Disclaimer: I don't own Glee or any of the characters.

Chapter 1: The Funeral
July, 2025

She swore to me that this wouldn't happen.

She promised me when we first got the notification of her re-enlistment that she wouldn't leave us only a flag. And yet she couldn't keep her promise, leaving me and our sons behind. I asked her, I begged her, to put us at the top. All I wanted was for her to not doing anything incredibly stupid because she had a family counting on her to come home.

For six years before I got back in contact with Lucy Quinn Fabray, she was a soldier, working her way through the ranks to become a Sergeant. We grew up together as children but hadn't spoken since we were 18. I moved to New York for NYADA while she was posted in Fort Lee, Virginia. Meeting up in New York years later when she was posted at Fort Hamilton, I reconnected with her and had been for nearly two years when she got the promotion to Sergeant Fabray. After a year as sergeant, Quinn was given the choice to renew her contract – she didn't. She proposed instead. "I want to spend the rest of my life with you, and I want it to be a long time. I can't promise you much as a soldier, and so I'm not renewing my contract, but if you want to stay with a high school teacher and be a teacher's wife instead – would you like to spend the rest of your life with me? Will you marry me Rach?"

My father, Leroy, had told me multiple times that he knew that even if the world couldn't understand how our love worked, he knew it would last the day that Quinn drove five hours to speak to him and my Daddy about permission to marry me. He told me on our wedding day that she turned up, in her army fatigues and a nervous expression on her face, sat my parents down, explained her decision to exit the army for me and, if they would approve, her wish to propose.

Nothing could possibly make me feel better now. I'm missing half of my heart; it's been ripped out and shredded. Reminding me that the woman who did so much for me is gone, leaving me with our two boys who were feeling her absence just as much as I do. I can't allow myself to break under the pressure of losing Quinn. They're counting on me.

The shadows cause the most pain, forcing me to realise exactly how broken she has left me. I never prepared myself for her death because she promised me she would fight and that she would come back to us. I was foolish to believe that she'd be able to control her promises.

I look around the church to see so many faceless people filling it to capacity. Soldiers, friends and family alike had come to pay their respects to my wife. My dead wife. I dry-reach at the thought, it's an automatic response, my subconscious thinking that if I drain my already empty stomach, the bitterness would disappear also. I've been left with the grief crawling further and further into my chest as I try my hardest to remember Quinn smiling in such a way that my knees felt weak and her hazel eyes shined with laughter and happiness as we played with our twin boys.

It hardly seemed possible that one moment we're all living our lives and the next her life has been taken away in the blink of an eye. I kept hoping I'll wake up and I'll be back in my bed, my phone would ring like it did every few days, she'll be on the other end, and all this will have been a bad dream.

My subconscious seems to find this moment to be the best time to pop up and torture me with all the facts. This is all real. That my wife is dead and I'm still alive, trying to make it through without her. She won't just come home one day and things won't miraculously get better.

I grab onto the pew and cry. It hurts too much. I can't breathe properly but that's only half the battle, I still have to struggle through the sheet of vulnerability and grief.

Cooper and Braxton are too busy trying to stay strong and be their Mommy's little soldiers. My chest constricts at the thought of her and the thought of our lives without her.

Frannie stands up with Santana by her side, one Quinn's biological sister and the other her best friend. Frannie has my wife's, her younger sister's, blonde hair and body shape, however where Quinn's eyes were hazel, Frannie's are blue. They shared many of the same mannerisms too and I wish that my wife was standing up there and not lying in the coffin next to her sister. I thought it was a warm day when I walked into the church, but now all I feel is the slight chill to the air. Goosebumps rose up on my arms and, involuntarily, causes me to shiver.

"When I first got the call from Rachel, I couldn't breathe. My baby sister's body was somewhere overseas and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it. I couldn't help Quinn and I couldn't help her wife," Frannie breathes out slowly. "My sister joined the army the afternoon of her eighteenth birthday."

She then stops, inhaling sharply, looking down at my two boys. I was sure all she could see is her sister, their Mommy, in them. She's the only one I can see in them since I've gotten the phone call – her eyes, her smile, her sense of humour, her walk, and her talk. Next to me they sit tall and proud in their suits, their Mommy's medals hanging proudly on their chests.

"I always thought it was to annoy our parents to begin with, mainly our father, but then again defending her country and doing it from the front lines was something that Quinn was born to do," I only hear her continue because I'm back to staring at my wife's coffin. "She was the stubborn one as a child who followed all the rules and reported to Mom and Dad when I wasn't behaving 'as a Fabray should'. Her favourite toys as a kid were her swords, army guns, and bows-and-arrows, something that really ate at our father. I remember for one of my birthdays she was the most skilled at paintball and laser tag, showcasing her talents. Everyone wanted Quinn on their team."

Santana takes over, letting Frannie step back and take a few deep breaths. "Quinn left the army years ago for her wife, Rachel, and the dream to have a family with kids that wouldn't be called 'army brats' at school. The respect I had for my best friend was immense, especially when she changed careers to give a sense of normality to her family. The love between Quinn and Rachel has always been immense, I've been seeing it for years, and I see it in Cooper and Braxton when they tell me 'Mommy is helping to save the world and make life better for everyone'. I can hear Quinn every time those boys explain to someone where their Mommy is and what she's doing."

Everyone in the church holds their breath as Santana continues. "I will miss my best friend who was the little blonde girl who helped me beat up anyone who was mean to my wife; I will miss the woman who was giddy with excitement when she rang to tell me that she and Rachel were getting married; I will miss the woman who walked out of the delivery room doors with a son in each arm, tears of happiness rolling down her face; but most of all, I will miss the woman with the huge smile and loving nature that tried to spend as much time with her two sons and wife because she loved them so much. I'll continue to look after them Q, I love you."

Santana moves to the side, letting Frannie speak again as she's taken back control of her emotions. "Quinn and I may not have been close for a while in her teenage years, but I'm glad that I got the opportunity to get to know my little sister again once she was an adult and joined the army because I'm proud to say that Sergeant Lucy Quinn Fabray was my sister. She's the kind of person I want to be," Frannie finishes before kissing the tips of her fingers and dropping them to the coffin that holds her sister.

Braxton and Cooper spoke to Santana and my fathers about their Mommy's song. The song they were talking about was my wife's unit's song they listened to on repeat. Before deployment it was often heard around the house. The twins had learnt the lyrics to the chorus by the time they were three. I've always been glad that's all they worked out – the swearing wasn't something I wanted them to repeat, particularly to other children. It was hard listening to two little voices singing "it's ten percent luck; twenty percent skill; fifteen percent concentrated power of will; five percent pleasure; fifty percent pain; and a hundred percent reason to remember the name" around the house when their Mommy was overseas brought a lot of late nights of tears and nightmares.

Fort Minor's "Remember the Name" plays through the church, with the song being more instrumental where the swearing should be. As it finishes and the last few notes play across the church, Cooper grabs his brother's hand and leads Braxton up to speak.

"Mama says that Mommy is protecting us from heaven now and I know she'll be the bestest soldier God will ever have because she was awesome," Cooper croaks out with Braxton, his eyes downcast, trying his hardest to stand tall next to him. "We love you, Mommy, and we promise to look after Mama until we can see you again."

The boys take a step back and salute to their Mommy. To my right, I hear Quinn's mother and Brittany break down, Santana inhale deeply, and Frannie let out a small cry. My own fathers are with Frannie's husband, Frannie's three children, Kurt, Blaine, their two children, and Brittany and Santana's three children in the row behind me and I can hear some of their sobs.

I will never forget the pain we caused our two little boys after she got the phone call. It was a day or two after the official letter turned up, I guess she was trying to pretend it wasn't real. I didn't react well, running to hide in our bedroom. Quinn followed me after sending the boys to the lounge room to play, finding me curled up in a ball crying. The boys ended up hearing us talking and assumed I was sending away Quinn. They both called Santana in tears, trying to see if "Aunty Tana could use the law to save Mommy".

I only wish that somehow Santana could have used the law to save Quinn from being called back into action, then I wouldn't be sitting in a church blocking out the priest's words as I hold onto Braxton and Cooper, praying that my only living reminder of my wife won't get taken from me like Quinn was.

She was supposed to come back to me, come back to her sons. None of us wanted her to go.

A/N: I have a few more chapters. It'd be good to know what you guys are thinking.