AN: Yes you are allowed to send me hate mail, it only took me 7 months to update. Sorry :/ and a HUGE Thank you to those who reviewed the first part, you all are wonderful :]
Tina ignored the repeated pleas of her family to come out of her room and talk about it; she preferred to wallow in self pity by her lonesome. She tried calling the Abrams house and no luck. She tried Artie's cell phone and it went straight to voicemail. She logged onto instant messenger and he was online but ignoring her attempts at communication. She gave up after 20 messages when Artie took himself offline. Frustrated with it all she collapsed with a groan on her bed. Giving up she let herself fall asleep.
"Tina, I have to tell you something," Artie spoke sadly from his chair.
"What," She asked still on a high from having kissed him.
"I've been faking," He said quietly hanging his head in embarrassment. "I can really walk."
"Wh-what?" Tina said stumbling over her one word response.
Artie looked up at her confused face and slowly got up out of the chair. He further demonstrated his abilities by walking around the chair and then taking a seat once again. He once again hangs his head waiting for a response from Tina.
Tina looked on incredulously as he moved his legs stiffly. She still couldn't believe what she was seeing. Artie…could walk! She felt the anger swell up in her body, and she looked up at him to let him know exactly how she felt.
Tina jerked awake almost falling off her twin sized bed. Recalling her dream; a fresh stream of tears made their way out of her eyes. Letting them fall she lay back down on her bed staring up at the ceiling; trying to decipher the meaning of her backwards dream.
She glanced at her small digital alarm clock; alarmed that it was already 2 AM. She decided that she should try going back to sleep, but her stomach didn't agree as it rumbled before she could even change out of her day clothes. Tiptoeing into the kitchen she grabbed a package of strawberry milkshakes pop tarts out of the pantry. She popped them into the toaster before turning to get a glass of milk only to be startled by her older brother Tony.
"Tony!" She whisper yelled punching him in the shoulder. "What the hell?"
"Ow!" He joked hiding any real pain she caused him. "What are you doing up anyway?"
"I could ask you the same thing?" She countered.
"I heard someone, came to check it out; now you?" He pestered.
"I was hungry," she said pointing to the toaster that contained her pop tarts.
Tina took that as the end of the conversation and continued to pour herself some milk. She set it on the counter and waited for the toaster to finish her food.
"Can I help you?" She asked her curious brother.
"What happened today?" He asked bluntly.
Tina didn't respond; instead just taking a sip of her milk. The toaster finally finished and popped up the breakfast food/late night snack. She continued to ignore her brother as she sat at the family table. She had a corner of the pop tart to her mouth as her brother took his place at the table and continued to stare at her waiting for an answer.
"What?" she asked putting her uneaten pop tart down.
"You didn't answer my question," he said simply.
"If you must know…Artie dumped me today," Tina said willing the tears to not fall.
"When did you start dating?' Tony asked confused.
"Well…okay so dumped isn't really the correct word but," Tina began failing at keeping the tears back. "Okay so we kind of had our first date today," Tina smiled in spite of the impending doom the story inevitably would bring.
Tina explained everything to Tony through her tears. By the end Tony was hugging her tightly.
"Tina I'm sorry this happened, but you guys will be stronger from it."
"How so?" Tina asked half hopeful half cynical.
"Think about it like this; you could have gone on pretending to be something you're not, having Artie fall in love with a false image of yourself. You would constantly question if he loved the real you, or the fake you. I'm sure you guys will work it out. If he claims to have liked you and then it disappears because you don't stutter anymore, well then could he have really liked you?"
"When did you get so deep?" Tina joked hugging her brother.
"Philosophy major baby," He laughed. "It comes with the territory."
"Thanks Tony,"
"No problem sis," He said giving her one last hug before retreating to his room.
Tina sat back down and ate her now cold pop tarts in a thoughtful silence. She went back to bed after washing her cup, wishing for a sweeter dream than then last.
Crawling under the covers and balling herself up to get comfortable, Tina closed her eyes in an attempt to coax herself into a deep slumber. She succeeds and before she knows it her alarm is buzzing at her to wake up.
She follows her daily routine and gets to school only to see Artie being helped by another student who wasn't her. She's sad but remembering Tony's words of wisdom from last night she soldiers on to her first class.
Artie avoids her all day and Tina does nothing to confront him either. Their friends can sense something is up at lunch when Artie opts to sit with his jazz band friends instead of his glee club ones.
"Okay we can't stand this anymore," Mercedes blurts out in the middle of lunch. "What is going on with you and Wheels?"
Tina looks up at her friend and can see her getting impatient, but Tina doesn't care. She's just not ready to let anyone else in. Mercedes huffs dramatically before returning to her conversation with Kurt about possible costumes for glee.
Soon the friends fall into a new routine. Artie comes by at the beginning of lunch to hang out with Kurt and Mercedes until Tina comes back from buying her lunch. As soon as she sits down Artie departs for either his AV friends or jazz band. Tina plays with her food while receiving stares mean to break her down from Mercedes and Kurt. After 5 minutes she eats about a third of the food on her tray and immediately dumps it in the trash before taking off to the bathroom to cry.
It's about 2 weeks before someone decides to do something about it. Mercedes follows Tina into the bathroom and confronts her.
"Tina, it's time you talk. Right now," Mercedes pleads after the concerned approach fails.
"You're going to hate me too," Tina whispers as she huddles near the farthest wall of the girls' bathroom at McKinley.
"Why would I hate you? Tina we're friends aren't we?"
"So weren't Artie and I and look how that turned out," Tina spits out bitterly.
Mercedes stands there confused as she watches her friend's body slump against the tiled wall as she begins sobbing. She wastes no time before sitting on the floor next to Tina and pulling her into a comforting hug.
"Girl what happened?"
Tina looks up at Mercedes through a veil of black hair and blue extensions. She sees no judgment in Mercedes eyes and therefore begins telling her tale.
Mercedes is angry at first and then confused and finally understanding. They missed all of their next class just sitting there on the bathroom floor; Tina crying and Mercedes consoling her. Just as the bell for class changes rung a knock came on the door and Kurt's head peaked in.
"I've tried 5 bathrooms already, what happened?" He asked spotting them in the far corner.
Tina sobbed through her story once more while Mercedes filled in the gaps. Kurt nodded and grabbed them both by the hands and attempted to lift them off the floor.
"Let's go ladies, this floor is filthy." Kurt demanded.
Mercedes rushed to pick herself up as if only remembering at that moment where she was exactly. They both helped to lift Tina up. They walked out arm in arm supporting Tina while she cried her last tears over this matter.
Telling Mercedes and Kurt her secret was the second hardest thing she'd ever had to do, until it came time to inform all of her teachers and Glee clubbers. The teachers didn't know what to think of it and most of the Glee club didn't seem to care. They weren't really her friends at that point anyway.
Everything started returning to normal after that. Artie was not a vindictive person and therefore didn't harbor any ill feeling towards her. He did however ignore her one on one which hurt Tina more than if he were to publically bash her.
She wanted his companionship again. She wanted to be able to sit with him at lunch when Mercedes and Kurt had other plans. She wanted to walk with him to class, her pushing him and listen to him rattle on about the newest video game that was coming out. She wanted him to talk to her like before, even if that did mean embarrassing and awkward proclamations about which appendages of his worked. Most of all she wanted that look he would give her when it was just the two of them around. That look he gave her right after she gave him his first kiss, and hers too; she wanted it all back.
AN: Thanks for reading! Now like I said you can totally send me hate mail...or you could review? If you want you can leave me your thoughts on what happened in season 1 and how Glee-taststic is was! (Or you can ignore me as well I mean who uses words like Glee-tastic? LOL)