Training Stephanie

A Needed Discussion

Mark had stayed in a lot of hotels throughout his career, and when he was younger, he had even torn up an occasional few here and there. But, as he stared around the room, he quickly came to realize that he had never seen destruction quite like this. Pillows were askew, chairs were knocked over, glasses was broken. In short, this room looked nothing short of a barroom brawl... between two men.

And though he realized that he should have been upset, Mark found himself suppressing a deep smile.

After all, this was exactly what he wanted to see out of Stephanie: aggression.

She wasn't a little girl anymore. Stephanie was a grown woman, therefore, she had to stake her claim, and tonight, she finally had. There was no room in the Ministry for the weak, and Stephanie, slowly, of course, would be molded into the woman that Mark always knew that she could be.

Sighing aloud, Mark attempted to follow Stephanie into the next room, but she met him at the door. She looked despondent. She tried to walk past him, but Mark lightly grabbed her by the arm. He wanted to read her thoughts. Instead, however, Stephanie simply avoided eye contact with him and went about gathering a mop, a broom, and a dustpan from a nearby utility closet.

She wasn't happy.

As she began to clean up, Mark, who still wearing his torn wrestling gear, sat back into one of the sofas. If he smoked, he would. A little chewing tobacco never hurt anyone, he felt. But since he didn't have any of those things, he simply had to forgo his urges for the moment.

Running his fingers through his hair while looking over at Stephanie in complete boredom, Mark quipped nonchalantly, "I thought the Greenwich Princess didn't do manual labor."

Stephanie, though, did not answer.

As she bent to sweep the broken pieces of glass from off the floor, Mark sighed once again and walked back over to his wife. Noting the presence of a huge shadow behind her, Stephanie attempted to walk away but Mark grabbed her once again.

"Hey, hey. What's with the long face, huh?"

Though she shook her head and attempted to walk away, Mark kept a firm grasp around her arm, before he gently reminded, "Now you know that you're not going to get away with that, right?"

Seeing that she was deliberately avoiding his gaze, Mark then removed the broom and dustpan from her hands, as he wrapped Stephanie into his muscular arms.

"Mark, I have to get this up. I hate a messy room," she protested.

Acknowledging that she have one hell of a mess to clean up, Mark gazed back down at her and said, "Yeah, you do. But I also want to know what's going one with you. Don't you think that I at least deserve that?"

Hearing the obvious hint of sarcasm in his voice, Stephanie half-snapped at him and said, "How the hell can you be so be so calm? Mark, you just went after my mom! And here I am, I just got into a fight with Ryan, and you're making jokes. Mark, you don't realize what's going on with me!"

Feeling like he was finally getting somewhere, Mark asked lightly, "And what's going on with you?"

Realizing that his fingers were laced around her with an iron-clad grip, Stephanie resigned herself into explaining, "Now you're going to put my mom on your... on your hit list. You're going to make her your next victim. And I just got into a fight. A real fight. I've never been in a fight before...

"...and to do it in front of everyone, like I'm some type of common street thug... that had to be the lowest moment of my life. And then you're mad at me. You treated me horribly tonight. Mark, I didn't even do anything."