It's early- or late, however you want to look at it, when Mike's phone rings. He groans and rolls over, AJ stirring behind him as he fumbles and finally answers it, not bothering to see who's calling. "Hello?"
"Hey, Mike, it's Bo!"
His eyes widen and he sits up, pulling the phone back to look at the screen. "Bo! How are you?" he wonders once he's sure that it is indeed the man.
"Better. They cleared me tonight, I can be back with you and Axel on Raw this Monday. Isn't that great?"
It is. A relief on a number of fronts. "I'll be glad to see you," he says honestly, segueing into everything that's been going wrong, how they lost at TLC and everything else. The only thing going right is that he's still champion and, to his credit, Bo listens to every word patiently, not interrupting Mike once, is more than can be said for AJ, who groans and buries her face in Mike's side, unable to sleep while he chatters on and on and on.
He eventually quiets, explains to Bo they were asleep and gets off the phone with as much politeness as he can muster at 4 AM, AJ huffing and tugging him back down for a couple more hours of sleep before Sara begins demanding breakfast.
They're sitting at the dinner table, Mike helping to feed Sara as she blinks blurrily at him, lazily opening her mouth for each spoonful, and he smiles down at her. She's more cantankerous for lunch or supper, throwing food around in an uncoordinated attempt at feeding herself, but in the early hours, she prefers to sit quietly and be fed, hair tousled and clothes wrinkled from her sleep. "i'm so sorry I'm going to miss your first trick or treating," he tells her, easing another spoonful of cereal into her mouth. "But Uncle John and Aunt Taya will be here to keep your mom and Maryse company, that'll be nice, huh?"
Maryse is more settled, her morning sickness easing the further in her pregnancy she gets, but she still comes by when she's lonely, so Mike's not surprised to hear her in the background when he's on the phone with AJ regularly. With Heath and Rhyno also going on the European tour, Mike expects a lot of sleepovers spent working through whatever candy Sara gets that she can't quite eat yet. He smiles and leans over to kiss his daughter's forehead. "I hope you won't hold my missing so much against me when you're older," he whispers into her hair.
AJ walks in a couple moments later, shaking a pumpkin at him and his eyes light up. "We're totally cutting these before you leave," she tells him. "There are two, I'll do one and you'll do the other, and we have a baby pumpkin that Sara here can paint." She tsks teasingly over her daughter's food stained face before kissing both of them in turn.
"Guess it's going to be a pretty good Halloween either way," he says to the baby, wiping some of the cereal off of her nose with a smile.
Mike tries to hold onto that feeling when he goes to Raw on Monday, the happiness, the contentment of being with his family, cutting into pumpkins and preparing Sara's little costume- she's going as a puppy, her eyes wide as she looks up at the fake dog ears flapping on either side of her face, sending AJ into giggles every time. He wishes he could stay with them, be the one carrying Sara from house to house, seeing people's reactions to his daughter's adorableness, but unfortunately, he's stuck here. Angle won't even let him leave early, Mike's plans to catch an earlier flight to Glasgow falling through.
He feels like he's being watched and the lingering smell from the garbage bag that'd been deposited in his locker room haunts him well after he yells at the nearest custodian until they oblige him and come in to remove it, until finally Alexa retains. They're immediately out, running for the car, and they somehow make it, they're free and safe... but then a trash truck stops in their way, refusing to move, and Mike yells at the driver until the thing comes back to life. Splits Braun Strowman out a minute later and Mike, Axel and Bo gape at him before diving out of the limo and running as fast as they can. He's deceptively quick too, however, and snags them before they can get too far- Axel and Bo are quickly gotten rid of but Mike continues fighitng, desperate to live another day, get Strowman away long enough to escape... but then Axel sacrifices himself to keep Braun from killing Strownan, Bo grabbing Mike and helping him to stagger up the ramp, to relative safety. They're forced to watch from where they're slumped in disbelief as Strowman attacks again and again, dragging him up the ramp once Mike and Bo have scaped through the curtain and sends him through the commentary tabe, finally silencing everyone in and out of the crowd. Ugh.
"Refs will get him! Move, move!" Mike cries, pushing Bo towards the parking lot. He's not sure how this is going to work, how he's going to survive Europe knowing that Strowman could come out of any corner, injure him, leave him in no shape to be champion or, well, much of anything else. For the second time that evening, he dives in and exhales once the driver finally peels away, leaving the arena far in their rearview mirror. "I don't know how I'm going to do this," he mumbles, eyes closed.