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Beard gets off the plane. Ted doesn’t. He stays, even though it makes him look like an asshole - or arsehole, because he’s not back in America yet. He stays, even though his heart aches. He stays, because he needs to go home to his son.
He’s restless on the first leg of his journey, unable to sleep, feeling unmoored without Beard by his side, even as he keeps remembering what he’d told his best friend.
You ain’t abandoning me. You’re just following your heart.
Beard needed to follow his heart, even if it wasn’t leading towards someone that Ted felt was good for him. And Ted, well, he needs to go home to his son. No matter what else his heart might be saying.
His thoughts continue to swirl for the entirety of the first leg. Memories flash through his mind along with feelings and thoughts he can’t seem to control or take hold of, everything whipping into more and more of a fever pitch. But it’s not until the second leg of the journey that it all breaks.
It happens after the layover where he has decidedly kept his phone turned off, too afraid of what he might do - who he might call and what he might say - if he turned it back on. It’s just after they’ve reached cruising altitude when he feels his skin start to itch, his hands start to clench, and his breath start to come in short gasps. He does his deep breathing exercises, but the panic is still there, clinging harder to his heart, his breath, than he thinks it maybe ever has before, and he cannot shake it.
The bright pink of Keeley’s gift bag catches his attention as he tries to mentally list the things he can see, and he thinks it would be the perfect distraction, opening up the gift now. After all, he’s on the plane, as she directed.
Or better yet, just don't get on the plane.
Keeley’s words echo as he pulls away the tissue paper and reaches down in the bag to grasp something solid with his shaking hands. He lifts it out and feels tears flood his eyes as he takes in the picture frame, the words ‘there’s no place like home’ etched across the bottom.
It’s another gut punch, another reminder that he’s going back to Kansas, but that it no longer feels like home to him. But it is home to Henry, and that’s what is important.
Except then he actually looks at the picture Keeley has put in the frame and all the air leaves his lungs at once. Because the picture she has chosen is one that Ted has never seen before - one he didn’t even know had been taken. It’s of the team all gathered around Henry, who is front and center, his smile so wide it looks like it might just hurt his cheeks. It was taken, he realizes, the day he let Henry lead training so that he could go up and ask Rebecca for her help in hiring a private eye.
And he hears then, her words from later in Henry’s trip, echoing back to him.
That time in your relationship with her has passed, but your time with Henry hasn't. You need to stop letting yesterday get in the way of today, Ted.
She was right - of course she was, she always was. His time with Henry hasn’t passed and that’s why he needs to go back to be with him. That’s why he’s been so staunch, so adamant in his decision to go back, even when everything inside of him was screaming for him to stay. But now, as he looks at this picture, he can’t help but think that maybe Richmond could’ve been Henry’s home too.
His little boy does look absolutely at home, surrounded by the people that Ted has come to think of as his family. And it’s crazy, he knows, to even entertain the thought of moving Henry to London with him, but maybe it’s not as crazy as he’d initially thought. Rebecca had offered him options after all, ways that they could make it all work. He’d thought moving to London had been crazy at first too, and look how that turned out.
Now that he’s got a picture of Henry in Richmond - at home - staring him in the face, his son’s own words come back to him.
To my country's political landscape? Not so much.
Ted doesn’t want to upset the life that Henry has in Kansas. He doesn’t want to pull him away from everything he’s ever known. But he has already done that in some basic, fundamental ways that he’s been trying so hard to ignore. Because no matter his reasons, no matter that he thought it was the right thing - that it has proven to have been the right thing - he did leave his son to move to Richmond. He gave Michelle the space and eventually the divorce she wanted and, in doing so, he had absolutely shaken Henry’s world. How could he not have? But Henry had survived. And yeah, maybe he’d had some growing pains, maybe he was still having some, maybe they all were. But wasn’t growth important? Wasn’t it worth the pain, to be able to bloom?
It’s Higgins’ words that come back to him now.
The best we can do is to keep asking for help and accepting it when you can. And if you keep on doing that, you'll always be moving towards better.
Moving towards better, that's the goal. And this - this is moving, yeah, but is it really towards better? Going back now wouldn’t change what has already happened - not for any of them. But it would change their futures going forward. And yes, he’d be there with his son, but he’d be without so much. He’d be taking away so much, from himself and from Henry. They never had made it to Abbey Road. And now, maybe Ted is damning them to never making it there at all. How is that better?
As these thoughts keep swirling, his breathing gets so shallow and encumbered that he begins to feel light-headed. Spots dance across his vision and the picture he is focusing so hard on begins to blur and fade, but even as it does, Ted can still see the smile on Henry’s face.
It's good to have people in your life that are excited to be around you, you know?
He’d told Henry that to try to justify Dr. Jacob’s presence in their lives, even if he’d never heard the words because he’d been asleep. But it hadn’t been a lie. He’d meant everything he said. Ted himself had lived long enough in places and times when he didn’t have people excited to be around him to know how absolutely soul-crushing that experience is. But, in Richmond, that has never been the case, not for either him or Henry. In Richmond, they were surrounded by love. In Richmond, they were home.
That is Ted’s last thought before he finally allows the blackness to overcome him.
**
The jerking of the plane as it begins its descent shakes Ted awake with a gasp. The panic is back - perhaps it had never really left, even in his unconscious state - magnified by the images his subconscious has provided him. Real images of Rebecca’s tears and Beard’s bloodshot eyes, intermixed with imagined images of all the people he loves in Richmond moving on without him, living their lives without him. These visions should bring him joy, but instead only bring him more panic. Because he wasn't there in any of those images. It was as though he’d been wiped out of the lives of all of his loved ones, as though he’d died, and his throat does fully close then, at that thought. He's going back to Henry so he wouldn't be like his father - but he was turning into his father for the people in Richmond. He was abandoning them - abandoning Rebecca, after he’d told her she wouldn’t be alone and he’d never say goodbye.
“Sir, are you alright?”
He feels a hand on his shoulder and looks up frantically, another gasp escaping him when he’s met with dark hair instead of blonde. The pain that shoots through his heart when he realizes she isn’t there confirms it. He loves Rebecca - and he’s letting her down.
“I - I can’t -”
The flight attendant looks at him with concern. “Do you need medical assistance?”
Ted pulls in a breath, his entire body alight with pain as he shoots up out of his seat. “No.” He doesn’t need medical assistance. He needs to go and fix the biggest mistake of his life. “Just - just need to get out of here.”
“Okay, sir. We’ve landed and are ready to start disembarking,” she continues calmly, still watching him closely. “Are you sure you don’t need any help?”
“I need to get off the plane. I should’ve gotten off the plane.”
Even though she thinks he’s an arsehole - or asshole, now that he’s back in America - the flight attendant is kind enough to help him gather up his backpack and guide him off the plane. Walking through the tunnel back to the gate somehow both helps and hurts Ted, his heart pounding so hard he thinks that he may very well need medical attention after all.
His head swims with all he needs to do - he needs to call Michelle, he needs to call Rebecca, he needs to get back on the first flight he possibly can - and the thought of all of it is overwhelming.
And then, suddenly, he hears a sound that cuts through all the noise.
“Dad!”
“Jesus, Ted, are you okay?”
“Henry? Michelle?” Ted blinks, unable to grasp the fact that Michelle and Henry are here. As far as he was aware, the plan has been for him to get a ride and meet them back at Michelle’s place.
“Is he okay?” Michelle demands of the flight attendant.
“He said he didn’t need medical assistance, just that he needed to get off the plane,” the flight attendant replies, dropping his backpack at his feet and then beginning to move away, now that someone else is with Ted. Michelle glares at her before moving over to Ted.
“Ted, can you tell me what’s happening?” Her hand comes up to hold his arm, even as she seems to be looking past him, searching for a doctor maybe. “Is it a panic attack? Do you need help? How can I help?”
“I have to go back,” he manages to get out, even as tears start to flow and everything seems to freeze around him at those words. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I can’t - I don’t want to - I need to -”
“Ted. Ted! Sit. Take a breath.” Michelle guides him down into a seat at the gate, kneeling down to be in his eyeline, her eyes continuing to move from him to a place behind him. He thinks, vaguely, that now she’s probably looking at Henry. That Henry is watching him fall apart. He’s destroying everything on both sides of the Atlantic today, isn’t he?
“I made a mistake,” he chokes out. “I should’ve gotten off the plane. I should’ve told her. I’ve gotta tell her, Michelle. I’ve gotta - I can’t - I can’t be like him. I can’t be like him for Henry but I can’t be like him for her either and - I don’t - I don’t know what to do.”
“Oh, Ted.”
“I need to be here for Henry,” he insists, tears still streaming, still gasping for breath. “I love Henry. But I love her, too.” He swears he hears a gasp then, but it doesn’t seem to come from Michelle, and he keeps going, trying not to think about all the bystanders watching him absolutely fall to pieces. At least he’d managed to fall apart here and not back in London, where they would’ve taken great delight in splashing it all across the papers. Looney Lasso Loses it Again! “I didn’t tell her. I have to tell her.”
“Okay,” Michelle says, as though he’s told her the sky is blue and not that he’s in love with his boss. Former boss, now, he guesses, and that just makes it all hurt even worse.
“Dad.” Henry moves into his line of vision, carefully shifting to take over Michelle’s place. “It’s okay. Don’t cry.” He reaches out to take Ted’s hands, finding them still clutching the picture frame, which just causes more tears to spill over.
“I’m sorry, Henry. I know you miss me. I know you need me here. I’m sorry I abandoned you -”
“You didn’t abandon me, Dad.” Henry shakes his head. “You moved to another country, yeah,” he nods, “but you’re still in my life. And yeah, I miss you. But I don’t need you to move back here. How are you gonna win the Premier League trophy from here?”
Ted lets out a sound that could be a laugh or a sob.
“I already talked to Mom. I want to spend more time with you.” He carefully takes the picture frame from Ted’s hands and holds it up to him, “At home. In Richmond. Mom says we’re gonna figure it out. So does -”
“We are,” Michelle cuts in over whatever else Henry was going to say. “We are going to figure all of this out. Together.”
Ted pulls Henry to him, hugging him tightly then. “I love you, Henry.”
“I love you too, Dad.”
When they pull away, Ted leans down toward his backpack, his hands steadier now, his breathing calmer. “I’ve gotta find my phone. I’ve gotta call Rebecca.”
“Hey, Dad,” Henry says then, a twinkle in his eye. “Did you know that a private jet can get you here in less time than flying commercial?”
“You been watchin’ The Parent Trap again, Hen?” Ted asks distractedly as he tugs at the zipper on his backpack. “Because that sure sounds like a line from it.”
“Actually, I think you’ll find that they’re talking about the Concorde, not a private jet,” comes the reply, but not from Henry.
Ted’s head whips up in disbelief to take in the sight of her moving forward from behind him, wearing the same outfit she’d had on at the gate in London, only somehow now here, in Kansas. “Rebecca. What -”
“In keeping with the theme,” she says as she moves over beside Henry, kneeling down, and taking his hands, “it took about thirty seconds after you got on the plane for me to realize that I didn’t want to lose you. That I couldn’t let you go.”
“Rebecca.”
She shakes her head, continuing to speak. “I thought that I had been quite obvious. I thought that you knew and you just didn’t want -" Her voice cracks and she shakes her head, tears falling. “But then Coach Beard was escorted off the plane and you weren’t with him. So I went to him and he told me that you didn’t know. Or that you didn’t believe it. That you wouldn’t ever have assumed it, no matter what I did or said, unless I actually said the words. That you needed to hear it. That I needed to say it. Because -“ her eyes flick away to fall on Michelle for a moment, before they cut back to him, “because people haven’t always said it. So I got on my jet and I flew here like a character in one of your bloody rom-coms -”
“Like a reverse Parent Trap,” Henry supplies with a grin, “because the pretty blonde English lady flies after the American instead.”
Ted laughs at that, even though his eyes never leave Rebecca’s face.
“To tell you that I love you, Ted. I am in love with you. And I know that you need to be there for your son and I don’t have any real, concrete answers yet except to say that we’ll figure it out. We’ll have a bi-continental relationship if we have to, with Henry raised here and there, and we’ll grow old together, because I cannot imagine my life without you in it.”
Ted opens his mouth to respond when Henry reaches over to tug on Rebecca’s arm, motioning her to lean over so he can whisper something into her ear.
“Oh. Yes, quite right.” She nods to him with a smile before she turns back to Ted, her thumbs brushing over his cheeks, wiping his tears away. “But you don’t need to cry hysterically.”
Ted laughs through his tears as he stands up and pulls her up with him. “Oh yes I do,” he says as he finally kisses her.
When he pulls away, he cups her face, leaning his forehead against hers. “You’re so brave, Rebecca. And I love you, so much. I’m so sorry I left. I just couldn’t -”
She leans forward and kisses him, cutting off the rest of his words, tasting the salt of his tears on her lips. “Hush, love.” She reaches up to brush his hair back off his forehead. “It’s alright. I wasn’t brave at first. I couldn’t talk to you the way you needed when you needed it. But we got there in the end, didn’t we?”
He pulls her close, holding her to him in a tight embrace. “Yeah, we did.”
She stays there in his arms until she sees Henry begin to fidget restlessly beside them. Then she carefully pulls back with a smile. “Now, we’ve both had a long day, and we’ve got time to figure everything out, hmm? So I say that for now, it's time you all introduced me to some real Kansas City barbecue.”
“Yeah!” Henry cheers, jumping up and down.
Ted laughs, the sound like music to his ears. “I can’t think of anything I’d like more.”
“Well, lead on then.” She nods as Ted takes her hand, keeping her close to his side. “After all, there’s no place like home, hmm?”
Michelle and Henry start forward, leading the way, as Ted stops for a moment. “I figured it out on the plane.”
“Figured what out, love?”
“Home. It’s not an address, a country, state, or town. It’s you and Henry. Wherever you are. You’re home.”
“Well then,” she kisses him again, gently but full of love, “welcome home.”