I'm not scared of death (I've got dreams again)
Ted Lasso x Rebecca Welton
But his thoughts have layers, and the emotion of remembering crashes like a wave. So, he tries to breathe and pieces together the words he can find, hoping to convey even a fraction of how he feels.
Or
Ted and Rebecca take a drive past his childhood home. inspired by The View Between Villages by Noah Kahan
Warnings: Ted's dad, parental loss, discussions/themes of suicide, mentions of blood, grieving (let me know if you want me to add anything else)
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If Rebecca built up walls, he's built up hedge mazes. Together they've climbed over a few of Rebecca's defences; put sledge hammers through others. But, now they wander aimlessly through topiary corridors, the labyrinth he’s constructed with all his tools of self-deflection.
And here, standing in front of his childhood home Ted feels as though he's in the thick of it. Unsure of how to proceed he decides to be honest; putting a metaphorical chainsaw through the winding hedge walls.
“My father died here,” he says.
His parents bought the house when he was a baby. It was supposed to be their ‘forever home’. Powder blue siding, white trims, and a red front door, with a backyard that felt acres big when he was a kid.
He grew up here. Took his first steps here. Got attacked by a dog here. He learned how to ride his bike here. Befriended the dog that bit him here. His first words, his first real kiss; sleepovers; Christmas mornings; Halloweens; there's not an inch of that house that doesn't have a memory in it.
He wishes he could lift it up and shake it out, sort through each moment and take only the good away with him.
“It's funny,” he says to Rebecca, never more grateful to have her hand in his, “when you're a kid, every scraped knee feels like it might be the end of the world. Every stomach ache feels like it's gotta be the most painful thing you'll ever feel. I was so naive. So innocent…I didn't think--” his words fail him. But Rebecca's support doesn't falter.
“Do you want to leave?” She asks.
He shakes his head, swallowing hard, silently trying to catch up to his own thoughts.
“You were still a child, Ted. And regardless-- I don't think there's a manual for how to deal with the loss of a parent,” her sentence trails off more than it ends. He knows she's tip-toeing around the nature of his father's death. Ted doesn't blame her for it. He does the same thing.
“I know that it's not something I'm ever going to recover from completely. The good doctor keeps reminding me of that. But, I thought it was getting easier-- I've been getting better at talking about it. But being here again…it's different,” he does his best to express himself, remembering that it feels better to get it all off his chest.
But his thoughts have layers, and the emotion of remembering crashes like a wave. So, he tries to breathe and pieces together the words he can find, hoping to convey even a fraction of how he feels.
The truth is he can't. There's no way to impart to anyone how shattering a gunshot really is. He has no way to communicate how long the scent of blood lingers, or how he can no longer smell bleach without being haunted by a phantom metallic stench.
He can't recall the sight in specifics, thank god, and Doctor Sharon says that's common enough. Finding his father like that was a trauma, and the human mind is capable of blocking out some of the worst bits. Knowing it happened is painful enough without the visuals.
He can recall the fear though. The shock, the confusion, and the agony of loss.
He remembers the aftermath, and the first day he and his mom stepped back into that house after it had been cleaned. The room where it happened sat empty, neither of them even dared to open the door, even knowing that any trace of the tragedy had been scrubbed away.
Morbidly, he'd lie awake at night wondering what the neighbours thought, what strangers thought that room had looked like that day. Over exaggerating, or romanticising the worst day of his life.
Now he wonders what the new owners think. Do they use that room? What rumours have they heard?
The house no longer feels like a home, it's more of a monster lurking. And Ted thinks that might be why London has been so healing. It was damaging always knowing his personal demon was just a couple of streets away, with an unexpected road closure or detour always threatening to take him past the house of horrors.
He drove past it a few times with Henry, wondering if he'd ever be strong enough to tell the little boy about what happened to his grandpa, and why his father's heart still aches.
Henry asked, “if that was the school you went to, did you live near here?”
Ted’s hands gripped the steering wheel tight, resisting the urge to clench his teeth. He lied, “ya know, I don't really remember”.
Because how can he begin to explain that bile starts to rise in his throat a block away and that his stomach doesn't settle until he can no longer see the faded blue exterior in the rearview mirrors?
“Because you're old now?”
“Yeah, buddy. Something like that”.
But no matter how much he wants to forget, there’s always so much to remember. Forgotten moments wedged between the floorboards, and whispering from inside the walls. The home in his mind's eye is nothing compared to standing outside on the sidewalk, face-to-face with the structure. The details of days and nights that had seemed so insignificant when they happened, scream out at him now. As loud and unforgiving, as they are comforting and nostalgic.
A couple of days after his seventeenth birthday, and a little over a year after his father's passing, the town felt as though it had fallen silent.
The seasonal sounds of backyard barbecues, and children who had made every inch of the neighbourhood their playground teetered out slowly, then all at once. Warm days had given way to truly cool evenings and without the white noise of the cicadas buzzing Ted found it tough to fall asleep.
His Ma hadn't asked any questions when he took the car keys for a late-night drive. It had become routine.
While his new habit was beginning to cost a fortune in gas, it felt like a small price to pay. To drive until the music on the radio drowned out his thoughts, and the wind blowing through the rolled-down windows reminded him he could still feel.
Usually, he'd start out in the suburbs, winding his way through cookie-cutter streets, and he'd keep going only turning back when the asphalt became dirt roads stretching all the way out of town.
But something had shifted inside of him, age seventeen and a few days. He just kept going. And the longer he drove, the faster he drove. Flooring it, the tires kicking up dust behind him. He wanted to scream. To cry. To throw up. Faster. His heart was racing, and the steady pounding of his own pulse rushing in his ears was failing to block out the echo of the gunshot playing on repeat inside his head.
He hated his father for what he did. To him. To his mom. For leaving them both alone. But Ted also hated the way he'd let the rage within him grow and fester. Burning himself from the inside out. Faster. 80. 95. 100 mph.
A rogue cow wandering from its pasture startled him to his senses, slamming on the breaks he swerved, the car spinning before he was able to steer into a skid, narrowly missing the animal in the middle of the road.
Nothing could've stopped the manic, watery laughter that escaped his lungs. His chest heaving for breath as he sobbed and cackled at the same time. It was like all of the air was being knocked out of his lungs, sucker punched by every emotion he'd been pushing down, and shoving aside.
The rush of adrenaline left his hands shaking for the entire drive home. But still, he said nothing about it to his mother. He set the car keys down in the bowl by the door and then met her in the kitchen. She was sitting and doing a puzzle at the dining table.
“You alright Teddy?”
“Of course, Ma. Just needed to clear my head” he grinned, pressing a kiss to her cheek.
“I worry about you when you waltz back in here so late,” she confessed, crossing the room to put her empty water glass in the sink.
“Waltzing you say?” And his laughter gave him away as he took her hand giving her a slow twirl before hugging her.
“I'm okay, Ma. I promise”.
There’s a guilt that comes with trying to forget, and now more than ever Ted is realizing that it’s not possible to erase a moment in its entirety; and try as he might, it’s not possible to suppress the bad without losing some of the good as well. And, just the same, there will always be great days, that get touched by the worst ones.
Watching Henry pick up a set of darts on his first trip to London, felt like a thousand pinpricks across his skin. It felt like watching his own childhood from outside his body, the hand of his father’s ghost on his shoulder. When Ted decided to do his white knighting for Rebecca, and picked up the same darts that Henry had held, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to get his heart to stop racing. Looking back, it felt good, to peel back the layers just enough to let his heart fill with a fondness for his father; to be able to hold the memory of his dad in his hands and decide what to do with it rather than allow himself to be consumed by it.
Doctor Sharon had done the same thing for him, asking him to tell her about something he liked about his old man.
He tries to do the same thing now with Rebecca, concentrating on the way her thumb rubs circles across the back of his hand. He’s sure she doesn’t even realize she’s doing it. It’s a relief he wasn’t expecting. Michelle knew about his father, but she could never stomach Ted reminiscing. She was, and still is he supposes, an advocate for leaving the past in the past. He respects that perspective, and always understood her reasoning. Everyone copes differently. In hindsight, it was just another way they didn’t match up, and he doesn’t hold it against her.
But Ted knows he needs something different, and he deserves someone who can help him navigate that, so he can help them with their baggage too.
Rebecca has been that person, and Ted lets himself cry; to feel all the things he resisted for so long. He doesn’t pick and choose, holding everything all at once, valuing it all in equal measure.
“I fell out of that tree,” he sniffles, pointing to the green leave branches that now tower above the house, “broke my arm that summer”.
“Were you a clumsy child?” Rebecca asks.
He shakes his head, “Nah, just enthusiastic, and long-limbed”.
She laughs, and he’s glad for it. He tells her about his memories as they come to him, shimmering little gems he hadn’t been able to see from all the dust he’d allowed to collect. It doesn’t fix anything, there’s nothing to fix, but it eases the weight on his chest and lessens the metallic taste in his mouth.
They drive back to his Ma’s house, across town. The windows are down and the radio playing low. He glances at Rebecca at every stop sign. She’s stunning under the yellow glow of the streetlights. And it all feels so simple all of a sudden.
His smile grows as they pull into the driveway, Henry dropping his basketball in favour of tackling them into hugs. Rebecca, it turns out, is pretty good at free throws.
And when Henry says, “Yeah, but Rebecca is good at everything!”
Her green eyes meet his, and Ted feels the now familiar feeling of another hedge maze wall collapsing inside his heart.
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