Fifty-one alerts, twenty favourites and thirty-nine reviews that is so immense! Thank you so much! I hope you enjoy this, this is longer. I've got serious exams coming up now which end on Friday so updates will be limited but I'll try my best to update at least once cause I love this story and I love my reviewers and readers! Enjoy...

'Do my tears, feel like raindrops through the mud?'

Mercedes didn't know the true meaning of 'hell' until she was eleven years old. Before, she thought it was a place where you could toast marshmallows and sunbathe all day long. When she was nine years old, she was taught in Religious Education that if you were a bad person, you went to hell. For weeks, she worried about what being a bad person meant; was she a bad person for forgetting a piece of homework? Eventually, she worked up the courage to ask her teacher what it meant and her understanding of bad and good grew. She decided to be more confident from then on. At the age of eleven, she opened up the newspaper she had bought for her mom. There were children without limbs, covered in blood and dirt. She asked her mom what it all meant, and her mom explained to her that hell was not only a place where bad people went, but that hell could be on earth. And those children were living it. Mercedes asked what they'd done to deserve hell – were they bad people? That was when her mom explained for the first time how the world worked. When she moved up to High School and joined glee club, she met Artie, and experienced and met her first survivor from 'hell'. Mercedes didn't ever truly understand until that day at McKinley.

When a teacher smacked into the choir room and screamed 'GET OUT! THERE'S A FIRE!', Mercedes was worried, but never for one moment did she consider that pupils might die. That her friends might die. She just left the building, thinking her friends were following her and that everything would be okay. That it was probably only a minor fire anyway so there was nothing to worry about. When she got outside and to the 'safe site', she got registered then went over to the bench where the other gleeks were.

"Guys, where's Rachel and Matt - and why's Finn running back inside?" Her booming voice rang out.

"I don't know Mercedes – we don't know. We were just talking about it, no one saw them leave! Finn's gone to find them!" Quinn's hysterical voice rang out, and for the first time, she began to truly understand what the word hell meant.

She turned slowly to look back at the school. She thought she could never see a more terrifying sight. Everything, everywhere she looked, was burning. Smoke billowed from the roof and red and orange darted out from windows. Mercedes felt her knees give way, and she slumped onto the wall next to Kurt.

"I don't know what to do Kurt, damn what do I do?" She whispered hurriedly to her best friend.

"Mercedes, you can't do anything, just sit still and be calm," Kurt replied with cool words, meant to be calming. Maybe they would have been calming if his voice hadn't broken with the sheer emotion halfway through.

"Damn Kurt! Your step-brothers in there and two of our best friends are in there, there's got to be something!" Her voice grew higher and higher.

"I know but there's nothing I can think of! Nothing at all! And I can't go after Finn, because I'm all my dad's got left. And I don't know what to do, because right now my brain's just NOT working well enough to come up with a plan!" Kurt replied viciously.

There was a moment of silence, and they watched Puck and Quinn run out of the gate.

"I'm sorry Kurt," She said guiltily.

"I'm sorry too Mercedes, we shouldn't take it out on each other, not at a time like this... Why don't you go over to the teachers and see if they want you to help out?" Kurt's voice was collected again.

"I will Kurt, thank you... Don't stay alone, okay?" She replied softly, giving him a shaky smile.

"Darling, I'm never on my own, not with Tina and Artie around!" He smiled, and went over to the couple, whilst Mercedes weaved her way through all the frantic people, some with make up smudged down their faces, others with stony cold faces of shock. She eventually made it over to Principal Figgins.

"Sir, is there anything I can do to help?" She timidly asked.

"No thank you, Miss Jones. Your offer is received with gratitude and respect – in this difficult time, I recognize the great personal sacrifice you are making by volunteering your efforts. However, at this time I do not think any of the students should see the horrors that are continuing inside our school. Thank you anyway," The Principal babbled as usual, and she bowed her head and began to walk away.

She stopped, something attracting her attention in the corner of her eye. She spun around and realised that the fire fighters had now cleared a lot of the fire on the east side, but it had gotten uncontrollable on the west side where luckily everybody had been evacuated. That meant only one thing – they could begin removing bodies and getting people out of the east side. Struck still in her position near the teachers, she watched as fire fighters began to pull people out. There was a blonde girl with half her face burnt badly – but she was alive; a boy covered with a sheet who was quite obviously dead; a teacher with burnt legs and several others she didn't know dead or injured. Finally, a girl on a stretcher was being rushed to the ambulance Mercedes was stood near. Her brown hair was matted together with blood; her clothes were covered in soot and her eyes kept fluttering open and closed. Her arms were burnt pretty badly and she kept whispering something over and over. Mercedes moved a little closer to hear her, and with shock and a feeling of dread filling her heart she realised at the same time that the girl was Rachel and she kept whispering Finn's name.

"Rachel! Rachel babe I'm here! I'll be there at the hospital as well!" She screamed just as the ambulance doors slammed shut. Immediately after Rachel, Mercedes saw Finn being shoved onto a stretcher (she could tell by the boy's sheer height). One of his arms and both his legs were in a bad way, and his eyes were firmly shut. She began to run after his stretcher, but before she got there the ambulance drove off.

"Fuck!" She swore, tears leaking from her eyes. Mercedes was never one to cuss, but all morals were forgotten at a time like this. Just as she was about to head back to Kurt, Mercedes heard two paramedics talking to a teacher.

"We found two of them in the choir room. They were holding hands, curled up together. There was another boy found dead straight off near science, he was half way to dead but the ceiling collapse destroyed all chances of survival. Three people in the canteen are dead, another girl in the gym and two boys in the changing rooms are critical. That's all we've found so far, but there's suspected to be ten more casualties..." Mercedes turned away, unable to hear anymore and she ran back to Kurt.

"Finn... he's in a bad way, Kurt. So's Rachel. We need to get the hell to the hospital!" She screamed. The rest of the glee club looked up in horror, and then they began to talk frantically, working out ideas of what to do.

"Mercedes, you need to get home! This isn't healthy, this isn't safe, you need to get home and change and let them have time with their families. Then we can go back later, I promise you!" Kurt's big eyes stared into hers, filled with promises.

"You promise?" She asked him, her lips quivering a little and they did their secret handshake.

"I promise, but right now? I need to get home, for Carole..." He looked at her, showing signs of vulnerability for the first time.

"It's gonna be okay, Kurt!" She promised the small boy.

"I hope so..." His voice trailed off, and together they began to walk away from the rest of the gleeks. Nobody questioned their disappearance, too caught up in their own conversations.

When Mercedes got in, no one was at home – her dad at his job as a dentist and her mom working at a charity shop in town. She locked the door behind her, and slumped to the floor, sobbing until she had no more tears left. When she felt exhausted from the sheer emotion of the day, she staggered up and leant against the door. She thought about being eleven, and not understanding about hell and hell-on-earth. Mercedes – at the age of sixteen – realised properly for the first time what the world was like and what the word hell actually meant. Her body shaking from the horror of the day, she clambered up the stairs and collapsed on her bed, her body racking with sobs yet to be cried once more.

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