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samkerrworshipper · 8 days ago

Text

lights are on, but nobody’s home

barca femeni x reader

it’s unedited. i’m not sorry about it, if it puts u off then soz icbf. this fic has been in my drafts since october so it was about time i finished it! combined to fics lol to get it done and its a fast paced very vague mess but have fun :) loved the idea not the execution!

warnings: kinda angsty?

Red cards exist in the game for a reason. You don’t deny that. Red cards are needed to keep people safe, to set a boundary between safe and unsafe play. But there had been something so undeniably unfair about yours.

You’d hurt somebody, you weren’t going to lie about that. It had been unintentional, but a risk you’d taken had ended up with the world’s best player being stretchered off the pitch, and for just that, you deserved a yellow. But a red, for a tackle that was mostly legal, seemed ridiculous. Tackles happened. As a defensive midfielder, it was your job to get the ball off attackers, it was your responsibility to make sure that you stopped the ball from being kicked in the direction of your keeper or down the field to another player. It was what cemented your spot in the English midfield; you weren’t just a good attacker; you were ferocious in defence. You averaged at least 5 tackles per game; it was the most crucial part of your game; it was fundamentally what made you a good footballer.

Arguing with the ref and using some particularly vulgar language definitely didn’t help your case but in your defence it hadn’t been a red cardable offence. It was all pointless though, the card had already been raised and pointed in your direction, you’d been booked, in a friendly of all games.

It was bad, you’d know that from the moment your cleats had stepped over the line, the incessant booing being directed towards you as you walked past Sarina the grim frown etched into the details of her face was enough of a sign. You were in a bad situation, but you’d just put your team in an even worse situation with a one less player on the field to continue the fight in the world cup final rematch. It wasn’t good, it was your job to make sure that your team was in the best situation to achieve success on the pitch and you’d jeopardised that. What you hadn’t realised was that action wasn’t only jeopardising your team, it was jeopardising you as a whole.

It had begun from the moment you’d gotten back to your hotel room later that night. Your teammates had focused all of their energy on trying to lift your spirits, with the game ending in a 1-1 draw, everyone was happy. The England team was your second family, and considering you didn’t play in the WSL like the vast majority of them, national team time was valuable to you. You sat next to Beth on the ride back to the hotel, happy to listen to her non-stop talking as a distraction for the disappointment that had settled inside of you. At team dinner, you sat sandwiched in between Grace and Ella; most dinners spent on your normal table, you struggled to get a word in, but it was the constant surrounding buzz that kept you out of your head and specifically off of your phone, and you were more grateful than usual that you had that. By the time you’d even made it to your room and gone through your nighttime routine, you still hadn’t checked your phone. It was only as you began to prepare yourself to get into bed that you headed towards your bag to fish it out. You climbed into bed, finally opening your phone for the first time, and instead of it having a handful of messages from your family and a sprinkle of Instagram notifications, there were thousands. Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, newsforums, both English and Spanish; as you scrolled down the list, it only got bigger. All of it was the same, about how you’d ‘intentionally’ injured your own club teammate to benefit your national team, how you were malicious, how you had played beyond the line of safe play, how you deserved to be penalised, how you had ruined sportsmanship. It was never-ending, and the more that you read, the worse it got. You felt like a shell of yourself as your eyes scanned the different words; you completely dissociated it all. It felt like you were reading about somebody else, like there was absolutely no possibility that the sentences you were absorbing could possibly be about you. There was so much falsity behind all of it that it was hard to understand it. You’d played the same you always did, you hadn’t played dangerously, you’d played within the rules as you always did. Beyond that, you’d visited Aitana in the change rooms after the game, desperate to apologise and make sure that you hadn’t done any damage or hurt her in any way. Your play hadn’t been malicious, there hadn’t been any ill intention or hatred fueled behind it, even though every single article or post was making it seem that way. Aitana had come off after the clash purely as a caution, when you’d gone to see her, all she was dealing with was a little bit of inflammation. By the time you were both back in Barcelona, she’d be as good as new. Even after watching the replays, it was clear to anybody with eyes that all you were doing was fighting for the ball, the same as every other 1-on-1 battle throughout the game. Yet as soon as a spotlighted player got injured, it was suddenly a different story being told.

Normally you would shake it off, in general, you were the kind of person who didn’t get bothered by much, You were a bubbly and happy person, you were the kind of teammate who was always smiling and trying to make other people laugh. Usually, if you had a teammate who was in the same situation as you were now, you would be the one picking them up and trying to help them shake off all of this. It wasn’t normally a struggle for you to overcome a little bit of hate, but there was something so shattering about this. Whilst you still believed deep down that you’d done nothing wrong, it was hard to convince yourself of that when there were so many people who were telling you otherwise.

You weren’t the kind of person who regularly fell into the mind numbing action of doom scrolling, you weren’t big on social media in general, it was something you had to do because of your job but not much else beyond that. Yet right now it felt impossible to deviate away from it, every time you saw your name pop up again somewhere you were drawn to another dark place of the internet where you kept reading until you were mentioned or tagged in another post and your phone lit up with a new piece of media.

It was never ending, it just kept coming, and the longer you indulged in it, the sicker you started to feel. Had you done something wrong? Were you truly as malicious as everyone wrote? Were you the bad person they were painting you to be?

It was impossible to not consider that potentially everyone else was right, maybe you were the problem.

It was a good day to be roomed with Lucy, she’d been in bed before you’d even made it up to the room and asleep whilst you’d been showering. If the sounds of snoring were anything to go off of then she was long gone, which made you feel more secure as you muffled a sob into your pillow. It was going to be fine, by the time morning rolled around it would be forgotten. Or at least that was what you thought.

The convenience of playing your games in Spain was that unlike majority of your teammates, you were able to sleep in the following morning instead of flying back to their club teams. Lucy was gone long before you woke up, something you were specifically grateful for because whilst Lucy was mostly oblivious, you weren’t sure if you would have been able to hide your red eyes and puffy face. You hadn’t had much sleep, but even in the few hours that you had managed to get, the notifiations on your phone had only multiplied significantly. Every second your phone lit up again, and for the sake of your own brain you chose to switch it off completely. If you stayed in the shower a little longer because you got so lost thinking about it all that your feet started to go numb from the water pressure there was nobody around to say anything about it. If you happened to space out halfway through your skincare and accidentally spill half of your serum down the sink it was nothing a bit of water from the sink couldn’t fix. Every time you thought you’d forgotten about it all, like you’d drifted away from everything you’d read and then suddenly it all came back to you like some sick fever dream. It was the same words that kept circulating, and every time it came back to you it was impossible to just let it go.

You were half way dressed when your door was knocked on. It was what woke you up to the fact that you had absolutely no idea what time it was or how long you’d spent spaced out and in your brain.

You weren’t shocked to find Keira waiting outside your door, looking significantly more put together then you were.

“Mate, I’ve texted you about 30 times. The taxis here to take us to the airport.”

Fuck. You’d forgotten that you were taking a group taxi instead of leaving the hotel individually.

“Give me five minutes, I slept in and forgot to pack up last night.”

Keira cut you off before you continued your ramble of excuses.

“I’ll help you pack up, you focus on getting dressed and sorting yourself out, okay?”

Keira wasn’t your closest friend, she was one of the few people on the Barcelona team that spoke fluent english which grouped the two of you together. She was also one of your idols coming through as the youngest midfielder in the English and Barcelona squad. But personality wise the two of you didn’t jell, you were too energetic and a little bit too immature to buddy up with her. It didn’t change the fact that she was basically an older sister to you. She wasn’t exactly the person you’d go to for relationship advice or confess your troubling thoughts to. But she was the person you could rely on to help you in any situation without asking questions, and this really was an extension of that.

Keira made quick work of packing up your things from around your room whilst you finished getting dressed and putting your hair in a messy bun.

By the time you’d made yourself look just enough presentable for the public eye Keira was done, all of your bags piled together at your hotel room door.

“I found your phone at the bottom of your bag, looks like you might want to charge it before the drive.”

Right now, your phone felt like a block of dynamite, balancing in Keira’s hand, ready to explode at any second.

“No, I just turned it off.”

You didn’t really think about how odd your words could sound until they’d left your mouth, and Keira’s eyebrows were raising quickly.

“You just turned it off?”

It’s an unusual behaviour for you, one that Keira has clearly picked up on by the tone in her voice. Your phone is practically an extension of you, the team didn’t joke about you having square eyes for nothing. Always getting people to film tiktoks or do stupid challenges.

“Yes?”

You actively observe all of the cogs in Keira’s brain turning, she looks like she has a lot to say, but then she glances down at her watch and it’s clear that the fact that you are running well behind time takes priority.

“Let’s go, the taxi is waiting.”

Keira practically pushed you out of the hotel room, all of your bags in her hands and ushering you straight towards the elevator.

As she’d said, the taxi is waiting in front of the lobby, the driver looks particularly ticked off as he waits outside the drivers side door, his foot tapping and a cigarette hanging halfway out of his mouth. Keira loads your suitcase into the boot of the car whilst you take your backpack off of her and hop into the back of the car, Keira follows and sits down across from you.

The first five minutes of the ride are silent, Keira flicks through her phone whilst you stare out the tinted window and pretend that you can see the things passing by.

“You can talk to me you know? I know we’re not exactly the closest, but I’m here for you.”

You don’t bother to look in Keira’s direction, you keep your eyes and facial expression schooled and focused on the window.

“Anything the media writes is bullshit, you ought to just ignore it.”

You wished you could have ignored it last night, when theoretically you were at your most vulnerable. Maybe if you hadn’t of read so much when you were already in a bad mindset it wouldn’t have imprinted so much, regardless it has and you can’t just ignore it.

“Kei, I’m fine. When have I ever cared what the papers write about me?”

Now, right now is when you care. It’s a fair statement though, you’ve never been affected when tabloids have written far worse things about you, when you came out and for months there was homophobic slander everywhere you looked. In the past it hadn’t been based off of facts, it had all been fictitious. But now that there is just a inkling of truth behind what’s being written it feels far more real and you aren’t sure how to get past that.

“I’m just saying that there isn’t anything wrong with being affected by it. Especially after last night, there’s nothing wrong with admitting that.”

This is the trouble between you and Keira, she’s a lot more frank. In your opinion it’s a thing that comes with age, whilst she’s very happy to admit when she’s going through a hard time you’d rather cover it up with jokes and pretend that it doesn’t actually bother you. The trouble with your approach is that it only works for so long before people start to see you fraying at the edges or you completely break down from the pressure.

“Just mad I hurt your bestfriend, huh?”

The only response you get from Keira is a loud exhale, the same a mother would when her child makes a immature joke at a immature time. Immaturity is your coping mechanism, because by default people tend to be put off by it, they naturally gravitate away from it. Furthermore they gravitate away from whatever conversation or confrontation they were going to have.

“I’m not mad, I’m concerned for you and how something like this can affect a persons career.”

It’s too many feelings, to much concern, too much. You don’t deserve it and you definitely do not want it.

“I’m fine, we play football, it’s part of it all.”

You still haven’t looked at Keira but you could make an educated guess and assume that she looks deflated. It’s another reason that out of Keira and Lucy you’d always gotten along better with Lucy, you didn’t care to admit it but she knew how to get to the bottom of all of your weird cues and knew what was right and wrong to say. Keira’s too smart for her own good, and it doesn’t work on you, it never has. She’s all you have at Barca now though, besides Roebs, whose been too focused on her rehab and getting back on the pitch to be much of a friend.

“Hate shouldn’t be part of it. If you need to talk about the fact that some part of it is clearly bothering you then I’m here, anybody else on the team is here. Okay?”

You nod purely for the sake of ending the conversation, you can’ even figure out how you feel about it all, let alone trying to rationalise it with Keira. You’re upset, yet you can’t quite get to the bottom of it. You’ve never been upset before when your actions have ended in somebody else getting injured, it’s a rare occurence and when it happens you feel a little bit of guilt but usually it fades. Injury is part of the game, it happens all the time right in front of your eyes. You suppose Aitana isn’t actually injured though, she’s sore and has a low grade ankle sprain but it’s nowhere near the same as her tearing her acl or breaking a bone because of you. You just feel drained, it’s odd, you put it down to the fact that you hardly got any sleep last night but you have this underlying feeling that it’s somehow more than that, yet you have no explanation for it.

After a long break of silence Keira and yourself fall into a fairly bland conversation about the upcoming fixtures and winter break plans. It’s so evident that there is tension in every word each of you speak, like you’re both a few syllables away from saying something that neither of you want to.

Luckily Keira is a lot more cautious than most people, unlike most of you friends or teammates in general she can control herself to a respectable level and can stop herself from word vomiting emotion fueled spieles.

By the time the driver pulls up in front of your apartment building not much has been said at all, but the overarching feeling is tense, it doesn’t feel good and the mixture of it with the everything else is making you feel sick. Keira gives you a hug after helping you unload your luggage and then leaves you. You know that outwardly you’re presenting that you want to be left alone yet everything in you is being used to stop yourself from clinging onto Keira and asking her to stay with you.

Your week is a lot of the same feelings. You have two days to yourself before training starts again and the two days are spent in bed. If you aren’t scrolling on your phone andreading every single thing that has your name mentioned then you are sleeping, or crying, or lying in bed thinking about it all. Every text from one of your teammates is left unopened, none of it matters when every single waking moment of your life is being spent thinking about the moment over and over again. It’s not just your career, not just the fact that you’re going to have to sit out in the next fixture and potentially tarnish your relationship with Sarina. You hurt Aitana, you hurt your ownt teammate. Your own actions had caused harm to somebody that you cared about. Every article, tiktok, post they were all painting you in some kind of negative light, like you were a demon hiding behind smiles. It was hard not to consider the truth behind it all, had you done what you did with malicious intent?

By the time training finally rolled around you were feeling even worse than you had a couple of days ago. Even though you’d been sleeping for hours a day there wer ebig eye bags under your eyes, you were pale and looked like you were sick. It was noticed by your teammates almost immediately, you weren’t even fully dressed in the change rooms before Pina was punching on you, talking rapidly in Catalan that you didn’t remotely understand.

“Chica, you missed our games night last night. To busy sleeping off the four goals you scored over the break, no? You need to leave some goals for other people.”

You shook Pina off as quickly as you could, you had a focus for the day and that was getting all of this over with. You had a game in three days, a game that you couldn’t ruin for your team again.

“Estas bien?”

You finish pulling your training top on and sit down on the bench in front of your locker.

“Estoy Bien.”

You focus on getting a sock on each of your feet and then your boots.

“Chica?”

There is concern laced in Pina’s voice, she’s still standing in front of you. Almost everybody else has made their way out onto the pitch, leaving the two of you and a couple of stragglers behind.

“You don’t look so good chica, are you feeling okay?”

Your boots are easy enough to lace up, once you’re done you reach behind you for your jacket, not quite sure if it’s warm enough to train in just your shirt.

“Estoy Bien. Vale?”

Before Pina can ask much more, you begin to walk towards the doors of the locker room. It’s breezy enough outside that you choose to put your jumper on, as do most of your teammates.

Aitana is doing individual training, because of her ankle. Pere says that it’s precautionary.

If you weren’t already feeling like you were on the brink of vomiting then now it’s the only thing you can feel. You feel ill, you feel completely absorbed by the sickness pooled at the bottom of your stomach. When Pere asks if you’re feeling alright you can’t say no, because you have no reason to feel as badly as you do. But it’s all the words, they’re spinning around in your head, every article, every single word.

It shows on the pitch, every decision, every pass, every shot, every tackle is helf back. You’re fearufl and it shows.

When training finally does finish, and Aitana is still working by herself with one of the coaches on another pitch you feel like it’s almost your breaking point. Until Pere pulls you over again and lets you know that you’ll be starting for the match on the weekend as a replacement for Aitana.

That’s your breaking point. You have nothing to say, nothing to think. You feel like a zombie as you walk towards the locker room. You sabotaged your teammate for your own good.

As soon as the team list is out that’s the only thing people will be saying, You don’t even want to think about what people will think when they see the photos of Aitana training by herself with her ankle all taped up. Whilst you were out on the pitch with all of your teammates. What was just starting to get better for you was only bound to relapse with the new information.

All of the girls notice your shift in behaviour. It’s Pina though who approaches Alexia on your third day of training back. Aitana is still training individually, purely for precaution and preservation. There are more important games then the one coming on the weekend and it’s not worth aggravating the small injury. It doesn’t feel like that to you though, and it’s been abundantly clear to everybody that something is up with you.

“Alexia, can I talk to you for a second?”

Alexia’s been talking to Irene about ….. for at least ten minutes and whilst Pina has no interest in interrupting it’s getting boring waiting around for a conversation to end that’s clearly dragging.

Alexia looks so care free, and Pina asking to talk to her shouldn’t change that, but the look that’s on her face changes Alexia’s demeanour almost immediately.

“What’s up?”

Pina looks at Irene awkwardly, like she’s not sure if the information she’s about to share with Alexia is for Irene’s ears. Irene seems to get the message, farewelling the two of them before heading off.

“I’m worried about y/n.”

Alexia’s silently been wondering whether to approach the subject. She’d thouyght about asking Keira is something had happened on England camp, considering that your particularly filthy mood had seemed to start afterwards. It was out of character for you, and originally Alexia had thought it was all part of some sort of prank plot. But as the last couple of days had passed it had become drastically clear that there was something else wrong. She’d thought it would be smarter to give you the benefit of the doubt, everyone had bad weeks. Alexia wasn’t aware of any relationships you were in but she wouldn’t have been shocked if your mood had been due to a breakup or something of similar origin.

“Ale, she’s been acting strange. She comes in everyday and hardly talks to anybody, she doesn’t joke around with use like she normally does, she hasn’t been answering our groupchat, she’s been avoiding all of our plans to hang out. Out on the pitch she’s been cautious but so unphased and she won’t talk to me or Ona or Patri or Kika or Esmee and I don’t know what to do anymore. Somethings really wrong, normally she’s so happy, I mean everyones noticed that the locker room has been more quiet. I thought it was going to pass, but she’s seemed really upset, like somethings really wrong and what’s happening on the internet can’t be helping it.”

The problem is that Alexia doesn’t disagree with anything that Pina is saying, she can’t dismiss any of it as overreaction because whether it’s been conscious or not she has noticed all of the things that she’s being told. She hadn’t yet pieced it all together as one thing but now that all the puzzle pieces are being laid out in front of her it seems impossible to ignore that it’s all coming together.

“On the internet? De qúe estás hablando?”

Alexia is the first to admit that she’s not exactly the best with technology, sure she’s got all the social media apps and Olga is constantly trying to teach her the ways of all of them but it doesn’t particularly interest her. She finds it easier to look at them as another means of work, it’s how she makes money, posting about football and endorsements. Otherwise she finds enjoyment in places besides her phone. Does it keep her slightly out of the loop? Yes. Does she have younger teammates to keep her up to date? Also yes.

“All the stuff about Aitana. I haven’t read into it much, but I know it’s not good. The media have been slaughtering her for that red card. She punishes herself enough after a bad tackle or pass, I can’t imagine what a red card would do.”

Alexia makes a mental note to look into it later but for now she knows that she needs to deescalate. Because if Pina is telling Alexia now then it’s not long before it blows up within the team.

“Okay. I’ll talk to her tomorrow after the game, if she’s still off I’ll talk to her. I’ll have a chat with Keira and ask if anything asked on camp, bueno? Whatever it is Pina, it can be fixed, all problems can be fixed. I’m sure it’s just been a rough week with all the travel and games, not everybody can adjust well, mixed with the recent fixtures it would be expected that everyone is feeling a bit more exhausted.”

It’s the rationalisation that seems to calm Pina down more, which was ultimately Alexia’s end goal. She can deal with you tomorrow but for now it’s crucial that she stops this from escalating within the team. When things spread it all becomes more drama and it’s not good, distractions are not what everybody needs leading into the next fixtures.

Alexia honestly forgets about the conversation completely. Between organising dinner the night before, stretching, spending quality time with her girlfriend and generally just getting herself game ready and in a good head space. She woke up feeling rested and prepared for the game ahead.

You however, were quite simply a mess. You’d hardly slept in over a week now, if you did sleep you woke up in a sweat after a particularly brutal nightmare, you were hardly eating because you always felt so nauseous from the anxiety and your performance on the football pitch had been dismaying.

Alexia, and your teammates, weren’t noticing the smaller things. You lived in your own apartment, in your own building. Nobody was aware of everything that was contributing to all the things that were beginning to show.

Alexia, hyper vigilant after Pina’s admission decided that she’d try and find you before everyone hopped on the bus to head to the opposing stadium, yet you were nowhere to be found. As everyone loaded onto the bus she almost missed you. Usually, you sat at the back, with the younger girls. Normally, Alexia gravitated somewhere in the middle of the bus, she was too old to be singing or messing around at the back but she liked to still be kept in the mix.

It was why she almost missed you, hunched into a seat almost at the very front of the bus.

“Chica?”

The way your whole body darted upwards as soon as you heard Alexia was another concerning thing that she was adding to a mental list.

“Capi.”

You pull your headphones off as a courtesy, but the reintroduction to the sounds of earth and the environment around you brings you right back to everything you’ve been feeling.

“Are you waiting for Kika or Vicky?”

Alexia feels like she already knows your answer, but she’s hanging on to a thread of hope that whatever Pina is feeling isn’t as bad as it seems.

“No, I need some sleep and it’s impossible to get any back there without somebody sticking something in my mouth or posting videos of me with my mouth half open.”

Alexia laughs, it’s the exact reason she can’t sit up the back anymore, it’s too much stupidity in a concentrated space.

“Ah, normally you’re more than happy to terrorize the rest of us, normalmente eres la reina de los estupidas.”

When your face doesn’t even respond slightly to Alexia and you have no witty comeback about her being boring or something else it’s another clear sign that something is up, she just can’t quite pin point what.

You’ve tuned out from her though, and as much as she is worried and thrown off, the bus is not a place to make a scene, specifically before a match. You will not take well to Alexia interrogating you and potentially causing any kind of emotional distress.

So, even though it pains her to do so, she walks on, she leaves you in the sinking ship you’re currently n in, taking on more and more water as every minute passes.

You’re at a point where you can admit to yourself that you are in no way fit to play.

You don’t want to be on the pitch, the fans don’t want you on the pitch, your teammates musn’t want you on the pitch, Pere wouldn’t have you on the pitch if Aitana was available and when you think about it the whole footballing world doesn’t want you on the pitch.

You flinch when you walk out to warm up and are met with boos, the Spanish fans are unlike all other fans, their passion is palpable and when one person starts booing everybody follows suit. It’s not even Barcelona fans, which is undecidedly worse and better. The overall impression is that you’ve aggravated the Spanish people.

It takes your teammates a couple of seconds to catch on to who it is the anger is being directed at but once they do it’s a domino affect of everybody turning to you, and then turning to each other and back to you. You try your best to not let it affect you, you’ve been booed before and have dealt with many angry fans, but when it starts to echo from the away side of the stands you honestly question if you’ve pushed yourself a little bit too hard.

Alexia regrets her decision not to say something to you when she sees the complete fear in your eyes as you look around at the crowd, who are vehemently booing you. It’s not a good feeling on any day to clearly have a crowd so against you but when you’re clearly off kilter as it is it’s clear that it all throws you off even more.

Before Alexia can think about it, she’s beelining straight to Keira.

“What happened on camp?”

Keira is just as thrown off by what is occurring as everyone else.

“England camp?”

It’s clear in the bewilderment in Keira’s face that she’s not understood what Alexia’s asking.

“With y/n, did something happen that nobody knows about?”

The booing finally comes to an end, but it doesn’t change the overall energy in which a whole crowd is sending your way.

“She was fine all camp, being an idiot with grace and beth and being her usual self. All the other games she was fine, and then after the Spain game, after the red card, she’s just been acting different. It’s like G at Man City all over again.”

Alexia understands everything that Keira’s saying, until the last sentence. Her English is pretty good, hger understanding is almost perfect, speaking less so but the last few words completely surpass her level of interpretation.

“G? Man City?”

Alexia notices you in the corner of her eye doing shooting practice, every time you miss and echo of cheers erupts.

“Georgia? Stanway? A couple of years ago, when she was young she got a stupid red card, it wasn’t pretty not dissimilar to the challenge on Aitana. Big mess with the media, got some really nasty messages.”

She doesn’t remember the moment itself, but she does remember reading something about it a couple of years ago.

“Gracias.”

You’re red hot with rage already, the crowd has you amped up. When Pere questions you in the locker room about your state of mind, you are quite literally in a blinding fury. It the kind of sadness fueled anger, youa re literally ripping apart at the seams and instead of actually feeling all of the innate anguish you are experiencing you turn it into anger.

“Why the fuck did you go to Pere and tell him I wasn’t ready to play.”

The tunnel is the only time you’ve been able to talk to Alexia, she’d been so held up with the pep talk, then talking to Pere, then giving inspiration to everybody else. But now that you have the opportunity you can’t ignore it.

Alexia’s eyes are ahead, you’re stuck standing behind her but she can hear you perfectly clear.

“After the game.”

It had taken enough effort for you to convince Pere that you were fine. You were begging for a starting spot that you didn’t even want, a spot that is actually making you feel sick to your stomach. It’s the doubt though, you doubted yourself in that stupid tackle that got you the card, so if you doubted yourself what was to stop everybody else from doubting you?

“No, what makes you think that you can talk to our coach about my game fitness without even talking to me? Do you have any respect for me at all?”

Alexia turns around, and it makes you feel slightly validated and slightly less like you’re about to punch her in the head.

“It’s not about your fitness.”

The punching in the head feeling returns pretty quickly.

“Not about my fitness? What the fuck else is it then? Just because I don’t act like a dickhead on the bus and decide to take a nap?”

Alexia gives you on final look before turning around, the look on her face only adds to your sickeningly consuming anger.

You go onto the pitch angry, which isn’t good for anything. Every time the ball lands at your feet, boos echo out. Every time you get tackled, which is fairly frequently because the opposition has chosen you as the punching bag for the game, cheers erupt. The game is easy enough, 90 percent of possession is with Barcelona, with you spot in the midfield the ball comes to you every few seconds. It’s mostly fine, for the first ten or so minutes. Until the tackles start to get rougher, and you’re mad, and the crowd is loud and everything feels so incredibly wrong.

It’s working you up at a fast rate, then the ball lands at your feet for the 50th time in the match already, and without even looking up at your defender, who three seconds before was standing right in front of you, her studs are placing themselves directly into your calf. It’s not a comfortable feeling, to put it lightly. You manage to clear the ball before you’re on your back, clutching at your leg and trying your best to breathe as the crowd cries out, your opponent mutters something aggressively in spanish and your teammates argue with the referee.

It’s all too much. Your just angry, and upset. Not even at your defender or at the tackle, just at all of it. You think in a roundabout way that this is all karma, that this is your punishment for whatever you did to anger everyone and yourself. You’re tired and fed up and want it all to go away.

You want to sink into the grass of the pitch and just disappear, it would make your life so much easier if in this moment you could just disappear and not face any of the stuff that is happening.

Then there are hands on you and you’re reminded that it’s nowhere near that easy.

“Estas bien? Necesitas la medica?”

You force yourself to stand up, push through, get it over with. You need to prove everybody wrong.

Whether you can see it or not, you are spinning out. Everybody else can see it, you’re frantic, timid and shaken. Patri is the one to put her hands on your shoulders and steady you before you try to return to play.

“You need to go off.”

Twenty minutes have passed, you aren’t going to force a sub when it is unnecessary.

“I’m fine.”

Patri shakes her head, in the same way Irene or Marta would when they are being tough.

“You are not okay, and you need to go off before something worse than that happens.”

You shake Patri off, and when she tries to come back you give her a shove.

“I’m fucking fine. I know when I can and cannot play.”

Like every other attempt that’s been made to try and stop you, she just frowns and walks away. The ref gives you a once over before allowing the game to return to play.

It’s not fine, nothing is fine. Your defender continuously gets away with dangerous tackles that should be continous yellow cards, the crowd is getting to you with every passing second. By gods grace three goals are scored in a few minutes, not only does it silence the opposition it puts you at ease a little bit. For the most part, you’re doing okay, or as okay as possible.

Until it gets to a corner.

There is two minutes of stoppage time, which have well and truly been used up. The corner is going to be the last play and it’s impact is not super important but the pressure is still there. You end up sandwiched between the two centre backs, and for whatever reason when the boot releases off of Patri’s foot from the corner instead of running to make room like you’re supposed to, you are yanked directly to the ground, with two boots stepping directly onto your legs.

It’s not agony, it’s definitely not good but you’re spending more time trying to not cry and collect air then focusing on everything else.

You can’t breathe, and you physically can’t stop the sob that leaves your mouth, it’s pathetic but it’s been building and you can’t stop it.

You don’t bother with listening to the call, or letting your teammates help you up or worrying about the play. The whistle has blown and you have one mission, to go anywhere away from people. You force yourself to stand up even though your back hurts from falling flat on it and your thighs hurt from being stomped on, and walk off.

Pere and the bench are still waiting in the dug out, normally you’d hug or talk or anything but right now the only thing on your mind is getting away, because if you don’t then what is now only tears is going to turn into a full panic attack. You’re working simply off of pure instinct, you have the shutters on and the only thing you are focusing on is your end goal and getting there. When you get to the changing rooms it’s empty, you bee line straight through to the bathroom and lock yourself in a stall before you actually let yourself think beyond the orders that have been set out in your mind.

Like everyone had said, you aren’t ready. You are living with the knowledge that because of your actions, your stupid actions you are being given a spot and opportunity that you didn’t deserve, you got it purely based off of the fact that you injured one of your teammates. Now you can’t even live up to the expectation of being a replacement.

The feeling that was initially what you had thought to be anxiety sickness builds up and all of a sudden you’re grateful your in the bathroom because within a couple of seconds you are kneeled on the floor letting your whole stomach contents out. It’s not a good feeling, you’ve been slowly descending towards rock bottom for days now but you’ve come to the realisation that this is it, this is your lowest point. Every time you think about the pitch you subsequently think about the crowd which leads you to think about everything happening inside your phone and then the sick feeling is back full force. The you think about Aitana, her ankle, her spot, her training, everything. All of that combined and all you can do is cry, it’s the only emotional outlet that you have enough energy for. You’d love to be able to punch something or throw something but you don’t have the energy, you’re running off of no sleep, hardly any food and now the fatigue of playing a half of football.

“Chica, can you open the door?”

Truthfully there are not many people you want to see in this moment or really ever again but Alexia might be at the top of the list. You’d been a little bit star struck when you’d gotten to Barcelona, you were an up and coming and to be on a roster with the best midfielders in the world was something you were in awe of. You were still slightly in awe of the fact that you were sharing a bench with two ballon d’or winners.

“I’m fine.”

You force yourself to stay as silent as possible even though it’s hard with the constant sobs building up inside of your chest.

“Please open the door.”

You’re at rock bottom and even if you try to swim out you’re going to need some help at some stage you suppose.

As soon as you open the door there is a resounding gasp, you close your eyes to keep a little bit of your inner peace whilst Alexia steps into the stall and locks the door behind her. There is just enough room for her to squeeze down on the floor next to you so she does without any hesitation.

“I don’t need you telling me that you were right to question me playing and that it was a bad idea, I’m already aware.”

You’re not sore from the match and yet everything hurts, you actually feel like your limbs are slowly being ripped off of your body and everything is being split open.

“I wasn’t going to say that, I was going to ask if you’re okay.”

It’s a complicated question.

“Physically yes.”

Your eyes are still closed, if you look at Alexia then suddenly this all becomes a whole lot more real.

“Mentally, emotionally?”

Just the question is enough to essentially demuzzle you, everything you were doing to stop yourself from crying out fails, and you start sobbing, in the loudest and ugliest way possible.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

Alexia bunches up jext to you, slings an arm around your shoulders and brings you in closer.

“Don’t apologise when you didn’t do anything wrong, even if everyone else is making it seem like you did.”

Deep down you do believe you did something wrong, you don’t exactly know what but you must have, you must have done something because why else would all of this have happened.

“I hurt Aitana, I took her spot, I sabotaged her.”

The crying is cathartic, you’ve been crying for days but in an unemotionally detached way to expel some of the depression instead of actually feeling it.

“No you didn’t. You mis-timed a tackle that ended in a very minor injury. Football is a game of injuries, it happens. I don’t care what you’ve read online or what you’ve heard, the facts are simple. Anyone on our team or the england team can tell you that. Nobody blames you for what happened, not even Aitana. So you shouldn’t blame yourself.”

It’s easier to blame yourself you think.

“Everybody hates me, all I’m getting are messages about how I deserve to die and how people wish I’m never able to have kids or that I get injured as payback.”

Alexia’s deep breath makes you feel queasy all over again.

“What we’re going to do is delete all of your social media apps for the next few weeks, nothing is going to make people stop being putas, si? So for your own sake you’re going to delete all of them, turn all of your comments off, turn your messages off. There is nothing more important then your peace of mind, once that’s gone then this happens. You deserve better than this, you deserve to feel better than this. You also deserve to have fun and enjoy being a part of this team, nobody thinks you sabotaged Aitana, nobody blames you. You are just as welcome here as you were before the break, you are just as valued here as you were before the break. This stupid situation is not worth your health, si?”

You wipe away some of your tears, even though they’re still coming and nod.

“You deserve better, and until people realise that we need to focus on making sure that you know that.”

You feel specifically worthless, and it’s completely your own doing.

“Now, we need to get up before my legs go to sleep and my old body is stuck on the floor in here. Not everybody has young bones like you kids.”

You flush whatever parts of your stomach decided they wanted to resurface and force yourself to stand up, but as you do so the realisation that you are midway through a match comes back and all off a sudden you feel the need to sit down again.

“I told Pere to take you off for the rest of the game, I was coming off anyway, managing minutes. You can get dressed or shower, or do whatever you need to do and then we’lltalk a bit more about how we can turn this around. I’m serious when I say that the main focus is you right now and supporting you.”

You ignore the fact that nothing was ever mentioned about Alexia managing minutes and just accept that it’s a pointless argument and you don’t exactly mind her company right now. It’s nice to know that there is somebody shining a light for you at the end of the tunnel.

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