From Heaven

There was darkness all around Angel, the now former champion of the AFW's Friction division.

When the medical team had began to take Angel backstage, after her match with Taylor, she had passed out again, fading away into blackness while they carried her off. They rushed her to the infirmary and began to work on her, checking on her wounds, making sure she was okay. There was some bruises, quite a lot of them, but those would fade with time. The cuts on her face, those would heal up.

What they were worried about was Angel's leg. The challenger...no, the champion now...had done a real number on it, bashing it and stretching it and just generally hurting it in ways that the human body was never meant to be hurt. When Angel finally started to come to, finally started to wake up again, they questioned her about her leg. Angel hated the questioning. She hated doctors and she hated medical staff and she just wanted to be left alone. But...she knew it was for the best. They were worried about permanent damage and she knew it was best to answer them.

Yes, her leg hurt, and no, she couldn't move it, and yes, the pain felt like an eleven on a scale of one to ten.

Eventually though, after what seemed like forever, the medical team finally left. They had put Angel's leg in a brace and gave her a painkiller, then left her to rest for the night. They told her to get some sleep, and they'd be back in the morning to check on her, and decide what would be best for her.

But she couldn't sleep. It had to have been at least three, maybe four in the morning, and she was still awake, sitting in her bed, staring into the darkness of the room. She was hurting. She was exhausted, and upset, and angry, and sad, and just a horrible mix of emotions. Her mind kept going back to the match with Taylor, over and over again. She tried not to think about it, but she couldn't help it. Her thoughts kept going back to their fight.

The early exchanges.

The brawling outside of the ring.

The fight through the audience, up into the stands.

And then, finally, Taylor's flying knee at the end. The knee that had taken Angel down, had put her out once and for all. The knee that not only broke her winning streak, a streak that had technically lasted since the Temple Games way back in 2012, but had cost her the title. Her championship. The thing that she had been fighting so long for, had struggled every moment of her career to attain. Just like that, it was gone.

Angel wasn't the champion anymore. She wasn't even a contender anymore, after being one for so long. She was just another wrestler. Just another face in the AFW's massive roster. The thought of it was killing her. It was tearing her up inside. She had lost. Taylor had taken everything from her, just like she said she would, and Angel was left with nothing. Nothing but an injured, useless leg and a twisted mass of dark thoughts and bad emotions.

She needed someone to talk to. She wanted to talk to someone, to cry and rant and let out all of these bad feelings but she had nothing, no one. She wanted to call Akashi, and for a single tempting moment, she almost did. But then, she wised up. She hadn't seen Akashi's match with Rebecca (she didn't want whatever happened in that match to be distracting her thoughts while she battled with Taylor), but she was assuming that her lover had won. Akashi always won. But...after a match with Rebecca, she had a feeling that Akashi wasn't going to be in the best shape either. She decided not to call, to let the sumo get some rest too.

And besides, she had no doubt that Taylor would be with Akashi too, wherever the sumo was right now, and she didn't want to bother them like that, either. She hated Taylor. She hated everything about her right now, but Angel wasn't going to come between two sisters like that at all.

So she lied there, alone in the infirmary, in her tiny bed, staring into the blackness of her room. She was lonely, more then anything right now. She wanted someone, anyone to talk to. She almost considered just screaming, to see if she could get someone's attention, just to have someone to talk to.

But she didn't. Angel stayed quiet, alone with her thoughts, and as the long minutes of the night crept by, she finally realized what she wanted to do. She didn't want to go back to Japan, not yet at least. With the way her thoughts were tangled up right now, her emotions getting the better of her, she decided that right now, there was nothing for her in Japan.

She decided that she wasn't going back to Japan anytime soon. No, instead she wanted to go home, to go back to Mexico. She hadn't seen her family in so very, very long. It would nice to finally visit them again.

The thought brought a smile to Angel's face, for the first time all night, and eventually she closed her eyes, finally starting to drift off to sleep.