If You Try Some Time, You Might Find

The lights in the hospital hallway dimly lit the entrance to the room Talia was recovering in. She'd already been in surgery to torn quad. Now she needed to stay off of it for six to twelve weeks. It was to be the longest time she'd been injured since joining the AFW. It was only fitting that her last match also be the most critically injuring one too. No one visited her but then again...the avalance pay per view didn't end until after visiting hours were over. It didn't make it any less depressing.

For the first time, she had taken painkillers as well. She was so tired of the pain. It didn't matter what she put into her anymore. She wasn't a professional wrestler. She didnt know what she could do now. There had always been the possibility that she could lose the match. Hell, she even thought it was likely. But it never really clicked in her head what she was risking. Now as she laid there in the hospital bed, she felt aimless and depressed. Even when times were rough, she always had a goal she could work towards. Now she didn't.

Talia reached over and grabbed her phone with her good arm. She opened up the messages tab and clicked on 'Cassie'. The last message was her text mentioning she had apologized to Taylor. Cassie never answered it. Talia scrolled down and suddenly was reminded of the texts before that. Cassie inviting her over to eat dinner. What had happened? How did it go this far? She clicked on the dialogue box and the digital screen keyboard popped up. Talia typed, simply, "Sorry," and hit send. That was what Cassie had wanted all along wasn't it? An apology. Talia's face suddenly frowned and she forcefully slammed her phone on the stand beside the bed. Cassie wasn't going to reply. Why would she? After all that had happened in the last year, it'd be a miracle if she even acknowledged her existence.

The last time Cassie saw her phone, she threw it out the window of a moving car. She remembered the message like it was still right in front of her.

"Cassie-san. I'd like to talk. Please consider it. I'd like to say my peace and then you won't have to worry about me ever again."

As she passed the time before the match, mostly in isolation, she found herself yearning for a phone, or for any kind of lifeline to the outside world. She hadn't exactly thought it through before tossing her phone onto the street. It took her several hours at a store to get a replacement phone set up, but she had it in time for her match. She added the numbers she knew by heart, Taylor's, Akashi's, her parents' home phone and cell phones, her brothers' cell phones, the phone at the school in London, the phone at the school in NYC.

After the match, after getting checked over by the AFW staff and transferred overnight to the hospital, she was released. She'd spent her brief hospital stay surrounded by people, and as glad as she was for their company she loathed them waking her up every few minutes when she just wanted to sleep. It was doctor's orders, though, because of her concussion. Her knee was badly sprained, but there was no lasting damage.

When she returned home, she expected to feel a great weight lifted from her shoulders, but as she slept through the following days she felt nothing like it. Her mind was still fixated on Dark Angel, on Talia and the mask and their three matches. She slept so late in the day and again in the evening that she found herself awake at odd hours, and she passed the time in the middle of the night at her computer, reading what bloggers and news sites and fan forums were saying about their match and about her and about Talia. Every time she found a detractor who supported Talia and blamed her, it wiped out the memory of the fifty people before him who had pledged their love to Cassie. She felt like she was beginning to lose perspective.

Akashi and Taylor, at her request, were giving her space. She needed it. But she also needed someone to talk to. She was laying in bed, idly thumbing through pages on her phone when is buzzed in her hand and a message appeared from an unfamiliar number.

"Sorry"

She couldn't be sure who it was. She didn't think the number was Mamouru's. Maybe it was Aurora? But that didn't seem likely. She wondered...

She typed out a short reply. "Yeah".

Talia wanted to sleep but her mind didn't let her. Too many thoughts were racing and she couldn't keep her eyes closed for more than a few seconds at a time. Her phone vibrated on the stand next to her. She stayed perfectly still for a moment. It was probably a coincidence. Aurora was probably worried about her and had to text her at this hour. After two minutes if ignoring her phone she decided to just read it.

It was Cassie. And it simply said, "Yeah." Talia frowned again. That was it? She put her phone back down and sighed. It was probably not worth trying to force anything. Nothing she did ever succeeded. This wasn't any different.

Eventually, though, Talia knew she had to answer. She picked up her phone and replied, "How's the knee?"

Cassie found herself staring at her phone, waiting for the reply. When it came, she wasn't sure how to feel. It was Talia. It had to be.

She replied immediately. "It's okay. Hurts." She hit send, but her thumbs still hovered over the keyboard. Her heart beat faster as she typed her next message, she had no idea how Talia would take it. She wasn't even sure how she meant it.

"Are you okay?"

Talia stared at her phone waiting for an answer. It came really quickly. Then another came in. Talia hesitated. She wasn't sure if Cassie was being serious or just trolling for an answer. Then again, she wasn't Taylor. Talia took a deep breath and typed a response. "Going to be on crutches a week or two. Ill be 100% after 6 weeks or so." It didn't really answer Cassie's question. Talia wasn't really sure just how much she could trust with the redhead just yet.

Cassie's phone stayed glued to her hands while she waited. It wasn't like she had anything else to do, laying in her bed in the middle of the night. She definitely wasn't sleeping.

She responded. "Oh. Sorry." There were so many things she wanted to say to Talia, and so few that she felt like she could. Her hesitance was eroded away by the distinct feeling that she had nothing to lose. What's done is done, and no one could change that. At the very least, maybe if she tried she could rest a little easier.

"We're all done, right?" She sent, with a catch in her throat.

Talia wasn't really sure what Cassie could say after that. What else was there to talk about? Maybe that was it. Maybe just confirmation that she wasn't dead was enough for Cassie. When her screen lit up and Cassie's text popped up it answered her question. Talia closed her eyes and leaned her head back. She stared at the message for a good long while just to make sure she wasn't misinterpreting it.

"Yea," she replied. That was it. They were done. She was done. Talia put her phone back down and sighed. That may had been relieving for Cassie but it wasn't any help to Talia. She grabbed her phone again and sent another text. "Have a good life."

Cassie snorted when she read Talia's last message. She understood that she was depressed, she probably had good reason to be, but she didn't like it. Actually, it pissed her off. She has the nerve to ruin everything for a year, and then act all woe is me over it?

She drew a breath and let it out slowly. Getting angry about it wasn't going to get her anywhere. She didn't want to be angry at her, or at anyone. She took a moment to settle down, and then replied.

"What are you going to do now?"

Talia expected Cassie to just ignore her like she was planning on doing. But she didn't. Her phone vibrated on the stand once more and she grabbed it. Talia wasn't sure what to say in response. It wasn't that she didn't have an appropriate response for Cassie. She simply didn't know what was going to happen next. "I dont know," she texted back. Talia contemplated what she really could do. What was there to do? She obviously couldn't keep wrestling in Friction. And Tension...she couldn't go back there either. There was really only one thing she could do.

"Probably move back home," she texted. And live in my parents basement. Maybe adopt a few dozen cats. Talia somehow managed to make herself sadder. She didn't want to talk about the future...or lack of. "You have 2 ppv wins now right? Someones gonna notice that."

Cassie grumbled to herself. She didn't like the idea of her career benefiting from anything that had happened recently, and as both Summer Splash and Avalanche she had put her opponent in the hospital. It seemed wrong to feel good about that.

She got to work thumbing out a lengthy reply. "Ya..... but idk. I think I'm going to go home for a while too. I put 4 of my last 5 in the hospital, and your sister might've been the 5th if is wasn't for you-know-who. I just need to be home for a while... so i can get some of myself back. You wouldn't go home for good, right?"