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 80th cycle. Now cycle 81!

"Hide & Gather"
Nora (AU!Beth)/Grace (OC), Emily (OC; Nellie V.)
Sunshine Girls 2 series
(all series now listed under the communities tab in my profile)

They had driven off in Emily's car, Nora in the back with Grace, as they made for Rachel and Puck's house. The ride was silent. As much as they tried to say anything, they just couldn't come up with anything worth speaking. They had this night ahead of them, one night without worries, but they knew very well it couldn't last forever. All they could hope for at this point was that one night apart would allow things to cool off enough at the Mackenna house so that Grace didn't have to be afraid of being back there again.

They made it to the house, and Nora let them in. It felt cold and empty, for having been without inhabitants for weeks already, but as they settled in they brought back some light into it. Emily had volunteered to go out and get them dinner and whatever they'd need for breakfast, and the other girls pitched in with money.

Nora had gone upstairs to see if they might need to replace the bed sheets. When she came back down, Grace was at the kitchen table, doing the homework Nora had brought back for her. She said nothing to interrupt her. If it helped Grace to feel better, then who was she to argue? She'd grabbed her school bag on the way out, to further perpetrate the story she'd given her mother, so after a while she sat and pulled out her own books, figuring she might as well do something.

She couldn't do it. She tried to concentrate, but she'd hear Grace's pencil scratching along, and she'd look up at her. Hunched over as she was, the bruised side of her face obscured by a cascade of red hair, Nora felt her heart wrenching. Grace was one of the sweetest people she knew, the sweetest, kindest… She was not the confrontational type, while Nora had what she might call 'the occasional Puckerman streak,' so why did it have to happen to Grace over her? Not that she thought she deserved it, but Grace… she deserved it even less.

"Are you going to keep staring until it goes away?" Grace's eyes turned up to her. Nora bowed her head, caught, but then she shrugged.

"Maybe," she smiled weakly. Grace quietly reached for her hand, held it tight.

They ate when Emily returned, the three girls around the table and the large pizza box open in the middle. Neither Nora nor Emily wanted to broach the subject unless Grace was ready to talk about it, and they didn't know if she was, which made for a dinner time to the tune of chewing and drinking, until Emily couldn't take the noise anymore.

"So… should we watch a movie after this?" she offered. "We could have a marathon, stay up ridiculously late and be zombies at school tomorrow?"

"Tempting offer, but we can't really push our luck right now, can we? In case you've forgotten, my father teaches at our school, and if he sees us 'be zombies,' as you say, he's going to start asking questions, and then he'll figure out I didn't really stay at your house tonight."

"Or, he might just think we worked very hard…" Emily countered.

The clatter of a glass tipping over startled and interrupted them, as Grace reached to right end it, reaching for napkins to wipe up the minimal spill. It had rung silence back in, drawn her friends' attention back on her, and she stared at the glass still gripped in her hand for a moment before looking back at them. She was trying to work up the courage to flat out speak her truth.

"I don't know what to do…" her voice trembled. "Even if I wanted to go somewhere else… I don't have any other family here." Emily raised her hand. "Not like that," she managed a small thankful smile. She took a breath. "I suppose… I'll be eighteen soon, so after that I could always just get my own place, but I don't have that kind of money, and even if I get a job…"

"Was it really that bad?" Emily asked, and Nora couldn't believe she was saying this. Emily turned to her knowingly. "I know it's wrong, what she did, but people make mistakes sometimes. It's her mother, if they can fix it…" her eyes flickered down, and Nora understood. Emily was all but severed from her own parents; she didn't want Grace to lose hers if she didn't have to.

"I don't want to stay," Grace made it clear, and whether it was and what made it that bad, she wouldn't say, but she didn't have to. "Even if I manage to make it so I can get an apartment after I'm eighteen… what do I do until then?"

"You know you can come and stay with us, as long as you need," Nora immediately offered.

"Is that wise though?" Emily pointed out. "Never mind the fact that her mother will never agree to it, she'd be right across the street, so…"

"Fine, then she can stay here. My parents won't mind."

"All by herself? Look, I can ask my aunt and uncle, I'm sure they'll be on board." Nora wanted to argue on this, but if she looked at it from Grace's point of view, then Emily was right.

"I don't know," Grace replied. "Not yet. But thank you, both of you," she already had Nora's hand, but she reached for Emily's, too.

She didn't want to watch movies. After dinner, she had finished her homework, and she'd gone up to bed. She and Nora would share hers, while Emily borrowed Hannah's bed.

After cleaning up the last of their dinner's trash, leftovers, and dishes, Emily had found Nora walking in slow paces around the backyard. She knew it had to be killing her on the inside, thinking that it was her fault Grace was going through this. Emily might have tried and pointed out that it wasn't her, of course, but there was no point. Nora was going to have to work through it on her own.

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!