Author's Note: I felt that Carole would have more to say to Finn about his father than we were able to see in "Yes/No", so I wrote this. Set between the Breadstix scene and Rachel singing in the choir room (which is presumably the next day).
Disclaimer: I do not own Glee or its characters.
As Finn returned from Breadstix with Kurt, his mother called him aside.
"Finn – can I talk to you please?" Carole beckoned her son into the living room. Finn exchanged a glance with Kurt, who went to his room. Finn went into the living room and stood with her, his expression guarded.
"So... I just want to talk some more about your father, Finn. I know this is very hard for you, and I'm sorry I lied about his death for so long. And I'm sorry it didn't really happen the way that I said it did, but you need to understand that how he died doesn't change the fact that he really did give everything for his country."
"He left us and died of a drug overdose," Finn stated flatly. "Just a loser, not a hero."
"It's not that simple, honey," Carole pleaded, tears in her eyes. "Your father was a good man, and he willingly signed up to serve his country and keep us safe. What happened to him... it wasn't physical, but it was still an injury. He wasn't the same man. Ultimately what happened to him in Kuwait killed him, of that I have no doubt."
"There were a lot of soldiers in Desert Storm."
"I know that the Army is a good career for many people," Carole said. "I've met people that swear it's been the making of them, and in my head I believe them. But in my heart I always think about your father and whatever it was that Desert Storm did to him, tore his heart and soul from him just as surely as if it had been ripped by shrapnel." Her tears were flowing freely now. "And I look at you – you're so much like him, I know you don't see it in the pictures much but it's the way you act, how you are – "
"Mom..." Finn put his arm around her and tried to comfort her, though right now the last thing he wanted to hear was how much he was like his father.
"No, let me finish," she protested. "I didn't tell you before because I didn't know how to bring it up, and I never wanted to remember your father the way he became. And you, you remind me so much of how he was, that same awkward openheartedness I first fell in love with. So I wanted to forget, I think, forget seeing his face, hearing his voice, but finding someone else inside. Forget the agony that came from seeing that the man I loved most in the world was lost and broken and there was nothing I could do to fix it." She choked back a sob, Finn rubbing her back awkwardly. "It might have broken me too if I hadn't had you. I saved myself from that pain by trying to make life good for you." She looked up at him. "But I couldn't let them take you too, couldn't let you make a choice like that thinking that it's like your videogames, just fighting and brotherhood and all the hurt is physical. It's not. They took my Chris away and they broke him, and they don't get to have my boy too. So I had to tell you. I'm sorry it happened the way it did. I know you're hurting." Finn broke away from her and started to pace the room, clearly still distressed. "Finn? Please talk to me."
"It's just – it tears up so much of me," Finn said, shaking his head in frustration. "I – I always had that image of him driving me on, I guess. Telling me I could make something good of myself. Be a leader, a hero like my dad. And now –" Finn's voice cracked. "Now that's all gone, I feel like that me wasn't real, and I'm really just going to be a loser like him too."
Carole went over to her son and put her hand on his arm. "Your father wasn't a loser, Finn," she said. "He was lost. It happens to a lot of people sometimes. Probably more often than anyone knows, but usually we find a way out eventually, especially if there's someone with us to help us see. But sometimes people don't, and it doesn't make them bad people or losers, just human. Maybe if your father had seen that, hadn't thought of himself as a loser, he'd have been able to find his way with us, I don't know. I do know that even as the man he became, even through the trauma and the drugs, he still loved us, even if all he could think to do to show that love was to try to spare us the rest. Wrong, of course, but still love."
"So is that what you think, I'm just lost?"
"Maybe. Maybe you just feel lost because you're trying so hard to find a way. Sometimes the way is there and it's not at all what you thought you were going for, you just have to open yourself up to seeing it." She cupped his face in her hand. "You were the light in my darkness, you know. As I wished we could have been for your father. I still had to find the way, we all have to find our own way, but you were the light I saw by." She looked insistently into his still-clouded eyes. "A loser? Never."
That night Finn lay in bed, moving a little, trying to get comfortable physically even though he knew it wasn't his body position that was stopping him from relaxing. His mind was still full of his mother's words, what she'd said about his father and about being lost, about darkness and light.
Then in his mind he heard that voice, so sweet and beautiful:
In the velvet darkness of the blackest night, burning bright, there's a guiding star...
Rachel, he thought, imagining the feel of her body in his arms, the taste of her kiss on his lips. Rachel, sitting on the lift at the tire shop, telling him that she supported him in whatever he wanted to do and believed he could do so much more. Yeah right, his negative thoughts put in. Rachel, kneeling at his feet, protesting to him that he'd just outgrown his dreams and they could find new ones together. Rachel, giving herself to him on the floor by the fire, in an act that was so much more than surrendering her body and virginity, letting him into her soul.
Light.