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updownlately · 2 months ago

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hi. i’m alive. it’s been a minute, eh? life’s been crazy. it’s been weird. it’s been a mess in all honestly, but we back and we’re gonna give this another crack. randomly came up with this idea at 1am while i was terribly tired but couldn’t sleep so here ya go. not at all proofread or factually checked. it’ll actually be a miracle if it’s coherent at all really anyways, enough of my yapping, much love 🫶.

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please don’t leave me here (i don’t know where my heart is)

awfc x reader

~~~

it happens quickly.

one second you’re focused and running, the roar of the crowd spurring you on, breathing life into you as you sprint across the pitch, your body thrumming with energy as you get to do what you love for a living.

the next, you’re laying on the wet pitch, nearly curled into a ball as pain erupts in your leg.

normally, the feeling of wet mud smearing against your arms and cheek would leave you feeling nothing but disgusted, but in this moment, you feel nothing but the burning ache in ur leg and a similar ache beginning to grow in your heart.

you were pretty sure you knew what just happened, and the thought of it caused your eyes to sting, you now desperately wishing for this to be nothing but a nightmare.

yet, the little voice in the back of your head knew better, and it didn’t fail to remind you so.

~~~

you don’t know how much time has passed since you’d been subbed off and now.

hell, you don’t even really know where you are. all you can make out from your blurry vision is annoying white walls, bright lights, and the lack of grass around you.

it’s what begins your panic- breath starting to pick up as the unfamiliar environment wraps around you, closing in on you, a lack of mobility that you didn’t notice earlier holding you down.

what the fuck was going on?

~~~

you only come to again a few hours later, or that’s what you’re told.

you’re in the arsenal medical room, small knick-knacks in the corner confirming that information as you finally take a proper look around.

you’d woken up to a member of the medical staff watching over you nervously. apparently you’d passed out somewhere between the panic attack you’d had and the administration of the laughing gas they’d used to calm you down.

matthew, your team doc, finally stopped eyeing you like you were about to spontaneously combust, tilting his head and silently weighing his options before murmuring quietly and shaking his head to himself.

all you get told is he’ll be back in a minute, and then suddenly it’s just you and the grandly entertaining four white walls surrounding you.

~~~

you still can’t make out how much time has passed when you hear a stampede of footsteps approaching you. it couldn’t have been more than a few mere minutes, but with how you can still feel a dull ache in your leg, and your hearts breaking and silently begging for you to tell it some good news, all you can do is wait for someone to confirm your suspicions.

it just had to be you didn’t it?

you can feel your eyes start to sting as your thoughts start to race.

after all the precautions you’d taken, after helping teammate after teammate go through this exact situation, of course it had to happen to you.

you wanna laugh at the irony of it all, having witnessed beth, then viv, then leah, laura, and person after fucking person around you go through this exact moment.

and then you go and do the same, contracting it like some godforsaken disease.

you wanna cry. you wanna yell. you desperately want it all to go away like it never happened.

but you can’t. and it’s that realization that finally causes you breath to shake as the first few tears to fall.

~~~

you soon feel your head being cradled and pulled towards someone’s chest. all you can do is turn into it and try to choke down your tears, body silently shaking as your faith in the universe starts breaking.

~~~

you’d apparently cried yourself to sleep in viv’s jersey, poor viv -bless her heart- holding you until you’d passed out, and then keeping your sleeping form company until you woke up nearly half-an-hour later, groggy and feeling like utter shit.

she doesn’t even have to say anything to begin your waterworks again- just a silent nod and sad smile confirming everything you already knew.

the acl crew had a fifth member as of today, and it was no one other than you.

slowly, each of the girls visit you.

some come by silently, giving you a hug and a reassuring pat on the head, as a few stick by.

steph’s one of the first few to enter, bringing a solemn kyra and alessia behind her.

if you weren’t feeling so broken you probably would’ve laughed at just how still kyra was for once in her life.

with hugs from all three and few encouraging words from the tillies’ second in command, you shooed them out, forcing on a fake smile that they all saw through yet chose to ignore.

lotte, foxy, viv, and beth were next, the former two silently patting you on the shoulder, before sharing a few words of support as viv and beth both took post by you protectively.

with a mix of a few other girls, kim and leah were the last to visit, both trying and failing miserably to hide their worried looks.

you were, ultimately, one of the younger ones of the group, only a year older than kyra and yet not a day more mature.

combined with your normally bubbly personality, it hit the team a bit harder to witness your tear stained cheeks and leg wrapped in the brace as you tried to hide the sadness the radiated from you at the moment.

“kimberly, what did i say about you frowning too much? you’re gonna get wrinkles like squidward if you don’t quit it soon.”

~~~

your surgery occurs a few weeks after the initial injury.

leah, viv, and beth end up coming with you for the actual procedure, only leaving after being prompted twice by the nurses.

since the initial tear, you hadn’t spent more that a quarter of an hour by yourself, instead taking up residence and the meadema household.

as much as you appreciated the love being shown, you still felt your heart clenching each and every morning that you’d waken up- the feeling of the brace much heavier than a kilo and only a fraction as heavy as the weight on your chest.

the doting was nice, it was nice being taken care of especially with such an agonizing injury. but it couldn’t compete with the way your crutches taunting you in the morning light. or with you even the simplest of movements you used to be able to do without second thought now felt like everest.

it was in all honestly a challenge you just weren’t prepared for, not that you thought you’d ever have to be.

~~~

the first few weeks after your surgery, you slowly get used to the feeling of not putting weight on your injured leg, as well as the dull aching pain in your heart that seemed to have made itself home in your chest.

most days, you find yourself laying in till late into the night, the darkness providing the perfect atmosphere for your thoughts to spiral deep down, and down, and down into the abyss.

could you have predicted it? should you have said yes when asked if you wanted a substitute at half? what had you done differently those past few days?

you spent hours upon hours racking your head, waking up to breakfast calls with eye bags so dark, it worried your team if you were getting enough sleep.

but you knew you could survive without sleep. what you really needed was answers.

~~~

it’s how you found yourself sprawled across the couch a few days later-watching viv as she cuddled the dogs.

“did you ever wonder what you did wrong?”

the words come out before you can stop them.

viv’s head snaps up at your question, eyes softening in familiarity as the weight of the words sinks in.

“so that’s where you’ve been?”

you tilt your head to the side, silently beckoning her to elaborate.

“you’ve been trapped in your own mind. we couldn’t figure out why, even though we all kept trying.”

the dutch striker doesn’t elaborate, and you find yourself surprised to feel the weight on your chest lessen a bit, a small spark of warmth spreading through you for the briefest of seconds.

the two of you end up talking for hours, beth quietly joining in after a short time- your head starting to finally quieten after nearly months of panic.

~~~

its a week later than you actually find yourself back at the arsenal training ground.

between weeks with a private physiotherapist and a never ending slew of doctors appointments, somehow you’d been approved for a light strength session with a key focus on your healing knee.

there’s a slight smile gracing your face as you follow leah to the weight room, finally free of those godforsaken crutches you’d been relying on.

everyone could immediately tell how relieved you were once you’d finally stopped using them. the clear way your shoulders rested more loosely, more relaxed told them everything the needed to know, and simultaneously causing small smiles on their faces, not that you would know, too busy breathing out an unabashed sigh of relief at a small piece of your freedom finally being returned to you.

so as you follow leah and the s&c coach to the astro turf inside, you feel your heart start to swell ever so slightly at the feel of the (fake) grass under your feet.

it takes everything in you to not let a tear escape as you feel leah’s hand intertwine with yours as the turf crunches underneath your trainers.

that night, the whole team shows up to the meadema household- ‘a small party due for our recovering energizer bunny’ according to leah.

you feel your heart flutter as your teammates surround you in a massive group hug and you find yourself smiling more that night than the past 2 months combined.

~~~

the weeks go by as you progress with your strength training.

it takes countless sessions with the medical team babying you in the weight room, the turf now feeling old and burdensome as you itch for the feeling of real grass and soil underneath your studs.

you’d been outside a few times, don’t get yourself wrong. but nothing compares to the gliding feeling of a proper pitch, with the wind hitting you stark in the face as baby hairs fly which ever way. as the ever so slightly uneven ground pushes back up against the studs adorning the bottom of your boots. as the oh-so familiar thud of the ball hitting your feet echoes in your ears.

your heart was getting real sick of the turf and you just had a feeling it was going to let you know soon enough.

~~~

it’s the next day that you felt a little niggle in your bad knee.

you’d waken up with a dull ache- so slight that you would’ve missed it had you not gotten used to being hyper vigilant about your legs.

you feel the slight weight on your chest return and you can’t help but just turn onto your side and tuck yourself into your sheets again.

so much progress had been made until now. you couldn’t bear the thought of it all being washed away.

~~~

its a few hours later than beth comes in your room.

at first, she tries a loud call to wake you up. once she realizes that’s not working though, is when you can feel her emotions shift- the bubbly personality of hers shrinking itself down as you can feel sympathy envelope the room.

you don’t have to say anything to her- somehow beth just knows.

you feel her sink into the mattress beside you, carefully pulling you into her arms, your body shaking ever so silently as you feel a weight so foreign yet so familiar come to rest on your chest yet again.

~~~

the niggle, it turns out, was you agitating your stupid knee again.

sometime between the last training session and that night, you’d put too much reassurance in your body, because of course, how dare you trust your body to heal like normal.

though, to be fair, normal didn’t seem to be quite as the word suggests.

either way though, the dull ache persisted well over a week, sidelining you yet again as the medical team wanted to wait an extra week to make sure it wasn’t anything serious.

it’s how you find yourself nearly two weeks later, curled up beside alessia and kyra in the living room, la la land playing on the tv as you desperately wished for your mind to stop wandering to every negative possibility, and instead focus on how just heartbreaking the story of mia and sebastian is- a love that was meant to be, yet ill-fated.

it would be a shame to have a love of that sort.

~~~

your return to s&c this time is accompanied by a wave of nerves, more so than the team’s ever seen in you- normally cool, calm, and collected.

it’s in the way you silently plead for viv to stay the whole time.

how you don’t dare complete an extra rep, taking each set slow until it is down.

how you focus on your knee more than anything else in the room, hyper attentive to the way it feels through each exercise, doing your best to ensure you weren’t pushing it to hard.

oh the joys of being unable to trust your body.

~~~

it’s a slow process, with a lot (and really, a lot) of tears, of being on the brink of giving up, of nights spent on the couch with viv, and beth, and leah, and lia, and alessia, and really whoever was there to listen as you mindlessly rambled on about how your knee was failing.

it was countless nights of many of them surrounding you one by one, fighting the voices in your head when you were too tired to do so, holding you close when you struggled to fall asleep, reminding you that you were better, simply put, better than the voices that convinced you otherwise, pushing you to be your best, to do your best, because they weren’t here to let you fail now.

it was a slow process, but it lead to here.

you should be happy, be feeling light, but the nervous thrumming in your chest is louder than ever today.

you’re finally cleared to run on the anti gravity treadmill, and you’re pretty sure you haven’t heard your heart pound this loud since you’d actually done your stupid acl.

it isn’t long before you’re ushered onto the machine, viv’s quiet “c’mon liefde” spurring you on as you hear beth, leah, and steph yell words of encouragement your way.

and soon enough, your finally jogging.

nearly 7+ months and your finally jogging for the first time.

you’re pretty sure you feel a tear slip down your face as you finish the two minutes run.

and for the first time since seven months ago, your chest feels incredibly light, even if it’s for a few passing moments, pride swelling in your heart as you’re sucked into a group hug immediately upon stepping off the machine.

~~~

there’s the saying about needing to see the darkness to appreciate the light, and you’d be lying if you said you never found it cheesy.

but now?

now? standing back on the sideline at the emirates, you kind of get what it means. you kind of get the way the universe reminding you of the love you had for not only the sport but for the people you overlooked. there was something tender about the way you had all your teammates applauding you the second the fourth official signalled the change. the way the emirates roared in applause, in joy, in respect, and in love.

it’s a little over nine months of blood, sweat, and more tears than an olympic pool, but you can finally feel the rare london sun shining on you, and the freshly cut blades of grass under your studs, and all you really know is it doesn’t get much better than this.

life really doesn’t get much better than this.

#arsenal wfc #arsenal wfc x reader #awfc x reader #leah williamson #vivianne miedema #beth mead #acl talks #not much going on just a small tale of life #i forgot how i tag shit so this will have to do i guess #im 98.5% sure this sucks but oh well #i shall be back much sooner-i'm aiming for under 48 hours this time lol

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