Disclaimer, etc., in part 1.

Part Fifty-Seven

Despite the fact that she realized that there was a good reason for her to stay at home and not attend SummerSlam - she would be absolutely horrified if she was somehow used as a distraction that hurt CM Punk's chances to win back the World Heavyweight Championship - she hated that she wasn't able to go to one of the biggest pay-per-views of the year... A pay-per-view that was in Los Angeles, maybe half an hour from her home. It sucked big-time, even if she understood the reason for it (though her reasons for not being there didn't exactly match up with the reasons why Teddy had told her she couldn't attend - he was worried she would be used against Jeff while she was worried she would be a distraction for Punk) and it had been very difficult to let Punk walk out the door without her. She'd sent him on his way with a kiss and a smile, biting back on the instinct to use the old show-biz adage of 'break a leg' and instead telling him to break Jeff's leg instead... Punk giving her a wicked smile and telling her that he just might do that.

And then he was gone, one last kiss and a wave goodbye, the man headed off to be in the main event of one of the biggest shows of the year... And she was stuck at home, waiting not-so-patiently for the show to start and the main event to finally roll around. Shortly before the start of the show, she'd gotten a call from Kelly, the blonde calling to give her a rundown of the pre-show match... A match that wasn't shown to the viewers at home but was just for those in attendance at the event. That had been the divas' battle royal, a match that Eve would have taken part in if she'd been allowed to be at SummerSlam in the first place. And as annoying as it was to miss the chance to be in a match, it would have been worse if it had been on the main card... Of course, this particular match had ended up having Chavo Guerrero as a referee, and he hadn't exactly been impartial, helping Beth Phoenix to eliminate Kelly and Melina at the same time to end it and get the final victory. Kelly had been angry about that - who wasn't when they were cheated out of a potential victory? - but she'd also been a bit pleased with herself, too, mainly over the fact that she and Melina had managed to knock Maria around a bit... Melina even getting a submission hooked in on her, causing Maria to try and tap out despite the fact that battle royals don't actually work like that. Shortly after Melina had finally released the submission hold, however, Maria had apparently decided that she'd had enough, the diva actually running from the ring and eliminating herself in the process in order to escape from the others... And it was really too bad that the match hadn't been part of the pay-per-view, because Eve would have paid good money to see that, especially if the look on Maria's face was anything like that Kelly described.

She sincerely hoped that the match would be some sort of DVD extra, or that she could at least find some video footage of it, because she *really* wanted to see Maria running away like the scared little moron that she was. But that wasn't the point, not tonight. Yes, okay, it was great that Maria suffered a measure of comeuppance - again - but tonight was about a lot more than that to her. Tonight was about CM Punk and Jeff Hardy. It was about a tables, ladders, and chairs match that would - hopefully - see CM Punk winning back the world heavyweight title that Eve still felt a little guilty about him losing in the first place. The fact that Punk vs. Jeff was pretty much the only match she wanted to see (no offense to the other guys) made it very, very difficult to wait patiently through the rest of the show... Including a ridiculous opening that featured DX being, well, the overgrown children that they so often seemed to be, doing their best to make fun of and belittle Ted DiBiase, Jr. and Cody Rhodes, whom they would be facing in a tag team match later on in the night. Apparently, DX thought it was a good idea to make fun of their opponents that were fifteen years younger than them.

After that head-shaking introduction was finished, the first match on the main card finally started... Dolph Ziggler against Rey Mysterio. And despite the fact that Rey had always been decent enough to her, Eve couldn't help the fact that she was sort of rooting for Dolph to win. After all, the guy had been nice enough to her lately - he'd even gone out there to help her when Maria had hurt her at Night of Champions - and the WWE had shown a video clip of him refereeing the match between Kelly and Maria on SmackDown and, well, that had just made her like him all over again... Even if he hadn't exactly been what one would call a 'fair' referee. He'd clearly favored Kelly, which was apparently enough for the announcers to start speculating that maybe there was something between him and the young blonde. And, yeah, Eve couldn't help but wonder what Kelly would have to say about that.

She didn't figure it would be anything nice.

Unfortunately (for Dolph anyway, not for Rey), Mysterio managed to win the match, which meant that smaller man retained the Intercontinental title. The next match on the card was MVP against Jack Swagger, and Eve pretty much remembered nothing from that match because she'd spent that time in the kitchen making herself a snack, occasionally checking the clock and reminding herself that it was a three-hour show, and there was probably still about two hours before Punk's match even started. (Yes, she was impatient; she'd never been the best at waiting and, if she'd been allowed to be backstage at the show, she would have at least had Melina and Kelly there with her to make the waiting seem less terrible.)

She'd spent most of the tag team title match between Jeri-Show and Cryme Tyme playing games on her phone and texting Melina and Kelly back and forth... Melina told her that she'd seen Punk earlier and that he looked calm, cool, and confident, and while Eve figured that he was projecting that outwardly, he had to be at least a little nervous. After all, he was main eventing the biggest pay per view of the summer, and he was doing so in a highly dangerous match. A match that would be made even more dangerous simply because there was no way for him to know if his opponent was actually high going into the match, which could make things disastrous fast. Jeff Hardy was crazy enough when he wasn't on drugs; there was no telling what he would do when he was high. And given what Punk had done to him not too very long ago, all the attacks with the steel chair? Yeah, it was actually pretty likely that Jeff would go out there at least on painkillers, which was a pretty scary thought... Even if she figured the man had developed a pretty high tolerance to them over the years.

After Jeri-Show had retained their titles - in a match that last longer than she would have expected it to, Kane made fairly short work of the Great Khali (thank goodness because, well, a Great Khali match was never something fun to watch) and then... Well, and then came a match that actually not only caught her attention, but held her attention. For what was probably a solid twenty minutes, Eve sat there watching the younger members of Legacy - Ted DiBiase, Jr., and Cody Rhodes - go toe to toe with Shawn Michaels and Triple H. The truth was, a lot of people (like the announcers) seemed to think that DX would just roll right over the younger men, which was silly, really... All the members of Legacy were second-or-third generation superstars, which meant that they had basically grown up around the business and that meant that they knew pretty much every dirty trick in the book. The experience that DX had didn't seem to matter for this one. Ted and Cody had learned from watching their fathers, had learned from watching their father's opponents... They knew how to wrestle. They knew how to be a team and, for much of the match, they actually had DX on the ropes. They clearly outwrestled the older men for almost the entire match, and the truth was, the fact that HBK hadn't wrestled in a little while showed. He was clearly a bit rusty, and Ted and Cody were more than willing to take advantage of it. In fact, Eve thought that Legacy had the match won on several occasions, but somehow, DX managed to pull it out, winning after a long, hard-fought match. To be honest, Eve was a little disappointed. It would have been kind of nice to see DX get their comeuppance, actually... Even if the fans did love them. She'd figured out by now that being loved by the fans didn't mean someone was a good person.

The next match had been something of a joke, a match that someone could blink and miss, only lasting a few seconds from bell-to-bell, Christian taking advantage of the arrogance of his opponent to get a quick and easy win. William Regal had actually waited until the bell rang to take off his ring jacket, and Christian had easily hit the killswitch on him and immediately pinned him for the three... Meaning that the Canadian was still the ECW champion and William Regal had been more or less humiliated at one of the biggest shows of the year. Eve kind of figured that Christian might eventually end up paying for that, but the truth was, she wasn't exactly invested in caring about it too much. She didn't even really know Christian.

The WWE title match was next, between Randy Orton and John Cena, and Eve found herself once again marveling about the fact that those two men - two of the biggest names in the company - were only the first of the two main events for the night. That the pay-per-view was actually being main evented by the World Heavyweight Championship match... A match between Jeff Hardy and CM Punk.

She could barely wait, the woman feeling herself tensing more and more as the match approached. The truth was, she could barely pay attention to the match that was going on, the woman finding herself not altogether caring who walked away with the WWE title. Okay, so John Cena was a decent enough guy... More than decent, really, since he'd actually stood up for her when Jeff had decided to break up a backstage fight between her and Maria by yanking her off the other diva and slamming her into the wall. So yeah, she had more reason to root for Cena than she did for Orton, who had never really been nice to her and had more than once tried to intimidate her, and then there was that whole thing where he was the reason that Punk's first title reign had ended... He and his friends in Legacy had attacked CM Punk before his match, leaving him unable to defend the title, and instead of giving him a chance to recover or anything, he'd been stripped of the title. So yeah... She had reason to dislike Orton. But even so, she couldn't work up too much anger when he managed to hold onto the title again (even though it was due to a distraction by a 'fan' that she suspected was really a friend of Orton and Legacy)... She was just too nervous, too keyed-up waiting for the one match on the card that really mattered to her.

CM Punk vs. Jeff Hardy for the title. The Straight Edge superstar vs. someone that most decidedly was not Straight Edge and possibly didn't even know what it meant. The man that had helped her through a rough time vs. the man that had more or less been the reason for that rough time.

"Come on, Punk," the diva whispered, shifting forward in her seat as she watched the video package that had been put together for the match. Like most WWE video packages, it was well-done, even if she knew that it didn't even come close to telling the whole story. It couldn't show Punk's real motivations because the people that made the videos weren't among the very few that actually knew what his motivations were.

Shaking her head a little, Eve actually moved off the couch as CM Punk's music began to play, the woman sitting cross-legged in front of the television as she settled in to watch the match. Punk looked incredibly calm and relaxed as he stepped out into the arena, the man smirking a little as he walked down the aisle, weaving around the various tables, ladders, and chairs that were scattered around on the entryway. He looked calm and relaxed, but Eve knew that the intensity was there. She knew how much he was determined to win this match... How determined he was to do damage to his opponent tonight. As Punk entered the ring, Jeff's music started, the older man walking out, playing to the crowd as usual, but with more intensity about him. His face was painted up in a messy design of purple and white and black that Eve figured even Goldust would find ridiculous. It looked a bit like a preschooler had fingerpainted on his face or something. As he entered the ring, the announcer began doing the introductions, first introducing Punk as the challenger, then Jeff as the champion. As the bell rang and the match officially began, the two men circled around, both of them looking up at the world heavyweight championship belt that hung suspended high over the ring... Punk once again almost smiling as he looked up at it while Jeff continued to look all business. Eve wondered if Punk's behavior was on purpose, if he was acting like that to make Jeff angrier, or maybe to make him think that he wasn't taking things as seriously as he should... And if Jeff thought that, he couldn't be more wrong, because Eve knew that Punk was deadly serious about this match.

The two men finally locked up in the ring, the fight actually beginning, and it wasn't long before it became evident that Punk was more than ready to go. In less than a minute, he had Jeff on the ground in the corner, stomping away at him, Jeff eventually ending up on the outside. Punk wouldn't let him take a moment to catch his breath, however, the wrestler diving to the outside and landing on Jeff, then continuing the attack, beating the older man down with vicious strikes. It was shortly thereafter that Punk went for the first attempt to climb the ladder, quickly setting one up in the ring and climbing it, but Jeff hadn't been beaten down enough, the other man rushing into the ring and shoving the ladder over... Eve cringing as Punk fell down a bit awkwardly. He seemed okay, though, taking some hits but getting back into it fairly quickly, Eve finding herself shifting even closer to the television, her hands clenched into fists, her fingernails digging into her skin as she watched... The diva thinking for the first time that maybe it was a good thing she wasn't there to watch it in person... Or at least it was a good thing that she wasn't watching it from ringside. She didn't think her heart could take it.

TLC matches were not for the faint of heart, and it would have been hard as hell to try and pretend - even for a moment - that she was cheering for anyone other than CM Punk to win this thing.

Once the ladders were brought into the match, more and more weapons began being used, and Jeff's attempt at a chair-assisted splash into the corner turned nasty for him as Punk caught him, then dropped him viciously on the chair. Despite the fact that the attack was on Jeff and not Punk, Eve actually cringed a little at that... It was a nasty blow. Jeff did eventually recover from it, though it wasn't until after Punk had tossed him around a bit, even throwing him to the outside then landing a suicide dive. Unfortunately, Punk made the mistake of bringing a chair into it after that, missing with a few blows before discarding the chair and, after managing to avoid being tossed into the ringsteps by jumping on top of them, Jeff managed to use the discarded chair against Punk, hitting him with it as he came down.

And that was when tables got brought into the mix... And Jeff Hardy's high-risk behavior didn't pay off. He missed a splash that was intended to put Punk through a table, the Chicago native rolling off the table at the last minute, Jeff going through it instead. That wasn't the end of things, though, as Jeff somehow managed to recover before Punk could get to the title, the two men going down hard off the ladder as Jeff powerbomb Punk off the ladder. Jeff recovered first, though, and Eve sincerely feared he would retain as he climbed the ladder... But then Punk was up, shoving the ladder over, sending Jeff falling into the corner, smacking into the turnbuckle. Punk continued his assault then, putting himself in as much danger as he was putting Jeff as he delivered a superplex directly onto the fallen ladder that had Eve covering her face with her hands.

When she dared to look again, Jeff was somehow up on the turnbuckle to deliver a Swanton, but Punk got his knees up in time... Unfortunately, barely a minute later, when Punk was going for his high-knee/bulldog combination out of the corner, Jeff managed to shove Punk to the outside of the ring and directly through a table that had been set up earlier. Jeff then went back to setting up the ladder, but Punk managed to send him sprawling again... The two men then going to the outside, Jeff managing to use the chairs and other weapons around the ring to get the upper hand, Punk ending up sprawled out on the announce table, Jeff having plenty of time to go and get the title.

And that was when Jeff's desire to be the show-off, to make the fans scream, got the best of him.

He went up for the Swanton off the ladder, and he hit it, sending himself and Punk through the announce table... And hurting himself as much if not more than he hurt Punk.

Officials came swarming out, quickly attending to Jeff, and somehow, Punk was in the ring by the time Jeff started pushing the referees and trainers away. Both men were moving slowly, the viciousness of the match having caught up to them. Punk got to the top first, but Jeff caught up to him, the two men trading blows, Punk going down a rung to get a good shot for a kick to the ribs, then knocking Jeff down with a punch, the older man landing hard on the match as Punk went back up, reaching for the title and pulling it free.

The match was over. CM Punk had just beaten Jeff Hardy at his own game. He was the World Heavyweight champion.

Again.