The Emancipation of Trish Stratus

A/N: You guys have been so friggin' unbelievable when it comes to reviewing this story! Thanks a million times over. Sorry this chapter's a little sappy. I kinda wanted to see if I could make myself cry. Anyway - hope you like it anyway. I don't own any of the people that you read about here - or any people, really. I wish I did - I wish I owned a hard-bodied man that I could just keep in a closet and bring out when I felt the need to play. Wait - I think I'm teetering on the border of TMI. Enjoy the story, folks.

Randy stood outside Victoria and Trish's room and gathered his courage. It wasn't supposed to be this hard to talk to his girlfriend. It wasn't supposed to be this hard to handle a relationship with the woman he loved. And he hated that it was this hard because of him, because of his ego.

Rapping his knuckles against the door, he waited impatiently for an answer. The idea that she wouldn't be there hadn't crossed his mind. What if she was out with Victoria, picking up guys? That wouldn't be out of the question, he knew. Especially as mad as she had been with him the last time they spoke.

But as he was about to turn and walk away, he heard the click of the door and the sliding of the chain lock. He had just seen her at the taping two days prior, and he was pretty sure she had dropped ten pound and forgotten to shower since then. "Hey," he smiled slightly.

She gave him a half-grin and stepped back, holding the door as he walked past her. "Can I get you anything?" she asked, her voice weak and strained. He was fairly certain he detected the gravelly twinge of a throat strained with tears.

Shaking his head, Randy sank to the bed and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. "I'm good. Thanks," he stated, his eyes drifting to a large bouquet of flowers on the vanity. "Those V's?" he asked.

Trish swallowed hard and leaned against the television cabinet, her arms crossed as she shook her head slowly. "They're from Hunter," she said honestly, avoiding the beautiful arrangement as she watched his reaction. His eyes clouded over angrily, but she watched him swallow whatever words he was thinking. "He sent 'em this afternoon," she added.

"Have you been talking to him?" he asked, his eyes finally meeting hers.

She couldn't lie. As much as she wanted to, she couldn't lie to him. Her head nodded slowly and she licked her lips quickly, her shoulders stiffening. "Couple times," she admitted. "He's trying," she defended. Randy started to say something, but Trish put a hand up and cut him off. "I know exactly what he's trying to do, Randy. You don't have to tell me," she insisted, moving across the room to sink into an overstuffed chair.

He didn't know what to say. In his own room, he'd thought of a million ways to start this conversation, but now that he was looking at her, and the tension in the room was about to strangle them both, he didn't know if he even remembered how to speak. Hunter knew something was wrong with them, and he was exploiting it. They both knew that much – but neither seemed to know how to combat it.

Something was different about him. Trish examined her boyfriend with a critical eye. She had seen him upset before. She had seen him depressed, anxious, hurting, injured, beaten, broken, and bleeding. But she had never, even before they were dating, seen him defeated. The sagging shoulders, the empty eyes, the blank expression? They all pointed to the fact that Randy, her champion, had given up hope. And it broke her heart to watch him pull a rolled up piece of paper out of his pocket and throw it onto the bed. "What's that?" she asked, making no attempt to move, though her body begged her for permission to wrap its arms around his neck and never let go again.

He stood in front of the bed and stretched his arms over his head, focusing his attention on the paper before him. "That's my Smackdown contract," he answered flatly.

Fuck permission. Her body stood of its own volition and walked to the bed, grabbing the packet of papers. Flipping through the twenty or so pages, her eyes rested on the bottom of the last page. He had already signed it, and so had his agent. All that was left were the signatures of Teddy Long and Vince McMahon.

The text may have pledged his allegiance to Smackdown, but Trish knew what it really meant. It meant that he cared more about protecting his title from Triple H than being with her. "So this is it, huh?" she asked, biting her lip as the tear pricked the backs of her eyes. "This is how it ends?"

Randy closed his eyes and let the finality and resignation in her words wash over him. "It's not what I want," he whispered, staring at the floor and then the ceiling as he blinked back an unexpected tear of his own.

"What then, Randy? Because I thought you said you didn't want to go to Smackdown. I thought you said you didn't want to be away from me. I just," she sighed, turned, and forced herself to look at him. She didn't want to fight. She just wanted to feel like she could trust him again. "I just want you to tell me what you really want. Tell me the truth."

He ran his hands over the top of his head and then his face, gathering all of his courage. He wasn't a sentimental or overly-sensitive guy. He didn't know how to put his emotions into words – didn't like talking about his feelings or whatever other Dr. Phil bull shit girls wanted from him. "I want us to be what we were," he said. "I want to know where we got so far off the path. I just want," he looked dead into her eyes, and his courage crumbled. "I don't know. I want to get back to the original plan."

She sat on the bed, one leg tucked under her as the other dangled inches above the floor. "Is this about the title?" she asked, not sure she knew him anymore. It had only been a couple of weeks, but it felt like a lifetime since she had felt his loving touch. Even when he was holding her hand or wrapping his arms around her shoulders or waist on camera, it was cold and distant.

"Remember the night I told you that I loved you? The first time?" She nodded. "And I told you I didn't know if that was a good thing or not because I wasn't sure how to love somebody who wasn't me?"

Trish smiled in spite of herself at the memory. It had been the perfect, cheesy movie-moment that every girl dreams of having. They had been in his car on the way back from his parent's house. She remembered that she had begged to choose the radio station that night, and that he had given in to whatever R&B music she wanted. There were no clouds or stars at dusk that night, and Monica was singing "For You I Will" while they held hands and rode in silence. She remembered that the silky voice on the radio sang the lines, "I will be your fortress, tall and strong. I will keep you safe. I'll stand beside you, right or wrong," just before he blurted the words she hadn't been expecting.

And she remembered how terrified he looked when he realized what he had said. "I told you I didn't know, either," she answered finally. It had been true. She didn't know anything about functional relationships. No more than he did. But she remembered, as she watched him standing before her now, that she was willing to figure it out with him.

"I wanna get back to that," he stated, sitting on the bed again, now just a few feet away from her. "Trish, I didn't ask you out that day at the gym so I could get inside Triple H's head. And I didn't take you to St. Louis with me so I could get that title back. And I didn't fall in love with you to make the fans like me again. When we started this thing," he reached for her hand and breathed an inward sigh of relief when she didn't jerk away from him, "it was all about us. At least, it was for me. Remember in the beginning? When I first agreed to go back to Evolution?" She nodded, captivated by the conviction slowly filling his eyes. "And I spent that week in Connecticut, just training with Hunter and strategizing and everything?

"I didn't spend that week dreaming about getting my title back, Trish. I didn't spend every moment in the ring thinking about how good the gold was going to look on me." Her eyes pooled with tears and her lip started to tremble, but he forced himself to go on, not to break down. "I spent every waking moment thinking about you. I missed you. I almost told Hunter a million times that week because I just wanted you. Back then, I didn't even give a shit if I ever got the fuckin' belt back. I just wanted to be back with you, even if it was just to throw that goddamned rubber ball back and forth in the therapy room.

"I don't know how we lost sight of it, Baby," he sighed, letting go of her thin fingers. "I don't know when it became about Hunter or Dave and John or Christy or whoever the fuck else has taken our eyes off each other, but somewhere along the way, we lost it."

A thought struck her in the gut and she looked into his deep, blue eyes. "Are you just trying to get me back before I have to ref this match?"

He couldn't have looked more hurt if she had smacked him in the face. "If you have to ask me that, Trish," he stopped and shook his head, moving without thinking. With a firm hand at the back of her neck, he pulled her body close and crushed her lips against his own. With all of the emotion he couldn't express in words, he kissed her. His breath grew short as he sucked on her tongue and held her face between his large hands.

When he finally let her go, Trish put a hand over her chest, just to be sure her heart was still beating. "I love you," she whispered, shaking her head. "But I don't know that we can just pretend like nothing has happened, Randy. I mean, whatever the reason, we've kinda moved past the "Take Back" stage, don't you think?"

He smiled and stood, holding a hand out. "Maybe we can't take it back, but we can definitely confront it together, right?"

She held the contract in her free hand as she stood and took the one he was offering, allowing him to lead her toward the door. "Not if you go to Smackdown," she pointed out.

Randy rolled his eyes, took the papers back and pulled her down the hall toward the elevator. "Let's forget about this," he waved the contract toward her, "until after the hot make up sex?"

Trish settled into his arms as he leaned against the glass wall of the lift, and rested her head on his chest. "Fine. But we will talk about it," she warned.

"If you still remember how to talk when I get done with you," he murmured into her neck, causing her world famous giggle to escape without warning. "Oh, God," he groaned and she felt him hard against her back. "I've missed you."