Lie My Way Back Home
Disclaimer: Since I do not own Glee or any of its characters, I am helpless while the show keeps trying to destroy Quinn Fabray. What I can do, however, is to create a happy bubble and live inside it until it all passes. Here's my head canon for the Thanksgiving episode.
She was never the one known for her honesty… Or niceness for that matter. It seemed to her that she reverted to the worst possible version of herself whenever she went back home. She did not even call Lima, Ohio as her home in her mind anymore. Lima was a place that she had the worst years of her life, where she had learned how to fake her way through anything and everything, where she had built the incredibly high emotional walls around herself and where she had learned about family and betrayal. But to this day, Quinn Fabray still considered that if she learned one thing in McKinley High at all, it was how to survive.
That's how she found herself among her friends at Breadstix, lying through her teeth. It was all survival instinct, really. She had way too many unpleasant memories in this place anyway, what was one more, if not habit? So she had lied, she told them Rachel was bothering her with her incessant emailing and telling her to use the Metro passes she bought for her. She smiled at her own reasoning and how easy it was to make herself believe that it was actually Rachel who wanted to keep in touch hard enough to spend a stupid amount of money on tickets.
It was me, she thought as her mouth kept on lying, she wants me to use the tickets that I bought for us. I want to use the tickets that I bought for us. I'm just way too much of a coward to actually do it. Then, later on Santana had to go and do it again. Wanky, she had said, in a tone that was way too smug for Quinn's taste when Kitty made a show of idolizing her.
So from then on all Quinn had to do was to go on autopilot really. She was scared, and way too familiar with that feeling for her own liking. She had spent 4 years in that very same building, dreading everyday, trying just to breathe, just to survive. And she had succeeded. Who was to say that her ways were wrong when they had gotten her alive out of this place?
Without even really thinking about it, she told them she was dating one of her professor's, who just happened to be married – soon to be divorced. It was the perfect lie, when you think about it. Dating an older married guy meant she'd never be able to introduce him to her friends. From now on, she'd have an excuse for each and every occassion that she'd attend alone. Nobody would really question if she was in a relationship or not. It was genius.
What she didn't consider was just how harsh Santana would react. She fucking slapped me¸ she thought, but I slapped her first, the voice in her head added weakly. Santana was possibly the only person who she had trusted to get the message. I mentioned Jodie Foster and Jennifer Beals in the span of two days for God's sake. But she hadn't. And now it seemed like she was down another friend. Not that she had an abundance of friends to begin with anyway.
The thing about lies was that they could be your savior and downfall at the same time.
The way back to her dormitory at Yale seemed shorter than ever. Mayve she was running away after all. Maybe she was finally coming home. She didn't know anymore. What she knew, though, was that she would not be able to sleep at all. Her thoughts would keep her awake anyway. So she decided to be at least a little productive instead of getting under her bed covers and fight with her demons. She was too tired for that. She turned on her laptop and signed on to her email account. Instantly, all the thoughts of productivity left, when she saw one familiar name. Rachel Berry. She read through her email twice with a smile on her face, then twice more. Then she pushed the reply button and started writing, her fingers going a mile an hour.
"Hi Rach!
Happy Thanksgiving to you as well! I wish you could have made it to Lima with the rest of us. I know things are weird between you and Finn right now but it would have made my holiday to see you again! Anyway, you will not believe your eyes when you read about the news I have about the Glee Club…"
She wrote on and on for about half an hour. When she finally hit send, she was feeling lighter.
Maybe tomorrow would be a better day after all.
Maybe not.