"If I was your girl, oh, the things I'd do to you, I'd make you call out my
name and ask who it belonged to-" Stacy Keibler sung along with her car
radio, she'd always loved Janet Jackson's 'If', and it seemed to fit her
mood especially right now. She was just pulling out of the parking lot when
she realized she'd forgotten her bracelet somewhere around the exercise
bike. She pulled the car back in to its spot and lightly jogged back into
the gym. She retrieved the bracelet and got a bottle of water from a
vending machine. Out of a morbid curiosity she peeked into the room where
she'd left Hunter and Kurt. Neither of them were there..she wondered where
either of them had gone off to. Hunter had seemed to be in an especially
foul mood today, he had even lifted her bodily from the room.
She had been seriously angry-and much to her chagrin, she had actually been turned on.the feel of his hands around her waist, the lifting sensation..God, was there nothing that man could do that would make her stop wanting him like this? It drove her insane. Stacy realized she'd taken a wrong turn, and she was taking the longer way out. Oh, well. That was when she saw the body on the floor. For a split second she thought it was Kurt, that Hunter had really lost it, had actually gone too far. But a second later, she realized it was Hunter himself and started gasping for air. "Oh, my God! Hunter? Are you okay? Oh, God!" Stacy screamed as she felt him for a pulse. She peered under his shirt and saw that there were two or three huge swelling bumps, like he'd been hit with something heavy. She tried shaking his shoulder, to get him up. "Hunter?" she yelled into his ear. She pulled open her bottle of water and splashed the contents on his face. Nothing. "I'm going to get some help. Don't move, okay?" Don't move, she cursed herself. That was dumb. Like he could. Well, he wasn't awake to hear her, so much the better. Then Stacy heard a voice coming from somewhere. She picked up the cellular phone lying next to Hunter. "He's going to have to call you back." She told the caller. She had almost hung up when a distorted voice said "You hang up this phone and you are dead."
"What?" She shrieked. "Fuck you!"
"Am I to understand Mr. Helmsley is unconscious?"
"Yes! You moron, he needs a doctor. I need to call a doctor!
"Did you happen to see who has done this?"
"No! I swear I didn't see anything, I swear!" Stacy told him wildly. "I just found him. Look, he's really hurt, please, let me hang up. I need to call a doctor."
"Very well. It wouldn't do for Mr. Helmsley to get out of the game so early, now would it?" The phone clicked off. Stacy started to dial 911-but the battery died. "No!" She yelled, throwing the damn phone against the wall. Stacy raced ahead down the hall and all of a sudden there was a gunshot. She turned wildly and saw that it had missed her arm by all of a centimeter and landed in the wall. She screamed again and flattened herself to the floor, beginning to cry. Then she heard a phone ring in the general vicinity of where the gunshot had come from.
A man's voice answered. "Yeah, Boss?" and then "What the hell do you mean it's off? I'm supposed to 'wound but not fatally injure the man, remember?'" A pause. "Fine, I'm on my way out..someone-guess it couldn't have been him if he's already down-was passing by. I need to go take care of it."
Stacy so didn't like the sound of that. She started crawling on the floor and tried to hide in a doorway. She heard footsteps come out.and they walked away from her. She peered back around the corner.no one. Maybe 'Boss' or whoever had decided to give her a break. Stacy shakily got to her feet and ran for a pay phone, dialed 911 and returned to Hunter's side. He still hadn't come to, and she was still freaked by the whole phone conversation and of course the freaking gunshot.she mulled over the man's words. "Wound but not fatally injure?" They'd had to have been talking about Hunter.they didn't want him dead, but it seemed they wanted him out of the way. And they probably weren't behind this, the man on the phone hadn't even seemed to know what had occurred. She wondered if Kurt had gone for some payback, but dismissed it. Kurt wouldn't have even been able to pick up the damn sledgehammer after the job Hunter had done on him.
What the hell was going on here?
"Don't worry, I'm here..you're going to be okay. You've been hit with sledgehammers a lot of times." She trailed off. But not like this. Never like this. "You're going to be fine." She repeated again, as much to reassure herself as him.
While Stacy was having quite possibly the worst day of her life in the waking world, Hunter was having the worst nightmare of his in another realm.
"You could have saved us." A soft voice told Hunter.
Hunter got to his feet.where was he? He breathed out, his breath coming out in puffs. The air here was icy cold."Who's there?" he called.
"You could have saved us." The voice came again, this time, it was so very sad, and closer to him.
"Saved who? From what? I don't understand!" Hunter called again.
Suddenly, out from the mists surrounding him, Stephanie walked out, holding something in both her hands. God, she was breathtaking. She wore a long, flowing white gown that pooled around her ankles. Her hair fell in waves around her shoulders, her skin glowed. "You could have saved us." She said again, her voice accusatory. "But.you didn't. Why? We loved you."
"I-What is happening? What's going on here?" He demanded.
But Stephanie wouldn't look at him, would only look down at the bundle in her hands.
"Stephanie, what's wrong?" Hunter crossed over to her side and looked down.
It was a baby. Her baby. Their baby. His baby. "Hi." he whispered dumbly at the tiny figure. Hazel eyes looked soulfully back up at him from the folds of the blanket. For the first time, Stephanie looked back at Hunter, tears streaming down her face. "Why didn't you save us? You could have, you know. If you would have just figured it out sooner, you could have helped me. I didn't want to leave you, we didn't want to leave you, not like that. Never that way."
"Why-why would you leave me?" Hunter asked, trying to get a handle on this situation, and unable to tear his eyes away from his baby. He looked up at Stephanie's eyes and his heart froze at the sadness. the pain he saw inside of them. "Stephanie, please, tell me! You have to tell me why we're here! Did I do something wrong? If I did, I'm so sorry.Just tell me what to do, I'll fix it, I'll make it okay again, I promise. I swear to you, I'll do whatever you need me to do." He said frantically.
Stephanie looked at him steadily. "Listen to your heart. That's all you can do now. Everything's already in motion, I can't stop it. Neither of us can."
"Listen to my heart? What kind of crank advice is that? What is this!?" Fear had quickly turned to anger inside Hunter. How could she expect him to help if he didn't know what the hell she was talking about? God knew he wanted to, would help her however he could, but the road to hell had always been paved with good intentions..
"It's all I can give you anymore, Hunter. If you want us, you need to do it. For all of our sakes."
Stephanie flinched, looked past her shoulder, like she'd heard a noise. Suddenly, the baby was gone, Stephanie was still there, but there was no white flowing dress, only the tattered remains of a long light red dress that had clearly been through hell. It was caked with deep black mud, and a deep blood-red clay, torn in several places. Stephanie looked around wildly, she was breathing hard.
Hunter asked "Stephanie, what's happening? Steph? Where's the baby?"
But Stephanie collapsed to the ground. "I can't do it anymore!" She cried. "I'm so tired. I can't-I can't run anymore." She choked out. And then Hunter realized the scenery had changed. From weird mists to.a farm? It was dark out, the only light came from the full moon and the stars. What the--?
He made a move to go to her, to run to her, pick her up, carry her away.but his legs were like dead weight. He couldn't move. "Stephanie! You have to run! You can do this, I promise!" He didn't know why he had said that, but he'd somehow felt it was important for her to run.
"I prayed you would come.oh, Hunter, I wish you were here. This hurts so bad!" Stephanie whimpered, clutching her stomach. There was another sound, very near now. Stephanie inhaled, and started to crawl quickly across the grass. "No! Please, no, no! I don't want this! Please, someone help me!" She managed to get to her feet, but the sound was closer now, and Hunter could make out the figure of a man striding toward them.
"Steph, run! I'll hold him off! Run, damn it!" He told her, although he didn't know how he was supposed to fight when he couldn't even move. Stephanie had managed to get unsteadily to her feet but they immediately caught on a branch and she went down. She gasped loudly, then put a hand over her mouth, trying to silence herself.
"Please don't do this, please..I'm sorry, okay? Is that what you want to hear from me? Is that all? I'm sorry, I truly am.you don't have to do this!" Stephanie wailed, still clutching her stomach. Hunter realized how big it had gotten.how far along was she here in this place?
"You've given me a good run of it, Stephanie, I'll admit it. But then, I knew you would." Hunter heard the man say as he walked slowly to Stephanie. Everything was happening in a kind of slow-motion, Hunter tried desperately to make his legs work, but the mists.they were coming.and the farm was fading..he heard Stephanie's final scream, and then..there was utter and complete silence.
Hunter Hearst-Helmsley's eyes blinked open, his breathing coming in shallowly. He couldn't see very well.everything was still so cloudy.
"Hunter?" A soft voice whispered. "Thank God you're awake."
"Steph? You're okay.you're okay." he cried, reaching toward the voice, feeling her arms, pulling her down to his face, and kissing her desperately. "You're okay, you're okay.." He breathed inbetween kisses. "I love you so much, I do. I'll do it different, I promise."
Stacy didn't know what the hell Hunter was babbling about but..he was kissing her and it was difficult to think..even coming out of a near coma, the man was every bit an amazing kisser. Then she realized he had called her Stephanie and pulled out of his kiss, much as she was loathe to do it. She looked up and stiffened when she saw someone behind them in the mirror on the wall..Stephanie. Her heart began to race.oh, the Fates were kind.Stacy grinned, and leaned back into Hunter. "Oh, Hunter, I love you too!" She told him, trying to capture Stephanie's whine, but not so much so that Stephanie would notice. She heard the door shut tightly behind her.
"Wha-uh-Stacy? Where did Stephanie go?" Hunter asked, confused.
"It's okay.shh.just wait for the doctor to come back. I'll stay right here with you."
"But, Stephanie, I need to talk to her---"
"I said shhhhh.." The last thing she needed was for Hunter to start calling for Stephanie, and for Stephanie to hear.
Stephanie leaned against the door, crying for the thousandth time this week. When she'd heard the nurses talking on her mother's floor about the gorgeous guy who was down on 5th, for some reason, she'd felt scared so she'd asked what was going on, and had quickly deduced it was her husband. She'd told Shane to stay with their mother and ran for an elevator. Shane had run after her, but the elevator doors had shut in his face. She'd been so scared all the way here, so frightened something had happened to him.and then she'd seen him. Alive. Apparently well. At least well enough to be kissing that witch Stacy.kissing Stacy the way he'd once kissed her, with all the fire and passion and life that was in his soul.
She hated him. She hated her. She hated them both.and they would be so sorry. He knew what she was going through, how could he be so callous? He was a bastard, and she hated him, hated him because he was a jerk and she loved him still so much that this hurt so badly. Stephanie jumped when someone turned her around, but it was only Shane.
"What the hell were you doing, running off like that?" he yelled at her. "Don't you get how dangerous this is?"
"Don't worry. I won't do it again. Never again." But they were talking about two entirely different things. "Let's go back to mom.there's nothing here for me anymore." Thoroughly bewildered and confused, Shane followed his sister to the elevator and they went back up to their mother's floor wordlessly.
She had been seriously angry-and much to her chagrin, she had actually been turned on.the feel of his hands around her waist, the lifting sensation..God, was there nothing that man could do that would make her stop wanting him like this? It drove her insane. Stacy realized she'd taken a wrong turn, and she was taking the longer way out. Oh, well. That was when she saw the body on the floor. For a split second she thought it was Kurt, that Hunter had really lost it, had actually gone too far. But a second later, she realized it was Hunter himself and started gasping for air. "Oh, my God! Hunter? Are you okay? Oh, God!" Stacy screamed as she felt him for a pulse. She peered under his shirt and saw that there were two or three huge swelling bumps, like he'd been hit with something heavy. She tried shaking his shoulder, to get him up. "Hunter?" she yelled into his ear. She pulled open her bottle of water and splashed the contents on his face. Nothing. "I'm going to get some help. Don't move, okay?" Don't move, she cursed herself. That was dumb. Like he could. Well, he wasn't awake to hear her, so much the better. Then Stacy heard a voice coming from somewhere. She picked up the cellular phone lying next to Hunter. "He's going to have to call you back." She told the caller. She had almost hung up when a distorted voice said "You hang up this phone and you are dead."
"What?" She shrieked. "Fuck you!"
"Am I to understand Mr. Helmsley is unconscious?"
"Yes! You moron, he needs a doctor. I need to call a doctor!
"Did you happen to see who has done this?"
"No! I swear I didn't see anything, I swear!" Stacy told him wildly. "I just found him. Look, he's really hurt, please, let me hang up. I need to call a doctor."
"Very well. It wouldn't do for Mr. Helmsley to get out of the game so early, now would it?" The phone clicked off. Stacy started to dial 911-but the battery died. "No!" She yelled, throwing the damn phone against the wall. Stacy raced ahead down the hall and all of a sudden there was a gunshot. She turned wildly and saw that it had missed her arm by all of a centimeter and landed in the wall. She screamed again and flattened herself to the floor, beginning to cry. Then she heard a phone ring in the general vicinity of where the gunshot had come from.
A man's voice answered. "Yeah, Boss?" and then "What the hell do you mean it's off? I'm supposed to 'wound but not fatally injure the man, remember?'" A pause. "Fine, I'm on my way out..someone-guess it couldn't have been him if he's already down-was passing by. I need to go take care of it."
Stacy so didn't like the sound of that. She started crawling on the floor and tried to hide in a doorway. She heard footsteps come out.and they walked away from her. She peered back around the corner.no one. Maybe 'Boss' or whoever had decided to give her a break. Stacy shakily got to her feet and ran for a pay phone, dialed 911 and returned to Hunter's side. He still hadn't come to, and she was still freaked by the whole phone conversation and of course the freaking gunshot.she mulled over the man's words. "Wound but not fatally injure?" They'd had to have been talking about Hunter.they didn't want him dead, but it seemed they wanted him out of the way. And they probably weren't behind this, the man on the phone hadn't even seemed to know what had occurred. She wondered if Kurt had gone for some payback, but dismissed it. Kurt wouldn't have even been able to pick up the damn sledgehammer after the job Hunter had done on him.
What the hell was going on here?
"Don't worry, I'm here..you're going to be okay. You've been hit with sledgehammers a lot of times." She trailed off. But not like this. Never like this. "You're going to be fine." She repeated again, as much to reassure herself as him.
While Stacy was having quite possibly the worst day of her life in the waking world, Hunter was having the worst nightmare of his in another realm.
"You could have saved us." A soft voice told Hunter.
Hunter got to his feet.where was he? He breathed out, his breath coming out in puffs. The air here was icy cold."Who's there?" he called.
"You could have saved us." The voice came again, this time, it was so very sad, and closer to him.
"Saved who? From what? I don't understand!" Hunter called again.
Suddenly, out from the mists surrounding him, Stephanie walked out, holding something in both her hands. God, she was breathtaking. She wore a long, flowing white gown that pooled around her ankles. Her hair fell in waves around her shoulders, her skin glowed. "You could have saved us." She said again, her voice accusatory. "But.you didn't. Why? We loved you."
"I-What is happening? What's going on here?" He demanded.
But Stephanie wouldn't look at him, would only look down at the bundle in her hands.
"Stephanie, what's wrong?" Hunter crossed over to her side and looked down.
It was a baby. Her baby. Their baby. His baby. "Hi." he whispered dumbly at the tiny figure. Hazel eyes looked soulfully back up at him from the folds of the blanket. For the first time, Stephanie looked back at Hunter, tears streaming down her face. "Why didn't you save us? You could have, you know. If you would have just figured it out sooner, you could have helped me. I didn't want to leave you, we didn't want to leave you, not like that. Never that way."
"Why-why would you leave me?" Hunter asked, trying to get a handle on this situation, and unable to tear his eyes away from his baby. He looked up at Stephanie's eyes and his heart froze at the sadness. the pain he saw inside of them. "Stephanie, please, tell me! You have to tell me why we're here! Did I do something wrong? If I did, I'm so sorry.Just tell me what to do, I'll fix it, I'll make it okay again, I promise. I swear to you, I'll do whatever you need me to do." He said frantically.
Stephanie looked at him steadily. "Listen to your heart. That's all you can do now. Everything's already in motion, I can't stop it. Neither of us can."
"Listen to my heart? What kind of crank advice is that? What is this!?" Fear had quickly turned to anger inside Hunter. How could she expect him to help if he didn't know what the hell she was talking about? God knew he wanted to, would help her however he could, but the road to hell had always been paved with good intentions..
"It's all I can give you anymore, Hunter. If you want us, you need to do it. For all of our sakes."
Stephanie flinched, looked past her shoulder, like she'd heard a noise. Suddenly, the baby was gone, Stephanie was still there, but there was no white flowing dress, only the tattered remains of a long light red dress that had clearly been through hell. It was caked with deep black mud, and a deep blood-red clay, torn in several places. Stephanie looked around wildly, she was breathing hard.
Hunter asked "Stephanie, what's happening? Steph? Where's the baby?"
But Stephanie collapsed to the ground. "I can't do it anymore!" She cried. "I'm so tired. I can't-I can't run anymore." She choked out. And then Hunter realized the scenery had changed. From weird mists to.a farm? It was dark out, the only light came from the full moon and the stars. What the--?
He made a move to go to her, to run to her, pick her up, carry her away.but his legs were like dead weight. He couldn't move. "Stephanie! You have to run! You can do this, I promise!" He didn't know why he had said that, but he'd somehow felt it was important for her to run.
"I prayed you would come.oh, Hunter, I wish you were here. This hurts so bad!" Stephanie whimpered, clutching her stomach. There was another sound, very near now. Stephanie inhaled, and started to crawl quickly across the grass. "No! Please, no, no! I don't want this! Please, someone help me!" She managed to get to her feet, but the sound was closer now, and Hunter could make out the figure of a man striding toward them.
"Steph, run! I'll hold him off! Run, damn it!" He told her, although he didn't know how he was supposed to fight when he couldn't even move. Stephanie had managed to get unsteadily to her feet but they immediately caught on a branch and she went down. She gasped loudly, then put a hand over her mouth, trying to silence herself.
"Please don't do this, please..I'm sorry, okay? Is that what you want to hear from me? Is that all? I'm sorry, I truly am.you don't have to do this!" Stephanie wailed, still clutching her stomach. Hunter realized how big it had gotten.how far along was she here in this place?
"You've given me a good run of it, Stephanie, I'll admit it. But then, I knew you would." Hunter heard the man say as he walked slowly to Stephanie. Everything was happening in a kind of slow-motion, Hunter tried desperately to make his legs work, but the mists.they were coming.and the farm was fading..he heard Stephanie's final scream, and then..there was utter and complete silence.
Hunter Hearst-Helmsley's eyes blinked open, his breathing coming in shallowly. He couldn't see very well.everything was still so cloudy.
"Hunter?" A soft voice whispered. "Thank God you're awake."
"Steph? You're okay.you're okay." he cried, reaching toward the voice, feeling her arms, pulling her down to his face, and kissing her desperately. "You're okay, you're okay.." He breathed inbetween kisses. "I love you so much, I do. I'll do it different, I promise."
Stacy didn't know what the hell Hunter was babbling about but..he was kissing her and it was difficult to think..even coming out of a near coma, the man was every bit an amazing kisser. Then she realized he had called her Stephanie and pulled out of his kiss, much as she was loathe to do it. She looked up and stiffened when she saw someone behind them in the mirror on the wall..Stephanie. Her heart began to race.oh, the Fates were kind.Stacy grinned, and leaned back into Hunter. "Oh, Hunter, I love you too!" She told him, trying to capture Stephanie's whine, but not so much so that Stephanie would notice. She heard the door shut tightly behind her.
"Wha-uh-Stacy? Where did Stephanie go?" Hunter asked, confused.
"It's okay.shh.just wait for the doctor to come back. I'll stay right here with you."
"But, Stephanie, I need to talk to her---"
"I said shhhhh.." The last thing she needed was for Hunter to start calling for Stephanie, and for Stephanie to hear.
Stephanie leaned against the door, crying for the thousandth time this week. When she'd heard the nurses talking on her mother's floor about the gorgeous guy who was down on 5th, for some reason, she'd felt scared so she'd asked what was going on, and had quickly deduced it was her husband. She'd told Shane to stay with their mother and ran for an elevator. Shane had run after her, but the elevator doors had shut in his face. She'd been so scared all the way here, so frightened something had happened to him.and then she'd seen him. Alive. Apparently well. At least well enough to be kissing that witch Stacy.kissing Stacy the way he'd once kissed her, with all the fire and passion and life that was in his soul.
She hated him. She hated her. She hated them both.and they would be so sorry. He knew what she was going through, how could he be so callous? He was a bastard, and she hated him, hated him because he was a jerk and she loved him still so much that this hurt so badly. Stephanie jumped when someone turned her around, but it was only Shane.
"What the hell were you doing, running off like that?" he yelled at her. "Don't you get how dangerous this is?"
"Don't worry. I won't do it again. Never again." But they were talking about two entirely different things. "Let's go back to mom.there's nothing here for me anymore." Thoroughly bewildered and confused, Shane followed his sister to the elevator and they went back up to their mother's floor wordlessly.