Chapter Text
Fifteen seconds on the shot clock.
Fifteen…
Fifteen…
But Caitlin can’t make herself move.
She tries to blink through it. Tries make sense of the way her vision pulses and blurs on the edges in a kaleidoscopic world. Tries to focus on the feel of leather basketball as it pads rhythmically against her hand. Tries to concentrate on anything except the ringing in her ears because she’d only barely brought it past halfcourt.
Tries because there’s only fifteen seconds left on the shot clock.
Fifteen seconds…
It should be easy. Simple.
Dijonai has been face guarding her all game, but with her so close and Lyss and McGowan down in the post, the uneven spacing gives her the advantage. She just needs to push off to create space for a three or shift her legs to blow by for a hand-off pass to Kelsey or AB —but she can’t.
She’s frozen, turned to ice, turned to stone. Fingers and face numb. Palming a ball she can barely barely feel when it comes up from the court once again.
Fifteen seconds on the shot clock.
Fifteen seconds and maybe cold isn’t the word for it, maybe it’s clammy, or hot, or just teetering between two extremes because she’s sweating and shivering in her jersey, and her undershirt is warm and sticky against her back.
Too tight, too heavy, too constricting.
Fifteen seconds and her heart is pounding, hard enough to hurt, and her lungs refuse to let her take a proper breath, and her head is… is fuzzy, a slush of white noise and static.
It’s too many things. Too many inputs.
She can’t think. Can’t focus. Can’t breathe.
C’mon… C’mon…
Fifteen…
Where was… where was Dijonai?
The arena tilts and shifts and warps into thousands of colors when she tries to look down the court.
Tries to find Kelsey and Sophie on the wing.
Aliyah in the post.
But College Park is still fucking spinning, a swarm of slushed jerseys and blinding lights, and no one’s where they’re supposed to be.
Fifteen seconds…
They’re going to get a shot clock violation.
She’s going to make them get a shot clock violation.
No one’s where…
No one’s where they’re supposed ta…
Caitlin’s mind skitters-skips-blinks-
Focus .
She tastes ash on her tongue.
Focus.
Like nails trying to swallow.
Focus .
The court general. The maestro. Nails at the line.
She needs to focus. She needs to try.
The air sits on her shoulders all heavy and thick and sluggish and drawn out as she struggles to find her teammates, but it’s all shapeless objects and out of synch sounds and that static is flooding flooding flooding and she’s trying, she’s trying and she can’t.
Can’t think. Can’t focus. Can’t breathe.
Focus. Focus.
Fifteen… Fifteen…
She’s going to have to bring the ball up herself.
Fifteen… Fifteen…
Caitlin stares for a moment, and then another. And another.
Fights the wave of nausea that threatens to overcome her.
Fights the fog. The heaviness. The cicadas buzzing in her ears.
Tries to find the basket. Tries to make the polyester net sharpen and crisp around the edges. Tries and can’t.
Waits for Dijonai’s hand that never comes.
And she knows she has to move.
She knows. She can’t. But she has to.
Because no one’s- no one’s where they’re supposed to be-
She has to go, even though she’s made of stone.
The ball comes up again. Feels like lead.
Move. Movemovemove-
Caitlin lurches forward.
Shoes flat to the court, knees up- pace pusher, pushing pace- her heart still pound, pound, pounding. It’s all too fast in her head. She wants to run from it, run towards it, find the basket, but somehow her body can’t catch up.
It’s wading through water, through mud, through molasses.
It’s up to her knees, her waist, her chest, her neck, bitterly cold and seeping down into bone.
She gets one step. Two steps. Four. Off the wing.
No one’s guarding her. No one’s-
Her legs falter, and her right foot slips on something, catches on the back of her heel, and her balance veers sharply off axis.
Caitlin throws out an arm to stabilize herself, palm flat against air and it pushes right through, but she doesn’t feel the fall or even the sting in her palms really as she scrambles to keep the ball.
Keep the dribble.
Keep it.
Kept it.
A bowling ball in her hand, comes up slick, but it’s hers.
She fumbles for a breath that gives her nothing, the air coming in all off-rhythm through her nose.
Focus. Focus. Focus.
Fifteen seconds…
Fifteen seconds on the clock.
Find the basket.
Get up. Get up. Get up.
She scrambles up.
Heavy. Underwater.
Like she’s been dunked in water.
Like someone threw Campbells against her shirt.
Stumbles again.
Keep the dribble. Keep the dribble.
She bends over like Coach Steph taught her.
Protects the ball from Dijonai who isn’t even here.
Keeps the dribble.
Calls for a screen, but her teeth are chattering, and the tone doesn't sound right. Her words don't sound right. Muted against the background of white static roaring in her ears.
No one’s listening anyway.
Eyes forward.
On the basket. The basket. The basket-
Doesn’t even make it two steps this time before she’s slipping. Falling.
Her limbs are an uncoordinated mess and she moves her hand just a little bit too slowly to break it and her head jolts when it cracks against the court that isn’t green and yellow any more.
It’s blue and red.
It’s black and yellow.
It’s maroon and white.
It’s all disjointed.
Spinning and spinning and spinning.
Bile floods the back of Caitlin’s throat, nausea cresting to new heights as she struggles to think to shake to feel past the colors swarming around her like hornets as the void splintered, between reality and something else, something dizzying as she scrapes to find purchase beneath her palm and tries get moving because- because fifteen seconds on the shot clock.
The static grows louder. Cranking, cranking cranking.
Get up. Get up.
Get fucking up.
She blinks hard and grinds her teeth and can taste it on her skin, metallic neon copper and salty grey.
And it takes all her strength to stand again.
Takes every bit of her soul to not lose the dribble with it.
Fifteen seconds.
The court is green and yellow again.
Fifteen seconds.
There are shadows moving closer at the edges of her darkening vision.
Dijonai.
She’s going to try to steal the ball.
Or foul her.
Stop the clock.
Move move move…
Outpace the defender. Out pace-
She gets two steps more.
Slips.
Crashes to her knees.
Warmth splashes against her skin as she sways back and forth struggling to remain upright.
Fuck.
Fuck!
Why can’t she-
Why can’t-
She feels a fresh wetness on her cheeks. More than salt, more than sweat, she doesn’t even know why she’s crying. She feels like she should start screaming or shouting any second now.
She’s going to make them get a shot clock violation.
She’s going to throw the game-
Get up. Get up. Get up!
Caitlin’s breath kept backing up into her lungs, strangling her. It’s like fighting with a wall, the lack of oxygen is a drum-beat pain at the crown of her head, and she doesn’t understand the unsettling absence of her strength, the queasy loss of time, the darkening of her blurring vision.
She's just…
She's just…
She’s just drowning in the silence and it fills up her ears and lungs like water.
She needs to get to the basket so she can call a time-out.
Go to the bench.
Reset.
But first she needs to get up.
A ghost of a hand grabs at her shoulder.
It should be a reach-in foul.
Find the basket. Find the basket.
No whistle.
Get up. Get up.
Fifteen seconds.
Caitlin’s low center of gravity teeters, yanks her away from the hand and her legs burn and scream and her chest heaves as she forces herself back to her feet, forces herself- picks up her dribble- and that should be a foul too.
No whistle.
Fifteen seconds. Fifteen seconds.
The stars in her vision are becoming too much and she doesn’t know how much longer she could fight it this time, her head feels too light.
She’s-
There’s no way she’s gonna stay on her feet.
No way.
None.
One step-
She tries-
Straight into Bueckers.
Paige is in front of her, hands searing hot, clamped tight on either side of her shoulder. Firm. Unwavering. Her mouth is moving, but Caitlin can’t hear her, can’t focus well enough to try and figure it out, her brain full of fog.
But it doesn't matte because nothing matters but the shot clock.
Fifteen seconds.
Paige is bending low, trying to meet Caitlin at her level when the brunette won’t meet her own, but all Caitlin can think is why is she stopping her.
They don’t have-
They don’t have time for this-
They don’t have time for this and no one is calling the foul-
Fifteen seconds. Fifteen seconds.
Her vision skitters skips jumps as she fights down the panic, fights back the pounding pressure rapidly building behind her, and Paige is in her UConn jersey now.
Still no whistle. Still no foul.
Caitlin tries to shake her. Can’t.
Tries to push off. Can’t.
She wants to rip it all off now, throw it away, but she doesn’t know how to make her hands move. They won’t obey her. She can’t move her own body. She can’t feel it. It’s all muscle memory at this point. A spectator in her own body. A prisoner.
She rakes in a stuttered uneven breath, tastes iron in her mouth as the phantom tightening of her chest unravels thoughts that go unfinished, slipping away from her like spidery threads that she can’t quite grasp.
The static, a background murmuring, words fading in and out.
Tries to push off one more time-
“Caitlin! Caitlin! Cait! Stop! STOP!”
There were too many lights, white flashes and soupy colors. Too many. Too much too much input and she barely recognizes Paige’s voice as it pierces the fog all rough, hoarse, and concerned.
Caitlin shudders. Stares at the Huskies logo blankly, hearing the words, but in no way sure how to make them mean something.
Stop?
Stop?
How could she stop? There’s only fifteen seconds on the shot clock.
She was going to- her vision skips skitters jumps again- Paige’s back in the Wings Jersey now- she was going to throw the game if she stops.
“Fifteen seconds.”
Caitlin tries to say, tries to get her lips to move, her tongue to work.
She’s more than picked up her dribble now.
Hasn’t put the ball down on the court in ages.
And somehow they still haven’t called it.
“Fifteen seconds. F-fifteen segunds.”
She slurs over air, chest heaving with the effort to drag it in.
Paige doesn’t hear her.
Muscle memory tries to push her forward.
Paige won’t let her.
She leans down again, face crystalizing into the only thing real in Caitlin’s kaleidoscope vision. Piercing blue eyes wide and worried. Panicked. Begging.
Her mouth is moving again but Caitlin can’t decipher the rest and there’s someone else now too, another shadow swimming in the periphery of her vision, murmuring low and quick and she needs to focus- focusfocusfocus.
Fifteen…
“F-fifteen seconds.”
She mumbles and tries... tries to tell her…
Fifteen seconds.
She’s shaking from the cold, feverish from the heat, and the world is tilting and spinning and twirling and she’s leaning into Paige really, more than fighting her, but still there’s this voice in her head screaming that she has to get the ball to the basket.
Fifteen seconds.
Someone, some ones, keep shouting her name, shaking her shoulder.
Someone else tries to take the ball from her grasp.
Caitlin grips onto it so tightly her knuckles ache.
Fifteen seconds.
“-need help-”
“Caitlin!”
“-over there-”
“Look at me! Focus on me!”
Someone is saying, some ones are saying but Caitlin can’t focus. She can’t decipher the rest, the ringing in her ears waxes and wanes with the fog, limbs growing heavy as she tries to breathe breathe breathe.
Fifteen fifteen fifteen
Darkness encroaches further in the conquest of her vision, intermingling with salt. There’s no oxygen to breathe because all the air is drained out until she’s left in a vacuum and she feels the control slipping away so fast she doesn’t know what to do.
Fifteen seconds.
“Look at me!”
Focusfocusfocus…
Listen…
She makes herself listen, claws for something safe, for something familiar, something that’s different from the whirlpool of darkness she’s being dragged into.
“There you go. There you go.”
It’s Paige again, her soothing words rising above the static, yet a million miles away.
“Y-you’re hurt. You’re hurt, Cait. We’re gonna get you some help, but you have to calm down.”
Hurt.
Hurt?
She’s not…
She isn’t…
Caitlin doesn’t understand, at first, what Paige means. She’s tired.
Tired.
And she can rest after she gets to the basket.
She can rest after she scores. After the shot clock runs out. After fifteen. After fifteen…
She isn’t… isn’t hurt.
Focus… Focusfocusfocus.
She gasps in another wet breath. Another fleeting struggle.
Focus…
Until finally, she feels it – the slow, creeping sensation of burn, the warmth across her abdomen, the heaviness in her head, the taste of iron in her mouth, and how it drips down her chin, warm like coffee.
Hurt.
Caitlin blinks woozily.
Recognizes speckled red flicked across the embroidered five of Paige’s Dallas White jersey.
Blood. There’s blood. There’s blood.
But Paige said she’d been the one that was...
Caitlin’s eye’s flit down- oh.
Her hands are red. Under her fingertips. On the game basketball.
Caitlin stares at her fingers, willing them to move. They don’t.
She can see them, those pieces of herself, white-knuckled, shaking stained dark-
Blood?
She…
S-she…
Fifteen…
There is a hitch in her chest and she has to cough, that iron taste filling her mouth again.
Paige is still speaking. Caitlin isn’t listening.
That feeling is building in her again, of urgency and alarm.
Fifteen seconds on the shot clock, but… this is… this her blood isn’t it?
She blinks and tries to focus on her hands again.
Blinks but the pain is wholly developed now and it pulls her attention and she only sees more red.
Her jersey is saturated.
Red seeps into her shorts and smears against her skin and rolls in small rivulets down her legs and absorbs into the cotton of her socks.
Fifteen fifteen fifteen fifteen
Nowhere else to go, but out.
The fog lifts like a curtain being yanked back and an ocean of noise comes crashing back in and— and it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts.
The ringing in her ears isn’t static. It’s screams. People are screaming.
People are shouting in fear, in anger, demands, barking commands.
There are heavy footsteps running in every which direction.
A disembodied voice overhead instructing people to be calm.
Paige is still talking. Then Aliyah’s there, next to her, saying something too.
Sirens alarms and noise. More noise. More screams but not her own.
Other people as she tries to curl up, tries to breathe, tries to cradle the ball in her arms and beg for it to go away.
Too much too much too much
And it hurts. It hurts. It hurts.
Another pulse sends more crimson spilling into her jersey, down her legs.
Ithurtsithurtsithurts-
Holy fuck, her body hurts. Her legs are weak, the initial shock of her body trying so hard to keep her afloat is rapidly filtering away, the shots of adrenaline after adrenaline doing little now to soothe the pain pressing down on her chest.
Doing little now to soothe the cold.
The only thing warm now is outside of her.
The only air coming up fights though the pressure of a straw.
She’s trying to breathe through water, trying to stand with what reserves remain of her strength and she’s starting to realise-
This… this is a lot of blood.
Caitlin’s eyes flick up, meet Paige’s face, and it must show on her face- the fear- the pain, because someone’s hand is on her forehead sweeping away the hair that she knows must be wet and cowlicked against her skin.
“It’s okay, just focus on me,” Paige says again. “You’re doing good. You’re okay. You're going to be fine. Everything's going to be fine.”
But Paige’s voice is wavering like she isn’t really sure.
Paige’s voice is wavering like she’s scared too.
And Caitlin doesn’t… doesn’t want to be the reason she sounds like that.
She struggles to hold Paige’s gaze, struggles to swallow down a shaky, wet inhale, tries to force herself to speak- to apologize- but it hurts. It hurts. It hurts.
The invisible band around her chest wrenches tighter and seconds feel like minutes, and minutes are reduced to seconds and Caitlin’s legs buckle.
She collapses sideways into Aliyah and AB has to twist to catch her, a too warm hand coming up to cup her head against the crook of her neck, another coming around to brace her back like she’s scared she’s going to break her.
“-in shock.”
“-some towels-”
“-need to get her out of here.”
Fifteen seconds…
There’s more hands. More voices. More shadowy, shapeless objects.
Someone is screaming for medical. Lexie. Maybe Sophie.
Each breath is a struggle, each beat of her heart a senseless attempt to get blood going to where it’s not and her center of gravity is being moved somewhere lower as the pressure against her limbs increases tenfold.
Moved down lower until she’s sitting, a sprawl of bloody limbs, back pressed up resolutely against Aliyah’s chest as she tries and fails to breathe.
“Clear a hole! Clear a hole! Clear-”
New hands are on her skin. More hands. More hands. The hands are fast, strong, unfamiliar. They’re everywhere. On her shoulders, along her hairline, trying for the ball again and her lungs expand but won’t and they spasm and the agony is electric and unrelenting as she tries to swat, tries to tell them to stop. Tries anyway because someone’s reaching out to stop her, pressing the edges of an oxygen mask against her jaw instead and she can’t get the words out
Fifteen Fifteen Fifteen Fifte-
There’s cold metal snipping away and something warm palms up her sides and the palpation flares up strong and sharp in her abdomen, pain shooting bright and all-encompassing and then she can’t see anything, feel anything, focus on anything but the copper bloom in her mouth.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no—
Caitlin screams.
She doesn’t know what she’s saying, can’t process words in the proper moment, as she’s desperately now trying to break free and get away from more hands, more bandages, more pressure, get them away from the ball as blood continues to trickle warm and slick down.
“-listen to me, listen to me, stop fighting us, I know it’s hard. Jesus Christ, get the -”
She fights and fights and fights, but the pressure keeps coming.
“Don’t let her go AB-”
She fights and fights and fights, but the strength isn’t there.
“- can’t do anything without moving the ball-”
The noises of protest come out as whimpers now, bubbling out thickly past blood that falls more freely, sticky and warm against her skin.
More nameless faces try to do nameless things and the voices continue to drift further and further, washed with the tide, slipping away too quickly for her to grasp as they overlap and mush into one another like sea foam until she doesn't recognize them at all, replaced again with that mind numbing whirring static.
And she wants it to stop. She wants it too.
This doesn’t feel right. This doesn't feel right at all.
Fifteen fifteen fifteen fifteen fifteen-
“Kid… Kid… CC! Breathe for me, kid. Breathe.”
Loud. Close.
Kelsey. It sounds like Kelsey. Impossibly steady. Impossibly calm.
Caitlin pulls her eyes open like anchors from the sea, unsure of when she closed them and is rewarded by a hacking cough that coats her mouth with iron and it is Kelsey.
Three Kelseys.
One Kelsey. . . three Kelseys. . . one Kelsey, then three Kelseys, until they finally blurred back into one.
Kelsey Mitchell whose trembling fingers are slicked through crimson to firmly hook under her chin, whose other hand is on the game ball in front of her.
And Caitlin’s trying, she’s trying to breathe, trying to listen, but there’s fifteen… fifteen seconds left and she tries to tell her that that there’s fifteen- fifteen- fifteen-
“Shot clocks out, CC. Possession change. It’s over. It’s okay. You can pass it to Paige.
Kelsey's words are so calm. So matter of fact. Like she knows.
Knows why Caitlin’s all worked up.
Caitlin’s throat spasms, and she twitches, grinds her bloody teeth, unsure. Lost in a sea of otherness and heaviness, and that’s terrifying, even after everything else.
“CC, it’s okay,” Kelsey reassures underwater, impossibly steady, and she says something else but Caitlin’s looking at the spiraling locs pulled up high because Kelsey isn’t looking at her anymore, rather beside her gesturing, “Pass the ball.”
Kelsey pulls Paige back into the forefront of her kaleidoscopic vision.
Paige, who’s tugging at the collar of her Wing’s jersey, whose eyes are all red, who’s not even looking at the ball.
Shot clocks out.
Shot clocks out.
No time left.
Possession change.
Wings get the ball.
That’s what Kelsey said.
That’s what Kelsey’s saying.
Behind her Aliyah is agreeing, a calm and level, wounded voice in her ear.
Her vision tunnels.
She can’t breathe-
She can’t breathe
She can’t-
She can’t.
Possession change.
Wings get the ball.
Her arms jerk down. Drop out.
Paige takes the ball.
Holds it like it burns.
Fair ball though. Fair. So she shouldn’t be upset.
It’s not her fault.
Kelsey’s hand is still on her face, hooked up under her chin, and Caitlin tries to say something, tries to ask… tries to apologize… for giving up the ball… for not passing but it’s hard now to keep her eyes open and to try and breathe in at the same time, like she’d given her last little bit of energy away with the possession.
Kelsey is nodding anyway. Nodding like she understands.
“Don’t worry, kid, we’ll get them on the next possession.”
Caitlin latches on to her words and tries to anchor herself to the warmth of them, even when she feels the world slipping away, the walls of her mind coming nearer, merging colors like a kaleidoscope, smothering everything that was even slightly coherent in her head.
“Just let the medics work? Just let em do their job.”
Kelsey continues and the mystery hands are back.
Probing. Packing. Pressing.
Caitlin feels each breath rasp from her lungs, feels the grayish-whiteness invading her field of vision, pulling on her like quick sand, pulling her back out to sea.
Feels Kelsey see it too.
“It’s okay, kid. We have your back.”
It’s okay.
Isss okay.
S’okay.
The shot clock is out.
Everything goes black.