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samkerrworshipper · 1 year ago

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revival | arsenal x reader

arsenal reader has been struggling more than she’d ever admit.. when it becomes to much she attempts to take her life but her teammates refuse to let her kill herself when she has so much more to live for.

warnings: do not read if you are triggered by suicide attempt, pill overdose, cutting, severe depression, angst, hurt/comfort

You didn’t know what had gotten you to this stage. Sitting on the bathroom floor of your apartment, staring down at an empty bottle of pills lying beside you on the floor. You weren’t sure exactly what had gotten you here, weren’t sure what switch had flicked in your brain this morning that had made you feel so positively broken from the inside out.

All you know is that right now you can feel deep purple, mauve and maroon bruises developing on your knees, from being hunched over the toilet bowl for so long.

Just when you begin to think that you’re empty, just when you think that there is nothing more that could be ripped away from you, you feel your muscles tense again as more bile is released.

Obviously, you knew the concoction of pills you took wouldn’t sit well, but you didn’t realise it would kick in this fast. You’d figured you’d have time to come to terms with the end of your life, or at least have time to scribble out a not.

But, all the pills you’d forced down your throat now resided in the toilet bowl, a mixture of stomach acid and medication pooling on the surface of the water.

It’s then that you make the decision that it’s time to take a different approach.

As you palm the metal blade, the cold sharp edge gently digging into your skin.

All you can think about is your team, your family, your home.

You think of the cold meal sitting on your kitchen bench.

At first, the metal burns, it stings and sears.

Almost as painful as the burning tears leaking down your cheeks.

Slowly, as more pressure is applied, your wrist is warmed by the pooling scarlett puddle dripping down onto the bright white tiles.

You’ve been sitting on the cold floor for way too long for your liking, your wrists pressed to the flooring to try and calm the burning sensation that’s spread all across your forearms.

If you try hard enough, you can convince yourself that the burning sensation is just another football injury.

You try and picture it, lying on the grass of a pitch, your arm throbbing with pain.

It only works for as long as your brain believes it, which is a total of ten seconds.

It’s been a long day, long week, long month, long year.

A long time pretending you're happy.

A long time try to convince everyone you’re happy.

A long time trying to persuade yourself that you’re happy.

A long time lying.

You’ve become so consumed with the lies that it’s hard to not be completely committed to them at this stage.

The only thing that reminds you of exactly where you are is the cold tiles against your arms, the warm blood and cold tiles mixing together like a thunderstorm.

The only sound to be heard across your apartment is the steady sound of blood dripping onto the tiles.

You think about your goodbyes, think about how this is the end, that you are content with this being it for you.

You’ve been at peace with this decision for a long while, longer than you’d ever care to admit.

It’s not really a decision for you, more like a losing battle.

In the last year, you’ve lost more of yourself than you thought possible, you don’t feel like you belong to yourself anymore, you don’t belong to yourself anymore. At one stage, a while ago, you loved yourself, you cared about yourself, you did your best to care. It hurt, feeling like you were no longer a owner of your body, maybe if you weren’t no longer classified as two different parts would you feel this way, or maybe it would make it harder, because maybe it wouldn’t feel like you were just getting rid of a body that you no longer belonged to, this was all to easy.

Your body was now something to be sold, something to be advertised, something to be purchased by the public.

You supposed that came from being a champion, being famous, being good at what you did.

Maybe, if you’d never become a famous soccer player none of this would have happened, you wouldn’t be lying on your bathroom floor, your vision slowly blurring and your blood leaking out steadily from your arms.

You walk towards the darkness, allowing it to embrace you as you slowly approach it without any resistance.

There was no fight for you, no hope or thoughts of redemption, this was your end, your demise, your final page, and that was okay.

You let the darkness completely cloud your vision, your body slowly being wrapped up by the accepting white light at the end of the tunnel.

It’s warm and comforting and you let your body rest, let it finally have the respite that it was so desperate for.

You felt yourself fade, far away with no intention of coming back.

You’d felt like you were gone, but you were brought back by more overwhelmingly white light in your vision.

Was this heaven?

Was this the end?

Was this it?

You were in pain, your head, your throat, your arms.

It was this thought that made you think you could be wrong.

Was this hell?

Or was the overwhelming white light just your bathroom tiles?

You cancelled out the tile idea, because you could feel your eyelids were closed, which meant that the white couldn’t be sourced from your home.

Your ears were ringing and as everything began to come back to you, it became terrifyingly clear that this could not be any of your previous assumptions.

Death wasn’t this painful, death wasn’t supposed to have any feeling.

Death didn’t feel like a warm bed and it definitely wasn’t consciousness.

This wasn’t the great beyond, this wasn’t the end, this was something else that you couldn’t quite pin down.

As your senses began to come back to you, your hearing and slowly your consciousness you began to become certain that whatever this was, it was not your end.

The sound of a constant machine beeping gave you an inkling as to where you might be, you just silently prayed that you were wrong, silently prayed that you would wake up in your red soaked tile bathroom and not a hospital.

You could clean up, try again.

You couldn’t handle being forced to recover, being forced to talk about your feelings.

It wasn’t something on your agenda, it wasn’t a part of your intricate demise.

You didn’t want to open your eyes, you weren’t even sure if you could, but you wanted to understand your situation, to understand what was happening.

So, you used every piece of your energy that was left, to every so slowly crack open your eyes.

It was more overwhelming white, that took a good deal of blinking to work through, but eventually, a blurry version of your surroundings began to appear in the corners of your eyes.

It confirmed your suspicions, you were in a hospital.

Which you hated, but you had also been prepared for, it made you feel insanely unaccomplished.

It took a lot of blinking and squinting for you to fully take in your surroundings.

The part that stumped you the most, and made you feel like you were hallucinating was the sea of red hoodies that were sitting, sleeping and lying around your room.

It was dark outside, the room was still lit up with machines and the bright white light from the corridor, but you figured that most of your teammates were fast asleep.

It was good, it gave you some extra time to take in your surroundings.

You were covered in cords and wires, your body completely moving even as you tried your very hardest.

Both of your wrists were bandaged tightly, to the point where you were completely unable to even wiggle your fingers.

It was daunting to you, the complete inability to do anything but lie in the bed and bear witness to your inability to do anything besides that.

Just as you were beginning to get truly distressed, one of the red blobs in your peripheral popped up out of their seat, making their way over to your bedside and tracing their hand over your one.

“Hey, ducky, it’s okay, I’ve got you, deep breaths. You’re okay.”

It’s Beth’s voice that hits your ears, and it has the reverse effect, making you more stressed out about the fact that she’s here witnessing this.

“Honey, it’s okay, big deep breaths for me, you’re okay.”

Beth’s hand moves up to your chest, your chest that is covered with a scratchy hospital gown.

“I shouldn’t be here, I-I-I’m supposed to be dead.”

Your words are croaky and chesty, almost unrecognisable but Beth manages to decipher them, and it almost brings tears to her eyes.

“Hey, hey, absolutely not. I thank every single god that you're here and awake right now, it is a miracle that you are here.”

This was not a miracle.

This was a fucking tragedy.

Beth’s face though, it was enough to send a deep pain to your stomach, deep guttural pain that hurt more than anything else.

“S-should be dead, wish I was dead.”

Beth’s face just drops, tears springing from her eyes and falling down onto the hospital sheets.

“Ducky, I promise you, we are all going to try our very hardest to make sure you never feel like that again. Get some more rest, we can sort this all out in the morning but you need your sleep, your body needs rest.”

You didn’t have energy to argue with Beth, so you nodded, relaxing back against the pillows and letting sleep and darkness return to the forefront of your brain.

When you awoke for the second time, it was less painful.

The sun was up this time, your room flooded with early sunbeams.

Overall the hospital was abuzz, to your extreme displeasure.

You were met with the eyes of some of your closest teammates, your words under the stars with Beth at the forefront of your mind as you looked at the extreme disappointment and sadness playing across their faces.

It hit home for you.

They all shared the same expression, all of you sharing the same situation that none of you wanted to be a part of.

“Hey Ducky, how are you feeling?”

Katie’s voice breaks the silence, her tone is full of emotion and you watch her mouth twitch to the side as she obviously tries her hardest to conceal the emotions that she is feeling.

“Like I wish I was dead.”

Nobody laughs, nobody says anything besides purse their lips and bite their tongues.

“We’re so glad you aren’t though, and we’re going to help you.”

We’re going to help you.

It’s five words, seven syllables, and the words that you least want to hear.

“Why couldn’t you just let me die?”

Your words manage to bring tears to the eyes of some of your teammates, you don’t care, all you can think about is the fact that someone, one of your teammates, had the fucking audacity to save you.

Leah’s the person to stand up, and take the same spot that Beth did last night, directly by your side, her hand resting on your own.

“Why didn’t I let you die? Why did I perform half an hour of chest compressions waiting for an ambulance whilst you bled out on your bathroom floor? Because you have a life that’s worth living, you have a gift for football, you are one of the brightest, happiest, smartest, best people I have ever met y/n, and this isn’t the end for you, it can’t be.”

You couldn’t meet Leah’s eyes, not with the knowledge that she had done this to you, she was the reason you were lying in a hospital bed instead of a coffin.

“You should have left me to die.”

Your words are broken, split in half by the knowledge that you were still fucking alive.

“You have a life worth living, kid, you’re only 21, there is so much more you have to give and I’ll be damned if this is it for you.”

You can’t meet any of your teammates' eyes, because it’s clear that they completely disagree with your actions, but there is still a part of you in your head telling you that everything would be better off if you were dead.

Your teammates wouldn’t have to pretend they care, they wouldn’t have too busy themselves with trying to save you from your impending death.

If you had any choice in it, you wouldn’t be this way.

If you could, you’d be happy and smiley, sweet, kind and soft. You’d be consistently happy, you would be the person smiling no matter what and someone easy to talk to, someone easy to love, someone that people wouldn’t let slip away.

You don’t have a choice though, this is who you are.

You are rough edges. You are a poorly labelled bottle of poison that people choke on as soon as they come into contact. You are a box of glass with a fragile sticker plastered all over and yet you still break, harming anyone who comes into contact.

When life gets hard, you quit.

There’s no way to explain why, everyone loves you until life is real and you need help, everyone is understanding until life isn’t pretty anymore.

You’ve never been loved through your lowest moments.

Never been loved when you can’t bring yourself to get out of bed, let alone shower.

Never been loved when the only thing that's playing in your head is how much you hate yourself.

Never been loved when the part of you that everyone loves suddenly dies.

Somedays, you are fairly certain that you are impossible to love. You don't know the kind of happiness love provides, you don’t know how to open up or trust, because no one ever loved you enough for that.

Other days, you remember that you are only 21, and maybe one day it won’t be this way.

You wish you were tender, you wished you were glowy and soft.

You wished you were Beth or Jen, always happy and ready to make anyone who was feeling down feel a little bit better.

“Why couldn’t you have just let me die?”

Your cheeks are practically drowning in tears, Leah reaches up to wipe them, you try to stop her but you instead moan in pain as the searing burn spreads backup your arms.

At the sound of your discomfort Leah is recoiling immediately, her hands falling down to your tightly wrapped arms and pressing them gently back down into the blankets.

“Hey, no, these need rest, you did some serious nerve damage, we won’t know the severity until you’ve got some strength back.”

Fuck.

“Nerve damage?”

Collateral damage had never crossed your mind, because you weren’t supposed to be alive right now, so why would collateral damage matter?

“Yeah, you could have severed or done some serious damage to your nerves, if they are cut then you’ll need a nerve replacement to regain the sensation.”

You blink a few times, staring up at the roof and willing the tears leaking down your face to fo away.

“I should have died.”

Leah, in all of her honesty, nods.

“Yeah, you should have. They had to pump your stomach to get rid of all the drugs you’d consumed, and you need 38 stitches and three pints of blood. You should be dead, but you aren’t and the fact that you aren’t is a fucking miracle.”

You wouldn’t call this a miracle, not from any point of view.

“When can I play again?”

You’re not sure if you’ll make it till that point, but it’s a question worth asking, there are big things coming up, on both a national and club level.

“Excuse me?”

Leah is shocked, and extremely taken aback by your question, so much so that she just stutters over her words.

Before she chokes on her words, Katie steps in.

“Kid, you almost died yesterday.”

You shrug, you figured it was a question worth asking, but Katie’s voice told you that to her it was a stupid question.

“A week? Two weeks? A month?”

You're grasping for something, trying to find the long straw in a pile of short ones.

“Kid, you tried to kill yourself, you almost succeeded, there are bigger things to focus on for you right now then getting on the pitch.”

A part of your brain disagrees so heavily.

“I have to go, they’ll take my passport and my licence and I’ll never be allowed to play again.”

All of the girls share knowing looks, but the general idea is that there is a general discomfort across the room.

“Ducky, look at me.”

It’s Katie’s strong Irish accent, the voice she uses when she’s captaining her national team that forces your eyes from the roof to meet her own.

“They can’t make you do anything, you need to be here right now. There is a treatment plan, you tried to kill yourself, you can’t just leave, it doesn’t work that way.”

Your brain is screaming inside of your skull, pounding against the bone and muscle.

“Jorge never let us take a break, he told us if we ever tried to leave that they would take all of our identification, and our licence to play, I have to play, I was born to play, it’s the only thing I have.”

Slowly, without the efforts of any of the girls, you are starting to unearth some of the serious problems you’ve been dealing with for the last little while, especially coming off of the world cup.

They’d all noticed the change, noticed how after your national teams win, how parts of you had changed.

They all had their assumptions, especially after what happened with Jenni Hermoso and after some conversations with some of their Spanish companions, but nobody could provide an explanation for what was happening behind closed doors.

It was no secret to any of your teammates that Jorge was your biggest critiquer, you and Mapi had tried sticking up to him at the beginning of his career with the Spanish team, and it had landed you both in deep water.

Mapi, had been intelligent enough to leave the toxic environment when it had become too much, when it had seriously begun to affect her mental health.

You however, were not as good at identifying your emotions, and taking care of them, you pushed yourself to the point of breakage, this was a perfect example of that.

“Ducky, Vilda is gone now, you don’t have to worry, I’ll call Alexia, she’ll understand and she’ll talk to them for you. You need a break sweetheart, you need to talk about why you're struggling, there are bigger things to focus on right now than your career.”

You couldn’t disagree more, you were in your prime, you didn’t have time to take a break.

You also didn’t have time to live, there was nothing that plagued your mind more than the idea of trying again, as soon as you could remove yourself from the conservatorship of your arsenal teammates.

“I need to leave, I want to be discharged.”

It’s an attempt at regaining some of your dignity, one that doesn’t last very long.

“You’re on a 72 hour psych hold, 24/7 supervision whilst you're recovering. Everyday you will see a psychologist and after the 72 hours they’ll deem if you are ready to leave, if they believe you can be trusted to leave then you’ll go home with Beth and Viv for the foreseeable future. For the first few weeks, you’ll be under complete supervision, you’ll see a therapist every few days and once you’ve made some serious progress we’ll look at getting you back into training.”

You forced yourself to take a deep breath, and a big gulp, trying to force down the lump that was prominent in your throat.

“You can’t do that, I don’t want to see a therapist, I don’t need to see a therapist.”

Most of the women in the room roll their eyes.

“Ducky, we’ve all been worried about you for weeks, but you refuse to talk to any of us, clearly something led to this and if you won’t talk to us about it you need to talk to a professional.”

You don’t want to admit that a part of you is secretly terrified of seeing a therapist, because what if they see right through you? What if all they see is all of your insecurities and imperfections, just as Jorge did?

“I can’t see a therapist, don’t wanna.”

Before Katie can speak, previously silent Viv stands up at her seat and joins the crowd around your bedside.

“I know it's scary, kid. I started seeing someone when I was around your age and struggling. It was so hard, it was terrifying. I didn’t want to admit I was struggling, and then one of my teammates caught me harming myself whilst having an anxiety attack. I had to go see one to play again, and it sucked to start with, but it helped me so much, we all just want the best for you, and you need help, there is nothing wrong with accepting that.”

The remaining women sitting in the room stand up, surrounding your bedside.

Beth, Leah, Katie, Caitlin, Lia, Kim, Steph, Viv, Jen, Laura and Lotte.

It’s a crowd, and the taller girls have to stand behind because they don’t all fit, and even if they aren’t directly hugging you, you are overwhelmed with the amount of love radiating off of them, it’s too much.

“No-no, I can’t do this, you guys can’t do this to me. There is nothing wrong with me, I’m fine, I’m fucking fine.”

It’s clear that none of them believe you, you expect them to step back, but they don’t.

“No you’re not liefje, people who seriously try to take their lives are not okay. You don’t have to be, we’re all here to support you, you just need to let us, let us be here for you, let us be a shoulder for you to cry on.”

Your breaths shudder, you can’t meet any of their eyes, it hurts you to know that they all think this of you.

“I didn’t mean to.”

It’s a lie that you push out, you're trying to find anything to argue about, anything to distract from what was actually happening.

“Ducky, it would be okay if you did. You’ve been struggling and it’s understandable. All we want from now on is for you to be honest with us, no judgement, just tell us what you are feeling.”

Beth’s voice is so soft, you almost want to give in, but Vilda is in your head, screaming at you for being weak and vulnerable after passing out on the pitch after playing with the flu, and your reminded once again that there isn’t space in the world for people like you to have feelings.

“I want you to fucking believe me when I tell you that I am fine and stop suffocating me.”

All of the women share looks above your head, and somehow, telepathically, majority of them sag off from the huddle, leaving you room.

You're left with the main group of girls who have been controlling the situation.

Viv, Beth, Leah, Kim and Katie.

“liefde, you clearly aren’t fine. Whatever it is, you can talk to us, we’re here for you, whatever you need.”

It shouldn’t cause you to break down, but the pain in your heart and the look in Viv’s eyes sends you barrelling over a very high cliff.

You're sobbing, and struggling to breathe, blood rushing to your ears and preventing you from feeling anything besides the deep depression that has been building up in you for years now.

It hits you like a double decker bus.

Before you can really start to panic though, someone is climbing onto the bed beside you, bringing you into their lap and arms and embracing you.

“It’s okay ducky, we’ve got you, you’re safe with us.”

The sweet nothings are murmured lowly into your ear, the genuinity continuing until the mixture of a mental breakdown and panic attack subside and you’re just a tired, pained mess.

“M’ sorry.”

Your words are hummed into the chest of whoever has climbed in beside you in the hospital bed.

“You’ve got nothing to be sorry for, do you want to talk about it?”

The long answer is no, you don’t want to talk about any of it, but you can’t help the sense that a part of you might feel a little bit better if you let something off your chest.

“Talk about what?”

It’s a genuine question, because there is so much happening in your brain that you aren’t even sure where to start.

“Whatever you’d like.”

You think that’s a stupid statement, because for all Leah knows you could want to talk about the weather, and that doesn’t seem particularly helpful.

“Jorge?”

It seems like starting with the source of your problems probably saves yourself from a lot of beating astound the bush.

“If that’s what you want, ducky, we’re all just here to listen to you, no matter what it is.”

You peak your head out of Leah’s sweater, and you’re met with the supportive faces of the four other women sitting around your bedside.

“When I started for him I was 16. For a long while, the older girls shielded me from him, Mapi and Jenni especially. But my young innocence only lasted so long, when I was 19, he did some really fucked up things, that was when he changed. Mapi, Claudia, Patri and I were the ones who spoke out, and it was the right thing to do, but it put a target on our backs immediately, especially with Alexia out with her ACL injury and unable to support us all. He was so mean to us all, always criticising, never giving us breaks, running us till we were sick or injuring ourselves. He used to wake us up at 2am in the morning to go running because he said we were getting lazy. It was around then that they all signed the statement to withdraw, and I would have loved to do it with them, but I just couldn’t. It only got worse from there for me, especially during the world cup, I was having panic attacks everyday and he couldn’t have cared less. All he did was push me, to the point where Alexia had to mind me everyday because of how bad I was getting.”

You took a deep breath, you wouldn’t allow yourself to look at them, not right now, not until you were done.

“That was when I started to think about killing myself. It wasn’t because I don’t love my life and my friends, but, Jorge was devoting his life to making mine a living hell, and nobody wants that. He never had anything nice to say to me, always criticism, always negativity. Then we won, and none of it mattered, but then there was everything in the press, and I was being slaughtered for all of it because apparently I was enabling his abuse, and I can’t handle that, I can’t handle being told that I enabled abuse that I was dealt for years, maybe I should have told someone, but who? All of the physios, all the doctors, they all worked for him, nobody was going to turn on him. He created an environment where all of us girls were miserable and competing against each other for no reason.”

Leah stopped you with a bone crushing hug.

They’d all heard stories about the Spanish Women’s team, speculation, rumours, hearsay.

But hearing first hand experience from their teammate, somebody they loved, it killed them all on the insides, because how could someone treat their ducky like that? How could someone be so horrible?

“Thank you for trusting us to tell us that ducky. You didn’t deserve any of that, nobody does. From now on, we’re all here for you, you don’t have to hide it all, no more hiding, we’re here for you every step of the way.”

You try your hardest to believe Leah, but it’s a uphill battle, especially when your brain is conditioned to think she is lying.

Leah seemed to notice how spent you were, your body completely relaxed against her, your state near catatonic.

“Get some sleep ducky, we’ve got you, I promise we’ll do everything to make sure you never feel like this again.”

When Leah says it, you believe her, because there is one thing that your mind can’t betray you about, and that is that Leah, and all the other women surrounding you would do anything to protect you, and to make sure that you felt loved, to make up for the lack that you’d been experiencing for the last while.

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