10.
Quinn stood there, glaring Mackenzie in the eye defiantly. It was three-on-one, but Quinn wasn't afraid of these girls, even if the odds did look pretty bleak for her going by their matching smirks and threatening stances.
"Why? Huh? Why'd you tell Hudson about Rachel?" she asked them, the rational part of her brain telling her that tantalizing these three was not a good idea. "What did you have to gain from it?"
"You really thought you could ditch us that easily? Like hell, Fabray," Mack snapped at the blonde viciously. The Mack pushed herself off of the metal frame that she'd been leaning against.
The three of them laughed simultaneously, creating a timbre effect as their sniggers reverberated under the metal bleachers. "Think again, sunshine."
Quinn put her very best HBIC mask back into place and stepped toward them, her heels clicking against the tarmac with a confidence she didn't actually feel. "So. . . what? I ditched you, so you're trying to get Rachel to ditch me?" she prompted. She smirked condescendingly, "Good luck with that."
Her smug smirk was wiped off instantly a second later as the sound of solid bone and muscle hitting soft skin echoed through the frame of the aluminum stands. Quinn felt the sting and burn of the punch, staggered only slightly, and then stood up straight again, which was a bad move.
Ronnie shoved her from behind, and she slammed into Sheila, who then shoved her into The Mack. Then suddenly, her world did a complete one-eighty and she was on her back on the ground, looking up at the network of shining support beams. A weight settled on her lower abdomen and Mack's face came into her vision, the girl straddled her with a disgusting sneer on her face.
One of The Mack's hands gripped her jaw tightly, pressing her thumbnail into where she had punched Quinn. "Remember this, Princess? Sure, you do. This summer . . ." Mack's fingers expertly undid a few buttons and pushed aside the fabric of Quinn's blouse. "You and me. We figured shit out together, didn't we? I helped you relieve some of that. . ."—A fire glinted in Mackenzie's dark eyes as she suddenly grabbed the apex of Quinn's legs and squeezed—" tension you'd been carrying around."
At that moment, Quinn decided to try and fight back, but Mackenzie was strong and had the upper-hand on her. "Screw you, Mackenzie," she spat at the girl.
"Oh, you did, and you loved it, didn't you? But we thought everyone else finding out wouldn't damage you nearly enough, would it girls? No, because you don't care about your reputation anymore." She looked over her shoulder at Ronnie and Sheila.
"Golden boy was real interested in what we had to tell him," Ronnie stated evilly.
The Mack returned her wicked gaze back to Quinn. "So, we thought, wouldn't it be much worse if that uptight freak-show with a mile-wide ego and a mouth to match. . . were to find out that she was starring in all your dirty little lesbo fantasies?" Mack sat back up smiling at her mirthlessly, "Huh? Wouldn't that just suck, in all the wrong ways?"
Quinn's eyes widened. "Leave her out of it!" she growled forcefully. She lifted her arm from where The Mack had it pinned at her side and twisted it enough to make Mack let go of her in pain, before drawing back and punching Mackenzie the hell off of her.
But as Mackenzie sprawled across the ground, Quinn felt hands on the collar of her shirt turn her over and slam her back down onto the pavement, then Mack was back again.
"Hey!" Another distant voice called out, one that sounded familiar in Quinn's dazed mind.
"Listen up, Princess," Mack growled, "Your secret is coming out and we're gonna enjoy sitting back and watching you find out how your little friend feels, knowing just how much fun you had this summer,"—the Mack's voice boomed louder with malevolent enjoyment—"how you loved screaming out her name as you came undone."
Mackenzie got off of her voluntarily then, but Quinn's vision was still fuzzy from hitting her head so hard on the asphalt. Stars and spots construed her sight as she struggled to stand up.
"Well well well, what's all this?" she heard Mack taunt.
When Quinn's sight cleared enough for her to see, she was met with the image of Rachel and Santana. The Mack's smug antagonizing didn't last long, as Rachel strode threateningly toward the clique with such fearlessness that they all retreated a half-step back despite the height advantage they had on her.
"Leave- my Quinn- the hell- alone," Rachel put simply in clipped tones. "Nothing you do to her could possibly make the three of you look like anything more than the self-loathing, useless, hateful people that you are."
Santana snapped back into Head Bitch-mode and walked threateningly toward the group to stand beside Rachel.
"You little-," Ronnie hissed at Rachel, moving toward her menacingly.
"Leave her alone!" Quinn yelled, summoning the strength to rise to her feet and join her friends. Santana caught one side of her as her state of disoriented vertigo made it difficult to walk straight. She managed to glare at The Skanks, "Back off of my friends, they've got nothing to do with this."
The Mack grinned maniacally. "Oh, she"- Mack glanced to Rachel- "has everything to do with this. Just remember, Q, you're the same ice queen you always were; everything you touch turns cold. You're just as destructive as ever."
"Go screw yourself, The Mack," Santana shot at the girl.
Fire glinted in Mackenzie's eyes and she smiled maliciously as she said, "Oh, but Quinn does it so much better."
Santana stumbled in her stubborn retorts for a moment, seeing Rachel's face crumple momentarily at Mackenzie's comment before the little girl composed herself.
The weakness that Rachel had shown was gone in less than a second as her feet moved forward and her fist connected with Mackenzie's face so hard that the girl was knocked onto her butt on the pavement. Rachel turned on her heel then, and slipped her arm around Quinn's waist.
Moving both herself and Quinn, Santana turned and started toward her car in the parking lot. "We're not going back to class today, Q. Pretty sure you're concussed."
When the three reached Santana's car, the Latina opened the passenger side door and she and Rachel gently helped Quinn to sit there. Quinn's head was throbbing, she was dizzy, and she kept biting back nausea. In other words, Santana might have been onto something with her 'concussed' theory.
She just sat there, feet still outside of the car, planted firmly on the pavement, and head resting against the doorjamb. The world spun around her in vibrant colors and fuzzy shapes, everything unclear and out of focus as she tried to keep herself awake. The silence from her friends was not helping this in the slightest.
"Q." She suddenly felt Santana's hand on her knee, and she forced her vision to focus on her best friend. Santana was knelt down and looking eye-to-eye with her as she finished, "I gotta go ask Chang if he can give Britt a ride home after school today, alright? I wanna take you to Lima Gen so my dad can check you out."
Quinn tried to nod, but that made the queasy feeling in her stomach worse, so she croaked out a "Yeah".
Santana left then, sending Rachel a meaningful look that clearly said 'keep an eye on her'. Rachel sat down next to Quinn, on the floor of Santana's passenger side, with her feet resting outside the car as well. She reached over timidly and rubbed Quinn's back, trying to reassure and comfort both the blonde and herself.
"Rachel, I'm so sorry. . ." Quinn tried to say, but her voice was weak and Rachel wasn't looking for an apology anyway.
"No, Quinn, it's okay. I understand now, why you've been ignoring me all week," she returned softly. All she wanted to do now was hold Quinn until they both felt better and the rest of the world ebbed away.
"I should've gone to you first, confronted you with what Finn said, but I was scared," the injured girl murmured, her words running together but still somehow intelligible to Rachel.
"You were scared of confronting me, but not those Skanks?" the diva questioned incredulously. She grabbed one of Quinn's hands and kissed the back of it discreetly.
Quinn used the hand that Rachel held to pull her up and sit the tiny diva across her lap, so that they could still look at each other.
"I was afraid you would reject me," she clarified in her slurred voice. "I was scared that what Finn told me was true, that you didn't want me. Because I'm so damaged and all I do is hurt you. Because I care more about you more than I probably should, more than you want me to, more than you could ever care about me."
Rachel pushed Quinn's hair away from her hazel eyes and heart-shaped face. "Ssh," she hushed her best friend. "No, Quinn. No. There's so much that you don't know, so much that we'll talk about when your mind isn't quite so scrambled." She hugged Quinn tightly, secretly placing affectionate kisses in her gorgeous blonde hair.
"I love you, Rachel," Quinn murmured drowsily. "Thank you, for being my best friend. I'm so sorry I doubted you."
"None of it matters-"
"No, you matter," Quinn interrupted her. "You matter. . ."
Rachel clasped Quinn's face between her two hands. "Quinn, sweetheart, you can't go to sleep," she told her in a loud voice. "Wake up, you have to stay awake, sweetie. You can't go to sleep."
" 'M so tired though," Quinn complained not unjustly; the darkness was closing in on her and she was helpless to stop it.