Started my daily ficlets to make the hiatus pass, then decided to keep going with a 2nd cycle, and then a 3rd, 4th, etc through 61st cycle. Now cycle 62!
TOP 15 COUNTDOWN - Something I do once in a while, if you will recall, where I take my favorite characters, ships, friendships, series (from my daily stories) and put them in order, the number 1 of which gets a seven-chapter story in the end :)
Coming in at number 4: Quinn Fabray
"On My Ground"
Quinn
By the time the news would reach her, the whole thing was already over. Her mother had called out of nowhere, and she had told her that there had been an incident at McKinley. Someone had brought in a weapon. She had assured her that, although shots had been fired, not one person had been wounded or killed. 'More of a scare than anything,' her mother had called the ordeal.
For Quinn, it had felt like more, and for a while after they had hung up she had remained as she was, needed to properly process what she'd been told.
It had not been her school in nearly a year, but it had been her home for the hardest and most memorable years of her life up to now. Her friends were still there, some of the ones she had adopted as her brothers and sisters.
It was never going to stop giving her this feeling, like being there, in body or in spirit, was like being home. To some that might have made it sound like heaven, a place where all was well, but that wasn't it. Home was the good and the bad, both of them together, it was enjoying the good and dealing with the bad, having people there to see you through it.
McKinley High had been that for her. In all the insanity she had gone through, it was the place where she had found some of the best reasons to smile. Most of those were people, a room…
It was safety, or it was supposed to be. In that room, nothing bad could stick to her. It slipped from her and left her able to breathe.
And in five seconds flat, two shots had taken that feeling away from them.
She had heard from all of them, Brittany, Artie, Tina, Sam, Blaine, Kitty… Hearing all of their tales, she had felt the dread of it cling to her heart. She had not been there, but it had happened in that room, her room, and she knew how it must have felt. At least she felt something. They had lived it.
She had felt anger after a while. Whoever had done this, no one had been caught, but they were out there. Was this supposed to be a joke? Did they think it would be funny? It was already real in their heads, but like most anyone they had probably thought 'it won't be us. It wouldn't happen here.'
Whoever it was, they had slipped in under all of their skins and ripped out that denial, and for what? How many of them must have cowered there for minutes, hours, terrorized, thinking that at any moment their life could be snuffed out? How many of them would spend days, weeks, months, years, marked with that fear in one way or another? Would they be too scared to go back?
This was supposed to be their place, just as it had been hers, and she could not get past this feeling. It was still hers, even now that she was done. It was an assault on her ground.
At Yale, no one knew who she'd been before. They might hear little things, mostly what she herself decided she wanted to share, and now this had happened and it made her wonder if she'd had it all wrong. Was she holding her past too close to herself? She wasn't ashamed of who she'd been.
Some parts she held guarded for good reasons. Being here she was supposed to have this, a new chance, clean slate, and she'd used it. Maybe it was time to bring some of the old Quinn Fabray back.
The next night, she had left school with a couple of the girls from class. They wanted to do something, and Quinn had mentioned going to a karaoke bar, maybe as a joke, if they didn't care for it. Sonia and Hanie were some of the more open people she'd met though, and they had declared it might be fun. So they had gone.
"Are you any good?" Sonia had asked Hanie with a chuckle. The tall Korean girl looked nervous.
"Sort of. I don't know though, maybe if I had a buddy…" she opened, and Sonia nodded.
"Fine, I can go with a duet. Will you serenade me?" she asked dramatically.
"Only if you don't tell Simon," Hanie played back.
"It'll be our little secret. A one-night musical tryst."
"What about you?" Hanie had asked. "What are you going to do?"
"I think I have a pretty good idea what I'll do," she assured them.
Some days she missed it more than others, sitting in that room, listening as her friends sang, doing her own songs. For however long it was, even if she liked the song or not, she was happy. Did I say it enough? Did I show it? Maybe she couldn't even realize it, because she was still there.
Now she was gone, and one day ago someone had changed that special room for her family. She wasn't there with them, and that was how it was supposed to be, she knew. Her time had passed, now it was theirs. But she had pretended like so much of who she'd been didn't matter, and now she knew better.
Sonia and Hanie had done their duet to 'I Got You Babe' like it was their love story, and it was a wonder that either of them had managed to get through it and hold in their laughter until they were done.
When it had been her turn, she had gone up, and though it had not been spoken aloud, in her mind she was in that choir room in Lima, Ohio, and she had begun like an audition. Hi, I'm Quinn Fabray, and I'll be doing 'Say a Little Prayer.'
THE END
A/N: This is a one-shot ficlet, which means that signing up for story alert will not bring you any alerts.
In the event of a sequel, the story will be separate from this one. And as chapter stories go, they are
always clearly indicated as such [ex: "Days 204-210" in the summary] Thank you!