Authors Note: We're now going to start having some serious time jumps. My intent at the moment is to cover the period from the girls return to Lima from New York up to and including the birth in a series of chapters that cover some important events as well as some regular day to day stuff. The birth will be end of this story but I'll be writing a sequel that will pick up from that point.
In the chapter below, the italics section is a flashback, I hope that's obvious.
And please forgive any errors, it's late and this is unbetad. Let me know if you spot any mistakes and I'll sort them out.
The day after the yoga session was their last full day in New York and a slightly dejected looking Mr Shue tried to persuade everyone to spend the day together as a team building exercise, a suggestion that left Miss Pillsbury looking rather uncomfortable as she attempted to subtly put space between herself and the Glee teacher. Thankfully no one else thought this was a good idea so Santana, Rachel, Brittany and Quinn spent most of the day together taking in the sights of the city, wandering in central park and making plans for a year in the future when they would all return.
They only went their separate ways when Quinn discovered that Santana wasn't going to use the tickets to that evenings performance of Chicago she had managed to acquire as a special surprise for Rachel. She had only bought two tickets for the sold out show and didn't want to leave Quinn and Brittany alone for the night after everything that had happened, but the blondes finally managed to persuade the other two girls that they also had plans for the evening.
Santana wasn't exactly happy to discover the plans were to head out to a local dance club, remembering the state Quinn had been in only a couple of nights before, but Brittany persuaded her it was going to be okay by producing a flyer for the evening, a special underage dance contest where no alcohol would be served and where there would be plenty of security.
The flight back was uneventful. The four chose the same seats as they had on the flight to New York but Rachel ended up pouting a little when Quinn and Brittany disappeared into the soundproofed bedroom at the back of the jet. Santana managed to cheer her up with sweet lady kisses, even if the diva pushed Santana's hand away when it tried to venture up her skirt. Rachel was adamant that she was not doing there where anyone could wander to the back of the jet and see them.
The bus from the airport took them back to the school where the four girls climbed into Santana's car and they all headed directly to the hospital. Quinn had been very quiet from the moment the jet had landed, not letting go of Brittany's hand for the whole of the car ride but of all the miles she had traveled that day it is the walk from the hospital reception that seemed to take the longest. When the doors for the ICU came into view, Quinn instinctively reached out with her free hand and grabs Santana's. The Latina just stepped a little closer and squeezed back reassuringly.
A helpful nurse showed them to Judy's room but it wouldn't have been hard to find without her given the presence of a uniformed police officer guarding the door. He let them past with just a nod and then the four girls were looking at the small looking form of Quinn's mother laying, still unconscious, on the bed. The few areas of skin that weren't covered by plaster casts, bandages or hospital gown were black and blue. Monitoring cables and IV tubes sprouted from various parts of her body leading to a number of machines installed around the head of the bed. But she was breathing on her own, the beeping of the heart monitor strong and steady in the otherwise silent room and the doctor that came to see them assured Quinn that there was a high probability that her mother would be okay. Eventually.
When they eventually went home they were met by two detectives and a group of uniformed police that took Santana's keys then searched the house. It was only a precaution, one of the detectives assured them, since there was no sign of a break in, but given the severity of Judy's injuries they weren't in the mood to take any chances. Thankfully no one was found but over the next few days Santana had the entire security system upgraded.
Every window and door was wired, every downstairs room and hallway was covered by passive infra-red sensors and panic buttons were installed in strategic locations throughout the house. Santana had security cameras installed that would allow anyone inside to check who was knocking before going anywhere near the door. Quinn thought this was all a little excessive but Rachel knew this was just Santana showing her maternal instinct and doing whatever was necessary to protect the little family she had built for herself.
They fell into a routine of for the final two weeks of school. Classes, hospital visits, take out dinner, hours of studying and then watching a movie until they dragged themselves up the stairs to collapse into bed. Time passed with surprising speed and very little drama given the number of finals that the four girls had and Santana even agreed to allow Puck to host a Glee club party at their house to celebrate the start of the summer holidays.
The 'Only Glee Club members and their plus one's' rule was enforced, much to Puck's disappointment, by a number of bouncers that Santana had hired for the event.
And then it was the summer holidays.
Quinn cracks open an eye only when her questing hand fails to locate the bottle of water that is usually sitting on her bedside table. It isn't there and she realizes with a groan that she forgot to pick one up when she headed up to bed the previous night. She cranes her neck to look over the body of the blonde still fast asleep next to her and finds that nightstand as bereft of water as her own.
She licks her lips, or tries to, but her mouth is as dry as sandpaper and a visit to the kitchen is pretty much inevitable. She throws back the covers, carefully prises Britt's arm from around her waist and heads to the door.
"Where are you going?" Britt croaks.
She looks half asleep, her eyes lidded as she looks up at Quinn from the bed.
"Just going to get some water. Want some?"
Britt nods than squeezes her eyes shut as Quinn opens the bedroom door, allowing light to flood in from the hallway. She's not surprised when she finds Rachel in the kitchen, staring into the refrigerator with a perplex expression.
"Hey."
Rachel jumps, gasping a little and pressing a hand to her chest in a rather over dramatic fashion and releases a shaky breath when she turns to see Quinn standing just inside the kitchen door.
"Oh Quinn, you surprised me. What are you doing up at this hour?"
"Sorry" Quinn apologizes, she really didn't intend to surprise the brunette and it was probably a bad idea since a certain Latina would kill her if anything bad happened, "I just came down for some water for Britt and me. Are you raiding the fridge again?"
"Cravings." Rachel explains with a pout as she pulls two bottles out of the refrigerator and passes them to the blonde, "But we're out of what I want and I can't find anything else to satisfy me."
"Time to wake up Santana?" Quinn asks with a smirk.
Rachel shakes her head and ignores the innuendo, "I've woken her twice this week already, she'd go if I asked but she needs a decent night's sleep."
"You think you're going to get much sleep when the twins are borne?" Quinn teases.
Rachel shrugs, "Probably not. Are you worried about your sleep being interrupted? I'm sure we could get your room soundproofed or something, or maybe…"
"No Rach, I'm not worried. It's going to happen but after everything you and Santana have done for me, I'm not about to hide out in some soundproofed room and leave the pair of you to it. Now you make up a shopping list and I'll go down to the store, just let me go grab some clothes."
"Quinn, you don't need to…" Rachel begins
"I'm already awake, it's fine." Quinn calls back and then it's pointless arguing since the blonde is already half way up the stairs.
The drive to the local store and back should only have taken five minutes each way, add in another five for getting everything on the list and paying, and Quinn should have been back after fifteen minutes, twenty at the most. It was now forty minutes since Quinn had left and Rachel was beyond worried. Quinn's contact details are still displayed on the screen of her phone and the call rings almost immediately when she presses the call button. And rings. And rings. And rings. When the call is diverted to voice mail it is the second time in the same number of minutes.
She hangs up the phone in the same moment that she reaches the far end of the room and turns to continue her pacing. How much longer should she wait? Another ten minutes wasn't a huge amount of time and maybe Quinn just got delayed, maybe she met someone at the store and stopped to talk or she got a whiff of bacon from the 24 hour café across the street and decided to have a snack, her phone on silent in her purse, leaving her oblivious to Rachel's calls.
But a feeling of dread was curling in the bottom of Rachel's stomach and she hadn't felt this sick at any point in her pregnancy so far. Something was wrong, she didn't know how she knew it but she knew it, and thanks to Santana and Quinn's addiction to crime drama television shows, and some sci-fi show that looked like it had been crossed with a western, she knew all sorts of horrible things that could happen to someone in well under ten minutes.
The human body can be drained of blood in 8.6 seconds given adequate vacuuming systems.
She doesn't remember climbing the stairs but by the time she reaches her bedroom door, tears are already streaming down her cheeks. There's nothing subtle about the shake she gives her sleeping fiancé.
"S-santana!"
The Latina groaned, shrugged off Rachel's hand and mumbles something that Rachel didn't catch.
"Santana! Please!"
Rachel's voice breaks into a sob during the second word but it's enough to break Santana out of the fog of sleep that had been holding her. Her eyes snapped open and the next moment she had pulled Rachel into her lap, fighting the surge of panic Rachel's tone had shot through her as the inspects the diva for any visible problems.
"What's wrong Rach? Are you hurt? Is it the babies? I'm going to call 911!"
"No!" Rachel grabs the hand that Santana been reaching out for her cell phone with, "I'm fine, we're fine."
Santana visibly relaxes, her hand returning to rub gently on Rachel's baby bump in a gesture that she knew calmed both her fiancé and her babies. She knew something was still wrong though, sure Rachel woke her up with amazing regularity in the middle of the night, not that Santana had a problem with that, but she was never this upset. She was sometimes a little whiny but usually she was more apologetic than anything else.
"So what's wrong Rach?"
"It's Quinn." Rachel explains as she tries to hold back another sob, "She's disappeared!"
It takes Santana another five minutes to calm down Rachel enough to get a full explanation of what the problem is, but as soon as she has, she's climbing out of bed and pulling sweatpants over the boy shorts she happened to be sleeping in, all the while assuring Rachel that everything was fine.
"She's going to be fine Rach. She's probably just broken down somewhere, or they were out of something at the store and she's had to go over to Walmart. You know how long it can take to get around that place." Santana had a bad habit of ending up buying way more than she intended to when she visited that store. "But I'll go find her and make sure she gets home safe."
"I'm coming with you." Rachel declares as she starts to search for a pair of her own sweats that actually still fit her.
"No. You need to sleep or at least relax. You are already way to stressed about this for my liking." Rachel starts to object, but Santana silences her by pressing a finger to her lips, "Don't argue Rach, please. I'm just trying to look out for both you and Quinn right now, please don't make it harder than it has to be."
Rachel nods after a moment and Santana rewards her with a grin and a kiss on her cheek before she pulls the hoody over her head. She grabs her keys, wallet and phone and pauses just before she heads out of the bedroom.
"Rach?"
Rachel looks up from the point of the floor that she had been absently staring at but doesn't rise from her position on the edge of the bed.
"You look after our babies, I'll go find Quinn and we'll be back before you know it. Okay?"
Santana returns Rachel's uncertain smile before she heads down stairs and out the front door, waiting until she heard the alarm system engage before she crosses the drive to her own car, now sitting next to the empty spot that Quinn had claimed for her own.
When Rachel had told her where Quinn had gone, she had, just for an instant, wanted to scream at the girl, demand how she could be so stupid as to let the blonde leave the house alone in the middle of the night when he was still out there somewhere. She had wanted to demand what the girl was thinking in waiting so long to wake her when the blonde hadn't returned within the fifteen minutes the journey should have taken.
It wasn't Rachel's fault, or at least not only her fault since Quinn should have known better to go out as well. The pair probably hadn't even thought of Russel's existence since the news about Quinn's mother had reached them in New York, even when they spent time at Judy's bedside, preferring to concentrate instead on what little they could do for the still unconscious woman. But Santana hadn't forgotten about him. The proof of that was the increased security around the house, the rigor with which she checked every window and door every night before they went to bed, the way her eyes searched the sidewalk every time they went for a walk and the fully charged devices all four girls carried in their purses at her insistence.
It showed in the way she checked out every pedestrian she passed on the short drive to the store. There weren't many and none of them were him.
She saw the flashing lights from over two blocks away, police cruisers drawn up to the curb with their lights still flashing on the roof. For a few moments she held onto the hope that it was unrelated, a break in further down the block or a botched robbery after Quinn had already left. But the hope is short lived, fading away as she pulled up behind one of the cruisers and Quinn's car comes into view sitting behind police tape.
She's out of the car in an instant, dashing across the street screaming the girls name and looking around frantically hoping to see the familiar blonde head of hair appear from one of the many groups of people that happen to be standing around. A strong arm intercepts her before she reaches the police tape and she's a split second from striking out when the police uniform registers. Instead she grabs the officer by the lapels.
"Where's Quinn?!" she demands, "Where the hell is Quinn?!"
"Santana?"
It wasn't the cop that was holding her, or rather that she was holding since he had already retracted the arm that had caught around her waist, but a guy in a fancy suit that it took her a minute to place as one of the detectives that had searched the house when the four girls had returned from New York.
"Where's Quinn? Please… Where's Quinn?" Santana begs.
"She was taken to the hospital…"
The doors to the ER slam open and almost every head in the waiting room turns involuntarily to the sound, expectations rising of a dramatic entry and possibly blood spurting everywhere as someone shouted for help. The entry was dramatic, Rachel did nothing by halves of course and she had been practising dramatic entries and exists since she could walk, but thankfully there was no blood. Instead brunette makes a beeline for the reception desk quickly followed by Brittany and both of Rachel's fathers.
The first thing Santana had done when she had finally calmed enough that the police outside the convenience store judged her safe to drive was to pull out her phone, select Rachel's number and hesitate. This was not the sort of news you broke over the phone to your pregnant fiancé and it wasn't exactly like she could call Brittany either. In the end she settled for waking up Rachel's fathers and sending them round to talk to Rachel and Brittany. The plan had been for the two men to break the news as gently as possible to the girls and then stay with them until the morning.
Neither Rachel or Brittany liked the plan.
"Quinn Fabray!" Rachel demands, slamming her hand onto the reception desk and actually making the nurse sitting behind it jump, "Where is she?"
The nurse blinks at Rachel and then consults her computer.
"No Quinn Fabray." The nurse says in an uninterested tone.
"What? She has to be here!" Rachel says, "About this tall…" she holds her hand above her head, "blonde, looks like an angel…"
Rachel's rant is cut off when Brittany's hand closes over her mouth.
"Her name is Lucy," The blonde says to the nurse, "Lucy Quinn Fabray."
Rachel's exclamation of surprise is muffled by Brittany's hand and the blonde rolls her eyes. "I'll explain later."
"Curtain 3," the nurse says in a bored tone.
Any confusion Rachel felt at finding out Quinn's first name wasn't Quinn was forgotten when she heard where the blonde was being cared for. She had expected ICU or worse being told she was in an operating theater, dreaded being told it was too late, that the blonde was already gone and nothing they could do would help, nightmare scenarios playing through her mind one after another. But Curtain 3 sounds so… safe, so normal, the sort of place you ended up when you needed a Band-Aid for a paper cut. It didn't stop them charging across the room once they figured out where the curtained off areas were, leaving the two Berry men behind them in their hurry and startling a nurse as they barrel though a pair of double doors. Santana's head pops out from behind a curtain in response to their calls.
"Will you too shut up and get over here!"
Santana holds the curtain open for them and there, sitting on a gurney that takes up most of the space in the small area, is Quinn. She's looking a little dazed and it's obvious that she's going to have some pretty impressive bruises along with a few lacerations, but she's awake and apparently alert, her hands folded in her lap and wearing a somewhat bemused expression as Brittany rushes over to wrap her in a hug.
"I thought you two were going to wait at home?" Quinn asks.
"When have these two ever done anything they were told?" Santana says with an eye role, earning her a glare and slap on the arm from her fiancé.
Britt releases Quinn from the hug, holding the other blonde at arm's length for a moment to examine her but letting go of Quinn's arms when she winces.
"What happened? Are you okay? Where's the doctor?! How could you think it was a good idea to go out alone at this time of night? Quinn, why aren't you answering me? Oh god, have you lost the ability to speak? WHERE'S THE DOCTOR?!"
"Calm down Britt, I'm going to be okay." This time it's Quinn's turn to take Brittany in her arms and give her a reassuring squeeze, "I've got some bruises and a few cuts, but that's all."
"And a possible concussion," Santana adds with a glare at the blonde who obviously didn't want Brittany to worry, "We're just waiting for some test results and if there's nothing serious, we can take her home."
Quinn has already shuffled over on the bed and Brittany has climbed on to the small space beside her. Santana has taken the only chair in the small area, an ugly plastic thing designed to be easy to clean with no concern about comfort, and pulls Rachel into her lap.
"You were supposed to wait at home." Santana observes quietly.
Rachel shrugs. "I couldn't not tell her," she says indicating Brittany, "and do you really thing anyone could have kept her home?"
"At least tell me you didn't come alone."
Rachel shakes her head, "No, my fathers are… um…" she looks around for the two men, "in the waiting area I guess. Daddy drove."
Apparently only Santana had noticed that Quinn had avoided the question about what had happened to cause her to end up at the hospital. She had asked too almost as soon as she had arrived at the blonde's bedside but Quinn had avoided answering that time too. Santana had decided not to push it while they were at the hospital, she'd wait until Quinn had been taken care of and they'd all had some sleep before she went hunting for answers.
It is another thirty minutes before the doctor comes back to discharge Quinn. She is indeed suffering a concussion, though just a mild one, and is instructed not to drive or operate heavy machinery for seventy two hours. A prescription is written for painkillers and the blonde is supplied with enough pills to last her a few days until she can get the prescription filled.
The sun is just starting to break the horizon by the time the Berry men, one driving their own car and the other driving Santana's, pull up outside the girl's home. The four girls climb out and head straight to their beds, the two Berry men following them into the house and making themselves comfortable on the living room sofas.
It's lunch time when the girls finally started surfacing the next day. Hiram and LeRoy had decided to raid the kitchen for something to eat, still too worried about the girls and the events of the previous night to leave for their own home, and the smell of bacon, eggs, pancakes and just about every other breakfast food brings first Quinn and Brittany and then Santana and Rachel down the stairs.
The six of them sit around the kitchen table. The only noise to interrupt the silence is that of knives and forks on plates, the crackling of Brittany's cereal and the occasional request to pass something from one side of the table to the other. So everyone jumps when the front door bell goes off, loud and clear even in the kitchen.
Santana's reactions are the fastest as she grabs the little screen that shows the video feed from the front door. She frowns as she glares at the screen, before slamming it down with a huff and stalking out of the kitchen. Silent looks are exchanged in the kitchen and Rachel reaches for the screen even as they can hear the front door opening. A few moments and some muffled discussion later, Santana calls through from the living room.
"Quinn, can you come through here please."
The blonde doesn't meet anyone's eyes as she pushes up from the table, reaches out for Brittany's hand and leads her out of the kitchen. The others stand one after the other and follow until they are all standing in the living room looking at the two strangers that were standing next to Santana.
"Quinn, this is Detective Williams and Detective Jackson." Santana introduces the two men, "They want to talk to you about last night."
Quinn's attention turns from the Latina to the two men.
"Miss Fabray, we're investigating the events of last night and we'd like to take a statement from you, if you're able."
Quinn nods, gesturing the two men to one of the sofa's as she takes the other with Brittany. After a moments silence, Santana clears her throat.
"Okay" she gestures with one arm to Rachel and her fathers, "Why don't we leave you to it…"
"No!" Quinn interrupts. She takes a breath before she continues, "You all want to know anyway and I'd rather not have to repeat myself. What happened was …"
The trip to the store had been uneventful; the roads were pretty much deserted as was the parking lot outside the local store. The blonde boy behind the counter, apparently the only member of staff in the store, smiled and nodded at Quinn as she entered. She cheerleader was pretty sure she'd seen him around the school somewhere, one of the football team probably.
It didn't take long to find everything on Rachel's short list and Quinn really didn't want to know what the brunette was planning on making. Bananas, peanut butter and pickles? It sounded like the recipe for disaster to Quinn but as long as she didn't have to eat it or watch Rachel eat it…
She added a few other things that she knew she needed to her basket before heading to the counter. The boy behind the counter, she thought his name was Sean or Samuel or something like that, tried to make small talk as he ran the items over the scanner but she was too tired for that and just glared at him mutely until he gave up and read her the total. She paid, grabbed the paper bag he'd put everything into and left.
Her car was only a dozen steps away from the door and she stifled a yawn as she dug in her purse for her keys. She'd only had them a few minutes ago but they at the mist inconvenient times they seemed to have a life of their own, always finding their way to the most inaccessible corner of her bag. She placed the grocery bag on the roof of her car and swung her purse off her shoulder to get a better look inside.
Without any warning that she noticed, something stuck her hard from behind smashing her whole body against the car. Her head bounced off the metal post between the front and back doors, an inch in either direction would have seen it smashing glass, and stars burst into existence obscuring her vision for a moment. When she regains her senses she finds herself on her hands and knees next to her car, the beginnings of a major headache already making itself known.
She lowers herself to sit with her back against her car for a moment, just long enough to catch her breath, and she's just in time to duck the empty bottle that had been thrown at her head.
"You Bitch! You ungrateful little bitch! It's all your fault! After everything I've done for you and you just walk away and break your mother's heart. And then what do you do?! Shacking up in a house of whores like the harlot you are. Dykes! Scum of the earth!..."
The ranting went on but Quinn honestly couldn't have told you what he had said, once she realized who it was and what he was ranting about, she tuned him out. All she could hope was that Sean or Samuel or whatever his name was had called the police or was at least coming to her aid. On that note, it finally occurred to her to open her mouth and scream; it wasn't worth even attempting to reason with him in this mood.
All it earned her howls of laughter from her father.
He had another bottle but he didn't seem inclined to throw this one. Quinn watched as he drained it dry then stumbled over to a nearby lamp post, smashing the bottom off the bottle and leaving him holding the jagged neck.
"Well I've dealt with your mother and now I'm going to deal with you! I'd tell you to say your prayers, but God doesn't listen to crap like you."
Quinn's feet scrabble at tarmac as she frantically tries to distance herself from him, pushing herself along the side of her car until her hand collides with something. Her purse! The memory of a canister of pepper spray being thrust into it by Rachel floats through her mind and she's dumping the remaining contents of her purse on the ground in an attempt to find the small yellow and black canister.
It's not there, it must have rolled away when she originally dropped her purse, but her fingers close around something else and if she had the time, Quinn would have taken a moment to give thanks to whatever deity would listen for Santana's paranoia. She turns, holding the device out in shaking hands, to find her father only a dozen feet away and charging at her. Without even a conscious thought, she pulls the trigger.
Two metal prongs fly out of the front of the taser, thin wire uncoiling behind them as they cross the distance to embed themselves in Russel's chest. The impact, as minor as it is, causes him to stumble to a stop, looking down at his chest in confusion then fifty thousand volts burns from one prong to the other. Quinn isn't sure how long she holds the trigger down for but Russel stands frozen until she finally releases it, then he crumples onto the ground in a heap.
Quinn drops the taser as if it's burnt her, her eyes still trained on the immobile form of her father as sobs wracks her body, then she slowly tips over to one side and lets blackness take her.
"And that's it." Quinn says after taking a shaky breath, "The next thing I remember I'm in the ER with Santana hovering over me."
When Quinn finishes the room is full of a silence deeper than that of people not talking. Brittany has her arms wrapped around Quinn and looks like she's on the verge of bursting into tears even as Quinn leans against her wearing a worryingly blank expression. Rachel is pretty sure that she can see her fathers and Santana are literally vibrating with rage but in true diva style, she won't be silenced by her anger.
"I want him charged with attempted murder!" she declares as she turns her attention to the detectives, "In addition to the charge for Quinn's Mom. That's what he was trying to do, he said it himself."
Maybe Rachel should have picked her words more carefully because Brittany finally burst into tears, burying her face into Quinn's neck and clinging on to the blonde as if someone was about to haul them apart. Hiram even crosses the room to stand behind the sofa and rest comforting hands on the two blondes backs.
"I'm afraid there won't be any charges pressed against Mr Fabray." Detective Williams said.
The silence in the room was immediately replaced with ear splitting noise as everyone except Quinn starts yelling at the detectives, even Brittany manages to pull her face out of Quinn's neck to turn her wrath towards the two, now rather pale and startled, men. It takes a while, but the detective finally manages to get the room to settle into a somewhat subtle silence.
"Mr Fabray won't be charged with the attack on Quinn or his previous attack on Mrs Fabray." This starts another avalanche of arguments but the Detective holds up his hand. "Because" he says loudly before continuing in a normal voice, "when Police and EMT's arrived on scene last night I was discovered that Mr Fabray was in cardiac arrest." He pauses and swallows, directing the next comment to Quinn, "The EMT's tried everything they could but they weren't successful in resuscitating him. I'm sorry."
"He's dead?" Quinn asks after a moment, a little surprised at how even how voice sounded.
"Yes."
Quinn nods once, her gaze dropping to where her and Brittany's hands are linked, while everyone else in the room exchange glances. Suddenly deprived of the target of their anger, Rachel's fathers start pacing back and forward in the small space behind one of the sofas while Santana repeatedly clenches and releases her fists as her glare burns a hole in the floor.
Rachel watches Quinn carefully and the lack of reaction from the blonde is just starting to worry her when Quinn suddenly pulls Brittany into a hug and kisses her thoroughly. Rachel is just about to look away to give the pair some privacy when Quinn stands.
"Okay, I'm ready." She addresses the detectives.
"I'm sorry, ready for what?" Detective Williams asks after sharing a confused glance with his partner.
"For you to arrest me" Quinn says evenly, "That's what you came here for right? To arrest me for killing my father?"
"No!" Santana was on her feet almost instantly and it only took a moment for her to take the few steps that physically placed her between Quinn and the detectives, "You'll arrest her over my dead body! I swear, if you so much as even lay a finger on her…"
"Santana, please!" Detective Williams interrupts, "I'm not here to arrest anyone."
Santana shoots the man a glare that tells him exactly what will happen to him if he's lying but she backs off, opting to lower herself onto the sofa so that Quinn was sandwiched between her and Brittany. The detective turns his attention back to the blonde.
"Quinn, you're not responsible for your father's death. Our medical examiner performed an autopsy this morning and while it won't be official until the blood tests are completed, he was pretty confident of the cause of death. Your father had a recently diagnosed heart condition for which he was taking, or at least was supposed to be taking, medication. We're not sure if he was actually taking his pills or not but even if he was, the amount of alcohol in his system would have neutralised their effects anyway. It's our M.E.'s opinion is that the exertion from the attack was what killed him."
"But it didn't." Quinn said after a moment, "He was fine until I used the taser."
"The M.E. doesn't think so and he's not one to bend the truth." Quinn shakes her head at the detectives words, but he continues before she can interrupt, "And whatever actually killed him, there is a CCTV video that clearly shows you were simply defending yourself. Given the circumstances, there wouldn't be any charges anyway."
Quinn shakes her head again but doesn't say anything. After a moment she stands, her hand still linked with Brittany, and without a word leads the other girl out of the room and upstairs.