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Build a Home // Barcelona Femení x Reader

Summary: You suffer an injury, and your teammates are there to help build you up.

Warnings: Swearing, mentions of grief and injury

Word count: 3.7k words

The thing about life was that it could be lost within the blink of an eye.

From a young age, you had always been intent on being the best footballer in the world. As you grew older, you fulfilled those expectations and more– you were a star, the talk of all of the news shows. You were the next big thing in the football world, and despite the fact that you had massive shoes to fill, you were determined to fill them and make football a better place than you had come into.

Of course, at the height of your career, when you had built yourself up upon a tower of fame, of expectation, and of skill and athleticism, you would have to fall. However, amongst all of your greatness, you had underestimated just how far that particular fall would be.

You hadn’t died that day, as you raced down the sideline for Barcelona’s football team. You hadn’t died when Keira Walsh had kicked the football over your head, or when you raised your foot to collect the ball neatly at your boots. You hadn’t died when Olga Carmona had attempted to kick the ball out from between your feet, or when you’d raised your arm to try to put some space between your athletic bodies.

How could you have failed? It was a move that you’d done a million times over, one which you had trained until perfection, until you had believed that there was no possibility of failure or mistake.

But as you pivoted on your left leg, a move which you had performed so many times before, you thought a part of you did die. It all happened in the blink of an eye, as your muscles twitched and spasmed in a way that you had never felt before, had never practiced or prepared for.

All too suddenly and unexpectedly, intense pain spread through your leg just a split moment before you fell to the ground, and you heard the dreaded “pop” come from the joint. You cried out in agony, white hot fire seeming to have exploded all over your knee. Searing, unbearable pain seemed to have dug its way into your knee as you held onto your knee tightly with both hands.

You’d always believed yourself to be a tough person, one who had a high pain tolerance. However, the ache which burned through your joints was one which you had never been prepared to handle.

You’d crumpled, folding in half and seemingly caving the rest of your body around your knee. Whimpers and pained gasps fell from your lips, the confused thoughts which filled your mind blocking out the concerned voices of your teammates who had gathered around you.

It was your captain, Alexia Putellas, who got through to you first. One of her large hands caressed the side of your face, trying to direct you to meet her gaze as she knelt down on her knees beside your shaking body.

“Aye, aye miramé.” Alexia commanded, her soft brown eyes, usually warm like a summer’s day flitting across your face. She was trying to gauge what was wrong, but the way at which you clutched desperately at your knee seemed to tell her all that she needed to know.

“Ale-” You gasped out in pain, the stark pain in your knee fading slightly as you laid on the ground. You were becoming more aware of yourself as the pain began to fade, dulled to a constant wave of aching pain which spread throughout the lower part of the limb.

“Estoy aquí. Estoy aquí. Qué pasó?” You mentally worked to translate her Spanish words into English– she was here. You knew she was here, but to affirm that you let go of your knee with one hand and began to grope around with it. Seeing the way in which your quaky hand struggled to find something to hold onto, Ale took your hand in both of hers.

From across the field, the medical team was running towards your fallen form. Alexia wanted to curse them for how long they were taking, as her worry for you compounded and continued to build. Ever since you’d joined Barcelona a year prior, she’d taken you under her wing.

Her relationship was similar to her relationship with Claudia Pina, perhaps. She saw you as almost a younger sister of sorts, enjoying the passion and the way in which you threw your entire body into everything you did. She’d been there for your first heartbreak when you’d been all alone on the team, had invited you out with the team and welcomed you with open arms when you felt like a shattered piece of a person you’d once been.

Likewise, you had been one of the people that Alexia could have leaned on when she tore her ACL. Despite how much younger you were than her, you were mature enough to be able to comfort Alexia in times of need. To say that she’d grown close to you would be a severe understatement, and as she held your hand she yearned to take all of your pain away.

Your brows were furrowed and eyes clenched tightly closed, and she watched as you worried your lip between your teeth. As the medical staff finally got to the two of you.

Even as you were assessed and it was determined that you had to have to be taken off of the field due to your injury, Alexia stayed by your side. Her hand was the one which wiped the tears from your face, hushing your pained gasps and whimpers when a medical personnel moved your leg this way and that. Somehow, Alexia understood that it wasn’t the physical pain which was reducing you to tears, but the emotional pain. You knew what that pop in your knee meant, had heard it when one of your teammates had been taken out with an ACL injury in college.

“It may not be… that.” Someone had said as Alexia wiped tears, but your vision only blurred further. So much so that you couldn’t actually make out who had spoken, but you knew, deep in your heart, that they were wrong.

The results came only a few hours later– you’d torn your ACL. Just like that, your entire world, a world that you had built up like a comfortable stone castle around you, a place and community and passion that had become your home, came crashing down around you.

Everything that you had worked so hard towards had been knocked down to the ground, almost as if the years that you had spent practicing for hours upon hours on end hadn’t ever happened in the first place. You had been taken down so far that you knew that you would never be able to return to the pedestal that you had once stood upon.

You hadn’t died that day, and yet you still seemed to go through all five stages of grief. You denied that you had ever gotten the injury in the first place, happy to pretend like you were perfectly fine, like you weren’t suffering. You were angry– angry at yourself, for pivoting at what had been, apparently, the wrong time, and at the situation which had taken you away from your happy place on the field. If you thought about it too hard, sometimes, the rage which overcame you was more than any other emotion that you had ever felt in your entire life. It scared you, honestly.

You bargained, almost– for a new leg, for a faster recovery. You would have done anything to have never had this happen in the first place, begging to some unknown force to turn back time, to undo the movement which had cost you months off of your favorite sport.

You cried. A lot, especially in those first few days. The only stage which you had seemed to skip over was acceptance. You seemed intent on pretending as though nothing had ever happened, and despite the fact that everyone in your life had tried to get you to open up, you refused. You’d gone catatonic, barely speaking, barely moving, seeming to have decidedly chosen that there was no coming back from this.

However, where you had already given up, Alexia had not.

Your captain had stayed by your side. She had come to the medical room as soon as the full time whistle had sounded, out of breath as though she had run there (which she had). She had held your hand when the prognosis had been delivered, and had held you tightly in her strong arms when you’d cried.

The girl had taken you home with her, hellbent on ensuring that you were okay for the first few days after your injury. It was Alexia who propped your leg up on a pillow and wrapped ice around it, who made you take medication to take care of the swelling in your knee and the pain which threatened to make you pass out with every move.

Even after you’d gotten your surgery, Alexia had made you stay with her so that she could look after you. She had made a list of medications that you had to take each morning, and set a timer for you to remember to put ice on the injury. When Alexia was at training, she had her phone on and at full volume, in case you needed something from her.

You had wondered why Alexia was so intent on being by your side. It was only later that you realized that Alexia saw herself in you– in the way that you had retreated from any public interaction, a shell of yourself as you attempted to deal with football.

Some people would have called the two of you dramatic, but how could you not be? Your sport had become so much more than simply a hobby– your sport was your bloodline, your life, your personality. It introduced you to your friends, to the people who you thought you’d spend the rest of your life with. It had been where you had first found happiness, and where you still found happiness. It was the thing which made you feel free, in a large expanse of green, where you could be yourself down to your core.

In one moment, everything that you lived for had quite literally been torn away from you. Alexia knew how you felt, and so she tried to help you in the way that she had wished had been there for her when she had torn her ACL.

At first, you appreciated Alexia and her presence by your side. With that being said, however, you were eager to return back to your own home.

You loved Alexia, and the rest of your teammates, but you also treasured your alone time. With the injury that you’d just sustained, you needed and yearned for your peace and quiet. You wanted to mourn in your own bed, and rot within the comfort of your own bedsheets.

At first, when you broached the topic of your return to your own home, Alexia was hesitant to let you go. However, as you slowly grew more and more irritable, Alexia knew that it would be for the better to let you go back to your own home. She did, however, make you promise to call her if you ever needed help.

You broke down as soon as Alexia left you in your house, your sobs so loud that you didn’t hear Alexia start her car or pull away like you normally would have. In fact, you simply crumbled down to the floor, the pain in your knee nothing in comparison to the pain in your heart.

You wanted to try harder– to not be sad, to not feel like a failure, to not feel overwhelmed, but you didn’t even know where to begin. You felt like you were a burden, especially to Alexia, who had texted you as soon as she was able to, to make sure that you were doing alright.

You’d quickly sent her an affirmative, not wanting to waste her time on you. Your captain didn’t need to know that you hadn’t moved from the floor from the moment that she had closed the door behind herself. Alexia didn’t know that you were doubting yourself, that you didn’t think you could do this. She didn’t know that you weren’t strong enough, that you were pathetic, that the pain and pressure was far too much.

Alexia didn’t need to know that you were drowning, and that you wanted someone to give you their hand and pull you up and out of the water. She didn’t need to know that, because you felt like you would pull them back into the water with you. What you were going through was too much for anyone to bear, you thought. You didn’t want to be a burden, or a bother, or a nuisance, and so you didn’t tell Alexia how much you were struggling.

When Alexia picked you up the next morning to take you to the training center, where she would practice with the team while you were doomed to work on your knee with the medical team, you didn’t tell her how you felt. You were, however, unnaturally quiet, and Alexia noticed. The captain took in the way you stared mindlessly out the window, and the way which your fingers picked anxiously at the material of your shorts. She saw the bags beneath your eyes, and how you were noticeably more pale than the last time she had seen you.

She noted down her observations wordlessly, deciding to make sure you were taking better care of yourself instead of mentioning it to you directly. You were completely oblivious to the way which Alexia looked at you, your head slumped down as your eyes stayed down, looking at your lap. Despite the fact that you’d barely moved that day, and that you’d slept a full eight hours, you were so, so tired.

You never thought you’d been so tired in your life. Your entire body ached with exhaustion, and you simply wanted it all to end. You didn’t want to die, but you wanted your pain to stop. You wished you were a genie, or a wizard, and could just… snap your fingers, and your knee would be okay.

Sure, you’d spent the majority of your time lounging on your couch, avoiding looking at your phone because you knew it would be full of sympathetic messages. Instead, you watched reality television, or read a book, or stared at your wall.

In fact, the majority of your time was probably staring at your wall, the space adjacent to your couch, which held a picture of you and the rest of your Barcelona team after winning the Champions League.

It was a picture which usually sparked joy, but instead filled your chest with aching pain.

Already, you missed your friends– you missed the random messages they’d send you, asking for you to come out to explore with them. You missed training with them, giggling while trying to nutmeg and trip each other. Oftentimes, you pictured the exact moment when everything had gone to utter shit, and you tried to figure out where it had all gone wrong.

It was useless, but you couldn’t help it. You wondered if you’d waited just a second longer, or if you hadn’t stretched as much right before halftime– then, maybe you would have been able to drive yourself to your own damn training sessions.

Each moment was filled with thoughts of “what-if’s” and doubts, from the past and for the future. As you continued throughout your therapy, your thoughts only got worse.

You’d begun to spiral, secluded in your little recovery space at the Barcelona training facilities. Of course, you’d known that each of your teammates was there, as well as the staff, to help and guide you through your recovery. You couldn’t help but continue to isolate yourself, however.

You weren’t sure whether it was emotional instability which had you struggling to reach out, or whether it was insecurity and self-doubt. Perhaps it was none of those, or a combination of those, or something completely different from those. No matter the reason, you found yourself struggling even more.

What was worse was that you felt like you were in the passenger's seat of your own life, watching from the side as you sped through everything that was brought before you, crashing and burning as you went along. You were much slower in your recovery than you were supposed to be, which only compounded your struggles– you watched some of your teammates join you on the injury bench, but they were always so quick to recover and get better, while you continued to be stuck in the position.

You were trying so, so hard to improve in your statistics, to get stronger and more flexible and to reach the benchmarks in your recovery so that you could run and jump again, and so that you could eventually touch the field once more.

No matter how hard you hoped, that day never came.

Instead, you were delivered the second-most painful news of your life. You would need another surgery, to try to help with your lack of mobility and flexibility in your knee joint. You were stuck, apparently, and had plateaued. All of your hard work was for naught, and everything around you continued to crash and burn and die.

It was all so quiet, so dark, and so unbelievably lonely.

A girl was brought up from the B-team, to replace the position that you’d once occupied. You’d sat on the sideline, helping to coach the girl up and give her advice.

Unexpectedly to you, you found yourself having to put on a mask, to pretend like you were okay. On the inside, however, you were crushed. You were facing a second surgery, and your future footballing career was looking bleaker than ever. You were beginning to lose hope, and having to help train up another girl to replace you was the icing on top of it all.

It was during one of the harder training sessions that Alexia popped up by your side. The girl had continued to try to provide you support, but had found herself on the receiving end of your icy exterior. You’d exchanged harsh words with the woman, several times over, but the captain continued to provide you with her quiet love and support whenever she could.

She didn’t say anything when she sat next to you, but her hand was soft and warm where it touched your lower back. You nearly melted into the touch, overwhelmed by everything that was going on around you. You felt your lip quiver, and sniffled a little bit as you blinked back tears.

“Are you okay?” Alexia asked you, in English. Her accented voice was thick with concern, and you sighed. You leaned into the other woman, thankful for her as she wrapped her arm around you in a comforting manner. Throughout the duration of your injury, you’d found yourself pushing everyone out of your life, believing that you didn’t want to bother them with your pain, and your discomfort, and your sadness. During all of that time, you hadn’t accepted any sort of comfort from anyone, and your mind had been far above the clouds, built up on the childish hopes and dreams which helped you from accepting reality– that you would, most likely, never again be able to play the sport which had become your home. It was Alexia’s touch that had you barreling back down to Earth, crashing and burning one last time.

You crumbled against your captain, and turned your face so that you could bury it into the material of her jersey. She smelled of sweat, and of some sweet, flowery perfume, and of dirt and something distinctly metallic– of the weights in the gym, possibly. You felt a hand touch the back of your head, and felt Alexia’s fingers gently tug through your hair, pulling it loose from your ponytail. It was the perfect way to cover your face from any onlookers– of which there were none. Most of your teammates knew that you’d been struggling greatly, and so they tried to keep their gazes off of your broken form, wanting to give you the space you needed to come to terms with your reality.

Just a week later, a few days after your second surgery, the announcement was put out on social media. You were officially a retired athlete, forced to hang up your boots due to injury. Messages came flooding in from all different angles– from old friends, to official clubs, teammates, and to opponents.

There was support everywhere, and you tried your hardest to appreciate every single message. You were reminded, once more, that you had built yourself a home amongst the world of football. You felt like you were saying goodbye to a family, one which had made you feel like you belonged and had brought you to greatness.

Alexia made everything more tolerable, however. The woman had offered you a place to stay with her, for just a little bit, until you found a place to set your feet. It was when she brought you along with her to visit a youth club that you rekindled your passion for the sport. You became a coach and, while it wasn’t the same, you found that you were able to build yourself up once more.

Little by little, you began to be okay again. It was during the late hours of night, however, that the images of your old life passed through your mind. Sometimes, the scars on your leg felt as fresh as the day they had been inflicted, and you could feel it all over again.

You should have been a star, and would have been a star. But some stars burn so brightly, try to fiercely, that they burn out before they ever reach full potential. You were just that, a burnt-out star– someone who was meant to be more, but had ended up crashing out of the atmosphere, destined to cave in among the rest of those who still burnt bright.

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