Set after D3: Ted and his wife visit Hans's grave after the J.V. versus Varsity grudge match, except Ted finds more than he bargained for when he sees Charlie visiting his biological father's grave.
You Broke the Boy in Me, But You Won't Break the Man
Ted Orion had never been one to like funerals.
Granted, nobody liked funerals. Funerals were just a depressing way of telling someone goodbye, as if watching their casket lower into the ground was supposed to bring you any solace. He'd witnessed both sets of grandparents die before he reached his twenties; none of them could see him play in the Stars, and they couldn't be there when the accident happened, and Lucy was left paraplegic as a result of the crash.
That had been another kind of mourning – he needed to leave his team because they would be moving to Dallas; if he had moved with them, it would've meant disrupting Lucy's recovery, moving her away from her friends, and forcing Bella to move to Texas and struggle to find another job to help them care for their family. So, when Dean Buckley asked him to become the new J.V. ice hockey coach at Eden Hall, he could hardly refuse. Even Hans had told him it could be a good thing, that maybe, coaching hockey would be just as fulfilling as playing.
Of course, Hans was right in that regard, to an extent.
It hadn't been easy needing to put up with a bunch of spoiled brats who thought they knew everything, who believed that they were hot, and that they didn't need to improve on anything else. Granted, a lot of those players came from the Hawks – they had money and prestige, their mommies and daddies were board members and members of the alumni club who donated thousands of thousands of dollars year after year to keep funding the place, none of them had to truly work for anything, and they got by through cheap shots. They rose to the top through dirty play, a product of Coach Jack Reiley getting into their heads and making them believe they had to win at any cost.
Ted didn't care about winning. He cared about his players working hard. Rick Riley, Brad Cole, and all those other brats that came along with them were a nightmare for him to coach. And while the Eden Hall Mighty Ducks might've started off rough and tumble, and their captain may have had anger issues, they gradually began putting in that hard work, and they only got better.
It was no mystery why they won the grudge match fair and square.
Hans would've been proud of them.
Ted felt that hint of regret that he didn't come to Hans's funeral. But he couldn't. Bella had been at work, and somebody needed to watch after Lucy that day. It was why he now stood with Bella in the cemetery, bearing his own white roses for Hans's gravesite.
Pictures lined the area. Some images captured Hans with the original Ducks, images of Charlie at age ten or eleven with his little flock. Others were of him and his brother Jan. Others were of him with Bombay, and there was even one of Ted and Hans after a Hawk game when Ted was nine.
He couldn't help his bitter smile as he lay the flowers down on the ground before he wound an arm around Bella's waist, pulling her closely.
"Are you okay?" she asked him gently.
Ted sighed, leaning a hand against her pregnant belly, the sign that she was eight months along, one step closer to little Teddy Jr. running around the house. "I miss him."
Bella smiled sadly before kissing him on the cheek, leaning her head on his shoulder. "Me too."
"I think we should give our boy the middle name 'Hans,'" Ted whispered.
"Theodore Hans Orion," Bella hummed. "I like the sound of that."
"We should get going." Ted began pulling her along, away from the grave, before he gave one last silent goodbye. But as he led his wife back to the car, his keen hearing picked up on something, somebody speaking in the distance.
"Well, the Ducks won. We beat Varsity. You should've seen it. God, you should've been there. And I met this girl . . . Linda, she's . . . Man, she's beautiful. She's smart, she's fearless, she's tough, she's witty, she's really something special." If he wasn't mistaken, it was Charlie. He turned, seeing a few miles away from Hans's grave; Charlie was sitting on the grass in front of a headstone, just talking. He recognized him from his build and his deepening voice, which was still cracking from that enhancing testosterone.
Ted turned to Bella, silently asking her to go wait in the car for him. Bella nodded, kissing him gently before beckoning him to go to his Ducks captain, who continued sitting in the dewed grass, the cold night air ruffling his curly brown hair as he just sat there talking, not noticing anyone else. As he neared the boy, Ted saw what Charlie was sitting in front of in the dim, silver cast of the moon.
Robert Joseph Conway
March 24th, 1964 – June 9th, 1992
Ted felt his breath hitch in his throat, his eyes critically scanning the headstone. Bombay had told him Charlie never knew his dad.
And Charlie found him. Probably some time before he started at Eden Hall, too.
Suddenly, that missing piece of the puzzle fell into place.
No wonder the kid had such a horrible attitude at the beginning of the semester.
"And she seems to think I'm something special, too. And I don't know but . . . Coach Orion, he seems to think so, like Bombay did . . . well, does," Charlie continued, and Ted could hear the hitch in the boy's breath, how his voice broke. "Why didn't you see that?" Ted winced as he watched Charlie bring a hand up to wipe his eyes, supposedly. "Why? What was so wrong with me that you left? Did I not mean anything to you? Huh? Why did you give up? When did you give up? The day I was born? When I was six months old? A year old? I'm fourteen years old, Dad!"
He was the last person to talk about feelings, but Ted could hear the anguish in the boy's voice as he continued his rant. Ted felt his own eyes sting on the boy's behalf as he noticed Charlie didn't even have a coat on, and it was colder than average for a night in September; the boy was just wearing an old, oversized flannel, and it was hardly enough to keep him warm. He didn't hesitate to remove his J.V. coach's jacket as he listened to Charlie, who, at this point, without a doubt, was crying.
"I . . . I know I'm not perfect. But . . . it was supposed to be your job to love me! So, why didn't you? Why? What did I do that was so bad? Am I . . . was I that worthless to you? And what about Mom? Huh? How could you? What did she do that made you bail? Was it that she decided to keep me? What was it? What would you have preferred she do? Give me up? Have an . . . an abortion? Would that have made you stay? You . . . You son of a bitch! How . . . How could you hate me that much?" Charlie buried his face into his hands, his fingers moving to grip at his hair as he let out a loud wail, a wounded cry that seemed to rip him in half.
Ted couldn't take it anymore. Seeing Charlie like this was too much. Seeing the boy looking so broken, so abandoned, and lonely almost made Ted yearn for the angry, temperamental hothead he'd met weeks ago, the young man who went around breaking sticks and picking fights; that was almost easier to deal with than this. Of course, he was no stranger to dealing with crying kids – he'd seen Lucy cry and cry when they'd been in that accident that forever took him away from his NHL career. But seeing a teenage boy crying in the middle of a cemetery, mourning the father who dumped him like a sack of trash, Ted almost didn't know what to do. He wasn't sure he knew the right thing to say. He contemplated calling Bombay, telling him not to leave for California yet and to come here and bring Charlie home. But Ted also knew he wouldn't feel right leaving the boy either, especially as he watched Charlie sink to the grass, crying, his elbows touching the ground.
Ted leaned down and draped his coach's jacket over the boy's shoulders before he knelt at the boy's level. Tucking the jacket around him, Ted gripped Charlie's shoulder before gently tugging him forward, drawing the boy closer to him until Charlie was in his arms, cradled against his chest.
Ted didn't hesitate to raise his hand to stroke the boy's hair. His fingers moved along the curls and pushed at the hair that ran behind Charlie's ear while his other hand rubbed the boy's back. For a moment, he said nothing. He just allowed the boy to cry his guts out, rocking him gently. But when he glanced down, he noticed Charlie's sleeve had rolled up slightly, and that was when Ted saw faint, pink scars crisscrossing the boy's wrist. He thought about what Charlie had asked, whether his father would've preferred Charlie's mother had an abortion instead of him; had Charlie thought everyone's life would've been better off without him?
He felt a tear roll down his face as he pressed his cheek against the top of Charlie's head, continuing to rock him slowly.
Finally, he found the words. "I'm so sorry."
Charlie tilted his head up, and when Ted glanced down, he saw the boy's eyes – usually bright blue – were rimmed red, eyelashes clumped with tears that ran in a miserable river down his face. His cheeks were red and soaked, and his nose was running. Ted reached for the handkerchief he kept in his pants pocket and handed it to Charlie, who used it to wipe his eyes, but the action was pretty much useless since more tears kept falling from his eyes.
Ted rubbed the boy's back. "You're wrong, you know."
Charlie looked at him blankly.
"It wasn't you. It was him. Conway, if he were half the man you are, he wouldn't have left his family," Ted said gently.
"I know." Charlie sniffled, trying to sit up, but he just slumped further into Ted, who wound his arm a little tighter around him. "But it just seems every guy my mom's with ends up leaving and dumping me."
"Bombay never dumped you," Ted argued. "Never. He wanted to see you have a shot at something. And he knew Eden Hall would be that chance for you. When he told me about you, he said I could learn a thing or two from you. And I did. I learned that, above everything else, you're loyal. And I can see why." He turned his gaze to the headstone, sighing. "You don't want anyone on your team feeling how you were made to feel. He also told me how you gave up your spot on the team so that Banks could play against Iceland – you wanted him to have a fair shot. That's all Bombay's ever been trying to give you this whole time; he's been doing that since he coached you in Peewees. You know that, right?"
Charlie nodded, wiping his eyes again.
"I meant what I said. I'm sticking with you guys. Your old man may not have stuck around, but that's not gonna happen with Bombay. Or me. And another thing: there's nothing wrong with you. And I know you may not believe that because you've seen lots of people leave and let your mom down. But they're the ones with a problem. Not you. You did nothing wrong, and neither did your mom when she chose to have you and keep you." Ted drew him a little closer, rubbing a hand up and down his shoulder. He knew what he said couldn't magically fix things. He knew he needed to address Charlie's problem eventually, and he also knew he would need to tell Bombay and the kid's mother about what the boy had been doing to himself. But the main priority was making sure Charlie knew that he wasn't to blame for anything, that he was worth sticking around for.
Charlie closed his eyes, his head falling back on Ted's chest as the older man rose to his feet, pulling him with him. Ted kept his arm securely around the boy, rubbing his back.
"C'mon. My wife and I will drive you home. I'm sure your mom's worried about you."
A/N: Charlie's speech to his dead father was partially inspired by Pacey Witter's one-sided dialogue with his father in the fisherman's episode in season 2 of Dawson's Creek.