The Emancipation of Trish Stratus

A/N: Alright, just a couple of things. First of all, I was going to write this chapter yesterday, but then you're awesome reviews of the last chapter made me nervous. I'm totally glad you all loved 19, so I hope this one isn't a disappointment. Also, I went back to the beginning for some of the dialogue in this chapter, so don't freak out and think you're reading the wrong thing. It's what I like to call "bringing the story full circle." Maybe you wouldn't even notice - I don't know. Anyway, I've said it, like, nineteen other times - but I don't own Trish and Randy. I hope you enjoy the ending to The Emancipation of Trish Stratus, and thanks to everyone who has been so supportive of my first wrestling fiction. You guys are the reason that I keep doing this - so either take a bow or take the blame! And, as always, I hope you enjoy.

"You," Trish pointed across her hospital room to a shocked looking man in jeans and a hooded sweatshirt, "have lost your damn mind. Are you completely fucking retarded, man?" She waited for an answer, but he just smirked and moved into the room, lowering his large frame into the chair beside her bed. "In the history of bad ideas, Randall, this was the most fucked up, ass backwards, shit-for-brains idea I have ever heard. You cannot possibly be serious."

Randy reached out and wove his fingers through hers, careful not to jostle the IV in the back of her hand. "Baby, settle down," he smiled, leaning over to press a chaste kiss on her forehead.

But Trish had spent the last hour rewinding and re-watching Randy's match from Unforgiven and she was not about to calm down. Sure, she had spent the last two weeks drifting in and out of consciousness, finding it better to just pass out than deal with the hellacious pounding in her head. And she had twisted her back all kinds of wrong, thanks to the fall she had taken in the ring that night. But she was not about to let Randy off the hook with just a warning. Not this time.

"How can you sit there and tell me to settle down, Randy? You gave that fuckin' match away. You could have won right there," she pointed to the "paused" action on the screen, "and you laid the fuck down and gave the goddamn belt away. What the hell is your fucking problem?" He didn't answer, only continued to smile at her, a tranquil smile that made her blood boil. "I had one hell of a concussion, lost way too much fuckin' blood, and might have some brain damage because of that fuckin' match and you gave it the fuck away!"

He looked around, sure that a doctor or some nurse was about to burst in and tell him to leave. He couldn't get Miss Stratus so riled up – she needed her rest. She wasn't out of the woods yet, and even she said she felt okay, there were a lot of internal injuries that they still had to assess. Trish's inability to stay awake for more than an hour was making it hard to diagnose anything concretely. "Why don't we talk about something a little less, I don't know, stressful?" He suggested. "Like the vacation that I'm gonna take you on as soon as you get out of here? I was thinking maybe Cancun, or Maui?" She stared at him blankly. "What about Italy? We've never really gotten to spend much time there," he pointed out.

Trish squeezed his hand until he was looking straight into her dark eyes. He wasn't peaceful at all. He was scared of something. She could see the fear in his eyes. A couple of weeks ago, she had watched him step into the ring with Hunter, completely fearless, but now he looked like a frightened child. He knew something. Something that he wasn't telling her. And more than the knowledge he had thrown a championship match, his lying pissed her off. "What?" she asked pointedly.

Randy blinked and cleared his throat. "I'm staying on RAW," he finally answered, his voice barely above a whisper. "I tore up the contract today."

Had she been able to jump up and down, Trish knew that she would. He wasn't leaving her? He was staying on RAW? That was great. And then her brain caught up with her heart and she stopped the party inside her head. "Why?" she asked.

With an incredulous look that said she shouldn't even have to ask, Randy stood and motioned for her to scoot over. He climbed into the small hospital bed and cradled her against his chest. "Is this comfortable for you?"

She rolled her eyes and dipped her head, showing him the bruised stitches on her temple. "Nothing is comfortable for me," she answered and then shot the best smile she could muster in his direction. "But it's better than being alone."

He kissed the uninjured side of her head and rested one of his hands against her stomach while the other twirled a piece of her long hair. "Why am I staying on RAW?" He repeated the question and she nodded. "Because my whole life's been about me, Trish. It's always been about what was best for me or what I wanted to do. I've never worried about anyone as much as I've worried about myself." He heard her chuckle and tried his best to pull her closer to his chest. "And then you came along, and I don't think I even realized what a great thing that was. I mean, not only are you the hottest chick on Earth, but you're also good for me. You take me outside myself, make me want to care about somebody else for a second.

"And when I saw you on that mat, all bloody and shit," he stopped and cleared his throat, seemingly surprised by the emotion the memory evoked. "Trish, I love you. More than any of the reasons I have for moving to Smackdown, that's for damn sure. I just don't," he stopped again and shook his head. "Dammit, I am not this guy," he laughed slightly, wiping the one tear that he hadn't been able to hold back. "Do you see what you've done to me?"

Trish laughed through the barrage of tears that were smacking the backs of her eyes. "You think I'm this girl? I have never cried over a man like I cry over you, jack ass," she accused, her head throbbing with each sobbing laugh that made it's way out of her throat.

Randy hugged her close and kissed the top of her head as gently as he could before pulling back and looking in her eyes. "Trisha," he sighed, kissing her bruised and swollen lip gently, "if I lose any chance at another title, I'll be bummed, and more than a little pissed. But if I lost you?" He shook his head and kissed her again.

Accepting a little more of his affection than her body should have allowed, Trish groaned as Randy's hand started inside the back of her hospital gown. His grasp was desperate, and as much as she wanted to continue touching him and listening to his moan into her mouth, another round of stabbing pain in her skull protested loudly. Pulling back, she gasped for breath and then smiled at him. "You have to go," she said the four words she never thought she would say.

Running a hand over the top of her head, Randy's eyes filled with concern. "I got it," he nodded. "You need your rest."

But Trish grabbed his arm and shook her head, a bad move in her current state. Things got a little bit blurry, but she pushed on, knowing that what she had to say couldn't wait. "No, I mean to Smackdown. Randy, I know you're trying to be the sacrificial hero boyfriend and everything, but nothing has changed since you gave me that incredibly well-thought out list of reasons you needed to do this," she insisted.

He laughed at that and then relaxed his back against the wall, her head resting on his shoulder. "You're kidding, right?" he asked.

Trish shook her head and let her eyes drift shut slightly. Exhaustion was weighing on her, but she was determined not to give in to the sleep until she had said everything that she had been thinking all afternoon. "For months now, I have done everything that I could do to be sure that I got my happily-ever-after. I have lost my mind for you, Orton. I have done things I never, in a million lifetimes, thought I could do, for you and because of you.

"You give me this undeniable, indescribable strength to be a completely liberated version of myself." She rotated in the bed and smiled up at him. "And now it's my turn to return that strength. I'm gonna hate being away from you, not seeing you every day and falling asleep next to you every night. I'm not gonna like the arrangement, but you need to go to become the next true legend in this business. You need to earn the respect of all the people who pay hard-earned money to watch you do what you love to do, what you're so fuckin' good at doing. You need to become one of the biggest stars this company has ever seen."

He watched as she delivered her little pep talk, and he felt another attack of emotion pounding against his chest. Refusing to break down for a second time in one conversation, he steeled himself against it and tightened his grip on her side. But he had never, in his twenty-five years on Earth, seen anyone look at him with so much belief and hope. He had never truly felt that anyone thought he could be the next big thing. But Trish's eyes said that she not only believed he could, but that he inevitably would. "You think I can do all that?" he asked, even though the answer was clear.

She rested her face against his broad pectoral muscle and kissed it sweetly. "I do," she nodded, sweeping her kiss up toward his neck. Every injured part of her body was begging her to stop, but the rapid staccato of his pulse convinced her to soldier on. When he squeezed her side a little too tightly, though, she retreated, meeting his eye once again. "And I think you need to go to Smackdown to do it."

Randy knew she was right. He knew it because he had been the one to tell her all of that in the first place. But she was in the hospital, and there was no clear date on when she would be released. Her future was so unsettled, especially with the current climate in the locker room. Female wrestlers were a dying breed, and if she couldn't stay healthy for more than a month or two, her job would be in jeopardy. They both knew that, and Randy couldn't convince himself that it was okay to leave her in such a fragile state. "What about us?" he finally asked.

Trish shrugged. A month ago, she would have worried that they would never survive a separation like this one. But now, she was one hundred percent confident that it didn't matter where their bodies were on the globe – their hearts were gonna be together. "What about us?" she asked him back. "Does going to Smackdown make you love me any less?" she asked. He rolled his eyes and gave her a quick kiss in response. "Then I guess we just work the long distance relationship until my contract runs out or you decide your tired of that side," she suggested.

With a sigh of resignation, Randy finally let his body relax against the bed as he held Trish's head to his chest and listened to her mumble something about taking a nap. He would go to Smackdown, not because it was best for him, though he knew that it was. He would do it because she had asked him to. And he knew now, for the first time with absolute certainty, that he would do anything Trish Stratus asked him to do.

Trish drifted toward a peaceful sleep with a smile on her face. She was grateful to Hunter for this moment. She was thankful that he had freaked out over Jeff Hardy, and that he had come completely unhinged over the entire Chris Jericho/Christian debacle. She was glad that he was so overprotective, because it had given her the chance to realize that real love was worth fighting for. She would bless the day Hunter demanded she stop dating Randy, because it taught her to stand up for what she knew was important.

And this one was especially important. More than ever, this one meant something. This guy lying next to her in her hospital bed wasn't just anyone. He was The One. She had finally found the guy who best complimented everything she wanted, and needed, to be. She smiled because she knew, for the first time in her life, that everything really was going to be okay. Hunter hadn't ended them. Their own petty, stubborn pride hadn't ended them. And she would be damned if she let Smackdown end them.

"I love you," she mumbled just before the sleep enveloped her mind.

Randy kissed the top of her head and then un-paused the action on the television, content to just be there while she slept. "I love you," he answered as her breathing began to even out. Trish had once told him that he made her feel like she could do anything, even the impossible, with style and grace. But as Randy felt Trish's head growing heavier on his chest, a wide grin spread across his perfect features. He was the one who had learned to do the impossible. He had learned to love someone more than himself. And, he realized as he turned his eyes back to the screen, where Triple H was choking him out, that he would do it all again in a heartbeat.

As he felt his own exhaustion finally starting to settle in, Randy thought back to a night he and Trish had shared, before the world knew their secret. And her words were the last thing on his mind as he drifted into the first truly peaceful sleep he'd had since Unforgiven.

"It doesn't matter if I'm with you in the privacy of this room, or in the middle of a public arena, Randy. Because no matter where we are, or who knows about it, I feel like my heart is free. And I can't think of anything that would make my life any better."

I just thought I would let you know, in case you were wondering, that I have thought about some possible sequel options for this story, but nothing is set in stone. Let me know if you want to see what comes next for these two, but know that it won't come for awhile. I want to finish Her Head v. Her Heart, and I have a couple of other ideas to play around with before I get to The Emancipation of Randy Orton. I'm just kidding - that's not what it's going to be called. At least, I don't think so.