"So what does this mean, do you think...?"
Mike sighs, pressing his knee carefully against the ice pack waiting for him, grimacing against the phone pressed to his cheek as he tries to manage his pain while caring on the conversation. "Think what?"
"That the anon GM is gone? If HHH is in control now?"
He takes a deep, steady breath, freezing numbness overcoming his discomfort slightly. "I guess. But who's to say HHH is going to be any better?" He stretches his leg out, resting his heel against the table across from him and sighs, glad to be back in LA for a brief period before the next media event.
"That's optimistic."
"Yeah, well, you know me, John. Regular bucket of sunshine here," he cracks with a mirthless smirk. "Besides, I have other things to focus on more important than the unending ownership drama over on Raw."
"Mm, the world title match," Morrison says after a moment. "You gonna keep it warm for me until I return?"
Rolling his eyes, Mike shifts once more into a slightly more comfortable position. "Oh please, as if you'd even get close to it with R-Truth around to babble about conspiracies. Your return will probably make that even worse, actually." He shudders.
"I'll show him a conspiracy," he mutters, the lightheartedness in his tone replaced by a sudden darkness that Miz is both surprised by and empathetic of. If he had been taken out of competition- twice, no less- he would've felt the same way towards those responsible.
"Bet you can't wait for October then," he says quietly, leaning against the couch as the warm LA breeze slips in through his open window, tickling across his arms and face.
"Yeah, something like that."
Once more, Miz arrives early to the event that next Monday, nerves and hope circling around within him, leaving him a little nauseous and jumpy, which does little to help his still sensitive knee.
He sucks in a deep breath as he pulls himself out of his car, turning to look at the arena. It's the usual kind of building for a Monday Night Raw, tall and patiently waiting for the fans to come fill its smooth walls in the hours ahead. He remembers feeling dwarfed by arenas like these way in his early career. He's come a long way, obviously, since then but right now, here, he feels little different from that rookie years back.
He's still standing near his car, looking up thoughtfully, when a throat is cleared behind him. He jerks, his knee automatically protesting the rough movement against the uneven pavement of the parking lot. "What?" he snaps, turning around with a glower just to find himself staring at Alex Riley. "Gah, Alex," he mutters, looking around quickly to find they're completely alone. "What is it?"
"We need to talk about this HHH thing," he explains, stuffing his hands in his slacks' pockets. "If he's in control, that means the Anon GM loses his power, right?"
"That's a possibility," Mike concedes with a jerky nod. "Won't really know until HHH actually says something, though."
"So do we keep the act up?"
He shuffles slightly, thinking quickly. "For now, I say yes. We don't know if the Anon GM is permanently gone, or what exactly HHH will do... For all we know, he's going to leave the decisions to the Anon GM like Vince has for the past year plus. Better safe than sorry."
"Ok. I should go then. Uh, really quick. How's the knee?" He glances down briefly, as if Miz's stance would tell him how he feels.
"It hasn't fallen off yet," he grumbles. Softening slightly at the exasperated worry in Alex's gaze, he shrugs. "Doctor said a bone bruise, some swelling. I have to be careful for awhile and it'll hurt like hell but it's nothing serious enough to keep me out of action."
Nodding, Alex starts to head for the arena. He's barely made it five steps, Mike already turning back to grab his bag, when he stops and faces his former mentor once more. "Good luck tonight."
Watching as he disappears into the building, Miz's lips twitch slightly. "Thanks," he finally mumbles before tugging his bag free.
Injuries are weird things, especially minor ones. The pain comes and goes and, even though you know better after awhile, you still fall into false senses of security- thinking at the first sign of normality that it's gone forever, from here on in you'll be fine and won't have to grit your teeth at the simplest movement. Then you trip, take too hard a step, twist just the wrong way and it flairs back up, making you want to scream and yell, pitch a fit until your body feels like your own again.
This is how it is for Mike, the first few minutes of his match against Rey Mysterio going fine. Despite the heavy bracing still holding his knee together, he feels like himself once more, dominates the shorter man for awhile until... until... one wrong move and he falls knee first into the turnbuckle, his hope and fluid movements immediately crumpling like sand between his fingers as pain takes over, blocks everything else out.
He still fights, yes he does- even comes close a time or two to getting that elusive three count- but it all goes downhill after that hard hit, his offense scattered and almost weak as even taking a step on the bad knee once more sends agony from his foot to thigh. How do people like Mysterio and Morrison deal with this, wrestle through it day after day? he thinks helplessly, unable to do much as Rey trips him up. He knows he's in position for a 619 now, his ears ringing with the crowd's reaction but he's so worn out and in pain that he can't even get his body to twitch, much less move out of the way of impact.
The three count is unsurprising but still disappointing and it all comes flooding back briefly after Rey rolls off of him, moving sluggishly as he limps back once more up the ramp. The loss of the title belt again hurts almost as bad as his body. Not wanting to get railroaded by the trainer, he ducks into the first locker room and grimaces at the monitor that's still on, showing Rey's win once more.
He's still in there, catching his breath and almost wallowing when he hears the celebration for Mysterio's first time at winning the WWE title. His eyes betray him by peering up at the TV, watching as various superstars drench the Mexican with champagne. He coughs, breath seizing in his throat as he watches Alex in the camera's focus, doing most of the champagne slinging with a large grin on his face. Despite his knowing that it's a part of the show they've been putting on for weeks, it still feels like a betrayal. He grounds his fists into his forehead, leaning over so he can't see the screen.
He's still sitting like this when the monitor shuts off, the room flashing with light briefly before dimming. The only glow now comes from a thin lamp across from Mike and he shakes his head, not wanting to talk to anyone right now. It's probably the trainer, coming to yell at me for not going right to him, he thinks drearily.
Quiet footsteps, now obvious in the silence following the monitor's being turned off, stop in front of Mike but he still ignores the person hovering over him, steepling his fingers before his eyes so that his vision is obscured further. After a few moments, there's an impatient huff and something drops onto the table before him with a flutter of crinkling paper.
Despite himself, he peers at it, slowly growing bored of the inactivity and silence. John Morrison, scrawled across the top of the page leaps out to him and he subconsciously leans forward, the words easier to see the closer he gets. He reads through the letter, his lips moving as he mouths the words, rereads again and again, uncomprehending. "No way," he finally mutters, twisting around fast enough to give himself whiplash as he looks up.
John Morrison stands before him in jeans and a rich brown shirt, his trademark sunglasses and fancy ringwear missing as they stare at each other, disbelief meeting intensity. "I'm back. For good this time," he adds when Mike just gapes.
"But- three weeks ago, you said-" he mumbles, still not wrapping his brain around this.
"I got a second... third... fourth opinion," he explains calmly. "The first doctor I saw was overly cautious. You see, WWE's doctor- the one who did the surgery- looked me over. After R Truth's second attack on me and when I was in China, I didn't get rehab like I should've. It hindered my recovery more than I realized... so he worked with me personally for awhile and it helped- a lot."
"That return package last week-" Mike mumbles, barely remembering seeing it through his haze of post-Money in the Bank agony and thinking it odd they'd air something like that when he still had a reported two or so months of recovery time ahead of him.
"Yeah, WWE was notified I was doing well with my recovery again, so they went ahead with airing it. I don't think anyone realized it'd be this week, though. I was just cleared on Friday."
Shaking his head in disbelief, Miz stands, his knee twitching slightly as he takes a slow step towards John. Without a word, he holds a hand out, his eyes gleaming with an unspoken challenge.
Rolling his eyes, John reaches out and clasps Mike's hand, waiting for a nod from the other man to tighten his hold and test his strength against him once more. Whereas three weeks before when he had barely managed to move him, he doesn't even take five seconds in overcoming Miz and leaving him gasping for breath as his wrist is manipulated in a way no extremities should be.
Released from John's steel grip at the first sign of pain, Mike drops back a couple steps, his knee throbbing with each jostle. John quickly steadies him, a guilty look in his eyes as they gaze once more at each other. "How bad is it?"
He takes a deep breath, shaking his wrist out quickly to ease the soreness left behind. "I'll survive," he grumbles, dropping back onto the bench.
John hums slightly before joining him, absorbing the familiar buzz of the arena just barely noticeable beyond the locker room door that he's missed so badly since his surgery. "Sucks about the match tonight," he says after awhile.
"Yeah." He has nothing more to say about it, wants to hear about it even less, so when John falls silent, he's relieved. After awhile, his former tag partner flips the monitor back on and they see that HHH's "state of the WWE" address is next.
"We talked briefly," he comments, pulling himself to a standing position. "He's going to announce my return during this... speech. So I should go wait for my cue." Something- fury, more than likely- flashes across his face as he catches sight of the monitor once more and witnesses R Truth babbling to HHH.
Miz leans forward and shakes his head. "Tagging with him now and again the last few weeks was really... annoying."
John glances over at him with a nod, many emotions still swirling around in his dark gaze. "I know how that is quite well." Without another word spoken, he turns and leaves the room.
Mike stretches his knee out and waits patiently. It's worth it as R Truth is in the right place at the right time upon HHH's announcement, Morrison coming out behind him and laying into him, not giving him a second to breathe before hitting Starship pain across his midsection. It's not all that the demented man deserves but it's definitely a start.
Even so, his night ends sourly as Cena wrestles Rey in the second WWE title match of the night and- surprise surprise- wins. Once more, Miz's most hated rival is champion. He's glowering at the TV viciously when Cena's horrible theme is interrupted, the "new" WWE champion looking more confused than normal until CM Punk comes out, his own WWE title held in an unwavering grip as he marches out to the ring. The stand off that follows leaves Mike disgusted and rolling his eyes. Some things change, and just as many stay the same, he thinks angrily, scowling at the TV as the two men face off in the middle of the ring, each holding what should've never stopped being his belt.