Chapter Text
Historians said that whenever something critical happened that triggered the change of eras, the people caught at ground level never knew where they were standing. They were too small and too low for the bird’s eye view only time could make possible.
And that’s why one didn’t buy into his own redemption story, not before he was dead and deep below ground. Those behind him could assemble the pieces into a whole, a story with a beginning, a middle and an end, but the man could not know the structure in the middle of all the swirling chaos. If he somehow did see it, if he forced it, then somewhere, inevitably, he’d be proven wrong. It was the rule.
And Fernando had bought into his own redemption story, hadn’t he? That’s what hurt the most. Hubris, he thought, he should have known. Standing in the heart of the Allianz, the home of felled giants with the crowd roaring at his back had felt like destiny. Fernando thought their victory must have been ordained by Heaven itself. How could he have helped it? Belief had sunk into his bones that night and made them hollow, made him lighter and lifted him upwards like a bird ready for flight. Relief and sheer joy mixed like finding yourself on familiar grounds after having been lost for ages. You thought in the moment, this is it, I know this. “The best is yet to come” he'd said, because if God had not meant to give them one more chance, why was Atletico heading into the final again in a repeat of the last clash against their greatest rivals?
The answer was not what he had expected. He really should have known better. No one can be the historian of their own lives. How arrogant he'd been.
An old saying unwound itself as he undressed. Things never happen the same way twice, he recalled, trying to remember its origins. He was sure he’d read that somewhere, but he could not relinquish the thought that it had happened the same way twice, and that he had blown the chance that had been put out for him on a silver platter. He had as good as thrown it away with his own hands, squandered it like it had been a commonplace thing.
What were his chances now at thirty two? Enduring to the end of the line had been a monumental struggle to begin with, a constant uphill battle in which he struggled to stay upright. And to do it again? To be brought back to the start, looking out to the road stretching ahead, knowing the blows and pain that awaited? It was enough to make him want to crawl into bed and never come out again. In his mind’s eye he saw himself pushing this boulder up and slipping right as he reached the top again and again and again all the way to the end of his life.
In the bathroom mirror the face staring back at him was pale, the skin under his eyes thin and finely lined. It reminded him a bit of cellophane. He looked parched, as if all water had evaporated under the intense heat of shame and failure, leaving him a dried out husk with a toothbrush hanging from his mouth. Jesus, he thought, I look well over forty.
He stepped into the shower. The water felt good against his strained muscles. He flexed them, testing to see if they had shaken off the weight and pain now, a few nights after, but he felt it in his bones still. Cholo had given him one hundred and twenty full minutes. Even when Fernando had thought he might be pulled out, Diego had kept him in (against all reason). One hundred and twenty minutes and the last penalty, he’d said. God, Fernando thought, what a disappointment.
Shame dripped into his belly uncooled by the water and Fernando felt his eyes burning. He lifted his head up into the spray, and under the water took big gulps of air in through his mouth. Leave it there, he told himself. What’s done is done.
He stayed there for a long time, taking in the silence of the house and the slow and steady running of the water. Olalla had taken the kids to his parents’ home to give him time and space and silence enough to recharge. It felt wrong that she had thought to do this at all, and worse still that he was glad for it. He felt slimy, a slippery shine persisted on his skin that water would not wash out. Here was a grown man crying over lost games, he thought. And everyone suffered with him.
Greedy bastard.
Guilt settled on his bones, making them heavy. He reminded himself again that there were more important things. What had Olalla said? The day would soon come when football too would be out of his life. Right, the pitch does not define you, Olalla had said but that was bullshit. At least partially. What did define him? What would?
Family, children, a loving wife, money enough to never have to worry about money -- these were the things that would matter he supposed. These would be the measure of his life.
He still felt lacking. Which was also bullshit. Had he not done well for himself?
You are lucky, he thought. What else could one be having won all there was to win?
And yet it wasn’t about the number of titles to his name, or the medals dangling from shelves, or the pictures framed on the walls, was it? It was the stories that were attached to each. That was the priceless part of them, he thought. Not the glitter and the gold.
How could he explain that? He’d tried once, thinking maybe Xabi would understand, but Fernando was good with his feet, not his words. He was not a worldly and sophisticated man. His words and ideas had come out clumsy and heavy with drink, and anyway, he could hardly find words even now when he was stone-cold sober. He could hardly explain what he couldn’t understand.
But the thought returned. That that night had been it. When the story would have made sense, that final had been it. That was when it would’ve been rewarding, when it would have had meaning. There, in red and white, having come full circle, having been welcomed back and lifted up into the sun after the darkened grey skies of England. There, where he felt like he had played a part to carve out his victory, where he had felt like a fighter in the middle of a battlefield and not merely a witness
You can’t win them all, Fernando.
He knew. Maybe he couldn’t win at all.
Some things just could not be helped. His traitorous mind snagged on Real lifting the cup again, and pulled everything that came with it forward; the confetti, the wide grins, faces stretched in happiness glowing from the inside, and all the lights, a million lights upon them.
In the middle of it all, Sergio lifting his first Champions League Cup with the captain’s armband; Sergio with ice water in his veins during the penalty shoot out while the rest, both Real and Atleti, were flailing, so close to breaking; when Fernando himself was clenching his fists so hard he could feel his tendons stretch beyond their limits, his nails digging into his palms, his teeth grinding down to dust. He had known when Sergio walked up, by the gait and the way he had held his head, that he would not fail. Sergio had looked like a man with no concept of failure.
As he often did.
Please, Fernando had prayed. Let me get to mine.
He pulled back past conversations like unspooling old film. He changed the words. In a million alternate universes, if they existed, there must have been one where Fernando Torres always remained a Rojiblanco. Or one where he was still Liverpool’s number nine. Another one where perhaps he didn’t feel like a visitor in his own life.
You’ll never walk alone it said, Torres, Torres --
He smacked the wet tile in front of him to physically stop that train of thought, but wanting to stop thinking of pink elephants inevitably only attracted more of them like catnip for elephants. And if his pink elephants brought tears to his eyes, they could be hidden in the spray of the water. That’s what stupidly expensive showers were for.
There, under the spray, Fernando took himself in hand, helped by old memories and fantasies of alternate endings. Of the times they wore red and conquered continent and world. When he spilled, it was the arm marked with Olalla’s name that he used to brace against the wall to keep himself upright. With the steam and his pale skin turned pink, the mark stood out all the starker. When he had finished, he felt exhausted and pathetic.
So much for leaving all that behind.
A voicemail from Olalla waited for him on the kitchen table. Grandpa and grandma weren’t letting them leave, she said, and he could hear the laughter and affection in her breath. They'd be there for the night, she said, and Fernando was welcome to join them. He was tempted for a whole of two heartbeats, but the house was silent and he couldn’t find the will in him to leave it.
Was it childish that he wanted to mope? Probably. Not the way in which he wanted to live up to El Nino, but he thanked God again for Olalla’s forethought and understanding and all her brilliance.
So when the phone rang again, it was four hours later when Fernando was in the middle of a movie and was not expecting it. It vibrated on his thigh as he was scraping the bottom of the popcorn bowl, and he jumped at the precise moment Aragorn found Boromir, who with his dying breath confessed, “I would have followed you my brother”. It ruined the moment.
He did not recognize the number.
“Hello?”
When the most Andalusian accent he knew blared from his phone the recognition was instantaneous.
“Sergio?”
“Yeah, bro, it’s me. Sorry, this is a temporary phone. Guess where mine is.”
Fernando didn’t want to guess shit. “No clue” he said, hoping Sergio would get to the point.
“In the toilet. Sergio Jr. got his pudgy dwarf hands on it”
Fernando couldn’t help but laugh at that, and Sergio joined in too and maybe Sergio thought everything was fine now because they were laughing.
What was it with toddlers and dropping things in the shitter, the other was asking, and then mumbling something Fernando couldn’t quite make out. It didn’t matter anyway. Fernando laughed again and said he knew, that he and Olalla had lost a lot of things by way of wayward pudgy hands. Keys to expensive cars, for one.
It was the mindless, meaningless talk Sergio and he engaged in now, both stretching the conversation without really saying anything. But he had to admit it did feel good to talk again. Fernando knew when he hung up he would have learned nothing new about Sergio, but that’s how it had been since he came back to Madrid. Before that too, if he were honest with himself. It was as if the two of them had decided to compensate for the shortened geographical distance between them by stretching out the emotional.
“It’s been a long time” Fernando said when he found an opening. Sergio went silent for an awkward bit, and then paused to clear his throat. “True, true” he mumbled. So sue him, Fernando couldn’t let the vacant thing between them go completely unacknowledged. He got some small pleasure from it even if it was an ugly place he didn’t want to linger in.
The irony was not lost on him of course, that he was now the bitter one, throwing his jabs where he could find them. The hypocrisy of it all. Dear Lord, what had he become? An asshole who begrudged his friends their winnings, their happiness, their own families. He hated himself a little more for it, but once in Hell did it really matter if the shit was ankle deep or waist deep? Hell was Hell. Might as well dive right in and go for maximum self-loathing.
So when Sergio said they should get together soon, Fernando was ready with a yes, knowing it wouldn’t happen, but what also came out after it was “Why don’t you come over?”
His brain caught up as the last word went out. He wanted to bite off his treacherous tongue, but now that the words were out there he couldn’t exactly take them back. Wouldn't that be even more awkward? He’d rather be told no. He was sure Sergio was about to say no. He hoped Sergio said no.
He held his breath.
“Is now a good time?” Sergio asked, because if anyone were to go off script midway into their routine performance, it would be Sergio. Yes, Fernando said, sure, Sergio could come right over. The kids were away and Fernando was alone.
And that's how Fernando was left staring down at his phone after that conversation, questioning why he always devolved into a neanderthal when it came to the goddamn Blanco. He was supposed to say no, goddamn him. That’s what they did, they said they’d talk and then never followed through. They promised to get together, but something always came up. They wished each other well on Twitter and Instagram.
And that was okay.
…
It took him thirty minutes to dress and clean up a bit around the living room. That was all Sergio was going to see anyway, right?
By the time he heard a car pulling up, Fernando had cleaned up the unpopped kernels between the couch cushions, picked up Leo’s blue squishy ball from under the coffee table and banished Elsa’s teething toys to her room. When he finally looked around, he could see no evidence anyone else lived there.
He froze.
If one looked around, they might at first glance believe this was still the same Fernando of old, the Atleti boy that had not yet departed Spain. With more money in the bank and fewer posters on his walls, of course, replaced now by tasteful abstract art that complemented the decor, and...well, maybe not that Fernando at all. He wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to be that again. Where was this sudden nostalgia coming from?
Sergio knocked.