AN: I don't own anything. If I did, this would have been in the series. This is for Dana because I do what she tells me, no questions asked.
You can get addicted to a certain kind of sadness…
Her frame was slumped in the hospital bed, her body ripped and torn. The word exhausted didn't begin to cover how she was feeling. There was something else there too, something worse than physical pain. She shut her eyes and leaned her head back, but the only thing she could see was the face of a baby taken away from her as soon as she'd taken her first breath.
Quinn wasn't sure if she had it in her to be a mother. Not at first, not when that pregnancy test sealed her fate. But once she'd seen that face, that pale, pale face, she'd known.
There was a knock on the side of the doorframe. She wanted to open her eyes and see who was there, but she didn't care enough to. She didn't even care enough to say, "Come in."
She could tell that the person entered by the sound of footsteps.
A hand grazed her forehead and even then she didn't open her eyes. She wanted to be dead. And the best way to be dead and not die is to pretend.
She heard a gentle humming and instantly knew who was by her side. Her stomach lurched and she wanted so badly to open her eyes, to see the man who had helped her into this predicament. She wanted to scream, to punch his chest, to cry and ask him why he would let their baby slip through their fingers like he did.
But she didn't.
Cause she was dead.
Even if it was just pretend.
"Hush little baby, don't say a word," his lips replaced his hand on her forehead.
She wanted to scream, to push him away, to make him leave.
But she couldn't.
She needed this pain.
She needed this pain to prove that she was alive, that this wasn't fake, that this was her life now.
"Puck's gonna buy you a mockingbird."
She could feel the tears stabbing at her eyelids, but she wouldn't give in. She wouldn't let him see her cry. She was dead. And the dead don't cry.
"And if that mockingbird don't sing, Puck's gonna buy you a diamond ring."
Quinn let the tears push out through closed lids. Maybe the dead could make one exception.
"And if that diamond ring don't shine, Puck is gonna buy you a looking glass."
Quinn opened her eyes. Puck had pulled back and was looking down at the woman he told himself he could never love. Because loving meant attachment and attachment meant pain. Puck didn't do pain.
But now, more than ever, he was aware of the heart beating in his chest, the one that he thought had turned to ice long ago. He felt that heart pound against his ribcage as it threatened to pop out of his chest and commit suicide.
He felt it tearing and ripping, stabbing and breaking, as he watched the girl he swore to never love fall apart. He felt it skipping and jumping as he realized that his daughter would never call him daddy, never ask him to read a bed time story as she pulled her blanket up to her chin. His daughter would never come home to him crying because her first boyfriend bailed out on her.
Puck would never be able to sit in the crowd as he watched his daughter graduate kindergarten, sixth grade, and eventually high school. To his daughter, he would be just another stranger. And this girl that he made sure he'd never love, would never look at him the same way again.