Disclaimer: I own nothing.

Author Note: Set in June 2014, starting on the night that Seth Rollins turned on the Shield and goes on from there. There's a bit of Roman/Dean and Dean/Paige in the fic too but I didn't think it was enough to tag. Enjoy :)

AND ONE FELL OUT

Roman could only remember the aftermath of the show in flashes. His back had felt like it was on fire the whole time as busy loud hands peeled him away from the mat and tried to get him onto a stretcher. Then the next thing he knew, he was backstage, sat on a table in some dim corner somewhere. It'd felt familiar, even comforting, maybe that was why they'd brought him there, maybe it caused him to stay still.

Someone was flashing a penlight in his eyes and where was Dean? His voice was sandpaper-rough when he asked, then he heard shouting and Renee was in front of him, worry bright in her eyes. She was holding onto his arm, her fingernails were digging into him but it didn't hurt.

"Come on."

His mind didn't feel present; all he could think about was Seth. Seth, his brother in arms, Seth his betrayer. There'd been glee in Seth's actions, there'd been delight.

Roman was following Renee and there was Dean, arguing with Paige, way louder than usual. Roman screwed his eyes shut for a brief moment and saw stars. Renee's fingers dug into his arm again.

"We haven't got long."

"Renee, go," that was Paige, looking gaunt and even paler than usual. "They can't miss you, not tonight."

Renee frowned and looked at Roman, pressing her lips together like she was suppressing a kiss and a whole lot more before nodding and heading off down the corridor. Her heels sounded like a nailgun. Paige tried to urge Dean forward but he was snapping at her and Paige was snapping right back. The noise sounded muffled to Roman though and he'd lost his vest at some point. His back was stinging but he could move so he was moving.

He had to keep moving.

It wasn't until much later that night that his memories became clearer and longer. He could hear Adam Rose and the Exotic Express making a lot of noise somewhere and someone was angrily calling for security. He was in an SUV with tinted windows and Renee was driving. She smiled sadly when his gaze met hers in the rearview mirror.

"Finally back with us?"

Roman blinked. Someone was leaning against him; Dean was drooling all over his shoulder in fact. The sight made something fierce clench inside of Roman. Here, scrunched up in the back of an SUV with streetlights dripping rapid colors all over him, Dean looked vulnerable and he'd chosen to slump close to Roman. Despite everything that had just happened, Dean had chosen to trust him. Roman anchored himself with a hand to Dean's knee.

They were here and they were moving. His back still felt like it was on fire, Seth was still gone.

Roman caught Renee's gaze again. "What happened?"

Renee's expression was as bleak as Roman's voice had been. "God, I wish I knew."

That night, they shared a master bedroom. Dean pressed Roman down onto the bed, scratched down his arms and bit his shoulder. Roman let him. They both needed it. They slept within easy reach of each other. When Dean woke up, he didn't let go. They both kept checking sightlines and exits.

Dean bristled with fury for days on end. His injuries healed surprisingly quickly considering how many hours he spent pacing and funneling his rage into the punchbag that Renee had equipped their safehouse with. They couldn't stay at a hotel, it'd be too easy for the Authority to find them, and all their Shield safehouses were out – Seth knew about them, hell he'd helped set them up.

Seth wasn't part of the Shield anymore. He'd chosen to sell out; he'd chosen easy money and power over brotherhood and friendship forged in fire and blood.

Renee had managed to scrounge a place up for them and still managed to go to work with nobody the wiser about where she spent her off-hours. She shrugged tiredly when Roman brought it up, kicking her stiletto heels off and curling up on the couch next to him, leaning into his warmth.

"I'm just an interviewer, part of the machine, you know. I'm not a threat, I smile and I do my job. Stephanie likes my work."

"Oh, you must be so proud," Dean sneered from where he was glaring out of the window.

Renee wasn't offended though and just shot him an unimpressed look. She'd known them for far too long, Dean's seething words weren't going to upset her. She got that he was hurt and raging because one of his best friends had stabbed him in the back. That brought up a worrying point.

"What about Seth, he knows about you," Roman pointed out.

Renee's expression pinched with pain and she leaned closer, fitting well against him. Roman wrapped an arm around her; she was still here, despite everything. He could still rely on some people, even people who voluntarily worked for the Authority.

"I think if he said anything to Hunter or Stephanie, they probably wouldn't believe him," Renee said at last.

"Because Stephanie likes you," that was Dean again.

Renee's smile was cracked now and Roman tugged her closer, needing to feel her breath against his neck, her delicate bones and smooth warm skin. He needed to really feel that she was present and real, that she hadn't changed in an instant like Seth had. He didn't worry so much about Dean; it'd take more than a mere moment to change Dean.

"Because if they pull me in for a meeting, I can say that you flirt with me a lot but that Dean freaks me out and that I seriously wouldn't go anywhere with Roman outside of work because God, you don't even have a locker room and you never use a hotel. Seriously, why would I be interested? At all?"

Renee's voice had gone convincingly incredulous and disgusted and Dean barked out a laugh "You're a slippery bitch, aren't you?"

Renee's smile firmed up again and she flipped him the finger. She'd recently gotten a manicure and her fingernails were painted a brilliant silver.

Roman's grip on her tightened and Renee murmured soft noises like a rosary or a lullaby. She could have been reassuring herself as well as them. Dean was still skulking by the window but Roman's skin was itching and his jaw was tightening so he turned to jerk his head towards Dean. His teammate caught the signal immediately and sloped towards them without hesitation. That was a blood brother, no questions asked.

Dean sprawled on the floor in front of the couch, his back and shoulders pressed against Roman's thighs and Renee's drawn-up ankles. Renee immediately reached down to tangle a hand in his hair; Roman pinched fingers at Dean's shoulder, just the right amount of pain for Dean who hissed out pleasure through his teeth. He settled quickly at their feet, looking a lot calmer now.

Roman had hands on both of them. Maybe he could even sleep through the night later. Maybe. It wasn't his still-healing back that kept him awake, some pains ran deeper.

Paige kept calling Renee who oddly never looked happy after talking to the current Divas Champion. She hung up after breakfast one morning and without warning punched Dean hard in the shoulder. It was the suddenness that got Dean's attention rather than the force of the punch itself. He glared at her, choking on a mouthful of cereal.

"What the fuck?"

"Did you tell Paige that she was as bad as Seth?!"

Dean looked completely unrepentant, chomping his way through his breakfast. "What, you don't think it's a little suspicious that she got herself the Divas Championship Belt on her first night as part of the main roster? Right after she and Seth started hooking up?"

Renee closed her eyes and looked like she was counting to ten before she spoke again. Roman nodded at Dean though; he could see the logic behind Dean's paranoia. Paige and Seth had started hanging out, Roman had liked her, she gave as good as she got and Seth had been seriously interested in her, interested enough to introduce her to the rest of the Shield. Only Renee had gotten that pass before. So maybe Paige had been working for the Authority as well, keeping an eye on the Shield as the Authority told Seth what he wanted to hear. Maybe she'd been promised a shot at AJ's title belt in exchange. It made too much sense. Roman had liked Paige.

But Renee's expression was wrinkled with displeasure and her body was tense. "Paige is…God, she's a legacy! She's been in this business since she was thirteen years old. Do you think her parents taught her to take the easy way up? She's nothing like Seth."

Renee made herself a coffee after that and called Paige to give her directions to the safehouse. Roman didn't stop her, instead he mulled over her words. He'd heard bits and pieces about Paige's background, but she'd never talked all that much about it. He could understand why, he was a legacy too. Paige would definitely have a story to tell and Roman trusted Renee's judgment. They'd see soon enough if he was right to, they were ready.

Paige turned up half an hour later, dressed in patched jeans and a faded black vest that was almost gray. Her face was scrubbed clean of make-up and she looked dulled and drained. Roman was used to seeing her screaming and fiery in the ring or laughing and happy outside of it. This was what Seth had done to her.

She hugged Renee for a long moment but didn't approach Roman or Dean. Her smile was thin and starved and she held out her phone.

"He called me, the night it happened."

She played them the message, there was Seth's voice, so proud and relishing his victory. He wanted Paige to know that there was a place for her in the Authority's ranks. They liked promoting fresh young talent and they liked what they'd seen of her. Hunter always spoke highly of her. She should give him a call soon; he was looking forward to seeing her. They had a lot to talk about.

Paige shoved the phone into her pocket once the message had ended. Her expression was so hurt and mutinous. Dean still looked suspicious.

"He left you a message, but not us?" he wanted to know.

Paige shrugged and let Renee wrap an arm around her waist. "Maybe he wanted you to hear it, to blame me so I'd go running to him."

Completely possible. Maybe Paige had been part of Seth's plan, another distraction so that the others wouldn't notice the schemes he was secretly building. Maybe he really had liked her and now he wanted her with him again. Paige looked completely raw, like someone had butchered her and left her bleeding out. It was how Roman had felt since that first chairshot.

He poured a coffee and handed it to Paige. Her smile was tiny but so relieved. His now-empty hand touched her shoulder, squeezed and then drifted away.

Dean and Roman lay back to back that night, ready even in sleep, touching, anchoring, protecting, it was what they did. Renee slept contentedly in the spare room, wrapped up in one of Roman's old shirts. She knew that she'd be welcome if she needed them and that they'd let her know if they wanted her there. Paige took the couch, a knot of gray and black, but she slept well. She wasn't alone anymore.

Seth kept leaving Paige messages, annoyance sharp at the edge of his words. He wanted to know why she wasn't in the hotel rooms she'd booked? Did she know where Roman and Dean were? Because the Authority would love to know, it would only cement her place among them if she gave them that information. He never mentioned Renee, because Renee made sure that she spent at least one night in whatever hotel room was booked for her by the company. She was always at work on time, early most days, and she did all the work the Authority asked of her and more.

One day, she came back to the safehouse, her mouth drawn up tight. "Seth came to see me today."

Roman frowned, no interviews with Seth had aired on the show that night. So Seth had specifically sought Renee out specifically. Dean leaned in close, his posture tense and furious. Paige was beside him and he wasn't waving her away. They'd made up in their own time, Dean had probably apologized in his own unique way and Paige would probably make him pay appropriately at some point. At least they were back on the same page now, Seth hadn't clawed away somebody else.

"What did he want?" asked Dean, intensity bleeding through his tone.

Renee's expression flickered into a hard unpleasant smile. Oh, it'd been like that, had it? Roman slipped an arm around her, Renee leaned into him almost immediately.

"He wanted to know how many times I'd seen you guys since the night he bought into the Authority. I said I'd hung out with you both a couple of times but that it was mostly Roman because I like having fun with him and that I'd stopped because he's really not much fun at the moment. I don't know if Seth bought it or not but he can't prove anything. He just told me to think about my future employment prospects."

A clear threat. Roman guided Renee further into his arms, she smiled against his chest for a moment and then turned back towards the others. Dean was bristling as usual and Paige looked sad but determined. Seth had hurt a lot of people with his actions, he'd been purely selfish. The Shield had always been about what three individuals could achieve by putting aside personal ambition and working together as one – they'd had excellent match after excellent match, they'd conquered the Wyatt Family and Evolution. They'd stormed the WWE and they'd done it together.

Only that hadn't meant as much as Seth as it had to Roman and Dean. How far did the rot go? Had he always had this betrayal in mind? Had Triple H gotten into his ear and given him ideas or just confirmed irritations that Seth had been nursing for years? Had he decided that once he'd hit the top, the apex, with the Shield that he didn't need them anymore?

They'd probably never know, they'd only have what Seth said on camera as any kind of confirmation and how could they trust anything he said now?

Renee might not be safe but she was still here, still determined not to lose out on what she wanted, despite how badly the Authority could punish her if they had any suspicions.

The night, Renee slept between Roman and Dean. She smelled of sea-salt shower scrub and rested one hand at Dean's neck, like she was restraining him. Dean had always hated being restrained; he bit at her wrist but didn't push her away. Roman kissed her temple and felt her heartbeat slow to something even. She was as wrecked as they were, but she was still here, able to sleep and able to hide a lot of what she was feeling on camera. Tomorrow, she'd have to slip back in her hotel room early, pasting on a professional smile if anyone knocked on the door. She'd suffer but she'd keep coming back, she had to. Roman's grip tightened at her waist. In the morning, Dean's hand was tangled with Roman's at Renee's hip. The center was holding.

Paige wove in and out of their lives. She drank a strong cup of tea most mornings and looked steely and determined as she prepared for the day – painting around her eyes with practiced movements and sheathing herself in her metallic purple armor. She and Roman talked sometimes about growing up with a parent or two who breathed the business and taught their kids everything they knew. Roman and Paige were standing on the shoulders of giants while also striving to make their own mark, their own legacy. Neither of them were failing at that, despite the Authority's best efforts.

She and Roman began working out together, they ran outside separately just in case but inside they could lift free weights and spot each other. Paige told him what had gone down the night that Seth turned on the Shield, how Paige had asked Adam Rose and his Rosebuds to be extra loud on one side of the building and how Santino and Emma had caused another distraction. She'd also enlisted the help of an NXT guy called Solomon Crowe who according to Paige was an expert hacker and was all for tearing down any kind of authority. So with multiple distractions happening as well as vicious electronic problems, Paige had managed to get Dean and Roman out of the arena unnoticed. A lot had gone on while Roman had been lost in his pained haze. Thank fuck for that.

He and Paige regularly sparred as well, it was good for Paige to practice working with someone bigger and stronger than her and for Roman to face someone faster. It worked out well for both of them.

Dean still snapped at Paige, but he played cards with her too, they taught each other games and Dean crowed when he beat her. Paige usually threw cards at him in retaliation and smirked when he couldn't bat them away in time.

They started sharing a bed some nights, sometimes the spare room double, crowding over each other, Dean thrown over Paige's back like a protective barrier and their hands folded together like a blade. Sometimes Paige shared the master bedroom with Dean and Roman, curled around Dean's back, her right hand stretched out to touch Roman's tattooed arm. Some nights Renee and Paige lay side by side, inky-black hair flowing into thick blonde, pale skin against tanned, both lying in broken-doll poses, offering comfort and absolute trust, exactly what they both needed. Didn't they all?

Roman hadn't changed his cellphone number. Text messages started arriving from Seth, short but very pointed messages.

Make sure your back's fully healed before you have a match.

Medical treatment costs a lot, doesn't it?

The house is looking pretty ragged out on Memphis and Sixth, I'll get it cleaned out. I know a guy who'll get me a good price for it.

Renee's a real asset to the Authority. She does what she's told.

Each one, a crafted cut. Seth was probably sending similar messages to Dean; actually he was probably being nastier to Dean. For all Roman's rage, it was always banked until its overwhelming power was triggered but Dean's was explosive and scattershot and likely to hurt him as much as anyone else remotely nearby. He had a short temper and Seth would know exactly what to say to set it off.

Roman kept the messages only to show the others. He deleted them afterward.

It was easy to think of Seth as the enemy, as someone who had to be dealt with because a betrayal should always be paid back in kind. An injustice always had to be righted. When had that stopped mattering to Seth? When had money and power become more important to him? The Shield had taken jobs for money before but this; this was a completely different corporate level.

He was the enemy, he was an injustice, but he was also still Seth. He was still the guy who'd argued over car radio stations with Dean, who'd thrown himself off balconies to save his teammates, who'd remembered the mustard that Roman always liked with blue steak. More than once Roman had helped Seth dye that white streak into his hair, the smell of the dye burning his nostrils as he'd smirked at Seth's look of frustrated concentration.

A million different memories were now skewed because of one man's choice. It left a more-than-bitter aftertaste in Roman's mouth.

Dean's sanity had always been questionable but it was definitely on thin ice now. His fury and pain streaked through everything he said and did on camera and plenty of times off-camera too. Seth had the balls to claim that he was the one who'd kept the Shield functioning so impressively together, as though he'd successfully leashed Dean and Roman, as though it was all down to him. Roman didn't hide from the truth – he and Dean both had powerful temperaments but so did Seth. All three of them had found a balance together, a cohesive impressive enjoyable balance and it was gone now, sending shockwaves through all three of them, even Seth, no matter what he said to the contrary. Seth had decided to savagely split from the Shield, now he had to live with that choice.

Who was he going to rely on now to keep his thoughts clear, his strategies knife-edge perfect? Randy Orton? The man who'd always been a viper and who'd given up following his own initiative once he'd slithered his way back into Triple H's good graces. Randy Orton only knew how to succeed on other people's terms. And Triple H? He was a king, waiting to be toppled. He'd married into greatness; he'd forgotten that he'd once been the cunning young knight, intent on destroying the old order. All he cared about now was protecting the status quo. Triple H was stale and he'd make Seth stale and irrelevant too. There was no brotherhood there, no bonds that meant something deeper than business, the kind of bonds that would help you no matter what.

But Seth had still chosen to join that club; smirking about how lost the rest of the Shield were without him. There he was, clothed in a tailored black suit, every inch the fucking sell-out. He was convinced that they wouldn't survive without him. Roman knew what Seth looked like when he was lying, ever since his betrayal Seth had believed every single word that had come out of his own traitorous mouth.

He thought that he held all the cards. But he didn't know about the Shield's new safehouses, he didn't know that Renee was a regular visitor there, and he didn't know how involved Paige still was with them. He only saw Renee roll her eyes when she interviewed Roman and how she was barely able to contain her disbelieving laughter when Dean muttered nonsense. He saw how amused she was by them, nothing serious, just fun to be discarded once the cameras were off. He never saw them interact with Paige; the Divas Champion ignored them at TV tapings, her mind apparently on other things.

Seth thought that he was the one who'd held them together, the sole reason for their conquering success. But he hadn't seen Renee knot her fingers in Dean's hair, or Roman and Paige's frequent morning conversations or the way that Dean sank his teeth into Roman's shoulder or how Renee's punches were coming along.

Seth really didn't know everything, at all.

That night, all four of them sardined into the master bedroom together. Dean slept at Roman's back; Renee was tucked under Roman's chin, pressed against his tattoos and fitting well. Paige lay beside Dean, bracketing him and keeping him from falling.

They all slept through the night.

-the end

Author Note

- Paige really is a legacy wrestler. She's the daughter of wrestlers Ricky Night and Saraya Knight. She even tag-teamed with her mother in SHIMMER for a while. Her mother is a badass, check out her SHIMMER matches if you can.

- There is an NXT wrestler called Solomon Crowe, currently working a hacker gimmick at NXT houseshows. I really want to see him on TV soon because he's awesome. He's better known as Sami Callihan who did amazing violent work on the indies. He was also in a tag-team with Dean Ambrose which I'd very much like to see reformed in the WWE :)