A/N: This is a short story loosely based on Harry Styles' debut track Sign of the Times. Loved that song, had this idea about X-men!Faberry and I thought, hey, why not? I'm not sure how many chapters this story will be; I reckon three to five chapters.

So here you go! I hope you'll like it. Reviews are definitely appreciated and are very much encouraging for the writer. :)

A/N: Bold is Santana, Italics is Quinn.

Warning: Mentions of suicide, murder, and (creepy) puppets.

Disclaimer: I don't own any of these characters unless stated otherwise. They all belong to their respective owners.

Just stop your crying, it's a sign of the times

Welcome to the final show

Hope you're wearing your best clothes

You can't bribe the door on your way to the sky

You look pretty good down here

But you ain't really good

The first thing she felt when she woke up was warmth. Her eyes felt warm, and it's like she was suddenly incapable of doing that one thing which, somehow, made her special.

It oddly reminded her of the day when she first woke up in the Institution, but she's pretty sure that she wasn't in the same bed for the same reason this time around.

She had been foolish — at least, that's what Santana told her the moment she opened her eyes. She had no idea who Santana was back then. She was a stranger; someone who was, apparently, assigned to make sure that the ice inside her head would thaw and that she'd be back to life before it was too late. She didn't know who Santana was, but Santana was asking her questions as though she knew who she was.

Why would you waste such gift, blondie?

Freezing your eyes and brain? That's too cliché, right?

Let me ask you something. If you're a seventeen year old teenager who discovered your ability to freeze everything that you want with your vision by accidentally shooting ice beams at your abusive dad, what would you do? Maybe you would say that you'd be ecstatic because the bastard's finally dead; maybe you would be scared, run away and find a place where you could live peacefully whilst trying to figure out how to keep yourself from accidentally killing someone again. Or maybe you would feel like shit, feel like you're a murderer, and try to punish yourself by doing the same thing to yourself.

And that's what she did. She lied down on her bed, stared long enough at the ceiling to create thorns made of ice, which, she thought, would eventually fall upon her and kill her on the spot.

However, she honestly had no idea how to control her ability just yet, and instead of projecting ice, she ended up freezing the inside of her head. She panicked at first, but then she realized — hey, that's what I wanted, right?

So she let it happen, and she was sure that she had died until she woke up in a difference place, in a different bed, with bright lights above her face.

And then, yeah, there was Santana.

She didn't understand why she was being mean that day. She had just recovered from her attempt to end her life — why was Santana not showing sympathy? As she spent more of her life in the Institution, the more she understood why Santana had questioned her in the first place.

Some mutants like her needed less sympathy simply because they didn't want sympathy from other people. It made them feel weak, made them feel small and useless, and they needed that lack of sympathy to build their strength up once again because, sometimes, all you needed was yourself and nothing else to get back on your feet again.

Others were different, of course, but Quinn Fabray figured that she belonged to the former percentage.

Somehow, she found a friend in Santana, the girl whose mutant ability was basically the opposite of hers. Where Quinn would shoot freezing energy from eyes, Santana shot a great amount of heat from hers. They were the perfect match, the perfect pair to send to certain trainings because they were the opposite of each other, and somehow, that made a perfect combination. Quinn didn't exactly know the professors' specific reasons, but she had an idea — it was pretty obvious. She just didn't know how to put them into words.

They simply complement each other.

And then came Brittany S. Pierce into the picture a year later.

Brittany seemed like an ordinary person when Quinn and Santana met her at the Institution for the first time. Nothing seemed out of place. She was chirpy, she was always smiling, and she was almost careless to the problems of the world.

She was … something.

And there was a doll always clinging on her back. It had been pretty creepy at first, with the doll's smiling face and its huge eyes. Fucks's sake, it was a replica of Slappy The Dummy — that's fucking creepy. But Brittany always reassured them that Ducky wasn't a killer, at least, if no one was threatening Brittany.

It took quite some time for the pair to get used to Ducky (apparently, Brittany loved ducks so much she decided to name her puppet Ducky), and it was a really hard task because Ducky loved visiting them in their rooms without a prior notice. Ducky would always appear out of nowhere, talk to them like Brittany would, and the pair would always wonder just how the hell the puppet would manage to enter their rooms without passing through the door or the window.

Again. Creepy.

Quinn didn't bother knowing more about Brittany and her fucking puppet; she was in the Institution after all, everyone was bound to have their own . . . quirks.Santana didn't give it a rest though.

For some reason, the Latina developed this huge interest in the quirky blonde and her doll — more on the quirky blonde than the doll, obviously — and with her usual feistiness, she questioned all relevant professors about Brittany's ability.

The answer was, apparently, unclear. Brittany seemed to have a part of her DNA imprinted in the puppet. How she did that, the professors weren't sure. It was almost like how Chucky, the serial murderer, was made; only Ducky had no soul. Just . . . Brittany's DNA, and with her DNA in the puppet, she was capable of controlling him, even allowing him to appear and disappear under her command.

Like a ventriloquist, really, save for the whole act of appearing and disappearing because, obviously, ordinary ventriloquists were incapable of doing such trick with their puppets.

So, Brittany became The Ventriloquist, and The Ventriloquist became a pair with Fire Snix (Santana's chosen name; not her official pseudonym, however) and Quinn became…

… well, Quinn. Ice Quinn to some other mutants, but she never acknowledged it.

Quinn didn't really hold it against Santana for sticking to Brittany after being inseparable for a year.

She was in love after all, no matter how hard Santana would always deny it.

Thankfully — though definitely not under a pleasant circumstance — that denial was soon demolished when the Institute was attacked by a small, but strong, group of renegade.

Said attack was basically the reason why Quinn was in that bed, under those really bright lights, again.

The Institute won, apparently, but many students were injured, some almost died, but they were all alive and healing. The students were ready to move on from such an eventful day, but it was obviously something they should never forget. It was a day which would remind them of the reasons behind their rigorous training. They had to be stronger, more knowledgeable of their abilities — it was for their safety.

"Ready to get up?"

Quinn heard Santana by her side, but she remained idle, eyes blinking, soaking all the heat from the light until it was almost unbearable for her.

It was only then that she stood and sat on the bed, eyes trained on the tiled floor.

"Yeah," she replied.

"All right," Santana walked around and gave her a pat on the shoulder. "Wolf Dude wants to meet you later. Said he needs to talk to you about the girl you encountered last night."

"You still call him Wolf Dude?"

"Wolverine is a mouthful. I mean, I wouldn't mind having him in my mo—"

Quinn groaned. "Save it, Santana."

Santana shrugged and waved at Brittany and fucking Ducky (who also waved at them) when she saw them standing by the open door.

"I'm just saying. He looks bi—"

"Heard you finally made it official with Brittany," Quinn said to change the topic.

Santana smirked because, whatever, Quinn had always been a prude and could never take a joke. "Yeah."

"What made you change your mind?"

"Life's too short, Quinn," the Latina said, retreating to the door, hand immediately finding Brittany's, and finally disappearing from the blonde's view.

Santana's words echoed inside her head and she couldn't help but think of the girl she met at the training grounds last night. The things she saw, the things she felt, the things she wished she could forget but were always appearing in her head.

Santana's words seemed wrong.

"Not to all, Santana," Quinn murmured. "Not to all."