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grimsonandclover · 26 days ago

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Sympathy is a knife.2

or; Wake up, I'm sorry.

Stanford!Tashi x tennis player!reader

Song of the post 'when you sleep - my bloody valentine'

Tashi Duncan visits you at the hospital. It could have been her.

SFW

2.4k words

you know the drill. injury, medical shit to the best of my ability which isnt a lot, tashi duncan being kinda gay??? homosexuality? in front of my salad? if you squint, reader being emo but like come on, hospitals, nurses, knee splints, DRUGS (the medical kind and morphine), reader is generally unwell but she also just came out of surgery, suicidal thoughts, more mentions of vicera, its the hospital episode (again) (like beach episodes but less horny and sexy and fanservicey more painful and ugly and intimate so nothing like a beach episode), enemies to idk what this is! I'm a native english speaker but i play fast and hard with the rules of the language (meaning i fuck up tenses a lot and don't catch it all in editing, but i know they're there so i think that makes it better), minimal use of Y/N but there are some points where I had to.

The steady rhythm of the heart rate monitor was the only indication that you were alive.

Tubes in your arm. Tubes in your throat. Hues of purple and yellow peaked from under the immobilizer brace and pins covering your leg and drainage tubes, matching with the same shades of color under your eyes.

Despite it all, she couldn't help but think you looked peaceful. You looked dead. The nurse said you were still knocked out from surgery and would be for a while. Tashi wondered if you were dreaming.

Tashi wondered if you always looked so lifeless in your sleep.

Her sepia eyes couldn't move from that leg. The bandaging, the knowing what's right under. She saw your soul, and then she saw your bones and blood. Tashi had cried in her mother's arms when it had fully hit her.

Tashi Duncan won the match. Your injury meant your forfeit. It didn't taste as sweet at she wanted, more bitter and even vexatious. She wanted to win through skill, not... this. It almost felt like you did this on purpose. You pitied her.

No, she knew that wasn't it. It was easier to blame you than accept the fate of an athlete. These things just... happen, sometimes. It could've been her, instead. But it wasn't. It was your bones that reached for the sunlight filtering down on the court amongst the blooming crimson, not hers. Tashi was here, standing before your resting form, with two perfectly functional knees.

When the nurse came and told her it was time to leave, and Tashi gathered her things from the small armchair in the corner of the room where she watched you from, she felt... strange. Changed.

The fan of your eyelashes on the tops of your cheeks, your pallor, the halo of hair framing your face and resting head. Those tubes. The IV. The heart rate monitor. The surgical steel pins securing your knee in place. Her eyes land on the small tattoo on your inner wrist, one she'd never noticed before. Tashi recognized them as your father's initials.

There was the girl she hated, softly asleep despite her surroundings. You almost looked beautiful, and then she got this feeling in her chest, and it startled her.

She pitied you.

Waking up was miserable. Your throat was dry like never before, the lights hurt your eyes worse than any hangover you've experienced, and the feeling of the scratchy hospital gown made you want to claw your skin off. You could hear your heart rate monitor, and in that moment you wished it would just flatline.

The sob that broke out, despite how dry you felt, when you saw the state of your knee, was ugly. Your nurse, Nurse Amanda, was a useless piece of shit. You had major respect for healthcare workers and everything that they have to go through on a daily basis, but Amanda could go fuck herself to hell. She's the one that had asked you for an autograph when you requested your brother's music to be played.

"Oh, your knee." She'd say casually while writing things down on a chart as disgusting, fat, blobs of salt ran down your face and chin and you tried to remember how to breathe properly. "Some physio and you'll be right back on the court or in the club. I'm sure."

"How," hiccup, "How much physio?" You try to wipe the tears, but more keep coming. It's like your eyes were sucking any moisture from your mouth and lips just to supply a fresh batch of them. Wasn't Amanda supposed to bring you water?

Fucking Amanda looks down at her chart, tapping a pen to her chin. You were on drugs, but no amount of them could completely rid the feeling of your knee and it freaked you out. Every time the corner of your eye caught on the metal pins that poked from it, you felt a shiver run through you. "About a year, possibly more, possibly less. It was a brutal break."

She covered her mouth sheepishly like she just told you the secret ingredient in a family recipe. "Oh, I shouldn't have said that."

No, she shouldn't have. It just makes you stare at your fucked leg even harder. It just makes the tears fall even more. The collar of your hospital gown, one a powder blue, now soaked a darker cornflower.

When Tashi returns, you've calmed down considerably-- mostly thanks to the increased dosage of morphine. It's been two days since, and it's actually hard to remember anything that happened that day. Or the day before, or when you first woke up this morning. God bless morphine.

Though you can't tell, Tashi hasn't changed from what she wore when she visited you yesterday. Nobody even told you that she came earlier, and she preferred it that way. She didn't know why she came back, or why her heart fluttered when the nurse told her that you'd woken up.

Tashi stood still at the door, and you lay exactly where you would stay for the foreseeable future on that damn hospital bed staring back at her. She noticed how you had such pained eyes. The harsh hospital light cast shadows from your browbones to your cheeks, draining color from your pupils. How'd she never seen it before? Words dried in her chest like withered flowers before they got the chance to bloom, and she could feel them sit there. Tashi honestly had no clue what she wanted to say. She could say "I'm sorry" or "Are you okay?" but those were useless words. She didn't like useless things.

When you spoke, and you spoke first after a long stretch of awkward silence and staring, your voice was clearer than it was earlier-- because Fucking Amanda finally remembered you might need hydrating after sobbing for three hours straight and major surgery. Despite that, you still spoke low and broken.

"What are you doing in New York?" She's meant to be back in France.

A pull between her eyebrows, like an invisible string being yanked. "What?"

You look aside at the circles of cleared dust. She heard you, you weren't that quiet.

"Fuck you." She slowly shakes her head. What she means is fuck you for questioning her, because she doesn't have a good answer. You can read between the lines.

You laugh at the suddenness of it, and then your head spins a little more. In a nice way, even though you're meant to be scared of her. "It's a reasonable question. You're meant to be playing against..."

"La Lourie."

"Right. Her. So, what are you doing in New York?" What are you doing here.

Tashi doesn't move from the door, arms crossed as her fingers pick at a loose string of her zip-up hoodie. She doesn't answer for a bit, eyes moving down to a spot on the floor. "I pulled out."

Your breath halts, looking up at her when her words pierce you like an arrow. You don't say anything, because really, you can't. What is there to say?

She finally steps in, leaning against the wall next to the door. An easy way out, and escape hatch. Tashi swallows thickly as the thread on the hoodie is pulled more and more. "I couldn't, uh," she blinks hard, shaking her head, "I couldn't go back out there. Not after that."

What an un-Tashi-like thing to say. She could've been in your place right now and she'd still get up and hobble to the courts, demanding someone play her. Yet, somehow, you ruined it for her. At least for now. She was meant to hate you.

"Your blood is... like, they cleaned it, but I swear I can still see it there. I had to leave."

"It's the French Open, Tashi--"

"And I'll win it next year. But, fuck, I can't play it now." she shakes her head with finality. "I tried, I went on the practice court but I could only picture you on the floor like that, crying and bloody and calling for your dad--"

Your eyes widen and your head snaps up to her. "What?"

The medical team rush from their tent onto the court, surrounding you almost the minute you crash and fall. You can't hear the scared murmurs of the croud, or the shaking breath of your opponent, or your own sobs. Just the blood rushing to your ears and out your knee.

Everyone saw how you clung to your leg, rocking back and forth on the clay. There's someone asking if you can move, someone calling for a stretcher. You just rock and cry.

"D-daddy," you whimper, eyes on the clear blue sky and swirling clouds as your vision blurs and doubles. "Dad, daddy where are you? I want my dad, I need my dad,"

The pain got so bad you stopped feeling it.

Those in the crowd who knew about your dad gasped. Amber stood frozen, watching, not knowing what the hell there was to do. Tashi couldn't feel her legs and her stomach turned. She ran off the court into the player's tunnel, spilling out into the first trashcan she could find. When they finally got you onto the stretcher and off the court, you'd passed out.

Naturally, it was all over the news. Players get injured all the time, but it wasn't often that players like you crashed and burned so brutally. News sites discussed and speculated in detail about the match, everything before, and everything after. TMZ reached out to Amber, who declined to give them any information, and even Tashi got called by a few publishers.

Amber came to your room an hour after Tashi left, rushing to your bedside as bombarding you with questions.

"Oh, fuck," She mumbled, looking over at the mess you were in. "Oh, fuck, I'm so sorry I didn't-- couldn't come sooner. I- I don't," words failed her. Sure, Amber was hard on you, and maybe she considered leaving your career in the hands of someone more emotionally capable very often, but she did care for you. Like a sick, twisted mother-daughter relationship despite the fact she was only a couple years older.

You could tell how hard she tried to not look at your leg, to keep her eyes focused on your top half. You could almost hear the anxiety going on inside that head of hers. The job insecurity must be wild. Where'd she get her check now?

Patrick was next. He almost threw up from a mix of the jet lag and seeing you. "Jesus fuck, Y/N."

He couldn't walk all the way in at first, staying by the door like Tashi had earlier. It was so much. "I got on a plane the second I could. God, this is sick."

It took him a while to come in and not feel faint, sitting by your bedside and not letting his eyes zero in on The Knee. Patrick wasn't a religious man, not by far, but he felt like praying for you.

Your mother was last. Nothing much to note there, it was a silent visit only interrupted by a call she 'had to take'. She didn't return. Seline sent a card which now lies facedown and unopened on the bedside table.

A hand on her shoulder startles Tashi from her vacant staring at her knee, a soft "We're here, Tash." from the driver's seat telling her they're home. It's been a week, now, since your fall. Looking up at the passenger's seat mirror, Tashi can see soft circles darkening under bloodshot eyes, a testament to the night terrors she's been greeted with every time she closes her eyes.

She was meant to move out ages ago from her childhood home but never quite got there. Art said it was because she was secretly sentimental, but Tashi just assumed it was cause her bed only felt right in that room. Nothing felt right, now.

Tashi helps her mother carry in the groceries, Nat and Renee bickering at the table about one thing or the other instead of helping. The older sister doesn't really hear, the words just pass through her as one bag, then another is set on the counters. She's asked to pick a side, the answer is a dismissive hand wave, their mother tells the twins to leave Tashi to breathe.

They've been tiptoeing around her all week but she's too zoned out to bother to tell them to stop. The truth is, Tashi doesn't feel like Tashi. She feels replaced, swapped out. A part of her kicks and screams at her for withdrawing from the Open, and everyone around her can tell.

Every time she sees her knees, she thinks about how it could've been her on the ground screaming, crying out for her mom or dad. Tennis was her fucking lifeline, thinking of it being ripped away like that in a blink of an eye... something in her head throbs and Tashi flops back onto her bed, staring at her blank ceiling.

She feels like she's swimming through life in a pool of shock. Nothing sounds full, everything feels slightly blurry against her skin. Art keeps calling and texting, asking if she's alright, if he should come over. She dismisses him every time. Her mother knows she needs her space to process everything, but now it feels like everything is giving her space. Too much space. She's suffocating.

Tashi forgot to ask for your number. She really wants to talk to you, despite it all. God, she can't even remember why she decided she hated you. Was there a reason at all? Did she hate you cause she felt like she had to, because everyone else did? It was like with Britney or Amy, watching them go through shit and instead of sympathizing, criticizing. Is that what Tashi was doing? Wasn't she better than that? Losing to you hurt, that was for sure, and she didn't exactly respect the DUI, but everything else... why did it matter so much to her?

All the shit-talking, all the tabloids about you she read, all the gossip she'd listen to intently from other players. It made her sick to think about, because now, and only now, she saw you as the person you were. It only took you losing it all for her to see.

Didn't her mother raise her better than that?

She grabs a pillow, pulling it over her face to block out the world. Downstairs she can hear the argument between Nat and Renee heat up, her father in the next room on a work call, her mother making fresh juice in the kitchen. The neighbor's dog, Lucky, is barking outside. Someone's starting a car. Art's new text buzzes her phone.

Tashi thinks about how the whole world moves on while you're stuck in that bed, and how it could have been her.

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#challengers #challengers 2024 #tashi duncan #x reader #zendaya #challengers fic #art donaldson #patrick zweig #angst #tashi duncan x reader #enemies to lovers #rivals to lovers #tashi duncan fic #enemies to.... whatever you call this #shorter than part one because i just can NOT do another six thousand word piece right now #finally finished #its 5 am #kaz i wish you were here to read this </3

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