Work Text:
“ugh! you’d think with all this money wwe the pays for these hotels that they’d be able to afford decent service for a fucking tweet to go through.” she scoffed, pointing to her phone with a glare as she looked around at the other three people in the room.
her eyes quickly narrowed, however, and she momentarily halted her poor service tirade to really take in their faces—all of them twisted in three identical looks of alarm.
“what?” she spat, more annoyed than concerned.
it had been only two weeks since this whole arrangement was set into motion. after a bone-crushing defeat at hell in a cell that left one team broken and one team transformed, an unexpected new member ended up joining the ranks of the judgment day, and she was finding it extremely difficult to shake the sour taste, and resulting sour attitude, that followed her whenever she had to interact to the other members of this “team”.
“morgan…” damian began, voice ever so slightly shaky from his disbelief.
she was about to repeat her original question when rhea spoke up.
“liv, you’re crying…” her voice was full of care and concern, which would’ve caught the small blonde off guard if she wasn’t so shocked by what was actually said.
she dropped her phone into her lap and wiped at her face, collecting the stray tears that had been falling down her cheeks—for a decent bit of time now if the amount of them was anything to go by.
the room was still and silent. neither edge, damian, nor rhea said anything, could say anything, as they watched the blonde look down at her wet hands with wide eyes, tears no longer falling but instead beginning to dry where they sat on her skin.
“hm.” the blonde deadpanned, delicately pushing her thumb against a tear that had landed on her index finger until the tear disappeared into her skin from the friction.
“no i’m not.” she said, void of any emotion.
the looks of confusion on the faces of those around her deepened but she merely looked up at them, face expressionless.
“liv morgan is crying—”
rhea’s face sank.
“and i’m not liv morgan.” she had said it like she was stating simple fact, one as mundane as the current temperature outside or the answer if someone had asked her what time it was.
she blinked, only briefly confused as to why the faces of her counterparts contorted into an unconcealed look of terror instead of shock this time, before standing up and grabbing her phone.
“anyway, the service in here is fucking shit, im going to the lobby.” and with that, she was gone, snapping back to the the same nonchalance that had been heavy in her frame, following her all the way out like it was nothing.
the three remaining members of the judgment day remained motionless, only looking at each other once the door had shut behind the blonde and her footsteps trailed off into silence.
“d-did you see that?” rhea asked, voice frail.
“her eyes…not even mine have done that before.” damian said.
“maybe this was a mistake, maybe she wasn’t strong enough to handle the call!” rhea shouted at edge, teeth bared in anger.
“or maybe she was!” edge shouted back, a bright smile stretched across his face as a laugh found its way out of his throat. “don’t you see? maybe she was so broken that accepting the call truly freed her from all the pain of others’ expectations and doubts. and those tears?—that flash of those soulless black eyes? well, that might have been the result of the final breath of liv morgan.” his smile grew.
“so what?” rhea shouted again, “t-that was liv morgan as we knew her, dying? just like that?”
“precisely!” edge replied hands thrown up in awe.
“fascinating…” damian mumbled, small smile playing at his lips behind where his finger ran over them.
“she’s gonna need a new name if she doesn’t think she’s liv morgan anymore.” edge said, completely ignoring rhea’s obvious distress as he clasped his hands under his chin in thought.
damian hummed in agreement, before clicking the pen that had been in his hand before the blonde left and scrawling something down on the hotel provided notebook.
rhea however, couldn’t move from where she stood, feet planted to the ground like cement had dried down on her boots—her labored breathing coming forward was a result of the way her head couldn’t stop spinning.
when she first became apart of the judgment day faction, she promised edge that she throughly squashed any and all lingering feelings for the small blonde the moment she pledged to join him and had sealed the deal by kneeling at his feet. she assured him that she only saw the other woman as something to be dealt with, like an infestation, and nothing more. but now, something powerful was undeniably crawling it’s way back into her heart and mind, a gut wrenching feeling that made her hands shake at her sides.
“how’s ‘hell raiser’?” damian asked edge.
“hmm, too gimmicky and it needs to come with a ‘the-‘ at the beginning for emphasis. like ‘the eradicator’.” edge replied, standing up from his chair to pace in a small square while he kept thinking.
rhea had loved liv. she knew it, liv knew it, hell, the entire wwe universe did too—knew that even against her best efforts and debilitatingly fresh memories of betrayal from when nikki had ripped her heart out, she had still fallen, and hard.
rhea loved a lot of things about liv, but there were a few things that twisted themselves into the final nails in her coffin before she became truly head over heels.
first of all, she had loved the way liv would speak to her, in ring, out of the ring, when they were around coworkers, when they were alone, when they were being interviewed, it really didn’t matter where, it just mattered that every word liv said to rhea was spoken with the unwavering intention of making her smile or even feel that particular kind of warmth she got when she was falling for someone. rhea tried to fight it off at first, tried to look utterly unamused or completely uninterested, but that didn’t hold up for long.
secondly, she loved the little gestures that liv didn’t even realize she had done to make rhea constantly feel seen and cared for, like fixing her lipstick after getting thrown over the top rope of the ring, the look of unwavering concentration on wiping away the messy smears of black cream so genuine that it made rhea flush, or the act of always grabbing two sets of snacks from catering like it was second nature, just in case rhea took up more time than expected getting ready and couldn’t get any herself. all things that seemed like they would require a lot of forethought and effort to consistently pull off, but would just come naturally to liv whenever rhea was involved.
she had loved all of those quirks and so many other liv-isms, so incredibly dearly, but above all else, she loved the way liv looked when rhea would return the gestures. she honestly loved that part the most, because it proved to her that there was truly a chance that liv was just as taken with rhea as rhea was with her. so, between all of the silent acts of care and soft smiles saved just for them, in moments that would have otherwise been consumed but the fast-paced machine of their job, the bone-crushing hugs after a match that rhea would rather choose death over than passing up on, and even the almost kisses that they would both obsess over for days after they happened—all of it—it was impossible to not be in love.
“the enlightened one?” edge perked up slightly before looking over at the unamused looked on damian’s face and frowning slightly.
rhea felt sick.
“guess not.” edge rolled his eyes and kept pacing, tapping his index finger against his lip as the gears kept turning in his brain.
liv morgan had a funny way of always reanimating different emotions rhea swore up and down she was too evil and unforgiving to hold onto. and, right now, all rhea could do was think about how she needed liv to do it again, to free her from the dark cloud that haloed around her head and clamped down on her skull like a torture device, preventing her from feeling anything at all outside of the want to win, to conquer, and to eradicate.
“ahh, we’re putting way too much stress on this thing, priest.” damian turned around in his chair to raise a brow at edge. “liv morgan isn’t some complex character that’s hard to figure out, right? she’s simple, emotional…and her new name should be the same way.”
damian hummed, reclining in his chair slightly as he stared at the ceiling.
so that’s why rhea was so terrified, not only because all the feelings she promised had died on the vine happened to be resurfacing, but because the one person she needed the most right now, the one person she wanted to hold close and apologize to over and over again until her voice went hoarse and her eyes stopped producing tears, had just died right in front of her eyes—leaving behind nothing more than a cold, soulless being in the place of the ghost. a ghost who’s cause of death was heartbreak, courtesy of rhea ripely herself.
“i got it!” damian snapped his fingers and rose from his chair, an impish grin spreading across as he locked eyes with edge.
“The Heartbreaker.”
the first tear that fell down rhea’s face, stung like acid against her cheek.