Disclaimer: I don't own anything you recognize.
A/N: This was written immediatly after Choke, when I was afraid RIB would completely drop Beiste's storyline. Trigger warnings for a character dealing with domestic abuse.
Shannon Beiste goes back, because she wants to be loved.
To be loved seems like such an easy thing when she looks at Will and Emma or some of her students. They face problems, yes, but at the end of the day, they seem able to fix them with well-chosen songs and honest communication.
(If she were a bitter woman, she'd think about how they don't understand how lucky they are.)
She's doesn't feel bitter though, just defeated as she walks up the steps and back home. Cooter is waiting, all apologies and kisses.
Beiste accepts them and hates herself for it, but it's okay, because she has Cooter to love her.
x
She may spend most of her time with the football team, but that doesn't mean Beiste doesn't have an enormous soft spot in her heart for the glee girls.
They remind Beiste of herself: more than a little bit outcasted, but trying their damnedest to make the world take notice. All of them are so young and she desperately wants them to all achieve their dreams.
(And if she was a bitter woman, Shannon Beiste would remind herself how these girls are different from her, because they are all so pretty and pretty girls never seem to lose.)
She sits in the choir room and watches as they perform a song. And while she knows their hearts are in the right places, all it does is make Shannon feel broken and jagged inside.
Despite that, she thanks them for the effort.
x
Things are okay, after a while.
It's takes a week for Beiste to stop flinching whenever her husband reaches for her, whether it's to offer some gift he just happened to pick up after work or to hold her in bed at night.
After two weeks, everyone at the school is swept up in the excitement of prom and graduation. Sue and Roz are back at each others' throats and Emma is flustered by planning her rapidly approaching wedding.
Beiste allows herself to be swept up in the madness, because it's easier to help Brittany Pierce cut out paper dinosaurs and pick out flower combinations with Emma than bring up her own life.
"I can't wait until I can enjoy the married life like you do," Emma admits as they consider silk flowers for the wedding, because they've never been in contact with soil.
Beiste never told Emma everything, because Emma worries too much. As far as she knows, Beiste and Cooter had their first couple's spat but have since made up.
(And since she's not bitter, Beiste doesn't like to think about how no one found it important enough to tell Emma what she actually missed when she was out with a cold last week.)
Not knowing what to do, Beiste plays with the petals on a silk rose until it falls apart. And she's suddenly, awfully aware of her own massiveness and strength when Emma's small pick up the pieces.
"Hey, it's no big deal," Emma says, in her baby soft voice, "I know that you don't always realize how strong you really are, Shannon."
Except, as she weeps in the staff room over fake flowers, Beiste has never felt so weak.