Title: 15 minutes and 4 plus months ago
Author: Rokwynd
Rated: T
Genre: Hurt/Comfort
Warning: Spoilers for everything in Season 1 of Glee
A/N: Yes, I am aware this isn't the next chapter of Old Stories, I promise it is coming soon but I had to get this story out of my head first. Please review.
She took a deep breath and held it as she walked into a room that had been 15 minutes and4 plus months ago, hers. So she was home, clinging to the same bags that she had packed everything that she thought mattered to her. So here she sat, at least 8 pounds and 6 ounces lighter, bags filled with a mishmash of things she had brought with her and stuff she that had borrowed (been given out of charity) along the way.
It was a week after the loss at Regionals, a week after her mom found her backstage. Quinn thought her Mom had finally grown a spine when she kicked out her Father. Of course not, it wasn't because he had tossed his youngest daughter out to the world, it was because she had been embarrassed by him. She left her home in spite and rage and came back into it almost the same way Such a sad hypocritical circle of life.
She could still remember hearing the news, she wanted to cry at her Mom rage out let her know how wrong that statement had been. Instead she played the good little daughter still keeping her own feelings on the inside until they came out, not in a torrent of emotion but with an undignified wetness. All the waiting was finally over, and on the plus side she didn't slip, which would have been grosser, but maybe more dramatic then when she had slipped the stupid puddle of sweat during rehearsals.
She walked around the room, just touching things, a little figurine she had forgotten to grab that her grandmother had given her. The low white bookshelf which held all those useful books on abstinence wedged between her bible and a photo album she had left behind. Shaking her head she turned to the bed where the former sum of her worldly good sat. The bag she picked up first held all of her Glee outfits,She took out the gold lame dress and looked critically at the frilly underskirts, that stain wasn't coming out.
The delivery room, the pain was one hundred times worse than the videos that Mrs. Scheuster had given her. Even Lamaze, had only helped a little, but she couldn't blame Mercedes for that, the poor girl had tried her best. The instructor had been sympathetic but she warned Quinn and Mercedes that catching a new partner up with Lamaze this late in her term would be difficult at best. Puck, he might have tried but the idiot was stressed out almost as much as she was. In retrospect he sucked was not going to be one of her finer moments, even if it was true. The dumb ass tried to be encouraging in his own stupid way and to his credit he was in the room, so he earned some bonus points for that.
She met her daughter and even after holding her in her arms she made the hard choice. Her parents had made that part easier. I!f they could give up a daughter of sixteen years, she could give up one less than a week old. Mom had disappeared after that, a freaking text was the only notice that proved she could still move back into the house. So here she was in the place that she once called home.
Home, where the hell was home now? Not Finn's, Carol had been nice but the lies still hung thick in the air between them. She might go back to being friends with him again someday but that would be long road. Puck's?, no, there was still something weird between them. It started with Rachel's freaking Mom asking to adopt Beth. Quinn wanted to keep the name to herself, a cold comfort in the nights to come. Puck though, he said he wanted to name his daughter and so he did.
After that she, Puck and Shelby sat down with a councilor from Social Services to start the adoption process. They agreed on no contact with Beth but they would receive yearly updates and Shelby would keep Quinn's contact information in case Beth ever wanted to meet with the mother who had given her up.
She pulled out the costume she, Mercedes and Kurt had put together for the Funk number. The maternity Tee had to go but wearing the wild outfit had been worth it to see that shock on the faces of those Vocal Adrenaline assholes. On second though she would keep the shirt along with the rest, she didn't want to give anything else up at this point.
Mr. Jones had dropped Quinn off since her Mom was meeting with the divorce attorney. He hadn't said much to her ever since she had moved into Mercedes' house. He and Mrs. Jones helped her set up the room so she didn't feel like an intruder and then gave her something she had desperately needed, space. They didn't ignore her, or pressure her but instead the entire family had treated like an adult. She shared meals with the family, oh dear God how she had missed bacon.
She and Mercedes worked on school and Glee stuff. Quinn was also able to catch up on a past addiction, gossip. She had been on the other side of the gossip cannon for so long that she had forgotten what it could be like. Mercedes and the other members of her quartet were relentless, they made it their job to treat Quinn like she was a normal teenager.
Awkward would be a serious understatement at first. So she sat with the group, or shopped with them keeping her mouth shut and just soaking in the sense of togetherness the group shared. Slowly it happened, she started to click. She started to get the gentle inside jokes and the not really meant bitch sessions that Kurt and Mercedes would launch into. Trust was proven the day that Tina, loaded down with shopping bags had allowed Quinn to push Artie's wheelchair for a brief moment. At least until Kurt began to chew her out for doing something so strenuous while pregnant. Seriously though Artie was a little guy, it was no worse than the dances they did in Glee.
The quartet became a Quintet. Artie was amazingly good at dodging coordinated smacks from all the other members of the group for that pun. Despite that, like a really bad nickname or that embarrassing moment your friends would keep teasing you about the term stubbornly stuck it out.
Her crappy prepaid phone choose that moment to buzz a tinny version of "Beautiful" at her. It wasn't the slick phone she had started out with this school year. Quinn had turned that phone in after being kicked out, she didn't need to pay for all the bells and whistles when nobody called her anymore. That was then, now she was giving serious thought to upgrading her phone to something that included texts, the little messages were eating up her minutes.
It was Mercedes, and the text was short and simple.
"U kno u can come bck rite?"
Quinn Fabray former bitch queen of the Cheerios started to cry over a text. Through her tears she mashed out a reply, asking, no begging for the Jones family to come back and take her away. A simple "Yes" was all she received and needed her own Mom could wait until later. For now she sat in her former room in her former house and cried. In her tears she washed away the ding of a microwave timer, the sound of fists hitting flesh in the choir room. She cried out the competing and contradictory pulls of motherhood and childhood. She cried for herself in this place that 15 minutes and 4 plus months ago had stopped being home.