VEX

xii.

Daniëlle van de Donk, had no foreboding or ominous feeling building in her gut over the weekend. On Saturday, they had an away match at Manchester United, stayed the night up in Manchester, and drove back to London the next day. Sunday, they had a pool recovery session and a physio session for a few players. Monday, the ladies were back in the gym and Daniëlle's heart sank just a bit. The wall covered in a graffitied 'ARSENAL' with an image of comic books. It's tagged by Vex, with a post it on the floor in front, saying that the paint might be wet. 

She tried not to be suspicious of the mural. Well, not just of the mural, but also of Vex themself. It was widely known that Vex didn't take commissions. Vex had even put up that piece about Arsenal and then covered it. So, Daniëlle wanted to know what was up with Vex and Arsenal. She leaves a post it on the now dry wall asking Vex why they're doing the walls.

Daniëlle doesn't get an answer on Tuesday. Not via post it, not via Instagram, not via the walls. She goes through training, like every day, but everything was a bit off. Her timing on and off the ball, the speed of her passing, her head just wasn't in the game. None of her teammates, not even Beth, knew of her interest in who Vex was and why they were taking commissions from Arsenal. They all knew something was up with her, but she did normally internalize her frustrations, unless facing a referee. There'd been too many times where Daniëlle almost got shown a card for how she seemed to get on every referee's bad side.

Daniëlle's frustrations bubbled over on Tuesday, and she snapped at Lia, one of the most wholesome and nice people on the team. She knew she shouldn't have snapped at Lia, hell, she knew she shouldn't have snapped at all. There was no reason for Daniëlle to have snapped at all, but she was getting pissed off at nothing important. Most of the team looked at her like she was insane, but they all thought that she was just frustrated with her performance during training. There was so much more boiling under her skin, so much more thundering around in her head, keeping her distracted. It wasn't just the Vex pieces or how distracted she was from training, it all stemmed from a few matches ago. 

Her performance was shit, at least as compared to her expectations. Not even Beth knew how she was frustrated and a bit fed up with herself. It wasn't as obvious during training at first, and Joe thought her performance was impressive enough to be in the starting 11 again. Now, Daniëlle would never protest starting on the pitch, but she thought that she didn't deserve a spot on the pitch. Her opinions on her performance continued to degrade, but her actual performance was above average, impressive enough for starts in every single match. 

Fucking hell, Daniëlle thought, why am I playing like shit?

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Vex knew that they were messing with Daniëlle van de Donk. They had the human decency to respond to the first DM, but nothing to the post it. Just to be obnoxious, the only thing Vex did to the next wall on Tuesday night was, in clean, thin letters, wrote 'leave me alone, van de Donk. I answer to no one, kid.' There was no way to decipher if a male or female wrote it, the message was in a typewriter like font. Paired with the message was a very cartoon or clipart hand flipping Daniëlle off. It's a clear and simple message that no one on either Arsenal team understood. Why Vex was telling Daniëlle van de Donk was a mystery to them, and one they wanted to figure out why.