Chapter Text
Chapter Seventeen: Dad Talks and Deep S#%!! Part 2
Everyone piled into Amanda’s car and they made the drive to the house.
“You guys look like shit, what happened, did you kick Robby’s ass, did he kick yours ?” Anthony looked up from his game long enough to comment on the state of his sister and her friends.
“Anthony…that’s enough.” Daniel sighed.
Aisha rolled her eyes as Demetri glanced between the Larusso siblings, flummoxed.
"No," Sam replied, not even able to muster energy for a snide remark.
"Well then what happened?" Anthony asked.
"That is not your concern," Amanda said. "If Sam wants to tell you she will,"
“I won’t,” Sam replied flatly.
“Whoa, that looks cool.” Demetri, Daniel noticed, stepped in. “What game is that?”
Turned back to his favorite subject, Anthony left the topic of his sister’s state alone, and Daniel breathed a soft sigh of relief. He kept his eyes on the rearview mirror as Amanda drove. He noticed that while they were in the car, away from Cobra Kai, relatively safe, Sam couldn’t seem to relax. It was understandable. None of them could, aside from Anthony, who was in the dark about this, and Daniel was intent to keep it that way as much as possible. But there was something else to it. He’d seen it when they’d been in the dojo, when he and Demetri had found them. There was something that Daniel recognized long before the moment Sam clung to him, long before the sobs, and it broke his heart. That turned him back to the dilemma they were now facing. The All Valley. The All Valley. Another freaking tournament… in these circumstances? Daniel would scoff. He would. He had promised that this was done, finished. Not just for his family’s sake, for the sake of all those kids. He was reminded of what he had said all those months ago. Yeah right, like this’ll ever be over. And the way that statement rang, it was a self-fulfilling prophecy if there ever was one. Who would've thought huh? This was about more than just karate now. So much more.
They pulled up to the house, and Daniel felt a hand covering his own. He glanced over to see that Amanda had taken his hand, no not his hand, his fist… and was gently unfurling it finger by finger. He swallowed stiffly. He took his hand and squeezed Amanda’s gently, grateful he wasn’t alone with this.
Upon entering the house, Sam and her friends went to the couch, Anthony went back upstairs, and Daniel and Amanda stayed in the living room.
“Now,” Amanda said. “Someone needs to explain.” She looked between her husband and the teenagers sat in a row. She placed Sam’s phone on the coffee table on the last word.
“I…” Sam’s gaze locked onto the phone, all of the messages that somehow hadn't been opened and then she began to explain, everything. slowly unable to meet her parents' eyes.
"Samantha," Her daughter's name came out a sigh as Amanda saw her eyes fill with tears. On instinct, despite the fact that her daughter's friends were nearby and in any other circumstance, she would get an earful, Amanda went over and gave Sam a hug holding tightly, and the teenager didn't make a single move to fight it.
Daniel left Amanda to comfort Sam as he took food and drink orders from the other two teens knowing they must be hungry or would be soon enough. Really, he wasn’t certain either way. He knew he certainly couldn’t think about food after all this, but it was something to do and that, well that was all he could ask for at this moment.
He went to the kitchen and slowly began going through the motions of getting the requested drinks as he managed to stay tuned into the conversation in the other room.
Aisha was telling Amanda, Demetri and Sam about a text message she had received from her father. And as Daniel brought the soda in, he noticed Amanda didn’t seem surprised by this information.
“School’s gonna be like a prison,”
“They can’t do that!” Sam said.
“Actually they can,” Demetri sighed.
“But we’re not criminals,”
“Not all of us,” Aisha amended.
Daniel listened to the teens talking over one another and had to fight to control his breathing, an informal meditation as he distributed the drinks. He and Johnny had pulled one hell of a fast one trying to one up each other and all of them would be paying this price.
“Daniel,” Amanda cleared her throat softly, her eyes flitting back toward the kitchen he’d just left. He got the message and nodded briefly.
“We’ll be back in a minute sweetie, you’re okay?” Amanda looked to Sam.
Sam turned back from the flabbergasted conversation and nodded.
Robby allowed his father to assist him in the bleach white halls. Everything was rapid fire. A wheelchair was brought over, hushed but urgent questions were asked and answered, commands were nearly shouted. And Robby found himself flinching through eighty five percent of it.
He remembered something vaguely about head injuries messing around with everything else, not just your head. Maybe his almost happy eight year old self had heard it on TV when Mom had been watching those shows that were less medically sound and more aesthetically sound. He didn’t know, but the light and the sounds blended haphazardly in a muddy thick pea soup and he found he had to shut his eyes, felt himself careening even long after sitting in the wheelchair. He wasn’t sure how much of this was based on where he was, and how much was based on what happened. It was a pretty good bet this would end up a tie.
“Sir, I’m sorry but you’re going to have to wait here. It’s standard procedure. We need to talk to your son privately first.”
“You’re shitting me? You think I fucking did this?” His father’s voice broke through the fog right after that nurse’s. Robby saw the name tag said Jacob Kind.
“He’s a minor Sir. It’s procedure.”
He was almost seventeen, had hardly been considered a minor for almost nine of those years with the hand he’d been dealt, the lies he’d had to build, but Robby knew what the doctors and nurses were thinking, even before they had clarified, before his father had made the jump.
Honestly, two months ago, Robby would have thought the same thing whether literal or not. The list of what his father had done...well...
“How long is it going to take?” Robby asked. How much do you need to know was the better question and the real question.
“It shouldn’t take very long.” Nurse Kind said.
They brought him into the exam room, helped him onto the table, and Jacob Kind helped him to remove his shirt. Of course, they would be examining the injuries while speaking to him, and the thought was enough to send him crawling out of his skin.
The nurse took notice of the bruising, old and new, his arm at a bit of an odd bend, which with less adrenaline, was in almost a state of non-pain that was just present enough to be painful. Robby could tell by the way his gaze was moving. “How long ago did this happen?”
“Dad had nothing to do with this.” Robby said. That was the simplest answer. His father hadn’t kicked him onto the concrete parking lot, his father hadn’t been in the school hallway with fists raised, so as far as these white coats were concerned that was it. He could give the novel length answer, but he wouldn't bother. Like Mr. Larusso had said earlier, it wasn't important.
The nurse nodded. “Okay, but can you tell me what happened?”
“I take karate,” Robby said simply. That had to be enough. They wouldn’t believe the rest, whether they saw the news or not. He wouldn’t ask about the fight would he? He couldn’t talk about it. If he did, straight to juvie.
“Karate huh? And all of this happened during class?”
“No,”
“You practice hard?”
“Wasn’t practice.” There had to be a way to handle this. He could give Kreese’s name...but would that make things worse? No worse for you. You still basically killed Diaz. Your life is over. Tournament or not.
“Not practice, then what was it?”
Survival, fighting back, trying to end the fight.
“Hey kid, can you tell me? What was it? It’s alright, take your time.”
Robby clenched a hand into a fist, would scoff if he could. How much time he took wouldn’t mean shit. “Just trying to end a fight,” In a way.
Jacob Kind had encountered a lot of bullying in his day. With a last name like Kind, it was inevitable. And he also watched the news regularly. It didn’t take John Walsh to recognize him. This was the kid from the West Valley school fight, the kid that had sent the All Valley champ over the rail, the kid the cops were looking for. Jacob knew this was Robby Keene.
And it seemed… this kid needed help as much as Miguel Diaz. If he came to a hospital with the cops looking for him.
“Hey, hey…” Jacob softened his voice. “Kid come on, look at me.”
The kid did, but barely. His gaze held way too much suspicion for even the most jaded teenager. What happened to you?
“Alright, I’m gonna go get your dad and the doctor and then we’ll take a closer look okay?” Jacob knew they wouldn’t get many answers this way, and they could always watch how the kid and his dad interacted. They had no choice. Whatever had happened, the kid was hurt, and he was barely letting him get close enough. If the doctor was going to have a chance, the family was the best bet.
“Sure,”
Ali was on her rounds when she noticed someone familiar in the hallway, Johnny Lawrence. And he didn’t look good.
“Johnny…” Ali stopped.
“Ali, hey…” Johnny sighed.
“What are you doing here? Is everything okay?”
They were interrupted as one of the nurses came out. “Mr. Lawrence, you’re clear to come back. Dr. Mills-Schwarber, we’ll need you on this.” Ali barely had time to register Jacob Kind’s words, the fact that he was addressing Johnny before she was able to put two and two together. One of their patients was related to Johnny.
“What do you have?” Ali asked, no choice but to go into professional mode. She could feel Johnny’s eyes on hers, the unprovided explanation hanging between them.
“ Robert Keene, Male, 16, came in after a fight.” Jacob replied.
“How bad is it?” Johnny demanded.
“We won’t know for sure until we finish the exam,” Ali said. “But we’ll make sure he’s okay.” Ali tried to reassure. Hell of a way for their second conversation in years to go. If Jacob was calling her in on this with her specialty, he probably knew this kid was in some kind of way. “I promise,”