Title: A Different Christmas
Author: Faith Alana Alastair
Fandom: Mean Girls
Disclaimer: I don't own anything, not the movie, or the characters, or any of that. Credit to Tina Fey and Rosalind Wiseman.
Pairing: Regina/OC
Rating: PG for language? It's one damned curse. Okay, two.
Summary/Prompt: Set in the future, Regina realizes some things.
Spoilers: The entire movie, though I've shifted some things.
Feedback: Always appreciated.
Distribution: Want… Ask… Have.
Regina shifted another box, an arm covering her mouth as the dust rose. Stupid Christmas decorations, they're never where you left them. Bracing the dangerous tower of half-filled boxes against her hip, she reached for another. The centimeter of space between cardboard and denim was sufficient, the stack toppling, contents spilling over the attic floor.
"Oh, for fuck's sake." Exhaling a resigned sigh, she began clearing up the mess, fingers pausing as they closed around the spine a very familiar scrapbook. "Oh my god…"
Regina sat down on the edge of a nearby trunk, opening the cover, eyes immediately closing against the painful memories. Forcing them open again, she confronted a part of her she'd forgotten. Twenty years had gone by since she'd even seen the book; she'd honestly forgotten its existence.
Turning a page, she swallowed. After the debacle with that ridiculous girl from Africa, Regina had simply fled, testing for her diploma from home, and focusing on a bright future. The girl on the page in front of her had simply… ceased to exist.
She'd been her best friend, once, before Gretchen Wieners had fed her that line about rich folks sticking to their own kind. Before Karen Smith told her about secret homosexual urges. And she'd believed them both, her own self-identity fragile, her home life strange and out of her control.
Rolling her eyes at her own stupidity, she forced herself to look through the rest of the book before coming back to gaze at a single picture, lip planted between her teeth. Coming to a decision with a sigh, she pulled the photo out of the book, and headed down the ladder. "Geoffrey, Steven, Claire… please go find the last box of decorations and straighten up the attic?"
Sounds of acquiescence came from various rooms as she passed, heading down the stairs and entering her office. Setting the photo against the framed one of herself, her wife and children, she opened her laptop, typing Janis Ian very slowly into the search bar. This would be a very different Christmas.