A/N: Greetings, I am back with another dark AU Mighty Ducks fic, except this one isn't as explicit as my previous one, Cough Syrup.

The events that occur in this story are after Fulton leaves Charlie in the alleyway, Charlie runs into the man who claims to be his biological dad and goes with him to his home, except his dad has no intentions of ever letting Charlie leave. After seven months of torment and abuse, Charlie's dad crashes his car into a tree with Charlie in the backseat of the car. Orion ends up seeing the aftermath of the crash; this story will primarily be from Orion's point of view.

WARNING for topics of child abuse and drug usage.

Summary:

When he'd gotten the phone call from Casey asking him if he'd seen Charlie, that he hadn't returned home, he at first scoffed, thinking the kid ran away, but Casey was hysterical, claiming it wasn't like him, that she knew Charlie was mad and bitter about what Ted had done with the team, but it wasn't in him to run away.

OR

Canon divergence: After Fulton leaves Charlie in the alleyway, Charlie runs into someone who claims to be his biological dad, and he never comes home. Seven months later, Ted sees the aftermath of a car accident on his way to the hospital for his daughter's physical therapy, and much to his shock, one of the victims is Charlie.

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Chapter 1 - Helpless

Ted Orion felt the crick in his neck as he awoke to someone's hand shaking his shoulder. Blinking his eyes open, he saw the bleary outline of Bella come into his view; concern etched in her green eyes as she handed him a Styrofoam cup filled with coffee.

"Here, honey."

Ted gratefully took the coffee cup from her and sipped it, sighing, before turning his gaze to the hospital bed. There was no change. They were there for three days. The only sign that Charlie was alive was the rhythmic beeping from the machine monitoring his heartbeat, which remained steady.

Like the other times he'd woken and looked at the Ducks captain, he felt the twinge of guilt about their previous exchange. When he'd gotten the phone call from Casey asking him if he'd seen Charlie, that he hadn't returned home, he at first scoffed, thinking the kid ran away, but Casey was hysterical, claiming it wasn't like him, that she knew Charlie was mad and bitter about what Ted had done with the team, but it wasn't in him to run away.

And then, the next day, Fulton came blubbering to him, saying he shouldn't have left Charlie when Charlie told him to go, snapping that he didn't need him because he had needed him, except Fulton didn't realize it till it was too late.

That was when Ted knew something was wrong.

Then Bombay ended up returning home indefinitely, deciding to stay until the boy was found.

Seven months.

It took them seven months.

Ted felt hollow between Hans' death and Charlie's subsequent, sudden disappearance. He hadn't felt this helpless since the accident.

But in those seven months, the team came back together. They won the grudge match against the Varsity and got the school's mascot name changed from the Warriors to the Ducks, but the win felt meaningless without Charlie there.

Gordon had been right.

Charlie was the heart of the team.

Ted didn't realize that until the boy went missing. The team played their hardest for him, bringing home the state championship, but by the skin of their teeth against the Cardinals. But after the state championship game was over, he walked into the locker room to find the whole team sitting there crying instead of celebrating, especially Banks, Gaffney, Fulton, and Moreau, who took it the hardest out of everyone. He had a feeling they would've played an even better game with their captain there. He knew the whole team missed their captain immensely.

Surprisingly, part of Ted missed Charlie, too. Perhaps not his attitude or his anger issues, but the way the kid seemed to glue everyone together and bring out the best in them.

The tears filled his eyes at the thought as he stared at Charlie's face, which was swollen four different colors yet so pale under the lighting. A breathing tube from the ventilator ran down the boy's throat, helping him breathe; IVs pumped him full of blood and pain medicine; even more tubes drained fluid from his lungs. There was a lump underneath the sheets, the kid's right leg, but it didn't end there; his left ACL was torn to shreds and had required surgery. Wires were connected to his head, monitoring his cerebral patterns.

"Honey," Bella's voice startled him from his thoughts. "You can't blame yourself."

Ted shook his head. He kept hearing the same thing from Bella over the past three days. "Of course, I can blame myself! I'm the reason he cut school for the day in the first place! He quit the team because of me! If I hadn't been so hard on him . . ."

"You were trying to help him learn something," Bella said sternly. "The only way he would've improved was if he realized it was time to adapt. And he wasn't ready to accept that yet."

"Still." Ted swallowed around the lump in his throat as Gordon came in, bearing his own cup of coffee, with Casey shuffling closely behind. Ted saw they looked exhausted; they hadn't taken his advice about getting any sleep. Not that he could blame them. He couldn't sleep, either. But they'd compromised on swapping the shifts so they could take turns getting rest. Still, he knew Casey barely had the strength to go to work, and Gordon was refusing to leave her, staying with her and even sharing a bed with her, holding her all night while she cried over her son.

"You guys couldn't sleep?" he asked.

Casey nodded tightly. Tears rolled down her face as she sat at her son's bedside. She brushed her fingers over the homemade quilt she'd created out of old Ducks' jerseys – the original green, yellow, and purple ones with the original Duck logo, the front of the quilt exposing everyone's last names and numbers, but Charlie's 96 was in the center; there were also jerseys from when they were Team USA, the red-white-and-blue standing out starkly, along with old T-shirts for the North Stars; every single shirt that got used in the quilt represented something from Conway's life when he'd been on the Ducks. It at been Moreau's idea; she'd asked the whole team and reached out to the former members to send out their jerseys so Casey could quilt them, saying she'd thought it would help.

Ted watched enviously as Gordon, whose face remained unshaven and scruffy, leaned over and kissed Charlie's forehead. How was it that Gordon made it so easy? Ted would never say it, but part of him desired space in Charlie's heart, not only because of this horrible tragedy (that certainly was part of it) but because he genuinely wanted to be part of this family that Gordon had created when he'd founded the Ducks.

Sighing, he reached over and grabbed the boy's hand, cautious of the IV. Every time, touching Charlie's hand was like touching ice. Ted rubbed his thumb over the back of it as if to warm it up. But Ted knew until Charlie opened his eyes, he wouldn't feel any relief. If what Gordon said about Charlie was true, Charlie was a real fighter, and he was going to survive this.