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 86th cycle. Now cycle 87!

IT'S THE FIFTH ANNIVERSARY CYCLE OF GLEEKATHON! - Five years! Five years! *insert flailing* Okay, not quite, but by the end of this cycle, it will have been five years of daily stories (sometimes twice a day! ... and for seven very frightening days a couple years back, three times a day!). It will also be the end of this crazy ride. I started thinking about ending gleekathon months ago, and I wanted to finish my ongoing series before that happened. It made it so I could finish out this fifth year, and it couldn't be any better that this cycle is actually ending on October 22nd 2014, which was the day it began, in 2009... Now here we go!

This story is 'Additional Scenes' for Return & Divert, a Sunshine Girls 2 series story originally posted on July 5th 2014.

"Dear Teacher"
Grace (OC), Will, Emma, Nora (AU!Beth)
Sunshine Girls 2 series

"Grace, I'm going to ask you again, and I need you to be honest. Do you feel safe at home?" The words seemed so simple, but they still left her feeling uneasy.

"What's going to happen to my brother if I say… She won't hurt him, I swear," she shook her head, pleading. He was still so unaware of anything going on between his mother and his sister.

"We'll make sure he's where he needs to be, even if that's right where he is," Will told her, and in the silence that followed, it felt like the question was being asked for a third time. This time she answered.

"No. I don't."

She had trouble believing she'd said it aloud. Now it was really out there. Yes, Nora knew, and her mother and stepfather, and Emily, but Mr. Schuester… It felt official. Her knees had started feeling weak, and she'd moved to sit back down in the front row of chairs. Saying what she'd been feeling in private over the last few days only left her having to face the fact that this was going to be part of her life from now on, that it would shape that life, for who knew how long… and it terrified her. When Will came and sat next to her, she wasn't sure where to look. She didn't want to look at him and see him feeling sorry for her. How was she supposed to walk back into this room again?

"Grace, will you do something for me?" he finally spoke, and now she looked at him. "I want you to come with me and go talk to Miss Pillsbury."

She'd hesitated about doing it, about having to tell one more person the whole situation, but if it helped at all to ensure her brother didn't have to get pulled out of their home, then she was willing to go through with it. After a couple minutes, she'd gotten up and followed him, and they'd walked to Emma's office.

She was sitting at her desk, talking on the phone with what they guessed to be a student's mother, arguing over a letter of recommendation she'd written, which had supposedly cost her son an acceptance into the college of his choice. No matter how much Emma tried to kindly explain it had been a long shot, with her son's grades, the woman clearly wasn't paying attention. She looked up when she saw her husband walk in with one of his students, watched as Will motioned for Grace to sit while he shut the office door and drew the blinds shut. Grace felt her heart beat a little faster at everything he did, feeling the world shutting in around her, while Emma watched this with further and further divided attention between her visitors and the woman on the phone.

"Mrs… Mrs Cooper, I'll have to call you back… No, it won't change Trevor's… Hello?" Emma frowned, then hung up. "Well that's done, that's… Will?" she looked to him before looking back to Grace. The girl had looked up to her teacher, and she looked like she wanted to be anywhere else but here.

"You can tell her," Will nodded to the girl, moving to sit in the chair next to hers. Emma looked from one to the other, and the tense mood only grew the longer it took for Grace to work up the courage to start.

"I… I told my mother about Nora and me, how we're… how we started dating," she finally said. Emma refrained from asking how it had gone, didn't need to. "She was… she was upset, she…"

"It's okay," Will encouraged her. In her head, all Grace could think was 'No, it's not, how can it?' She knew she and her mother would never have the relationship they'd had before anymore. This revelation had changed them, and there was no going back.

"The things she said…" she shook her head, remembering. "I never want to repeat them."

"You don't have to," Emma told her.

"I could have put it behind I think, except that she hit me," she pointed up to her face, and she could feel Emma's posture shift.

"When was this?" she asked.

"Three… three days ago. I-I called the secretary the next morning and pretended to be my mother so I could stay home," Grace revealed this quickly, concerned they would turn her in for that, but Emma only gave a small nod: it's alright, go on. "Then Nora came over in the afternoon to bring my homework, and when she saw my face, she took me to her father's house, we spent the night there, us and Emily. We told our parents we were staying at each other's houses. The day after, yesterday, we were here all day, but after… Nora's mom and Mr. Hudson busted her, so she told them everything. Mr. Hudson came to my house, he talked to my mother. After he left…" She paused, the memory of her mother barging into her room the day before still making her flinch. Rather than having to go into details with words, Grace pulled back the sleeve from her arm.

She remembered repeating the rest of the story for the guidance counselor, pleading with her about how she didn't want people involved, didn't want her brother to be dragged into all this, when he was perfectly safe there… unlike her. And just as she'd confirmed it for Will, Grace had needed to confirm to her how she did not feel safe in her own home.

"I couldn't sleep last night. I thought she would come at me again, like she did after Mr. Hudson left." The thought of having to go back there, to her own house, had been bubbling up anxiety in her all day, and as much as she had given herself to try and put up the picture of calm, of everything being good and normal, on the inside she was falling apart screaming. "But I have to go back, I… I don't have anywhere else to go, all my family's back in Scotland, I can't keep having friends let me stay the night, I…" Sometimes she still wondered if she couldn't make it on her own, just pack her bags and run off where her mother wouldn't find her… If she hadn't had Nora, she might really have done it.

Emma wasn't blind to what her husband had in mind when he'd brought Grace to her. As much as it was exactly what it looked like, him knowing his student might benefit from the conversation, she knew what he was appealing to, knew what he'd already thought of doing. He wanted them to take her in, to convince Grace's mother to let her stay with them, at least until she was eighteen, which would happen in a matter of months. She saw what he was getting at and, truth be told, she would have been the one to offer it up if he hadn't. The best they could do was offer that peace of mind to Grace, and if she felt comfortable with the idea, then it would be all they needed to get the process started.

The conversation had carried on for over half an hour before either Emma or Will ever approached the offer with Grace. When they did, they could see the disbelief in her eyes, either that it would work, or that they could really want to do this. It took Emma's pulling up her mother's contact information before she believed it, and even then…

"You don't have to do this, really, I… I don't want to impose." Emma tipped her head to her.

"Then it's a good thing you won't be."

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!