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The day before the first game, Ronnie comes around for Pro Evo.
"If we get into the final..."
Ronnie had started shaking his head as soon as he saw the look in his eyes. "Leo, no - "
" - if we get into the final, if we win it, will you stay?"
"I can't promise you that."
"Why not?"
Ronnie sighs. "You know. I can't do this any more."
He had never heard Ronnie sigh before last year.
If you can't do it any more, what am I supposed to do?
Some part of him feels it like a personal betrayal. Ronnie would always be here, a shining example of what's possible in this game, waiting up ahead for him to catch up.
Or at least that was the promise he saw when Ronnie came up to him four years ago and said hello, when he moved Leo's stuff to make him sit with the rest of the regulars as soon as he came into the first team - when he passed to Leo for his first league goal.
He knows he's catching up now, can almost see that number 10 jersey in the distance in his dreams, but he never expected it to change colours.
* * *
Before the game, he catches Bojan sneaking into the tunnel.
"It sounds amazing out there," Bojan says, breathlessly excited and flushing a little with embarrassment at being caught.
Leo recognises the uncertainty shading Bojan's features, even if it's a feeling he's mostly shed in the last few years.
(He rarely thinks of himself as young any more.)
"It does. You'll be fine," he says, smiling. "You know, I sneaked out to look at the crowd before my first Clasico."
Only then it was the baying of the Bernabeu outside, and he was preparing to start his first big game. He's been in many big games since then, but the sight of the Camp Nou - his home - filled to capacity, the giant mosaic, 90000 voices singing as one - and later, filling the stadium with the sound of his name -
- the day he stops feeling something tremendous and wonderful at the whole thing, he might as well retire.
* * *
When he checks his phone one last time before kick-off, there are 3 messages from Cesc.
Beat those bastards for me.
- and -
See if you can nutmeg Ronaldo a few times. Come on, it'd be hilarious.
He can't help but laugh at that one. And the last -
Tell the rest of the guys good luck from me.
* * *
Leo passes Gerard in the tunnel. It's still strange to see him in Manchester United's colours, all the more so inside this stadium, where they used to watch games together.
On impulse, he stops to give Gerard a hug.
"You should be starting. I'm sorry."
When he pulls back, Gerard is smiling. He looks at home in the red jersey.
"It's okay. I'll be fine."
* * *
(Mr Rijkaard is wrong about one thing: he's very, very aware of what happens to his body. It didn't always use to be this way, before the injuries came, one after another.
He can feel everything that's not quite right. He used to be faster, stronger. He used to run more.
Stupid injuries. Stupid sickness.
Dammit.
Leo has never been afraid of anything on the pitch, but a part of him is increasingly terrified that his body isn't going to hold up for much longer.)
* * *
After the game, Leo sits in a corner of the dressing room, frowning to himself.
The other guys learnt a long time ago not to leave him alone when he was like this.
Still, there's something cautious in Xavi's body language as he sits down beside him.
"Leo? Are you okay? How's the leg?"
"I'm alright."
Xavi exhales in relief. "What's with the frown, then?"
"We should have won. I didn't…If I was fully fit..." he mumbles down at his boots.
"You did all you could. Everybody knows that."
"That doesn't matter if we lose in the end. No one remembers how we played then." His voice is clear this time.
Xavi shakes his head in affectionate exasperation. "No one wins all the time, Leo."
"But we have to keep trying. You told me that."
Almost reluctantly, Xavi smiles. "When was this?"
"My second year at La Masia. You were giving a talk about what it's like in the first team."
"Ah, yes, Cesc pestered me with questions the whole time. I don't remember you being there too."
This time, he mumbles so much that Xavi leans closer to hear the words.
"…I was hiding in the back row."
"When you wear this shirt, you inherit a duty to go out there, play in our style, and try to win, no matter who or where you're playing."
* * *
On the bus to Old Trafford, Leo takes Ronnie's usual spot. Deco only raises an eyebrow at him before wordlessly sliding into the seat beside him.
It's unusually quiet. Leo tries to think back to the last time he had travelled somewhere for a game with Deco and finds that he can't remember. Still, habit is a useful thing, and they slump against each other comfortably as if they haven't both been out injured for what feels like most of the season.
Eventually, Leo blurts out what he's been dying to ask.
"...have you...spoken to Ronnie lately?"
Deco says nothing, and Leo shifts uncomfortably until he gathers up the courage to glance back at the other man and realizes that he's fallen asleep.
Leo snorts. He thinks of shaking Deco awake, but one look at the black circles around his eyes makes him change his mind.
It's not - he's not -
He would say something, but Deco always gives his all on the pitch, and Leo has to believe that he knows how to separate life on and off the pitch.
* * *
(A couple of times, he tagged along with Ronnie and Deco when they went to clubs. It wasn't his thing, the drinking and the women. He'd always end up sitting in a little corner with Pablo, making formation diagrams with shot glasses as they talked about River Plate's new signings -
" - I thought D'Alessandro would go back."
"Nah, Pablito told me there would be problems."
- and how worried Leo was about Kun's dating habits -
" - he goes out too much. If Diego found out…")
* * *
Leo still can't look at photos of the winning team two years ago without feeling a twinge of regret and something that's probably bitterness, even as it makes him smile.
But as the final whistle blows, he knows with sudden and vicious clarity that he would have taken a yellow card and missed this one too, if it would have made a difference.
* * *
Mr Rijkaard hugs him as he walks off, the sounds of Old Trafford's elation all around him, each step slow and heavy as if his boots were filled with lead. He's tempted to stay like this, with his face buried in Mr Rijkaard's coat and just hide from the world for a bit.
But there had been a horribly resigned look in Mr Rijkaard's eyes. A part of him wants to ignore it, like a child finding out that their parents have moments of weakness for the first time.
He can't be a child any more, though, can he?
"Leo?"
He looks up, shakes his head and speaks, quiet and clear. "I'm sorry. Thank you."
* * *
(Losing is a difficult thing to get used to.
Back in that youth team with Cesc and Gerard, they won everything there was to win. When he started training with the first team, they were already flying, as if by magic, almost everything going right.
He can still count the number of times he's lost with the first team on the fingers of two hands. That probably makes him amazingly lucky. Doesn't make it hurt less.
That's the thing about football, though. He remembers crying in front of the TV when the national team went out in 2002, the whole country almost crazed with mourning the morning after. But he also remembers being given the best send-off two years ago in the Monumental, with the albiceleste ticker tape raining down on the pitch and the sheer enormous belief contained in the roar of the crowd. As if the memory of their grief four years ago had been erased by hope.
Standing on that pitch back then, he began to understand.)
* * *
It's deathly silent on the plane back, so much so that he's beginning to fidget until Andres puts down his book, glancing at him in concern.
"Hey. You okay?"
He pauses to consider for a moment before answering. "I think so, yeah. I will be."
That earns him a longer look and a shake of the head. "No one expects you to do this by yourself. You know that, right?"
Leo has to smile at that, coming from Andres, who never loses his composure in public; never complains when things go wrong; who runs his heart out every game. Whenever Leo looks at him, he can almost see the senyera wrapped around his arm. When Carles' voice finally gives out after all these years of shouting in the desert, he's got a brilliant deputy waiting in the wings.
"Same to you."
"Next season. Things will be different."
Even if they aren't, though, even if things get really bad, as they had been when Leo first joined years ago, even if other players come and go, some things - some people - don't change. He's seen it before, in Xavi's smile, in the lines around Carles' eyes.
Leo just never thought he would be tested in the same way so soon.
A hand lands on his shoulder, making him jump. Across the aisle, Carles grins.
"We keep trying."
Fin (faith is infinite)