Disclaimer: I don't own Glee.
Note: This is one of the more emotional chapters, and yeah, it's sad, so here's a tissue warning right here and now.
Chapter Nine—Tina
Dearest Artie,
Hi. I bet you didn't expect we'd still be thinking of you—or care so much—six years after your death. But Artie, I could never forget you, never. You were my first love…and my only true love. Yes, I know, I dated Mike for a while, but he didn't make me feel the way you made me feel. I loved you so much, Artie. I still do. They all tell me I need to move on. But I don't see how I can, considering the circumstances…
Tina never expected it to happen. Really, she hadn't. She only meant to reconcile with Artie, now that they were both single again. She still loved him, and he was willing to give her a second chance. So they went on a date, they went back to Tina's house, and they made love, as they'd always secretly wanted to. Thinking of what had happened to Quinn, they used protection.
Neither of them noticed that the condom broke.
Tina didn't want to believe that she was pregnant. What teenager does? She tried to convince herself that it was the flu, seeing how it was winter and all. She couldn't be pregnant, she just couldn't be. They had been careful, really, they had. She brushed it off when her period was late, blaming it on the 'flu' she thought she had and the stress of the impending Regionals competition. She hadn't been gaining much weight that she'd noticed, and other than bouts of nausea and otherwise feeling a bit weaker than usual, she felt completely fine. She had Artie back, and she was happy for that.
That day in art class, she had been painting. She wasn't sure entirely what she was painting, as the topic that month was abstract art in various media. Other classmates wanted to draw with charcoal or sculpt something, but Tina liked to paint. She couldn't erase it like she could a pencil sketch or smooth it over like she could a sculpture. It had to be perfect. If she tried to paint over a mistake with another color, it wouldn't be quite right. It was about control, about the right length of the brushstroke and the right mix of colors to create a symphony of colors and shapes. It was okay that it was abstract, what she was painting; after all, that was the assignment. She let the paintbrush swirl across the paper, allowing her mind to drift as she did so. She liked when the teacher played classical music on the radio to inspire them. The smell of paint permeated the air, along with other smells found in an art room, making her eyes sting, but she didn't care.
That's when it started to happen. She felt the blood drain from her face, but led Joe Hart, the new kid, towards a nearby emergency exit and straight outside to the parking lots.
"Tina, what…what's happening, I don't understand," Joe said.
Her eyes were wild. "It's Columbine all over again," she bit her ragged nails. "Oh God, no, this can't be happening." She dropped her hand from her mouth. "Oh God, Artie! Where's Artie? Is he okay? Is he safe?" She racked her brain, trying to think of what class he had at that time, where he could be, if any of their friends were in the same class who could get him to safety. Her eyes welled with tears. "Oh God, what if he's hurt? What if he's…?" Her knees began to buckle.
"Hey," Joe put a hand on her shoulder. "Hey, he's gonna be fine. The Lord will see us through this. Don't…don't cry…" he pulled her into an awkward hug. "Look, there's uh…Mercedes, and Rachel and Finn. Let's go talk to them, okay?" She nodded miserably and sniffled as he brought her over to them.
"Thank God, you're both safe," Rachel breathed a sigh of relief.
"So it's only the five of us for now?" Joe questioned Finn.
"Yeah, bro, but I'm sure the rest of us are around here somewhere." They shivered in the cold as gunshots and screams penetrated the atmosphere, Rachel sidling closer to Finn as they huddled for warmth. Quinn and Sugar appeared, and then another group of Glee kids, and another. Only one arrived by themselves, which was Mike.
"Mike, where's Artie?" Tina immediately asked him. "Where is he?"
Mike shook his head, the poor boy trembling from head to toe. "I'm so sorry. I'm so freaking sorry, Tina."
And her world went black.
She awoke a few minutes later to Mercedes shaking her shoulder. "No, no, he's dead, he's dead!" The Asian girl screamed. "Artie, Artie, no!"
"I've got you, babygirl," Mercedes held her fiercely. "I've got you. It's gonna be okay." She gently stroked her black hair in an attempt to soothe her, but Tina thrashed her arms.
"No, no, no! Bring him back! Someone, anyone, please tell me that this is just a cruel joke!"
But they didn't, because they couldn't. It was true. He was gone.
Mercedes drove her home and tucked her into bed, offering to stay with her, but Tina sent her away. She wanted to be alone to grieve her love's death. She pressed her hands to her stomach. In her innermost heart, she knew it to be true, but she was going to deny it until there was too much evidence confronting her with the reality of the situation. She didn't know who to turn to. She couldn't tell her parents about her potential…problem. And Mercedes and Kurt, for as much as she loved them, couldn't keep a secret. Instead, she turned to the one person she knew who had been there before.
"Quinn, I…can you…first of all, I'm sorry for snapping at you in the bathroom at Artie's…you know." She couldn't bring herself to say funeral. "But do you think you could accompany me to the drugstore so I can buy a…a test?" She hoped Quinn would get the message.
The blonde smiled warmly. "Of course, Tina. We'll go today, after school." And so they did, Tina hiding her burning face as Quinn purchased the pregnancy test. She waited the agonizing ride back home. She waited the painfully long time it took for the results to pop up. She couldn't even bear to look at the little lines that came on the screen; she made Quinn do it. "I'm so sorry," Quinn said softly. "Tina, I…"
"Don't," she whispered. "I know what that test says."
"What do you want to do?" Quinn asked gently. "I can go with you to Planned Parenthood, if that's what you want. If you keep it, give it up, or abort it, it's none of my business, and I'll support you no matter what."
Tina's hands fluttered across her belly. She knew her decision.
"Take me there," she said. "I can't keep it. And I don't want to bring it into this world." Quinn flinched; abortion was against her religion, which was why it hadn't been an option for her, but this was a different circumstance than her own. She had just been stupid and caught in a web of lies and cheating, and she hadn't used birth control. From what Tina told her through hysterical tears, she gathered that they had used a condom, but it must have broken without them realizing it. There was no cheating; just a consummation between two people who'd loved each other for three years.
That, and Tina's baby's father was dead.
She held Tina's hand in the waiting room. "Are you sure about this?"
Tina's face was a rock. "Positive."
In the end, she didn't go through with it. She felt as if Artie had put his hand on her shoulder and told her that this baby, this child, would love her when he couldn't, that this was a reminder of him, but a positive one, and that this could change her life around.
So she concealed it from her friends and family for as long as she could, until Quinn was about to go to Yale, a couple weeks before Tina was to give birth. Her parents had, surprisingly, not kicked her out of the house, and found space for the necessary baby things. Of course, she had to pay for much of it herself, but her friends pitched in, and Rachel and Kurt and Mercedes even set about planning a baby shower. She loved her friends for being there, really, she did. But as her stomach expanded and the baby inside of her grew, she couldn't hide the fact that the baby's father wasn't there to support her and to love her…to love them.
The birth was a bloody, painful ordeal, in which Tina went in and out of consciousness as Mercedes and Quinn supported her, Mercedes having been there before with Quinn and Quinn being on the other side of things for the first time.
Tina was blessed with a baby girl on August 23, 2012, a month premature. The baby was named Sunshine, Sunny for short, as insisted upon by Quinn, who thought Tina could use a little ray of sunshine in her life. She was a beautiful baby, with Artie's soft green eyes and Tina's jet-black hair. Tina almost hadn't wanted to hold her at first, but when the cooing baby was handed over to her by the nurse, she fell in love instantly. This was her baby, her very own, and she and Artie had created her together.
And so Sunny grew up before Tina could count the minutes. When she took her first steps, Tina started crying, knowing Artie would've loved to have seen it. He would've loved little Sunny, would've spoiled her and fawned all over her. Sure, he would've been worried at first, having to support a baby at seventeen, but he would've made her his daddy's little girl. The other Glee kids doted on her, Quinn especially. Tina decreed her the unofficial godmother, and Mike, whom she still cared for in a way, the godfather. Both accepted and lavished Sunny with love and gifts. Unfortunately, with a baby, Tina had to stay close to home for school, so she wouldn't have to dump her baby with her parents for months at a time. Besides, she couldn't stay away from her baby girl for that long.
Of course, there did come the day that Sunny asked about her father. "Where dada?" She asked one evening as Tina was cleaning the kitchen after dinner.
Tina froze, tears springing to her eyes. "Dada isn't here," she managed to say.
"But where?" Sunny insisted.
"He's in Heaven," Tina choked out.
Sunny studied her mother's face carefully. "No dada?"
"No," Tina whispered. "No dada."
Sunny's face crumpled. "Dada bye-bye?"
And Tina, for once, couldn't look at her daughter.
Eventually, when Sunny got taller and could see things that were on higher shelves, she came upon a framed picture of Artie. "Mama, who's this?"
Tina smiled softly. "That's your daddy, sweetie."
Sunny regarded the picture with great care. "What was his name?"
"Arthur, though we all called him Artie."
"You mean Auntie Quinn and Uncle Mike and Auntie 'Cedes and all them?"
"Yes. He was…well, he had something very bad happen to him when he was young, a little younger than you, and he couldn't walk anymore. He was in a wheelchair."
"Oh." She looked at the picture a little more. "Hey, I have his eyes!"
Tina chuckled. "Yes, you do, and you have his smile, too."
Sunny laughed. "Did you love him, Mama?"
"Yes," Tina looked at the picture with her daughter. "I loved him very much."
And so she watched her wondrous little child grow and blossom. She wouldn't be the first to admit that it was difficult being a single parent, but she pulled through on the sheer strength of her friends and family. When Sunny was old enough, she took her to her father's grave. She told her daughter everything that she could about Artie, summoning memories of him and encompassing both of them with his spirit. But she would never admit aloud that Sunny was an accident, that she hadn't been planned, nor that she hadn't wanted her in the beginning.
She could never allow paint in the house. The smell of it alone was enough to send her reeling back to that day, and she couldn't make it through without crying. She never bought paint for Sunny, and immediately hid the paintings she brought home from art class. She couldn't even look at an abstract painting without remembering what she had been doing when her boyfriend had been dying nearby. The world seemed abstract to her, colors and sounds blurring into each other as they flew by her. Things that would've made her cry made her laugh, and vice versa. At times, she felt oddly calm and peaceful. One might've thought her to be depressed or else suicidal. But she wasn't. She just felt free and light, even though she always carried with her the pain of knowing that her daughter would never know her father. She didn't want to fall in love again or marry again, and so she didn't, although Sunny unsuccessfully tried to set her up with various single fathers of her friends. She'd always be in love with Artie, and nothing could change that. She wanted to forget him, yet remember him at the same time. She was afraid of forgetting him, but she was afraid of remembering.
Still, she knew that somewhere, he was watching over her.
And that was enough for her.
Sunny loves you, too. She really does. I only wish she could see her father. She's taken after you so much. Sometimes, I feel you watching over us. You're still here, Artie. We just can't see you.
Love forever,
Tina
P.S. Sunny wants to add something here:
Hi Daddy I love you I wish I could see you so Mommy can stop crying Love Sunny
