Mercedes is awesome. I love Mercedes, but the thing is we don't know anything about her past except that her dad's a dentist and she loves Kurt. Usually I'd make up a story, give details to her story that revealed how tragic her life really is, but I didn't want that for Mercedes. Because I kind of think that's why she's screwed up. She doesn't fully understand the pain that the other members go through, or maybe they don't think she does, and that makes her distant from them. Anyway, read and review please.
Mercedes Jones doesn't have a best friend until sophomore year of high school.
When she was younger, nine or so, she had lots of friends. A group of girls from the Baptist church in the next town over that would come over every Sunday for fake tea parties and to take turns jumping on the trampoline in her back yard.
But none of them were ever best friends; none of them were girls she would call at midnight to reveal her nightmares.
She thought that maybe it was just the age, that when they were older they'd be closer. That maybe they'd spend hours talking about their boy problems and family problems that at a weight of ninety pounds Mercedes actually had to worry about. But by eleven Mercedes is ten pounds overweight and the girls finally do whisper to each other in the pews of the church.
(Just about her.)
---
When she's fifteen she walks into her English class with an A- and a 3.89 GPA. But on the third day of the fourth semester her teacher screws her.
Mr. Jacobson picks twenty-two quotes chosen at random and places them in a hat, instructing each student to pick one as they file into the classroom.
She gets stuck with this one: Maybe I wanted to hear it so badly that my ears betrayed my mind in order to secure my heart. She spends the next two weeks of her life bull shitting a paper about a quote she can't relate to.
It's her first D, so she goes in and talks to her teacher, even though her parents spent the entirety of last night's dinner telling her that it was okay, that she can make it up.
She tells him that it's not fair that he graded her on life experiences instead of her written work; that she at least deserved a B, and for just a second she sees herself as Rachel Berry resident grade-grubber. But she doesn't exactly care that she could, at that moment, be compared to the tiny, annoying brunette.
He looks her up and down, and then glances back at her paper. I can't give you a B for writing this paper about the world at large. I wanted to see how you felt, Mercedes. I'm sorry.
(A year and a half later, she writes the paper because it's all she can relate to.)
---
Mercedes Jones has both her parents.
She doesn't deal with grief from abandonment or death like most of Glee. Her dad is a dentist, her mom a secretary. And she thinks that maybe the group looks at her differently because of it. Like because she hasn't experienced loss on the scale they have, that means she's on the outside of this tight little circle they have.
And shit if she doesn't resent them for it.
Because she may have family, but they, they have friends. They have relationships, failing or not, and all she has at the end of the day is a best friend that she really wants to kiss and a school that draws bloated figures of her on the bathroom walls.
---
It doesn't start with Quinn, no matter how much she wants to blame it on the pregnant queen, it instead starts with a piece of paper.
Later, she'll look back and read the note in the context of what they were actually talking about, but at that precise moment the only she could comprehend was that she was being asked to hang out by a guy.
It was the first time, and she still wishes she had said no.
Mercedes thinks that maybe she knew about Kurt even before Rachel and Tina gay-ventioned her, but denial is the name of the game and she could play it almost as well as she could sing.
When he finally tells her, she may want to 'bust out his windows' but what she actually does is spend an hour in the bathroom sobbing. Then she walks out, shoulders squared, smile on her face and who thought Mercedes Jones would pull a Quinn Fabray and pretend to be fine.
---
Quinn has her baby while she's still playing bitter and not talking to Kurt. But spending that many hours in the waiting room watching Finn drive a hole in the floor leaves little for her to do but discreetly watch the boy who shattered her heart. And then it's like wow hello reality because while she is watching Kurt, Kurt is watching Finn and she finally gets it.
She finally understands the thing that no one in Glee gets, even after they sang the freaking song. Life isn't about getting what you want; it's about dealing with what you have.
It's probably suppose to comfort her, the fact that in some way or another no one in Glee has exactly what they want because Brittany's sister still doesn't talk to her and the teenagers in the next room still don't get their daughter. Still, though, that revelation almost drives her to her knees, because they might not have what they want, but they all have something.
And at the end of the day, Mercedes Jones just isn't damaged enough, broken enough to even receive that.
That's the day she begins to hate them.
---
Senior year she pulls a Finn and leaves Glee two weeks before Sectionals. Half of them try to convince her to come back and the other half convince themselves they don't need her, but when it comes down to it she's never really been in Glee.
Because a month ago they all sat in another waiting room watching Rachel try to kill nurses when her dad had a heart attack, and they all helped Matt limp around when he snapped his fibula during a bad hit in a football game.
Because this group feeds on grief and tragedy, and they all just stare at her when she speaks because this girl is supposedly whole and healed and what does she know about anything that they're going through.
(They still win sectionals, and wow that hurt more than she expected.)
---
She graduates, and two years later she's a secretary at the hospital the next town over from Lima but in the process of becoming a nurse when Finn walks in with a brain tumor, Glee following behind.
They barely notice her, and she walks in with a stack of papers just as Puck is saying something about Rachel and setting people on fire. It's so familiar that she stops a few feet in the door, and stands there until Kurt notices her.
He tilts his head to one side, and when he open his mouth, half a smile frozen across it, his voice echoes around the room like it's empty. Well hello.
She can't help the smile that pulls at her lips, but as the other heads in the room turn to face her, it hits her, hard. She doesn't know these people, not anymore , Finn, Rachel, and Puck all have bands on their left ring fingers but she honestly can't begin to guess who's together, and Santana has what looks like a baby bump and it's just too hard.
Because she walked out on them, and they hardly even flinch when she does it again.
Another two years later, she gets a letter from Kurt on simple stationary. His dad died, and he knows she hates them but was wondering if she wouldn't mind attending the funeral.
Mercedes is halfway through writing a response that no, she can't make it, when she wonders who the hell let this happen to them, and instead goes out to buy a black dress.
