DISCLAIMER: The Ducks ain't mine. I'm not making a dime off this.

AUTHOR'S NOTES: I just saw the movie yesterday, so go easy. I thought there should have been some reconciliation between Gordon and Jack Reilly, so I wrote this.

RATED: G for generally everyone.

ARCHIVES: Ask first.

RECONCILED

I can't sleep. I'm so loaded up on caffeine that I can't sleep.

My team won today. I can't believe it. I beat my old team, my old coach, and my kids won.

Six o'clock in the morning. I've gotten about two hours of sleep tonight. I'm not gonna get any more sleep anyway. The skates Hans gave me are sitting by the closet. Might as well put them to use. I grab my heavy winter coat and gloves, and run out the door.

I pull my car up by the pond where I first met my team. I pull on my skates and skate around the ice. I pull my gater up to shield against the cold. It can't be more than twenty degrees. The place is deserted. I skate, slide, spin - do whatever I want. No one can see me anyway. Almost twenty years since I've been on a pair of skates and I think I'm doing pretty well.

"Never leaves you, does it?"

I spin around so fast that I fall down. Who the heck was that?

"Skating." It's Jack. "Never leaves you."

"No." I pick myself up. "It doesn't."

"What are you doing out here this early in the morning?" Jack asks me.

"I could ask you the same thing." I tell him.

"I couldn't sleep." Jack says. "I was watching you."

"Didn't know I had an audience." I snap.

"Bombay, what is it with you?" Jack asks me.

"I'm not one of your peewee hockey players anymore, Reilly." I say.

"All right, then, Gordon, what is it with you?" Jack asks me. "Why won't you talk to me like a normal human?"

"Figure it out, Jack." I resume skating around the pond.

"Gordon, just talk to me!" Jack says angrily.

"Are you really that thick?" I stop in front of him. "You have no idea why I'm so angry at you, do you?"

"No." Jack admits. "I don't, OK? So tell me!"

"All right." I say. "First off, you made my years in peewee hockey a living hell."

"I did not!" Jack starts to protest.

"Will you let me finish!" I nearly yell. "You did. 'Win, win, win, win'. You think I picked up that mentality on my own? Bad news for you, Jack - you taught it to me. Two days after my dad died you wanted me back in practice."

"You had to get over it." Jack says condescendingly.

"I was thirteen years old!" I yell. I feel like I'm a kid again, arguing with my coach over a move I made in practice. "Do you really expect a thirteen-year-old kid to get over losing his dad that fast?"

"Gordon-"

"Stop interrupting me." I say. "I'm not a kid anymore, Jack. I am sick of you, and so are your players. They have no idea what hockey really is! They know how to skate, maneuver, pass the puck, score the goal, win the game. But they're miserable! They don't know how to have fun."

"The purpose of hockey is to win, Gordon, not to have fun!" Jack argues.

"Is that what you really think." It's a statement more than a question. "It's a game, Jack! Sure, you may be undefeated, well, at least until tonight." I couldn't resist it. "But your kids hate hockey. You're too hard on them."

"I want my kids to win." Jack says.

"Jack, what would you rather have." I ask. "A team who wins every championship but hates hockey because all their coach does is yell at them, or a team who wins a few championships but loves hockey, because their coach can strike the right balance."

"What's happened to you, Gordon?" Jack says to me.

"Maybe I've learned that the purpose of life isn't to win all the time." I say quietly. "Ever think about that?"

For once in his life, Jack Reilly is speechless. I leave him standing there by the pond and start skating again. I've started to shiver just standing there in the cold Minnesota morning.

"Gordon." Jack calls out. "Gordon."

What does he want now? I roll my eyes and stop in front of him. "Yeah?"

"You're right, you know." He says.

"What?" I'm totally astonished. I've never seen Jack forfeit an argument in my life.

"About when you were in peewee." Jack steps onto the ice. "I was too hard on you, especially after your father passed away. I'm...I'm...I'm sorry."

Now I'm the one who's speechless. Did Jack just apologize? Admit he was wrong? Was this the same Jack Reilly who had screamed at me for six years while I was in peewee, who pushed his players to the point of exhaustion and beyond? Was this the same guy to whom I had said, "you're going down, Reilly" just twelve hours earlier? Now he was apologizing?

I had a right to be angry with this man. But I just couldn't muster it. I had waited seventeen long years for this apology. And now here it was, in the least likely of places, at seven in the morning on a frozen pond.

"Do you forgive me, Gordon?"

My jaw was just about scraping the ground. Forgive? "Yeah." I say. "Yeah, Coach, I do."

Jack moves forward slightly, almost as if he's about to hug me, then thinks better of it. Instead, he squeezes my shoulder and smiles.

Jack doesn't say anything as he leaves. I just watch him go and then start skating again. The sun is coming up. It's a whole new day. I'm a whole new person. I'm back in the sport I love, I've finally won a championship, and even better, Jack and I are reconciled.