Author's Note: This is a tie-in. It's a tie-in to the current episodes of Glee on TV, but it's also (and this will become more apparent as it goes along) a tie-in to my other story, This Space Around My Heart. It's the missing link, so to speak – the explanation of what made Finn into that broken creature who is so valiantly trying to deny himself love. I had a choice to include this as a flashback but decided against it – because I have no idea how long it will be, and how much it can still follow canon. At some point it will most likely veer off, but I kind of find it amazing that everything that happened up to this point and probably for as long as Finchel are still apart can be used as backstory. I must be the only Finchel shipper who is quite happy at the way things are going at the moment, at least when it comes to my personal writing.

Disclaimer: I would like to thank the writers of Glee on Fox for writing Finn the way I had planned, because if they hadn't, this would be a total AU story. And it's really nice to make their version work for mine for once. (Thanks for creating them all, too – and allowing us all to play with them)


Wrong

If anyone asked her how she knows, she wouldn't be able to give an explanation. Call it a kind of mother's instinct, maybe; but really it's something else. There's mother's instinct that will tell you when a scratch is just a scratch or a serious injury to your son, there's the kind of instinct that tells you when he needs a comforting word or a hug and when not; and then there's that feeling of knowing something's wrong. She's not sure that isn't an additional sixth sense instead.

There's that dreadful feeling at the pit of her stomach again. She gets it every time she catches him unawares. It's not that he does anything he shouldn't – most of those times all he seems to be doing is sitting in that chair of his that used to be Chris' – but that there's a look on his face. That look. There's not one single word that will describe it, really; at least she can't think of one. She calls it his mask, and that scares her more than anything else about it. It seems the wrong word, somehow; wrong as in not right for a boy of his age and innocence. He's always been her little boy, so full of innocence and childish wonder at everything, no matter what. But whenever she finds him with that blank expression on his face, she's not sure that same boy is still there, and it scares her.

Wrong. It terrifies her.

When all the drama of Quinn Fabray and her baby happened to him last year, she was scared. For him, for Quinn, for herself, for the future… But no matter what mood he'd gone through as a result of the girl's scheming, he had still remained that same sweet boy underneath it all. Maybe a little more serious, a little less wide-eyed, but still… very much the same childlike innocence. And then he'd found Rachel, and as much as that girl could set her on edge sometimes with her attitude, she'd immediately seen the benefits Rachel's influence had on him. But she'd also, with that mother's instinct, known that there was something a little too intense about it all; just like the girl was too intense, it seemed to carry forth into everything Rachel touched. Including, and most of all, Finn.

But she doesn't want to blame Rachel.

She doesn't pretend to understand what went wrong between them. She isn't sure she even knows the whole story; in fact, maybe the first time she ever saw a hint of that mask flash across his face was the afternoon he came to "inform her of his decision to break up with Rachel", and she doesn't know if she wants to trust the Finn who talks like that. The Finn who talks like that spent most of Christmas sitting in that chair up in his room, and refused to talk to anyone about it if approached directly. It's not like she didn't try. But there's only so much you can do if your son acts like nothing is wrong besides not being able to kill some zombie overlord on level 8, even if it's blindingly obvious he wasn't playing the game until he realized you were in the room (at least in the beginning – now you know by the noises coming from his room that he is playing it, day and night, and you're worried about that, too, because all this running around killing things can't have a good effect on his mind on top of everything else).

She really doesn't want to blame Rachel. But she wishes she knew what on earth happened so she could understand any of this. So she would know what to blame. So she could fix it, like she always did before.

But her mother's instinct is failing her. Or something. This whole being-a-mom thing is failing her. It's never been easy, being a single mom (and she doesn't want to remember the first years after Chris' death, when all was a hazy cloud of misery and they barely scraped by, she doesn't want to think of feeling so desolate she didn't even care when her own mother had to come and take over because she was too much of a mess to look after herself nevermind a toddler) but these last two years it's been like she's had her control stick yanked from her and she's left unable to stop the inevitable crash from happening. And she knows that eventually that's what has to happen between a mother and her child, because you have to let them go and find their own feet. But it's not supposed to happen like this. There's not supposed to be this drastic a change. (Is there?)

Maybe that's what terrifies her. That she doesn't know how to fix what can't be fixed by her. That she's lost him.


She is standing over by the fridge, head buried almost inside it looking for a yoghurt she knew she put in there the other day, when she hears the faint click of the front door being closed. For a moment, her heart speeds up, imagining all the dark and bloody outcomes of this (burglars, murderers, rapists, escaped convicts) before she hears the unmistakable shuffling of feet that belong to her son. She relaxes, dark thoughts abandoned instantly. And then freezes up, realizing it's 5 am and he just came in.

Maybe he doesn't see her there, behind the open fridge, as he walks into the unlit kitchen (unlit save from the corner where the light from the open fridge is spilling onto her and the floor and wall so how can he not see that?) and through it, past her, towards the stairs that lead to his room. Maybe he's too wrapped up in whatever he's thinking to notice the world around him. Maybe he's just ignoring her… hoping she'll let it go, she'll ignore him in turn.

"Finn?"

She almost scares herself with her whisper. She isn't sure she wants to get into this now, didn't realize she was going to speak until she did. But that look on his face as he walked by… she thinks she recognized it. Even if she feels powerless to address it now, she has to say something, right? It's 5 am. And he just came home. It's not supposed to go like that.

"Mom…."

The word sounds like a plea. To let it go. To leave him be… To help him out of this mess he's in. It sounded like that, too – right? She has to try – right?

"Where were you?"

That didn't come out the way she wanted it to. It's not even what she'd wanted to say. But she doesn't know how to say what she wanted to say. And it's a valid question after all. It's 5 am. He just came home. She should have made it sound a lot harsher.

"Out."

It's barely above a whisper but it's an unmistakable rebuke. He's annoyed. Blocking her off.

"It's 5 am, Finn. Where were you?"

She can't let it go. Why doesn't he sound guilty? She switches on the light. He's standing with his back turned to her, unmoving, as if frozen to the spot. There's something about the way he holds his head, however, that makes her feel like he's got his fingers wrapped around her heart and with every word she's going to extract from him he's going to crush it a little more. It's a weird thought. But she can't shake it.

The moment stretches, second after second racing by, and he's still not said anything. She stares at him from her spot over by the fridge. She feels cold, and she doesn't think it has anything to do with the fridge being open or only wearing a nightgown. There's a tendon at the side of his neck, twitching, and she knows he just did that thing with his jaw that he does when he's frustrated or angry. And then it stills. And his turns even further away from her.

"At Puck's. Playing a game. Lost track of time. Sorry."

She frowns. It doesn't sound right, somehow. She doesn't know why. Maybe if he turned his face and looked at her while he said it, instead of turning to the opposite wall. She fears it means he is lying. No – that's not correct: she knows he is lying - she fears what that means.

But what else could he have been doing? It's not like it's never happened before. He's spent a lot of time at the Puckerman house lately. Or so he says. Maybe it's all been a lie; she didn't pay attention to it when he said it before during the day.

Or maybe she's just reading too much into this. Maybe he's just tired and worn out from playing all night.

How is she supposed to deal with this?

"Fine."

It's not, but she doesn't know how else to express her annoyance with all of this. Any of this. And he knows her well enough to know that that small word doesn't mean it, either.

"We'll talk about this once you got some sleep and I'm back from work."

She's not sure what that will be like, or if they will really talk, but she guesses she'll have the day to organize her thoughts. At least in her line of work she'll have plenty of time to do that.

He doesn't answer - just nods his head once. She stares after him as he simply moves on as if the last few minutes hadn't happened.

"Goodnight," she says, but knows he can't hear her anymore. Still, she has to make an effort.


That day at work she spends some time trying to understand it all, to make some sense of it – so she can find some way to fix it. Because it cannot go on like it has. She thinks she is partly to blame for the way he is behaving; maybe everything that happened to them in the last year was simply too much for him to deal with, and his only way out is by detaching himself from everything. Maybe she should have paid more attention to him. Maybe she should have been around more. Maybe she should have listened better, or tried to see beyond the obvious.

Maybe she hasn't been a good mom at all.

She hasn't really fixed anything in a long while. When he told her about the baby, all she'd be able to do was hold him and tell him it was going to be alright. How was that fixing anything? She remembers feeling relieved that she could finally do something when she'd allowed Quinn Fabray to stay at their house; but that relief had promptly changed – first to annoyance with the way the girl would treat Finn (she'd never really warmed towards her, there was something coldly calculating about Quinn that she mistrusted from the start – and that had apparently been one of the instances her mother's instinct had proven correct) and then to utter dismay when the truth had come out. She'll never forget the day she packed Quinn's bags for her and dropped her off to Puckerman's. It had been the day she discovered she had a vicious streak in herself; but she did not take kindly of having been taken advantage of, so she took her own revenge by dumping her into the hands of Noah's hysterically screeching mother without feeling even the slightest bit of pity or remorse for Quinn.

She wonders if his renewed friendship with Noah means that he has forgiven Quinn, too. He's always had a big heart (although she's not sure anymore that that's a good thing) so it's not inconceivable. He hasn't mentioned her name since that day. But she knows they're in the Glee club together so she supposes he has had to deal with her in some way or another.

She wonders how he's dealing with Rachel being there, too.

But maybe she should be wondering how he is dealing with them. With having a family dumped onto him. With having a step-brother who used to have a crush on him. With having a step-father who accused him of being a homophobe. With having a mom he suddenly has to share with others. A mom who doesn't listen, doesn't pay attention, forces him into all these situations he has no way of knowing how to cope with. She remembers the anger she felt at him when she came home from work to her new home, only to be told that Burt had thrown Finn out of his house. She remembers the disbelief and the shame that filled her when she drove over to their old house where she was sure Finn was hiding at. She remembers yelling at him, pouring out all her disappointment and her rage for messing up this one good thing that had come into her life, for a full hour before she ran out of words. What's worse, she remembers the look in his eyes afterwards; she remembers the pang she got in her heart as she'd realized how some of the things she'd said had affected him; she remembers the way he pulled back from her like a frightened animal when she'd tried to take his hand after that realization.

She wonders how she could have thought she fixed that situation, just because she'd finally coaxed him into talking to her; she'd been horrified at finding out about Kurt's sordid fascination with him, and it'd taken some very uncomfortable talks with Burt before she felt secure in their relationship again. But she'd been more concerned with the status of her own relationship to consider how Finn coped with the aftermath, even if Burt had warmed towards him quickly enough again once he knew the truth.

She thinks that maybe somewhere along the way she's started to add to his problems instead of fixing them for him. She's not sure how to deal with that. She only knows that she's turned out to be a horrible mom.

By the end of the afternoon she has to ask off from work because she can't stop crying.


A/N: I would love some honest opinions about this story so far. I have to admit it comes rather easy writing Carole, because I'm a mom myself and I just have to think of all the horrible nightmares I have about having a teenager someday soon, but I'm not sure I'm not overdoing it – and that her mind really works like this. So any opinions are much appreciated. An update should come shortly – I'm halfway into the next bit already. (And a quick heads-up on the other fics – I'm working on some other updates, too)