Chapter Text
It's not that Ted forgets about the torn sign, precisely. In fact, it's more like the polar opposite. The image of it has got its tenterhooks into him so deep that the only thing he can do to keep it from dragging him under is to cut it off at the knees. So he takes down all the bright yellow signs scattered around his house, starting with the one stuck right on his mirror — the crumpled piece of paper he'd half-ran to show Nate, nearly taking a dive down the stairs in his need to make him understand.
The extraction process is methodical, a room-by-room sweep that dips into any nook, cranny, or track pant pocket where a little sign may have taken refuge, waiting to ambush him with false hope at the most inopportune moment. By the time he's done his garbage bag is overflowing with yellow paper. It's just as well since the ample remains from this week's takeout had already been starting to rot, leaking out an unpleasant odor anytime he opened the can that was starting to cling to the kitchen cabinets. So he pulls out the entire bag, strings it up tight, and when he tosses the whole thing into the dumpster he only feels a little bit like he's tossed a piece of himself in there too.
It's scarcely days later when he finds out he'd missed one, and it's a costly mistake to have made. He's starting to pack for his upcoming Kansas trip and when he opens his backpack to grab his residence card, he comes out with a fistful of crumpled yellow poster paper instead.
He's not sure what had possessed him to slip the remnants of the destroyed sign into his backpack, the details of the moment lost to the memory of the pain he'd been feeling instead, like the rip straight down the middle of it tore straight through the core of him instead, creating a deep fissure in everything he'd barely been holding together in the tips of his fingers.
He tugs the paper out of his bag and stares at the blue 'IEVE', traces the letters with one shaking finger, hovers his palm over the small stain from a Wichita after-game celebration that had gone a little overboard. This particular sign has been with him for longer than Henry had been alive.
Maybe this is the problem, he thinks. He's been a coach for so much longer than he's been a father. It's something he'd always thought he'd been pretty good at, hadn't been lying to the Doc when he'd said as much upon their first meeting. And he thought he'd only been getting better with time as he went from job to job and learned from each mistake, big or small. But maybe that isn't true. Maybe he just wanted to believe that so he didn't feel like he'd failed at everything in his life, that he wasn't a failed leader in addition to being a failed son. A failed husband.
A failed father.
Because that's the truth of it. It'd been easier to stay here and do something he knew he could do well, rather than to go back and face all the ways he's doomed to fail Henry, just like his father had been doomed to fail him. But in staying here he'd done exactly that. Nate was right on the money - he'd abandoned his son and for what? For a place where he didn't fit and people he couldn't seem to stop from hurting no matter how hard he tried.
He knows his thoughts are getting away from him, can sense he's doing exactly what the Doc had told him not to. But he's so fed up of trying. Every day is a battle against his own mind and body. Even breathing, the one thing his body was born knowing how to do, is something he has to work at, and it's annoying as all get out.
He thinks about calling someone to help him carry a bit of his load, just this once. Now that the Doc is no longer on the payroll he doesn't feel like that's a fair option. But as he flips through his mental rolodex he very quickly runs out of feasible alternatives. Beard's going through his own mess with Jane and it's clearly taking its toll. He couldn't bear to put this on him too. And Roy's still processing his singular emotion. He has a feeling the two of them would just egg each other on in the worst way anyway.
He briefly thinks about calling Rebecca. It's the most tempting option yet, the relief he knows she can bring in his darkest moments just a tantalizing phone call away. He even gets as far as bringing her contact card up. But then he thinks of her chugging down a glass of champagne in her office, and of her haunted eyes and the lingering downturn of her lips all through her father's funeral, and he swipes the screen away.
He's so tired.
Tired of fighting himself. Tired of unlearning ideas he spent decades cementing within his DNA. Tired of paddling like a duck just to keep his head above water while everyone else around him drowns.
So…he's going to take a break from trying. It is, after all, what he tells his players to do when they're training new muscles. Working the same exercises over and over again will just make everything worse in the long run.
He pulls out the other end of the sign and trudges down to his kitchen with both halves in hand. He spreads them out face up on the table, then goes and pulls down a new bottle of whiskey and a glass.
Since he'd started seeing Doc, he'd made a concerted effort to stop drinking hard liquor when he's alone, and even more of an effort to not drink when he's feeling like this. It's been the hardest rule not to break and it's the first one he chucks out the window.
He pours the glass full to the brim and stares down at the sign before him. Then he chugs down half the glass, wincing at the cheap burn of it, and just lets himself feel.
And…it's a lot. He's angry and disappointed and happy and devastated and relieved and resentful and envious and exhausted and lonely. So goddamn lonely. Can't remember the last time he hasn't felt the shadow of it clinging to his ankles like Wendy herself had sewn it there.
Sometimes, on the worst days, he wakes up and feels like the inside of him is cavernous with it. Like he's just a shell of skin and bones puppeteered by a brain that's playing a role he's cultivated over the years, following a script that tells him to crack a joke here, and make a show of support there. And he hates those days the most. Hates how disconnected his body feels from his emotions. Hates even more that it makes him feel like everything he does is just for show, affirming almost everyone's first impressions of him that he otherwise takes great joy in disproving.
He downs the rest of his glass and pours himself a refill, swiftly drinking down half of that as well. Because a burn in his chest and nausea in his stomach is better than no feeling at all.
He yanks out a chair and slumps down into it, then traces his finger along the edge of one half of the sign. The tear is actually quite neat, as if the person who had done it, whoever it was because he still can't bear to connect the sight in front of him with the smiling face in his mind, had taken their time with it. Like they'd relished every second they'd spent destroying what had become a beloved symbol, not just to him but to the entire team.
The thought makes him sicker to his stomach than the crappy booze. The amount of hurt that person must have been feeling, to lash out with so cruel and vicious an act, aches deep within him. And now that he's opened this moment up and let himself examine it, knowing that he'd been the one to cause that hurt, and to have the exact words to put to the feelings behind it handy courtesy of his memory, it all sinks like a stone in his gut and settles there.
He polishes off the rest of the glass and looks at the bottle, a third empty now, and thinks that maybe he should take a beat to let it kick in. And then he thinks that if he's still having those thoughts, that must mean he's okay to have another half glass. So he does.
And then he abruptly gets to his feet, crumples up the two halves of the sign, and takes the whole thing straight out to the dumpster.
There's a cool summer breeze in the air outside that plays delicately over his face and he pauses there for a second after he's tossed the sign. He closes his eyes and if he tries hard enough, he can almost pretend it's the touch of someone's fingers instead, ghosting lightly over his cheek.
The desperation of it rips an abrupt sob from him, forceful enough to make him shake. He slouches against the nearby wall and slides down it, the harsh scratch of the brick against his back soothing in its own way.
He pulls his legs up to his chest and buries his face in his hands. His shoulders are shuddering now and his fingers quickly grow wet and his stomach is roiling and his heart is aching, aching, aching. All he'd wanted was for everything to stop, just for a moment, so he could catch his damn breath without needing to count it out. And just like with everything else he'd tried in this godforsaken life of his, he's somehow made it all worse instead.
He thinks that maybe he should stop trying altogether. That maybe the best thing for everyone would be if he just…didn't. Didn't coach. Didn't mentor. Didn't father.
Didn't exist.
He wishes he could. Wishes he didn't know just how many hurt people he'd leave behind. Because even if they don't see him, even if he doesn't let them see him, he sees them. Not enough to do right by them, most definitely not. But enough to know that the one thing he could do that's worse than everything else he's tried so far is that.
And so, even though in that moment he resents the hell out of everyone he's ever exchanged a kind word with, he fills his mind full up with thoughts of them. And then he scrubs his hands over his face, pushes to standing, and dusts himself off to head back inside and face another day.