Full Summary: Makenzi Quinn wasn't your typical teenager. She was tough as nails and always knew how to do what she needed to in order to survive. When her life took an unexpected turn and she found herself relying on an unlikely source for support, she learned that being Southside wasn't all that bad after all.
Disclaimer: I do not own Shameless (2011), any of the original characters of the TV series, nor any of the direct quotes from the show!
A/N: The only true to a T quote I use is the opening line. It fit into my story too perfectly not to use. Takes place right before S1 and follows the plot loosely. I will be omitting certain plots and characters to fit this story, so I'm going to consider this AU, especially since several characters have been changed a little to fit into the plot better.
Nobody's saying our neighborhood is the Garden of Eden. Hell, some people say God avoids this place altogether. But it's been a good home to us. For my family, this is the only home we've ever known. We've faced trials and triumphs in the streets of this piss poor neighborhood and we've found our footing in society just by being here.
If you asked me to describe where I grew up, I'd say fierce or dangerous or violent. We were all of those things and more, we had to be. We bounced from one Southside neighborhood to the other. Canaryville, Back of the Woods, you name it, we lived there. Being incredibly poor has that effect. Right now, we're barely keeping up with the rent for our very tiny three-bedroom home complete with a rodent infestation and a leaky roof. We lived next door to the Milkovich's now, and let's just say, I liked our old house a whole lot better.
We never stayed in the same home for long growing up. With our mother getting sicker and sicker every passing month and our father constantly going AWOL to do whatever it was he did with his life, we were often left picking up what little we had and bouncing to whatever new house we could find.
We spent more time in foster care than we did out of it, it seemed. My siblings and I were so used to the process, that as soon as we saw our case worker pull up, we knew to pack our things. This was the longest we'd been out. Nearly an entire year and only thanks to the fact that Angel, the second oldest of seven, finally aged out and took over the bills and upkeep.
There were seven of us in total, but only five of us still got to be considered Quinn's. Our youngest two siblings were adopted by some family in New York and we hadn't seen them in five years. After mom got even sicker than before, the state refused to let them come back into the shit hole we call a home.
So there's Jake, our oldest brother, who's twenty-one but a total fuck up. He spends more time in jail than he does home these days. Then there's Angel. Then there's me. I'm sixteen and working my ass off to stay out of the system. Then there's Gabe, the golden goose. He's smart, kind, and a total dork, but he's a good kid. He's fifteen. Then there's Abby, my favorite sibling. She's ten and tough as nails. The younger two, Jenna and Gracelyn, are six and five respectively. They were great kids, but after Gracelyn was born, the state had enough with the seven of us always ending up in the system. So they were taken away and our parents couldn't give a rat's ass about it.
Growing up in our house, you learned not to question what Bridgette, our mother, or Erik, our father did. Bridgette was a…colorful woman to say the least. She was sick for as long as I could remember, yet she always seemed to find a way to put food on the table. These days, she looks like a walking corpse. Erik, on the other hand, was a cruel, heartless man, yet he always seemed to come through. As far as I know, he does jobs for Terry Milkovich to keep the lights on. God only knows what kind of things he does, the Milkovich's have a pretty rough reputation after all.
This was the first time in as long as I could remember that I was actually excited for the start of the school year. Despite everything, I was keeping my grades up and managed to just barely get enough credits to push my way into my junior year. I only had to survive the next two years and I'd finally be free. I had high hopes of leaving the Southside behind, simply because there was nothing holding me down. Of course, I had my small group of friends, most importantly, the older three Gallagher kids. Fiona and Angel were best friends growing up, so she's like another sister to me, and Lip, Ian and I have been friends since we were little kids. We knew each other like the back of our hands.
Angel was rushing around the kitchen, trying to find the shoebox we used to store the winter squirrel fund, when I heard a crash come from upstairs.
"Mom?" she asked, looking at me with a troubled expression.
"Gabe's got Abby over at the park, so mom's the only one upstairs," I reminded her. Gabe was a good kid. At fifteen, he really did give his all for our family. He was probably buried deep in a book while watching Abby run around.
"Go check on her?" Angel said, a comical expression on her face, almost as if she thought I was too thick to understand what she was saying. "Makenzi, go check on mom."
"Fine," I scoffed. My mother and I had a strained relationship to say the least. Ever since we lost Gracelyn and Jenna, I could barely stand being in the same room as her. I shoved myself up from my spot at the counter and made my way towards the stairs, trying my best to ignore the rat that raced along the wall as I nudged a pile of dirty laundry out of the way.
I made it upstairs quickly, my heart racing in my chest as I knocked on the wooden door that led into our parent's room.
"Mom?" I called, my voice cracking. "Mom? You okay?"
There was no response. I sucked in a deep breath and forced myself to shove open the door. It gave with little effort. I stepped into the dark, stuffy room and looked around. Across from the bed, I saw a heap I could only guess was my mother.
"Mom? Mom!" I yelled as I ran to her side, turning her thin body over. Her face was as pale as the white sheet that covered the bed, her hair, faded and tangled, seemed to surround her sunken cheeks like a thin veil. "Mom, wake up, mom!"
I laid her on her back and quickly checked for a pulse. There was none. She wasn't breathing.
"Angel!" I screamed as I straddled our mother's thin frame, my hands pumping at her chest. "Angel!"
"What the-," Angel's demand cut off when she saw me desperately trying to save our mother. "Kenzi, stop, she signed a DNR last week."
"What?" I paused, tears in my eyes.
"She doesn't want to be saved."
The words hit me like a ton of bricks. I rolled off of our mother's limp, pale body and stared up at my older sister with tears in my eyes.
"She knew she was going to die, Kenzi, she knew," Angel said softly. She pulled the cellphone we shared out of her back pocket and dialed 911. "She knew."
I ran from the room, tears streaming down my face as I shoved open the back door and inhaled the warm, late summer breeze. I felt my body trembling as I sank to my knees, clawing at the yellow, dried out grass, my heart hammering in my chest.
"The fuck's your problem?" Mickey, the youngest Milkovich son asked as he watched me rock on my heels from his perch near the side of his house. "You look like you just watched someone die."
"I…" I sucked in a shaking breath, shaking my head quickly. Mickey's a cruel, heartless kid. Always in and out of juvie and never really one to give a rat's ass about anyone but himself. But he had a soft spot for me. Sure, we fooled around sometimes, and sure, I always seemed to find a way to cover for him, but we weren't friends. We would never be friends.
"Shit, what happened Kenz?" he asked, using the pet name most of the neighborhood knew me by.
"My mom died," I whispered, tears falling from my eyes again. "She's…"
The wail of an ambulance silenced me. I forced myself to my feet and before turning to go back inside, I caught sight of Mickey's face. He knew my mother in passing, and while we were never close, he knew I was going to be living the rest of my life with regrets.
"Fuck, Kenz, I'm sorry," he scoffed, running his hand over his face. I said nothing and made my way back inside, facing the chaos head on.
Death is never easy, no matter how much a person hurt you, no matter how much you wished you could change the past, when someone you should care about dies, it comes with an aftershock of emotions.
We buried our mom a week after she died. After we learned that the cause of death was cardiac arrest, caused by the cancer that had spread to every organ in her body. Angel said she knew mom had cancer, but she didn't know how bad it was until after mom signed the DNR and told Angel that when she died, she wanted her eldest daughter to look after the rest of us.
When the morning of the funeral arrived, I was laying on the bed I shared with Abby, my eyes locked on the chipped paint above me on the cracked, leaking ceiling. I was vaguely aware of the voices coming from the hall, but made no move to get up. The days following our mother's death had been trying to say the least. We made Jake hunt down our father, with the help of the Milkovich boys, and Angel made all the necessary arrangements, contacted mom's family, and made sure that no one else had to lift a finger. That was always how she coped with tragedy, she'd take on the work and do it without complaint, she was a saint in that sense.
Abby and I spent a lot of time lying in bed, telling stories about the good memories we had of mom. For me, they were few and far between, but Abby always saw the good in mom, despite her short comings. Gabe spent the week packing up mom's belongings, saying it would be easier to cope if we packed away the constant reminders of the last few years.
"She won't miss the funeral," Abby's voice resonated off the walls. "She promised."
"She hasn't left that room in days," Gabe sighed in response.
"We'll get her to come," a familiar, welcomed voice said with conviction. Lip. "She'll be there."
I didn't move as the bedroom door opened and the sound of footsteps stepping over the pile of clothes against the wall made me tense. I felt weight add to the edge of the bed, before I saw bright blue eyes staring down at me with a concerned look.
"You have to get dressed," Lip said softly, his eyes locked on mine.
"And shower, you're pretty ripe," Ian's voice added. I forced myself to let my gaze all on my red-headed best friend.
"Go away," I moaned, tears threatening to bubble over again. "I'm not going."
"You promised your sisters you would," Ian said stubbornly. "We'll be right there next to you, don't worry."
"Your mom would want you there," Lip added.
"She hated me," I whispered, my words hitching in my throat. "The last thing she said to me was how I ruined her life."
"You didn't ruin her life, Kenz," Angel's voice rang from the hall. Suddenly, the room that us three girls shared seemed incredibly small. "Mom didn't hate you."
"I could have saved her," I whispered then, the tears I'd been fighting to hold back finally falling.
"She didn't want to fight anymore, Kenz, we had no control over that," Angel reassured me. "C'mon, I'll help get Abby dressed, you shower. We need to be at the funeral home by noon."
"I'm not going," I said again, this time, sitting up, knocking Lip to the side. He wrapped an arm around my shoulder and gave my sister a troubled look before pulling me close. I felt the sob rip from my chest before I could call it back.
I heard Ian whisper something to Angel, but couldn't make out what over the sounds of my sobs echoing off the yellow stained bedroom walls. Angel replied quietly before shutting the door behind her. A moment later, Ian was passing a joint to me as he crawled into the bed next to me, his arm lacing around my shoulders, overlapping with Lip's.
"After the funeral, we can all head over to our place," Ian said softly. "You can get drunk and crash there and we'll make sure you're safe."
"I don't need a baby sitter," I growl in spite of myself, causing both boys to smile softly.
"Hey, we're here for you, okay?" Lip said gently. I found myself amused by the irony of the situation. Only a few months prior, I was saying the exact same thing to them after Monica took off, leaving Fiona to raise the five younger kids as her own. "We stick together, remember?"
His words brought the sense of comfort I was so desperately craving. Despite everything, despite everything we'd lost over the years, we always had each other to fall back on. It was something I later learned to never take for granted.
People like to say that Chicago's Southside is full of violence and crimes and the absolute slummiest people alive. Those people haven't seen into the hearts of those who live within the confines of the slum. Those people haven't seen into the lives of those who fight every single day just to get by. If you asked me, I'd tell you that nowhere in the world would ever feel as much like home as right in the heart of the darkest streets of Chicago.