Flames

Endure and Let Go, part 2

As the quarantine and self-isolation periods stretched longer and longer, Becky started to notice a bleakness to the days. She did her best to combat it by keeping busy, either working our or reading or taking her online acting classes; Seth's presence made everything better, even if he was playing video games in one room while she was off doing something else. It was a strange domesticity, but it usually felt soothing instead of smothering.

She couldn't shake a sense of unease when they found out about WWE's upcoming announcements. Since they were alone at Seth's gym, Becky felt safe enough to obsessively refresh her Twitter feed and her email in a constant loop, along with checking her texts to make sure she didn't miss a notification. "This sucks," she said flatly, sitting down on a weight bunch and staring down at her phone. "I mean, I understand the math, I guess, but these are people. They could get rid of Lesnar or Rousey or Goldberg and those guys would all be fine, but that's not who they'll gun for." When Seth stood beside her and started rubbing her back, she let herself lean into the touch for a few moments. "Sorry. I know it's out of my hands. I just keep thinking—and I don't mean this in the selfish way—that if this had been two or three years ago, I'd be on that list. And I mean that in the sense of what break-out star are they going to let go just because they don't see what that person can be yet?"

Seth dropped into a crouch and hugged her. "I know what you meant. There's no way to tell who's going to pop big like that, and a lot of the people at the top don't know how to see the beginnings of that. They don't follow your Twitter machine," he said with a slightly teasing smile, leaning in to kiss her. "Or Instagram or whatever, so they don't know who's getting themselves over on their own."

"It's so frust—" When Becky heard the first ping, her heart sank to her stomach. Between her phone and Seth's it was like a chorus of insects chirping, though she doubted the notifications meant anything good. "Shit. Gallows and Anderson?" Becky paled a bit. "They were just at WrestleMania!" Would it make their WrestleMania moment in the Boneyard Match bittersweet, or would they be glad they had one last hurrah?

"Hawkins, Ryder, Drake Maverick, Heath Slater, Rusev. . . ." Seth's subdued tone made it sound like he was reading out a list of soldiers fallen in battle. It was almost impossible to keep up with the updates. Some came from the wrestlers themselves, either in a public Twitter post or a mass text sent out to friends and fellow wrestlers.

"Maria and Mike. I guess that's not surprising, but still. . . ." Becky kept scrolling, shoulders hunching more by the second. "Erick Rowan. Lio Rush. Sarah Logan?" That made her sit up straighter. "The women's division needs all the help it can get, and they're cutting her?" Maybe it was because she had been an underdog herself, but Becky found herself rooting for the women like Sarah and Sonya and Dana, the ones who hadn't quite caught the right person's imagination yet. With a little bit of development, Becky had thought Sarah could go far, especially since she had a persona like no one else's.

Beside her Seth went suspiciously still, and he started stroking her back again. "Look at the list of producers. I think most of them are just furloughed," he added, knowing that wasn't necessarily much better given the circumstances. "Except for Kurt, but—"

"Finlay?" Becky almost dropped her phone. "What the fuck?" It wasn't just that he was Irish or even a friend, responsible for her late entry into the 2019 Royal Rumble. He had been given the women's division to develop—as a joke, she was sure, or maybe a punishment—and treated all the women with such respect that Becky had never heard a bad word said about him. Without his support and hard work, women never would have main-evented WrestleMania or had tag team championships or achieved half the things they had under his guidance. "What are they doing?"