(Okay, I know I've been kinda off the radar for FOREVER, but I think this makes up for it. My friend and Best Beta Reader EVER, Padfoot's Prose, helped me a LOT with this, and if you're a Klaine fan you absolutely have to check out her now-completed story: "You Had Me At Sesame Street". I actually like it better than Kiss (and I LOVE that story) and it needs a lot more love than it's getting at the moment. She needs like a million and two reviews, so go check it out! After you've read this, of course. ;D
Honestly, Quinn is my favorite character and I don't think she deserves as much hate as she's been getting for a while. She's always been a good person, I think she was just a little bit confused because everyone can see how much she's been through, and everything she's lost, and loneliness and weakness just aren't feelings she was used to. It shouldn't be what ANYONE'S used to, but I think Quinn has actually dealt relatively well with all the crap she's had to go through. Not saying she couldn't have dealt with it BETTER, but she did do well with everything if you think about it.
PEOPLE I NEED TO THANK~
Padfoot's Prose (Cuz she rocks and is responsible for about half of this),
And BMontague (she is an amazing author and "The Five Stages Of Quinn Fabray" is where I got my inspiration for this in the first place. :))
DISCLAIMER-I own nada, except this amazingly long author's note. If anyone actually read the thing, you get awesome points!)
Quinn can't tell you for sure what she feels anymore.
A year ago, when she was confident and Miss Popular and perfect, she'd been so sure. Sure of who she loved, what she liked, what she thought – sure with pure confidence thatshe was right. That confidence had defined her, that confidence hadbeen her.
Back then, she could order, and be obeyed. She could feel good, feelnecessary, just knowing that people really listened to her, really wanted to listen to her. But now...
Now she's dirty and ravaged andtouched. She doesn't know why she feels so different now, as she walks down the hallways of McKinley, but she does. She feels like a stranger, like an invader in a place that had been, at another, happier time,her place.
But now it's nothing but another day in prison.
…
Finn didn't doesn't like the new Quinn.
Purple hair, new attitude, and he knows all she's doing is trying to cover up the emptiness she sees in herself. Finn knows that Quinn needs someone, and he knows he's selfish and spiteful for not wanting to be there for her.
Apparently, cheating is the way all the best relationships start. And Puck had been there for Quinn when Finn wasn't. That makes him unimportant, second best, a cast-aside. She'd lefthim, he reminds himself.
But now she's the cast-aside. Deserted by her parents, deserted by Puck, deserted by Beth. Now, she truly has nothing left.
…
Quinn can tell he knows.
The second she walks in the room to sign up for Glee, to anchor herself in the Black Parade again, his eyes meet hers for a split second and he just knows. So easily, so simply, so instinctively.
When Puck talks and she pours out her little secret, she watches his reaction with grim satisfaction.
Because, even though it isn't monumental, it's still a second to be herself again. For a brief moment, she's Miss Popular once more – knowing with certainty that's bitingly, painfully familiar that someone cares. And it's that, just that one little conviction, that keeps her holding on, stops her from becoming another statistic. She needs that, that moment to really be sure of herself again. She needs to not just be the pregnant cheerleader who fulfils all the clichéd expectations.
In retrospect, she knows it took her a while to figure all that out. To figure out how she really felt about it all - about Beth, about Puck, about Shelby, about her reluctant, mismatched,wrongfamily - and to decide whether those feelings were worth keeping, worth showing, or not. For a blissful year she'd denied them all, denied that hole they bore in her very soul, but now she knows that it has always been there, lurking beneath the confidence, behind the smiles, inside her beaten, battered heart.
It took time, maybe too much time, for Quinn to understand how to stop that burning, aching pain in her chest. It took time to figure out why it took so long, too. But she'd discovered the answer eventually, realizing that coating the pain with honey and sugar and compliments and beauty just wasn't enough. She'd searched herself for another solution, one that would work, and when she'd found it, she could hardly believe it. Even she didn't know that grief could destroy her soul this much, turn her into something so bad that this was the only solution. This was the only way to make her feel whole again, feel human again. Feel like the closest thing to Quinn that she can manage.
Because now she wants everyone to be just as damaged as her, because she wants them all to feel it too, to have to live with it like she does. She wants everyone's minds - everyone's entire lives - to be as horribly alone and sick and twisted as hers, and if that makes her selfish and cruel, so be it. She'd do anything to bask in that glow of being liked again. She'd do anything to have it all back, to fill that gap. She'd do anything for Finn and Beth and family - therightfamily, thegoodfamily, the family she'd always meant to have before that one stupid day ruined it all.
…
One day, a week later, Finn realizes just how broken she is.
When the Cheerios walk right past her locker, brush against her like she's nothing, like she had never meant anything to them, he can tell in that moment what she's become. He feels a momentary stab of that pleasant, vindictive pain of revenge before a wave of remorse washes over him. He had promised himself he wouldn't forgive her, but unease prickles beneath his skin as he tears himself away from the girl who had once been his world, his life, his everything.
…
Quinn can tell he's looking at her, and the thought forces her to turn around, biting her lip to hold back tears. He's just talking with his friends as if nothing happened, but she knows the feeling of being looked at and that was definitely it. The feeling of being looked at by him has taken so long to fade that even now she hasn't forgotten it.
But she ignores it all, ignores him, because he doesn't care anymore. Or he doesn't want to care anyone. Does it matter which?
She shuts her locker and walks away in the same way she has for a month now: quick steps, head down, books pressed against her chest like an anchor to herself. It's the nerdy way, and she hates it. Hates being afraid, just like the nerds, of when her next slushy will be. Not if she will get one, but when.
She misses that long, slow way of walking – the way the popular girls walk. Like they have all the time in the world. Like they will always be the bubbly, pretty cheerleaders they are. Like they will always be popular.
They won't, she thinks with bitter pleasure. Like everything else – like school and family and love – it ends.
…
Finn watches her walk out, barely registering that his friend is talking at all. He hates her new style of walking. He can see she hates it too, sensing the tears that threatens to spill from her eyes and trace down her cheek with the line of crystal that haunted his dreams after she broke his heart. He hates that she doesn't swing her hips anymore, doesn't chatter nonstop like she used to. She isn'tQuinn, and it kills him inside.
And he doesn't know how on earth he manages without her, but right now it's her that worries him more. She isn't managing. Anyone can tell that. But only he seems to have noticed.
Finn is afraid of her, of this new Quinn. What if one day she gets fed up and does something drastic? The thought of it – of her getting hurt – scares him more than he'd care to admit. And even though he's freakingtiredof hearing the whispers and feeling the stares and pretending that his whole world doesn't crash down every time she gets hurt (and, God, he knows he's part of it, and that just makes it worse), he still wants her.
He wants that vanilla rose scent, and can't seem to find it anywhere else. He wants her smile, her laugh, her hand grasping his. He wants that feeling, that joy he gets every time she really, truly is happy. Really, truly happy.
But he can't have it. Not now.
If anything, every second of their relationship had taught him that life isn't a fairytale. He can't be the prince, he can't sweep her off her feet, he can't hold her and ride off into the sunset for a happily ever after. And even though she mightn't be a princess, she deserves someone like that. Because Finn, more than anyone else, has seen what she had to endure last year, andno onedeserves to have to go through that.
Especially not her. Not the person who hides beneath the hair, the tattoo, the piercing. Not the one with the baby and the family, who almost found the life that she so, so deserves. Not the girl who, in spite of everything – everything – else, Finn still loves in a terrifyingly powerful way.
No, he tells himself as he watches her leave. Not Quinn.