Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

i lied when i said i never made it off the field. or — maybe not lied, exactly. more like... fudged the truth.

i didn’t die instantly, like i told everyone.
like i said so much that i even half convinced myself.

i didn’t feel anything, yeah — that part was true. but i knew what was happening. i could still feel the glugging of fluid in my ears and the announcer's voice echoing, garbled like it was underwater and the boys from my team — and the other team — dropping down onto one knee around me after i fell.

i can still hear it sometimes. the crack. that disgusting, reverberating crack through my neck. it plays again whenever it’s too quiet. and i maybe wasn’t able to feel anything below that, but by god i could feel that crack. i remember the hit. i remember the pop. this awful, sharp snap — and then nothing.  i still shudder if anybody touches me there.

i remember the smell of the dirt. the turf burned against my face. the friday night lights still pulsing overhead, swimming around me and beaming down like heaven’s golden gates opening for me. fluttering and lapsing and swirling, voices and screams and sirens.

i knew the sirens were for me.

i knew i couldn’t move.

i knew i couldn’t breathe.

i couldn’t feel anything except the grass against my jaw.

i remember the medics yelling “spinal cord injury!”

i remember the brace. the backboard.

the cold plastic pressed against my skin.

the sirens screaming.

and my mom.

god, i remember my mom, running down to the field from the bleachers, not a single tear in her eye. i don’t think she was a monster… i don't think she is a monster. i think she was in shock. it’s her first time living. but it was mine, too.

she told them to stop. right there. on the field.

while the emts were trying to stabilize me, she told them not to bother. while they were asking me to blink once for yes and twice for no if i could feel whatever they were touching me with, while they were holding my head in place and trying to shuffle me over onto some sort of board and strap me on. 

she told them to stop trying.

that it wasn’t worth it. that i wasn’t worth it.

that she wouldn’t take care of me. that i would be alive but not really living. 

she said she had seen it before and i could hear the choke in her voice, now. 

i wonder what life could have been like if she had let them continue. if she had stayed silent in the fall and the wake. i wonder if she would have caressed my face and talked to me even if i couldn’t talk back. 

i remember the ambulance lights painting the school walls red.

i remember my mother’s voice outside the door.

"don’t resuscitate if he won’t walk again."
"he wouldn’t want that life, and i won’t be the one to carry it.”

she didn’t know anything. because i would’ve survived.

i would’ve been eighteen and paralyzed from the neck down. the star quarterback in a hospital bed, unable to scratch his own nose or breathe right without help. the ada wouldn’t be passed until 1990.

i think my teammates would’ve visited once, awkward and over-perfumed, and never come back. coach would’ve sent a card signed with a sharpie.

it wouldn’t have been the life i, or my parents, dreamed of; but it would have still been one. it still would've been better than nothing. still full of pain, yes, but still the sunlight on my face. still the beckoning golden gates. still breathing air, even if it was through a ventilator. still the bristle of the trees outside my window. still cassette tapes and people seeing me at the class reunion. still class of ‘84. 

but that life didn’t happen. i died on the field instead.

and some nights, i wonder if that made it easier for everyone else. not for me, though. for the people who didn’t want to see me broken. for the people who couldn’t bear to watch.

they got to bury a golden boy, not care for a wounded one. i died innocent and golden and beautiful in the eyes of those who knew me.

but i didn’t die because of the hit.

i died because she gave up.

Chapter Text

the dirt of the field sunk beneath the heels of wally clark’s nike high tops. he stood in the end zone and held himself like somebody trying to remember what it felt like— the rush, the burning in his lungs, and he hated the people and didn’t care for the game but he loved the wind in his hair and the thrill of a win and going as fast as his cleats and scrunched up socks could take him— and he would’ve used that hunger within him to take him further than this place, to get the hell out of here. if he had ever gotten the chance. 

he didn’t make it that far, evidently. 

the field was empty. the kind of empty that echoed. 

no fans, no lights, no band. just the fog and the sun peeking through; the broad daylight and the chill in his bones that weren’t really bones. just a boy who really isn’t a boy anymore and hasn’t been for 40 years staring down at the turf like it will open up and swallow him whole.

the mascot has been updated and the name has been changed to his, but the stadium is still the stadium that he died in. the dirt is the same and the sky is the same and you can change the bricks and you can change the bleachers but nothing about what happened in september 1983 can be erased, even if it is erased from the memory of time, even if there’s a plaque behind the bleachers with his picture and even if the picture is fading. 

wally often muses on the color of the sky when he died— the stars within it, what constellations could he see, with the light pollution? the flickering stadium lights and the buzzing moths flooding his vision because the lights blurred like fireworks, even when he drove at night. something called astigmatism. but he didn’t wear his glasses because he wasn’t a nerd and he secretly always liked it, the lights, he means. it left him dazed like a dream and sent him to sleep. the kind of death that you see in a movie—the beauty of a tragedy. the perfect backdrop to a not so perfect senior homecoming—he died looking at the sky and there were twice as many stars as usual like that dumb two headed calf, even if they were flickering out. 

the sky now was always overcast, always still. time had stopped for him but time hadn’t stopped around him. it just went by quicker.

he stood for a while, heels aching, tense in his neck like it always was when he came here. but he still always came here. he never really had a choice, did he? haunted by the expectations, by the desire and ideals forced down his throat. he never spit it back up. he digested it. 

everyday he thinks that it’s going to be different. that the field will feel less sacred. less like a funeral. less like his. 

that’s when he heard the footsteps. he didn’t turn, and he didn’t have to, because it was almost certainly a blonde in a red flannel, probably cocking her eyebrow. 

maddie walked across the field slowly, carefully, like approaching something wild. or wounded. when she reached him, she didn’t speak. just stood beside him, close enough to feel the edge of his silence.

he finally said, “i always think this place will feel different.”

maddie looked down at the turf, then back at him.

“i figured you’d either never come back here, or never leave.”

wally laughed, but there was no humor in it. “yeah. that sounds about right.”

the football field hadn’t changed. not in this afterlife, anyway.

the lines were still painted in white that never faded. the goalposts still stood stiff and golden like a holy grail. the air hung with a kind of stillness that belonged to memories, not weather. 

“… i thought i might find you here,” maddie said, soft.

wally didn’t turn around. “you’re getting good at that.”

she stepped onto the turf beside him. “you okay?”

“no.”

the honesty surprised them both.

she waited. she never rushed him.

wally let out a long breath and finally glanced over. “this is where i died.”

“i know.”

“no, i mean—right here.” he tapped the turf with his foot. “i always said i never made it off the field, that i died instantly. but i lied. i did. i remember them flipping me over, putting a collar on me, strapping me down. i remember the sigh of the emt’s when they saw my neck. i remember… i remember her.”

maddie didn’t have to ask who.

"i heard them shouting 'spinal cord protocol.' heard the ambulance. and the people shuffling out of the bleachers, being guided out because they knew it was bad and knew they shouldn’t watch. and her voice. my moms voice—" he squeezed his eyes shut, trembling. maddie took a slow step closer.

"you don't have to repeat it," she said gently.

"i need to," wally whispered. "i need someone else to hear it." he took a shuddering breath.

"she told them….. she told them to stop trying. that it wasn't worth it. that i wasn't worth it." silence. wind curled around them, carrying the echoes of lost cheers.

her heart sank, but she didn’t interrupt. she needed to hear it, even if it hurt.

“i was so sure i was gonna die on that field,” he continued, his voice flat, void of all the bravado he usually used to cover his emotions. “but they almost got me out of there. they put me on a stretcher and they checked me over like i was some kind of broken thing. i couldn’t talk so they were asking me to answer yes or no questions. asking me if i could feel whatever they were tapping me with and i kept blinking no, no, no. and the looks on their faces. they knew and i knew and my mom knew, too.” his voice cracked on that last word.

"i didn't die because of the hit, maddie" he said bitterly. "i died because she gave up."

maddie, eyes wet, crossed the distance between them and pulled him into a hug. careful - always careful - of his neck, of his pride, of everything breakable inside him. 

"you were never not worth it," she whispered, "never." 

wally clung to her like a drowning man, the ghost of his helmet at his feet, forgotten. the field wasn't a shrine. it wasn't sacred. it was just a place. a place where a boy tried his best, and a family failed him.

he looked at her, and it shattered her, because his face wasn’t angry. not like it should’ve been, not like hers would’ve been. it was just empty.

“i think i would’ve rather lived,” he said. “even if it meant never walking again. at least i could’ve learned to live that way. at least i could’ve had the chance.”

“you didn’t get to choose,” maddie said quietly.

“i should have,” he said. “they took it from me. she did.”

maddie looked at him, really looked at him — the boy behind the letterman jacket. the showman, the flirt, the guy who’d died doing something stupid and brave and golden. but there was more now. softer edges. a quiet pain he didn’t always speak aloud.

silence settled over them. the kind of silence that knew grief and knew how to hold it.