Chapter 1: Adjustment
Quinn awoke to a cockerel's crow, her whole body aching from the events of the previous night. She did not attempt to delude herself that it had all been some horrible nightmare; the pain in her foot had kept her tossing and turning, constantly aware of her situation.
At some point Fr. Schuester had carried her to one of the priory's cells, and Quinn found herself to be grateful that whatever Order he was affiliated with did not appear to believe in foregoing luxury. The bed, whilst not of a royal standard, had been comfortable enough during the brief periods of genuine rest her foot had granted her, and the rest of the room was similarly pleasantly appointed.
Maybe this won't be so bad for a couple of days.
She sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed, trying to work up the courage to stand and see just how painful her foot really was. She spent a full five minutes staring at her foot, and had just reached a decision to attempt it when there was a knock at the door and Fr. Schuester entered, holding a tray with bread and water.
So perhaps this place isn't as rich as I thought.
The priest beamed at her. She quirked an eyebrow.
"Princess Quinn, it's my honour to have you here. How are you feeling? Can you stand?"
"I was about to see."
"Ah! Let me help you."
He placed the tray down on a small table with a chair in front of it, and moved to her side.
"I'm sure I won't need help."
"Still, your Highness."
Seeing that he was going nowhere, and determined to prove herself no invalid, Quinn rushed the manoeuvre, placing too much weight too soon, and she collapsed into Fr. Schuester's arms, screaming in agony. He sat her back down on the bed and patted her shoulder in what he obviously thought was a soothing gesture. She glared at him. Attempting a reassuring smile instead, he retrieved the tray and placed it beside her.
"Well, at least you're finally awake."
Quinn gave him her best incredulous look.
"What do you mean, 'finally'? The cock has only just crowed."
He let out a small chuckle.
"Oh, the cock crows at any given opportunity, your Highness. We're actually well into the eleventh hour."
"I see."
The priest indicated the food.
"You should eat, your Highness. You're going to have quite an adjustment over the next few days."
"How so?"
"Finn - that is, Captain Hudson, your guard - wishes for you to remain anonymous..."
"Obviously."
"...So I'm going to have to treat you like any other orphan. You will work, either in the fields or in the priory itself. You will not be waited on. You will be just the same as all the other poor peasant girls and boys who pass through here. I will do my best to limit such contact, but you may even have to work with the convict labourer teams at times."
He paused, trying to gauge Quinn's reaction, but her face remained stoic.
"And, of course, I will be addressing you as such. As soon as this conversation is over, when I have left this room, neither 'Princess', nor 'Your Highness', nor any other remotely royal identifier shall be used again."
"Of course."
"You will simply be Quinn."
"Of course."
A thought occurred to her.
"Why not something else? I have other names to choose from - Lucy, Elise..."
"Unnecessary. Quinn was the most popular name of your birth year, for obvious reasons, and there are five more in this village alone. Three of whom are blonde girls of similar age to you. Those other names would probably be more obvious. Whoever went after your family would doubtlessly be expecting you to hide under a pseudonym, after all."
"Doubtlessly."
She sighed, and put her face in her hands. The laughed.
"At least the accommodation isn't bad."
"Actually, this is my bedroom. We have no apothecary area here, so you are free to sleep here until your foot is healed, but after then you will have to sleep in the dormitory."
"Won't it raise suspicion that I was in here at all?"
"Oh, no, I always seem to be giving up my bed to the ill and infirm."
Quinn cast a worried glance down at the sheets. Fr. Schuester grinned.
"Don't worry, they're quite clean. There's a washer woman in the village here who assures it."
"I'll take your word for it."
Her sardonic reply was met only with another beaming grin.
"Father..." she dragged her mind through the previous night's events, "Schuester?"
The priest nodded.
"You may call me Father William, if you prefer. Some of the other orphans do."
"Father Schuester," Quinn would swear his smile dropped a little, "Where is 'here', exactly?"
"The village of McKinley."
"I don't think I've heard of it."
"That's understandable. We're quite out of the way here, and it's been many years since a Royal carriage so much as passed through."
He patted her shoulder again.
"I think that we've talked enough for now, Quinn. You should eat, and rest some more. I'll walk you around the grounds in the afternoon."
He started to leave. She called after him.
"Father Schuester?"
"Yes, Quinn?"
"Thank you."
He smiled at her, and exited the room, leaving her with her thoughts. But she had only one.
Quinn. Just Quinn now.
The afternoon was halfway over when Fr. Schuester came again. He had brought a cane with him, and with both its and his own assistance Quinn was able to stand without much difficulty. Not wishing to prolong her discomfort, he suggested a simple walk around the priory gardens.
Quinn was trepidatious at first, but fortunately the priory gardens amounted only to a small square walled area attached to the front of the building and its accompanying chapel.
"Captain Hudson brought me through here last night."
"With my help, yes."
After only a few feet, Quinn stopped to sit at a bench. Fr. Schuester remained standing.
"Thank you again for that, Father. And please sit down, I can't stand hoverers."
The priest sat beside her, concern etched onto his face.
"Do you want to go back inside?"
Quinn smiled gently at him, and shook her head.
"No, we can continue in a second. I'm just enjoying the breeze. Also, it took me five minutes to walk the twenty yards from your quarters to this bench, so I think a break is in order."
He returned her smile.
"It was nowhere near that long, Quinn. You're doing very well."
She grimaced.
"It felt that long, believe me," she looked down at her foot, "How bad is it, really?"
"You trod on a nail, and by the time you got here it was quite well embedded. You shouldn't worry, though, it wasn't rusted and the wound is quite clean. I'm sure it feels worse than it is."
"I can't believe I slept through you removing it."
"Oh it was quite straight. One swift yank and it was out; you barely twitched. And I would hardly term what you did after arriving here sleep, Quinn. I think it only turned into that this morning."
"What makes you say that?"
"That's when you started snoring."
Quinn cocked an eyebrow at him, fixing him with her iciest of glares. He had the decency to look sheepish. She relented, letting out a sly smile.
"I suppose I'm going to have to get used to people other than the Captain showing their sense of humour around me."
"Finn never was overly bothered with propriety."
"No."
Quinn looked out over the small garden. It was maybe thirty yards square, with a border running around the inside of the wall, then the path, and then four square beds forming an internal cross pattern with a fountain in the centre where the dividing paths met. The mix of plants was what she presumed to be standard monkish fair: mainly herbs and vegetables, with some roses adding colour. The interior beds were edged in box.
"I hope he's alright. That he didn't try and do anything stupid after he left me here. He must've known the castle was lost, I swear I saw the great hall on fire as we were fleeing."
She lost herself in the bubbling of the fountain.
"I wonder how many servants made it out alive."
She sighed, and tapped her cane on the ground. Putting on too wide a smile, she turned to Fr. Schuester.
"Enough of this. Let's see if I can finish the circuit, yes?"
The priest humoured her, returning the smile.
"Yes! Do you need help standing?"
"Well let's see."
Quinn put all her weight onto her cane and stood, wincing only slightly. She looked down at Fr. Schuester, a triumphant smirk on her face.
"Apparently you don't," said the priest, getting up himself, "But still, I think for now..."
He offered her an arm to hold. She took it gratefully.
"Probably for the best in the long run."
"Probably," he agreed.
They continued their walk, Quinn stopping occasionally to lean into Fr. Schuester for a rest, masking the action by running her hand through some heather, or smelling a rose. She asked him about various plants, trying to show willing as she had been taught to do for royal visits. The perambulation took longer than Quimm would've liked, and it wasn't until they had almost finished the tour that she asked a major question that had sat too long playing on her mind.
"Is this where I would work?"
"Until your foot is fully healed, certainly."
"There are other places?"
"We maintain a small vineyard, and an orchard. There is also a quarry, but we have an agreement with the local justice of the peace, so only prisoners assigned hard labour by the courts have to worry about that. It should be noted that we do sometimes have small groups of mainly female prisoners working here in the garden as well."
"The belief being it assists rehabilitation, I presume?"
"There is some evidence to that extent, yes. Of course you and the other orphans would have as little contact as possible with them, and none with those serving hard labour time."
"How many others are here?"
"There are three at the moment, fortunately all of similar age to yourself. I set them to work in the vineyard today, to keep them out of your way. I'll let them introduce themselves at supper."
"When is that, precisely?"
"A good few hours yet, Quinn. We have plenty of candles to burn for when the sun goes down. And a fireplace large enough to roast two pigs at once."
"Useful. And I'm glad for that, I'd quite like to rest again before having to make conversation."
"I should refresh your bandages, too."
"Hmm."
With that non-committal grunt, the two of them re-entered the building.
Quinn awoke to the sound of voices outside her window. One was female, and sang in a beautiful, lilting soprano:
"The heart's desire is so complex -
one moment true, and false the next -
that love's most urgent quality,
most requisite, is constancy.
Yes, other virtues play some part -
like silent suffering,
that gentle handmaid of the heart...
But if it's flames that leap about
within your breast - no doubt
some other flame can put them out!
Our love's not furtive or impure:
we must try to ensure
its innocent delights endure."
The other was male, and, well, not so much:
"The flames by which I die -
yet which I glorify -
remain invisible to men:
save she extinguish it
by whom their fire was lit
never will it sink again.
Thus, yours is the command to give -
to sentence to death - or let me live."
They continued, and Quinn recognised the song - it was called Summer Love, and she wondered if the voices should really be singing a song of seduction outside a monk's window. Especially if, as she presumed, they were two of his wards. She further wondered if she would be able to guess which of the three others these two were.
I'm sure all I'll have to do is see which of them are making eyes at each other behind Fr. Schuester's back.
The voices finished their song, bursting into fits of giggles at the ending, and moved off.
Maybe they were singing it deliberately to irritate him. He seems the sort to inspire it.
As soon as she thought this, she could picture her Mother admonishing her.
Now Quinn, that was very rude, Fr. Schuester has been nothing but kind to you. Who are you to criticise his manner?
The voice in her head was so clear, so perfect, that all she could was burst into tears.
Sorry Mommy.
I miss you so much.
It had been two years since bandits murdered her Mother. She thought now that perhaps it had been the first salvo against her Father, although at the time it was believed to be a simple robbery. Well, as simple as a robbery can be when it results in the murder of the Queen.
Her Mother had been in the habit, once or twice a month, of having a picnic lunch with her Lady's maid, Alicia Lopez. The two of them would travel to one of the parks situated outside the castle's walls, leave their other guards, and have a pleasant time pretending to simply be old friends. Quinn had attended some of these lunches when younger, and she had marvelled at the easy rapport that her Mother had had with someone who was essentially a commoner - she herself had never been that at ease around members of the household staff, not even Lopez's daughter, San-
No. I can't say her name. It's not right.
-not even her, who would also sometimes accompany them - and those days when she had seen her Mother so carefree, so much more full of life than when she was around her Father (she even let Lopez call her Judy, and even more familiarly, Jude, to Alicia's Alice or Lisa), or dealing with the comings and goings of court, had counted amongst the best of her childhood.
Quinn had actually been asked if she wished to attend that day, but she still couldn't look either of them in the eye, and had declined her Mother's request.
It was only when they were late for supper that her Father sent Captain Hudson out to retrieve them. He was angry that his wife and 'her woman' had skewed his schedule for the running of the castle. Quinn didn't like her Father at times like that, when it seemed like he didn't love her Mother.
The tears he shed later made up for it, though.
Captain Hudson found her Mother's guards passed out from drink in one of the gatehouses. They would later claim her Mother had sent them away completely, rather than staying just far enough away to be out of sight.
This was not unheard of, because Lopez was far more than just a Lady's maid, she had been trained as a bodyguard. Regarded as one of the best swordspersons in the land, she had even taught Quinn some tricks that her Father refused to. Her Mother's life was never safer than when she was near; she had told Quinn often that she would die for her.
The guards told him where they had last seen her Mother. He had them arrested, and then organised a search party.
It was the Captain himself who found them, in one of their favourite clearings. It had a particularly lovely view of the mountains.
They were found with Lopez covering her Queen, her friend, protecting her to the last; one sword run through them both.
Protecting her to the last.
Despite what I did.
They had obviously put up quite a fight, their clothes were torn, their limbs cut. Lopez's sword lay broken at their side, the tip protruding from the chest of a dead bandit lying a slight bit farther off. Another two were near him. One of them was clutching her Mother's necklace, so obviously it was a robbery gone wrong.
Captain Hudson felt that her Mother's guards should've been imprisoned, because they could've been telling the truth about her Mother sending them away. As it was, they were to be put on trial as co-conspirators, which carried the death penalty. It never got that far though, they were found hanged in their cell before the trial was ever started; it was presumed their guilty conscience had got to them.
At the time, knowing her Mother's habits, Quinn had sided with Captain Hudson. Vociferously.
But now, she wondered.
Maybe it was all a grand conspiracy.
Or maybe it was coincidence.
She wondered, but as the thoughts ate into her mind she was saved by a soft knock at the door, with Fr. Schuester's head swiftly appearing from behind it.
"Quinn? Ah good, you're awake. Do you think you're ready to join us for supper, or would you like me to bring some in here?"
"No, thank you, Father, I'll join you. Better to get it over with quickly, or rumour will spread."
"Ha! True enough!"
Why does he always grin as if he's been caught doing something he shouldn't've?
Quinn threw her legs over the side of the bed and tested her foot. She winced.
"I'm afraid I'll still need some help though."
"Of course."
Fr. Schuester moved over to her and supported her as she stood, stooping first to retrieve her cane, dropped on the floor as he had laid her down earlier. She found she didn't need to lean quite so heavily on him as before, but both he and the cane were definitely still necessary.
The pair of them left the room and hobbled down the hallway, passed the dormitory, and into the small dining hall. Sitting around a table designed for around eight people were two Orientals, a girl and a boy, and an effeminate boy that reminded Quinn vaguely of her Mother's dressmaker.
They looked her over with varying amounts of suspicion as Fr. Schuester helped to sit her down. Once he was done, introductions were in order.
"Hey guys, this is Quinn, she arrived last night. She has an injured foot so she'll be using my room until she's healed up, which obviously means I'll have to sleep with you in the dormitory - but I'm sure we'll manage for a couple of days!"
He sounded a bit too enthused for Quinn's liking, and given the looks she was being thrown - which Fr. Schuester appeared somehow not to see - she was sure the two Orientals would've cheerfully shivved her there and then, with the other boy not far behind. She decided meekness might be a good course of action, and slumped slightly in her seat before speaking.
"Hello."
Her effort to appear passive seemed to work, and the tension - of which Fr. Schuester was still oblivious - reduced back to normal 'Who is this person?' levels. In fact, the effeminate boy looked positively delighted.
"Ooh, a fellow townie! You can tell me what the new season's like!"
God, he even sounds like my Mother's dressmaker - and she was a woman.
"I'm sorry?"
"The season? For Fashion?"
"Oh. Sorry, er...?"
"Kurt. Kurt Hummel."
"Sorry Kurt, but I've never been one to attention to such things."
Which is true enough. The newest blades from the East, or artists from the West, on the other hand...
Kurt's face fell.
"Oh. Well, it's nice to meet you, anyway. Like I said, I'm Kurt Hummel, and these two are Tina and Mike."
The girl gave her a sweet smile, that was just slightly tinged with shyness.
"Tina Cohen-Chang."
The boy just gave her a somewhat stoic nod.
"Michael Chang."
Quinn quirked an eyebrow. They looked a little young to be married, and Quinn didn't like the other possibility, given that they were clearly the two she had heard outside the window. The pair must've registered her specific concern, because they looked at each other quickly before turning back to her and speaking in unison.
"No relation."
Thank God. I may be Royal, but I draw the line at incest.
"So, Quinn, what brings a fellow townie such as yourself all the way out here?"
Quinn regarded Kurt, her 'meek' act temporarily forgotten.
"Why do keep calling me that? The castle is surrounded by a city, not a town."
He was affronted, taken aback by her harsh tone.
"Well, because that's what people from the capital are called, Quinn. Why don't you know that?"
Shit.
"We lived right on the outskirts of the city. My parents were extremely religious. They didn't mix with our neighbours, and they taught me at home, so I didn't go out at all often. Certainly never to anywhere I might have been called anything other than 'Quinn'."
Never have I been gladder of having my Father's mind.
"Oh. So again, how did you end up out here?"
Despite Kurt apparently believing her, Quinn glared at him.
"The same way all of us did, I believe. My parents died."
"Touché."
Quinn sat back in her chair and allowed the meek mask to fall back into place. She sighed.
"I'm sorry."
"No," said Fr. Schuester, "It's alright, Quinn. It was only last night, after all - you can't be expected to adjust to your new circumstances right away. Frankly, I'm amazed you haven't spent the day in tears."
And the meekness fell again, with a withering glare.
"We do not cry."
"Of course, of course," he rubbed his hands together, unsure of his next course of action, "Why don't I bring the food out? Give the four of you a chance to talk plainly without my fusty old presence."
Quinn watched him leave, and then turned to the table, trying very hard to memorize every turn and knot.
Anything rather than talk to the others.
"Quinn."
The soft voice made her turn to face Mike Chang.
"It won't help, but you need to know..."
"Yes?"
"It gets worse before it gets better. The guilt."
"What guilt?"
"You survived."
She turned back to the table, and he said no more. Fr. Schuester came back in carrying a tray with five bowls, and promptly set them out on the table.
They ate mostly in silence, with the priest occasionally trying to start conversation by asking about everyone's day. After some stilted conversation along those lines, when they were almost finished, it was Tina who finally asked the question that Quinn had been dreading.
"How did it happen?"
"I don't think that's a suitable topic for the dinner table, Tina."
"Sorry Fr. Schuester."
Tina cried, silently. Mike rubbed her shoulder in sympathy. He decided to ignore Fr. Schuester's advice.
"Our parents were part of a settler convoy, going west. They got ill on the road. McKinley was the nearest town, so we got left here."
Kurt also teared up.
"My Mother was killed trying to calm a runaway horse. Afterwards, my Father just... ...stopped. He just stopped. He was the blacksmith here in town."
Quinn looked up at him quizzically.
"I thought you said you were from the city?"
"My Mommy was from the city. She was out riding one day when her horse threw a shoe. That's when she met my Father. It was love at first sight."
He smiled through his tears.
"I've never even been to the city. Is it nice?"
"Yes."
Quinn sighed.
"Or at least it was. For all I know it's anarchy now, given what happened."
The other three looked at her, worried.
"Wh-what happened?" Tina stuttered.
Quinn looked over at Fr. Schuester.
"You didn't tell them?"
"No."
"The most important thing to ever happen to this tiny little country and you didn't tell your charges?"
"No."
"What happened?" Tina repeated.
"My parents were killed by bandits, or mercenaries, I don't know. Maybe they were those revolutionaries you sometimes hear about. They murdered my parents and burned our house to the ground. I barely escaped thanks to a helpful neighbour boy who knew Fr. Schuester, which is why I'm here."
"What does this have to do with the kingdom?" Kurt asked.
"They were attacking the castle. Our house was just on the way."
"They were attacking the-"
"They killed the King. Princess Quinn too for all I know. The castle was on fire as we left."
The three of them looked shell-shocked. Quinn turned to Fr. Schuester.
"I'm sorry, but I'd like to go to bed now. I'm sure you would like to talk more with these three, but I need to go to bed now. You can tell them more later."
She addressed the others, shaking their hand in turn.
"Michael Chang, Tina Cohen-Chang, Kurt Hummel - Quinn Pierce. Goodnight."
She strained against her stick, and stood. Fr. Schuester got up and assisted her. Just before leaving the dining hall, she stopped and looked back over her shoulder. The other three were still in state of shock, just staring blankly into space.
"Michael?"
"Mike."
"Mike... ...it does get better?"
"It does."