Antebellum

[url=http://afwrpg.informe.com/forum/summer-splash-f69/ss-14-hawk-and-lioness-vs-silver-ace-and-valley-doll-t10281.html:1gn3xbag]Continued from here...[/url:1gn3xbag]

Valley was used to hearing boos. She just wasn't used to hearing boos aimed at her. As she made her way to the dressing room with Ace behind her, she swore she could still hear them echo through her head.

Whatever happened tonight, she had planned on leaving the arena in a good mood, win or lose. Even if Hawk and Lioness beat them, it wouldn't have been that big of a deal. She and Ace would have gotten through it together, it would have been a learning experience for them both, and they could always come at those two again. If it was just a loss, she could handle it.

But what Allison and Jocelyn had given them was something far worse - humiliation, plain and simple. And the worst part of it was, no matter how much she wanted to throw it all on them, the hard, inescapable fact was that every bad thing that happened in that ring was her fault. So many mistakes. Obvious ones. And what she did to Jocelyn was starting to sink in, too - it was like a twisted perversion of everything she'd been taught as a wrestler.

"Are your friends and families in attendance? Did they all watch you both brutally beat a young girl half your size just now? How proud they must be to see what you've become."

Allison's words clawed at her, marks left deep even after the woman was long gone, like a scar that just refused to fade. It felt good at the time, beating on Jocelyn like that. She saw red, thought let herself get caught up in the moment, and just let go. Indulged in her power, in the control, and the result was simply terrifying.

Sure enough, Valley's phone was vibrating the moment the entered the room. Valley didn't need to see who it was, really, but she looked any, sliding the phone on as she took a seat - her mother. Of course. That was going to be an extremely fun conversation. but one that could wait for a little while. At the moment, she had a more pressing problem.

Sliding the phone away, she turned in the chair towards Ace, shifting about to look at her in full. "I just-" Her shoulders sagged and she shook her head. "I'm sorry. I don't know what else to say, but...I'm sorry."

Ace limped into the dressing room, quickly laying flat on her back on a bench, whimpering lightly as her back and neck ached after being put in two different camel clutches.

She was disappointed and confused, wondering just how it all went so wrong so fast. It was probably the worse showing of Ace's career, completely underestimating Jocelyn's actual skill, and Valley....Ace couldn't explain why Valley kept interfering the way she did when there were better ways to help, or her overly brutal treatment of Jocelyn.

Letting out a long sigh as Valley apologized, Ace just stared at the ceiling.

"Val....what the hell happened to us out there?"

Valley took a moment to answer that question. She'd been asking herself the same thing nonstop for the past few minutes, and now that she had a second to stop and think, she kept coming to some hard conclusions.

"It was my fault." She winced as she eased back into the chair, still feeling the effects from Allison's Atomic Drop. Just bending over was going to be a painful affair for a few weeks. "I shouldn't have-" She bit her lip, looking off to the side and hoping that sentence could stay unsaid. "I just made some mistakes and I got carried up in the moment, and I...I'm sorry."

She slouched forward in the chair and straightened her hair out, the sweat making a few irritating strands stick to her face. "God, I've never bee so stupid."

"I just don't get it...I mean, the first time you hopped in the ring, alright, I was in trouble and, I mean...I could have reached the ropes with a few more seconds, but you were helping. The second time though...I mean, I get it, she was touching my face and being creepy, but the hold wasn't that painful, and if you had just given me a chance instead of being jealous, I would have found a way out! I'm not helpless!"

She said, throwing her hands up in frustration. In all fairness, Ace hadn't exactly done that well either, but she wasn't focusing on that at the moment, overly frustrated with the match, Valley's mothers words being true, and her own self dissapointment.

"And what was with you and Jocelyn!? After all you and I have been through with crazy bitches here, you were the last person I'd expect to start acting like one of them!"

She said, only realizing after she said it how badly that could be taken.

"Jealous?" She perked up at the word. What did she have to be jealous of? Allison wasn't ugly or anything - maybe a bit frumpy for her tastes - but was she really jealous? The woman had no business touching Ace like that, that was all there was to it. "I wasn't jealous, I-"

The phone started buzzing again, this time a call from her Dad - still more of a headache she just did not need right now. She grabbed the phone and shut it off, sliding it back across the table.

"Ace." She focused a level look her way, speaking more sternly than she liked to with her. "I wasn't jealous, I just..." She held up her hand and paused, trying to keep from going to fast. "Imagine we were in a mall or a crowd or someplace and someone did what Allison did. How else could I react?" She cocked her head to the side. "And I'm not a crazy bitch, you know me better than that. I got carried away, okay, fine. I admit that, but it's just...I'm tired of people messing with you, Haley. I just thought of all those times, and I snapped. That doesn't make it right, but there it is."

Ace frowned as Val got a tone in her voice, one that, even if it wasn't intended, sounded for all the world like Ace was getting lectured, as if she was some schoolchild who got an answer wrong in front of the class. It didn't help at all, instead serving to irritate an already frazzled Ace even further. Valley had never spoken to her like that for a reason. She knew that Ace hated being talked down to, and knew that if she ever tried to pull the "I'm older, so listen to me" card, that it would just belittle and anger her.

"Damnit Valerie, don't you think I'm tired of it too? People have been messing with me my entire career! Because I'm young, because I'm rich, because I'm a rookie, whatever reason, people have messed with me ever since I stepped foot into a ring, and every time they have, I fought them head on. Sometimes I won, sometimes I lost, but I still did it myself. I never had to get rescued by some shining knight and carried off like some damsel in distress, yet since we've met you've done it 4 times! You couldn't see that's what Allison was goading you into doing? Or do you have so little faith in my abilities that you think you have to save me every time I take a hit!?"

Ace yelled, finally voicing what had been bothering her since the match ended. She sat up, letting out a pained yelp as her back screamed at her for doing so, before holding up a finger at a time to Valley

"Jocelyn kicked me in the cooch and beat me down. Fine, I needed help then. Lioness attacked me, but I had already taken Jade out with a Flash Kick and was rolling almost out of the ring when you ran in, so I didn't need to be saved. Jocelyn got the better of me tonight and got me in her hold, but we were just inches from a tag, and the ropes were right in front of me, so either way, I was going to get out of it, so you should have stayed on the apron, but you didn't, and Allison wasn't even trying to hurt me in her hold, she was trying to goad you into the ring, and you fell for it, because you felt you had to save little Ace again, because without you around to save her, little Ace just can't handle herself, can she!?"

She finished, panting. If she had been in a right state of mind, she would have been horrified at her yelling at her girlfriend like that, but with everything that had happened....it was too much for her to take, the silver haired girl taking it out on her well meaning girlfriend.

Gah, Ace was using her real name. That was never a good sign.

Valley sat quietly, patiently as Ace got everything off her chest. A lot of it, almost all of it, were things that needed to be said and were a long time coming, but that didn't make it easier to take. Valley knew she'd done the right things - maybe in the wrong ways, sure, but for the right reasons. She acted like a girlfriend was supposed to act.

She sighed, rubbing her head as a headache started to set in, and opened her drawer to see if she could find the Aspirin. "Ace, I'm not going to apologize for caring about you, and not wanting you to get beat around. Do you even remember the fight with Jade and Lioness? When I came out, you were on the floor. Lioness was beating you around, which, by the way, would not have happened if you had let me come to ringside instead of staying in the back." Valley remembered the moment vividly, she'd practically flown down to ringside with her bat. Like she was supposed to do. "Not to mention those two regularly hang out with a guy who probably weighs more than both of us combined. I didn't know if he was hanging around, and it wouldn't be the first time he's interfered in a Friction match. The lumps you've taken so far are nothing compared to what a guy like that could do. Would do, if he could." Just the thought made her shiver - if Black Dragon had decided to back up his little bitches, she wasn't even sure the baseball bat would have saved them. A weapon could only equalize so much.

Valley found a bottle of Brand X aspirin - not as good as the real stuff, but it would do. "Look." She shot her gaze up to Ace as she popped the bottle open, trying to temper frustration and not let it boil out on Ace. It was getting harder by the second. "Can we not do this, right now? Honestly, I'm in no mood. I'm just not."

"Fine fine...what would you rather do then? Talk about how your mother tried to intimidate me into leaving you, by telling me how I was putting you at risk because people would use our relationship against us?"

She replied, finally revealing what happened behind Valley's back the day before. Ace actually started tearing up a little at bringing it up. She had always had trouble controlling her emotions, but this was all getting just too much for her.

"Look what happened! That bitch Allison played the "Save your girlfriend" card perfectly, and because of that, you got hurt, and we lost the damn match. You would have been perfectly fine if....I dunno...."

She faltered, hanging her head, unable to actually bring herself to say "if we weren't together." She couldn't help but think it though, Valley, as overly aggressive as she got, was the only competent member of their team in that match. No wonder she, in Ace's mind at least, looked down on Ace and kept trying to save her, all she had seen was Ace failing ever since they met.

"She did what?"

Valley shot up at the first part, nearly spitting out the water she was taking to swallow the pill. She was surprised, but after a moment, she realized she really shouldn't have been. It was something her mother would do, always sticking her nose just a little bit farther than he had any right to. She'd done this sort of thing before, too, with a couple of her boyfriends. Private meetings. Whispered words when she wasn't looking.

Valley groaned as she swallowed the pills, looking over at the phone - at least when she finally did have that talk with her mother, she'd have some ammunition to throw back.

"It's my fault, I know, I shouldn't..." She squinted, massaging the bridge on her nose. "I shouldn't have tagged you, I should've just kept the pressure on Jocelyn and taken her out. I complicated things."

Ace just laid back down on the bench, face grimacing from the still sharp pain in her back and neck.

"You gave me like....a couple minutes of recovery time too. I had barely gotten back to my....ugh...."


She let out another loud sigh.

"I'm......I'm not trying to blame you. I'm just....I'm upset alright? Your mom....scaring me like that...the match going badly, me.....fucking up so much. I dont think I've ever done that badly in my life....I'm the one that got pinned....I fucked up the entire damn match."