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 69th cycle. Now cycle 70!
GLEEKATHON FOURTH ANNIVERSARY CYCLE - It's October again, which means another year of Gleekathon is about to wrap up! At the end of the month it will have been four years since I've started doing my daily stories! As always, I will be celebrating this with a special cycle of stories to touch on my favorite stories I've done throughout the year. There will be two installments each on Thursdays, Saturdays, Mondays, and Wednesdays. The remaining days will feature, as they have in the last several months, new chapters of the latest story in my Doctor Who/Glee crossover series. As far as the anniversary stories go, it will be as I've done before, taking those past stories and either doing a prequel, sequel, POV swap, genre swap, alternate ending, or additional scenes.
This story is a POV SWAP to "In the World of my Creation" a Sylvesters series story originally posted on November 14 2012.
(This is a shift day, which means there will be two stories posted today!)
"No More Days"
Brittany, Sue, Grandpa Joseph (OC), (Jean)
Sylvesters series extra
(all series now listed under the communities tab in my profile)
She'd been having one of her dreams she had many times over the years. She was sure she'd had it in one variation or another since she was little. In her dream, she was queen of the elephants and her queendom was great and mighty. This time, her valiant companion, Harold the elephant, was letting her ride him through a lake, and she was having the best of times.
Then Harold had stopped and he'd spoken with a woman's voice. Just as she was wondering, first, how long her elephant friend had known how to speak and, second, if she had always been mistaken as to his – or her – gender, she recognized the voice: it was her mother's voice, calling to her. The next thing she knew, she was waking up, opening her eyes to find the woman sitting at her side.
"Did I oversleep?" she asked, figuring that had to be the reason for her coming to wake her up.
"No," her mother replied, and there was something strange, not just in her voice but in her face.
"What's wrong?" she sat up. She hated to ever see her mother in distress; she had to know how she could help her.
"Brittany, I need to tell you something," she started, then paused. What if she was sick? What if she was dying? But then she went on. "It's your aunt Jean, she… She was sick, and… and she couldn't recover." At the mention of her aunt's name, she had been briefly reassured, only it changed again. She didn't like that her aunt should be sick.
"Is she going to be okay?" she asked her mother, who came closer, sitting with her. The next words out of her mother's mouth were the last ones she wanted to hear. She would have pushed them back in if she could.
"She passed away this morning. She… She's dead."
She wanted to speak, to ask her mother to tell her it was wrong, that her aunt Jean was still out there, still smiling… But she knew it didn't work that way, that people didn't live and die by words, and her lips moved on empty.
She felt frozen, like when she drank her Slushie too fast, but all over. It hurt so deep, but she couldn't make it go away. When her mother's arms folded around her, she welcomed the embrace wholly. Her mother would protect her. Her mother would warm her and make the ice and the pain go away. It melted out of her in heavy tears, streaming down her face and making her tremble.
She didn't know how long she had stayed there in her mother's arms before she heard her say something she was sure she must have heard wrong.
"We don't have to lie anymore." Brittany looked at her, puzzled. How could she even say that, after everything…
"W… What about your mother?" she asked.
"I can deal with her if I have to," her mother shook her head. "Jean may not have known that she was your aunt, but you did, and I want you to be able to mourn her properly, with people who care for you."
She was trying to set her free. She was willing to sacrifice this secret of theirs for Brittany's sake, so she could be made to feel better. That should have been an easy choice, to say yes and be thankful for it, but it shouldn't be right for grief to make them make this kind of decision, even she understood that. She could see reality where her mother couldn't.
"You care for me," Brittany shook her head, sniffling. "And Dad does, and Charlotte, and Cat and Izzy, and Grandpa. You don't need to tell anyone about me." She wanted her mother she meant this, so she would listen. That was how it worked with her.
"Brittany…" her mother protested, like she knew she would.
"I'll be okay," Brittany promised. "You need to mourn her with people who care for you, too," she borrowed from her mother's words. "It won't matter to any of them if our secret comes out like this." Her mother kept on looking at her, saying nothing for a moment.
"Are you sure about this?" she finally asked, and her touch as she held Brittany's face soothed the girl. She nodded, and her mother held her. "I can write you a note for today," she offered. Brittany couldn't. Staying home meant no Santana, no Quinn. They knew her secret, she needed them.
"It's okay," she said. "I'll go."
It had been hard, that first day, but she had made it through. If she was out of it at all, they would write it off as her being normal, so she didn't worry too much.
Only then it came about that the Glee Club would sing at the funeral, and there she felt something that made her feel the need of a family embrace. She couldn't put this on her mother, on top of everything else. So after school, she'd gone to her grandfather Joseph's house.
She hadn't seen him yet, not since the news of Jean's death. They'd called, and he'd offered to come over, but she knew her mother needed privacy, and he respected that. When Brittany showed up on his doorstep that afternoon though, he wrapped his granddaughter in comforting arms. He brought her in to sit, asked how she was. She told him about the Glee Club's performance.
"That's very nice of your friends to do that."
"I know," Brittany agreed.
"I'm sensing that's not all of it."
"I'm scared that… if I hear the song, I'll start crying, and they'll know something's not right. They'll figure out our secret, after I told my mother we didn't have to tell."
"She… She offered you that?" Joseph asked and Brittany nodded. "But you said no?" She nodded again. "Don't you want people to know?"
"I do, but not for that. So what do I do?" He looked at her for a minute, thinking. Then he stood and went into the living room. Brittany, curious, followed him. "What are you looking for?" she asked, seeing him dig through the cabinet. He turned back to her, presenting a worn movie box, and she blinked. "You have it?"
"Sure I do," he laughed. "It's always been one of your favorites, what kind of grandfather would I be if I didn't have it? We used to watch it all the time."
"I remember," she smiled.
"So that's what we'll do. We'll watch it, you and me, and you can let it out of your system, cry as much as you need to. And when you have to sing it at the funeral, you'll do fine."
"You think so?" she sat down.
"I know so."
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!