Disclaimer, etc., in part 1.

Part Forty-Nine

Someone was knocking at her door.

Eve frowned at that, the woman rolling over in bed, wincing at the sensation that brought to her injured ribs... Sitting up slowly, she looked over at the clock, frowning as she noted that it was just after six in the morning. Definitely too early for someone to just be showing up at her place... But whoever was there didn't seem to be about to give up, seeing as the knocking hadn't stopped, and she'd heard the doorbell a time or two as well.

Shaking her head, Eve slowly rose to her feet, making her way down the hallway and toward the door, pushing her hair back from her face as she walked. It was Saturday morning, way too early to get up, and she had no idea who could be at her door... Her family was in Denver, most of her friends were spread out around the country and not necessarily even in California, and the people she'd been spending the most time with lately were currently doing SmackDown live events for the weekend.

Or maybe they weren't... Or, at least, one person in particular wasn't. At least, that's what it looked like through the peephole.

Her eyes wide, Eve reached out to unlock the door, shaking her head slightly as she took in the man that was standing there. "I don't understand."

"How mad are you at me?" CM Punk asked, causing Eve's brow to furrow in confusion, the diva stepping back to let him in. Her first thought was that he thought she was mad at him for waking her up... But the look on his face showed more concern than she thought he would feel about something like that...

"I don't... Am I dreaming? Am I still asleep? Because it's Saturday, which means... You're supposed to be on the road right now. At the live events," she said, closing and locking the door behind her as she spoke, the woman still shaking her head, feeling more than a little confused by what was going on. She turned to him, frowning a little. "I'm still sleeping, right?"

"No, you're not. I'm here," he told her, reaching out to take her face in his hands, leaning forward to kiss her, apparently not caring about the possibility of morning breath or anything like that. Pulling back, his eyes searched hers. "How mad are you?"

"How are you here? The shows... You're supposed to be halfway across the country right now. I know the SmackDown schedule... I was booked for these shows before I got hurt." She frowned. "I guess Kelly's taking my spot in the matches for this weekend now."

"She and Melina are facing Michelle and Layla," he told her, and Eve nodded, then looked over at him again.

"That still doesn't explain why you're not there, too."

He gave a half-smile, stepping back away from her, heading for the living room, Eve quickly following him, the woman crossing the living room and going into the kitchen for a moment, turning off the timer on the coffee machine - it wasn't set for another hour and a half - then turning it on manually, figuring that she wasn't going to go back to sleep again anyway... Of course, given the circles she could see under Punk's eyes, the knowledge that he'd probably traveled all night to get here... Well, she figured that he would at least need a nap at some point, whether she was up for the day now or not.

"You haven't answered me," the diva said as she came back into the living room, finding the man seated on her couch. She arched a brow as he looked over at her. "Why aren't you on the road this weekend? You were scheduled-"

"Teddy Long decided that I needed a few days to cool down. Apparently the way I attacked Jeff Hardy on SmackDown made him worry that I was... somehow unbalanced," the man said, smiling just the slightest bit as he said that last part. "No matter that I had reason to be pissed. I guess it didn't matter that Jeff used what Maria did to you as a distraction to win the title... And then had the gall to act like it was what you wanted. To lie through his fucking teeth and act like he was the one that looked after you after what happened. All it takes is someone like Melina telling the truth, and his lies are up in smoke. At least that one is."

"He's bought into his own hype. Everyone loves him, he can do no wrong, all of that. Plus, the drugs have probably done some damage by now. He's delusional... And he thinks I don't have enough of a backbone to stand up to him. He thinks that, if I want to stay in the WWE, then I'll have to toe the line and all of that. Plus, he doesn't have a clue when I'll be back anyway... Or if he does, he didn't get the information from me. Teddy Long probably would have told him-"

"But he wouldn't want Teddy Long to know he didn't get the information from you. Asking the boss instead of you..." Punk said, and Eve nodded.

"There is that," she replied, making her way over to where Punk sat, the woman coming to a stop as she was standing in front of him. Reaching out, she ran her fingers through his messy hair. "Still, he might be able to find a way. Not that it matters. He apparently has bigger things to worry about than when I'm coming back. Like his title match next Friday."

Punk winced slightly at that, and Eve suddenly realized that was what he'd been thinking about when he'd asked her how mad she was at him... Or, at least, it was part of what he'd been thinking about.

"Punk?"

"I'm sorry. I know we talked about you being there and cheering me on and turning against him and all of that, but... He set you up. We know it's true. Even if he didn't explicitly tell Maria to go nuts on you, he probably talked down about you enough to make her think it was what he wanted. She came after you with a weapon, and I couldn't get to you. It's just... I don't want you caught in the crossfire. You're out with an injury right now... You'd been having more matches, putting together a string of wins... You'd been getting the pins, not just Melina. You-"

"That could be it."

He blinked in surprise, frowning as he looked up at her. "What do you mean? I don't..."

"One reason he's always thought he could treat me however he wanted to was because I was just a manager. Before I became his manager, I was just an interviewer. I really didn't do anything besides that, and Vickie Guerrero gave me grief whenever I mentioned that I was training and wanted to be an actual wrestler... Then I started managing Jeff. It gave me something to do beyond holding a microphone and asking inane questions while half the assholes in the company were trying to get a look down my dress or whatever," she said, then shook her head when Punk went to speak. "Not you. Obviously. You were always actually decent to me when I interviewed you. But not everyone was. Anyway, once I started managing Jeff... They found someone else to do the interviews, so if I ditched Jeff... I either had to find someone else to manage, or I was in big trouble. Even when I started having matches here and there, they were still seen as an anomaly. Something that wasn't typical, but now..."

"Now you've been having matches at SmackDown, at live events... You're been wrestling a lot more."

"Right... and high half the time or not, even Jeff Hardy had to have noticed it. I'm not always at ringside for him any longer... Because of my matches. He pretty much thought he could do anything and I'd have to deal with it because I didn't have anything else. My career was being his manager... then. But recently? It hasn't been. I've been having matches, getting wins... I don't need him to have a career, because I'm starting to carve out one of my own."

"So he took you out before you could turn on him."

"Maybe... Or maybe it was about putting me in my place. I'm probably not going to be able to wrestle for a month. Major setback in my career, and maybe he thinks I'll be oh-so-grateful to him for keeping me around. Which just shows his complete lack of reasoning skills if that is the case, since he has to know that I suspect he had something to do with Maria attacking me... Even if he never directly told her to."

Punk shook his head, the man's hands curling momentarily into fists, his anger obvious in his eyes. "The man is a complete asshole. Fried his brains with the drugs, pissed away a lot of talent and a lot of chances. You know, he was supposed to be in the Money in the Bank ladder match at WrestleMania in 2008. The year I won it the first time," he said. "Everyone knew he was going to be in it... But then, suddenly... He wasn't. Because he fucked up his chances to even be in the match by having a positive drug test. His second wellness violation. I don't know what would have happened if he hadn't been suspended. If he would have been the one to win the ladder match and the briefcase, or if it would have still been me. But he didn't even get the opportunity because of his own fuck-up. But I went out there, and I competed, and I won. So I guess maybe his loss was my gain and all of that."

"You would have been in the match whether he was in it or not... Who's to say that he would have won it, anyway?" Eve asked. "I mean... People talk about how great Jeff Hardy is in ladder matches... And I guess he can be. He and Matt won the first tag-team ladder match way back when... But what's his record really been in ladder matches since then? He always does the crazy, stupid thing, you know? Takes himself out of the match and the other person or team usually wins. Yeah, Jeff does memorable things in TLC or ladder matches, but those memorable things don't often include winning them," the woman said, and Punk nodded at that, reaching out to put his hands on her hips.

"You do have a point there. It might be nice to have the crowd shouting 'holy shit' at you because you did something amazing, but it's better to actually win those matches," he said, starting to pull her to him as he spoke, the wrestler freezing when he saw Eve wince. "Eve?"

"It's fine."

"You're in more pain than you're letting on, aren't you?" he asked, reaching up to tug at the short sleeve of her t-shirt, exposing the bruises that were left over from the hits Maria had gotten in on her...Hits that had been aimed at Eve's head, but the other woman had managed to block them.

"My arms look worse than they are. It's really... Punk..."

"Let me see your back," he told her, still urging her to turn around, the diva doing so a bit hesitantly... Not because she thought he was going to do anything - he would never do anything to hurt her, she knew that - but because she didn't really want him to see the myriad of bruises that she knew were on her back... Bruises that looked worse now that they'd had several days to fully blossom... Now that it was nearly a week later, some of them were starting to fade a little around the edges, which actually made them look worse.

"You don't.."

"Just let me see," he said quietly, gently pushing up her shirt to reveal her back... Hissing through his teeth at the sight of her injuries.

"They're going to get better. I'll be fine," she told him, the diva unable to stop the shiver that went up her spine at the feeling of his lips very carefully pressing against first one bruise, then another. After a moment, he sighed, letting his head rest against her hip, carefully avoiding the bruises.

"Whether he put Maria up to this or not... Jeff Hardy is going to pay for this," he promised her, and Eve reached down, covering his hand with her own.

"I know."