A/N: Sorry for the gap in updates, I intended to post this on Monday, however it took on a life of its own and is a lot longer than the other chapters, I was almost tempted to split it into two separate ones, but couldn't find a good cutoff point. Also, thank you so much for the reviews, they are very much appreciated (both positive and negative ones) Please give me some feedback, it really inspires me to write the next chapters! Also forgive any grammatical errors, I wrote this at work, and although I did proofread this, I know I did not give the proofreading my full attention.
Will Schuester smiled as he walked into McKinley High School Monday morning; he had taken a long weekend fishing trip with his father. He left Friday afternoon immediately following Glee practice, and had returned just a couple hours ago, wanting to make sure his kids didn't miss a single practice this close to Regionals.
"Oh Will!" Emma said throwing her arms around the confused schoolteacher. Her large brown eyes filling with tears. "I've been trying to call you all weekend. I know how devastated you must be."
Will pulled away from her, more confused than ever. "Emma, what are you talking about? What's going on? I'm sorry I didn't answer your calls, I was fishing, my service was in and out all weekend."
Emma paused for a second. "You mean you don't know?" She asked, will shaking his head in confusion. "Noah Puckerman was murdered Friday night."
For a second will thought he must have heard her wrong, he wanted nothing more than to have heard her wrong. He took a dew seconds to attempt to process the information he just received. His student, a student he had become very close to this school year and watched find his voice and his place among his newly found, close knit, group of friends, was dead. "What?" He finally managed to say.
Emma took a deep breath, hoping to maintain her composure. "Friday night, at the Glee Club movie party, he was robbed and stabbed to death. I'll be doing grief counseling for the students, as well as the teachers all this week."
Will's heart sank at the mention of the rest of his kids being there. "The others, are they okay, were they hurt?"
Emma shook her head no. "They're okay, physically. I don't know about emotionally. They were all present when Noah passed."
Will's face grew paler as he thought about what they must be going through. He was sure Tina's stutter had returned, and he couldn't imagine how helpless all of the guys who had grown so close must be feeling. He knew Rachel, who wore her heart on her sleeve was most likely a wreck; Brittany was probably confused and leaning on Santana for support, who he imagined, along with Mercedes, was trying to be a strong rock for the rest of the club. He worried for Quinn, she had been through enough this year to last a lifetime, and the extreme stress of this situation could not be good for her, or the baby. He quietly excused himself to the choir room, making an attempt to pull himself together enough to be there for his students.
Emma returned to her office, sanitizing her hands before sending out the passes to bring in the eleven students she knew needed her guidance and counsel the most.
Mike and Matt
"Have a seat." Emma gave the young men a solemn smile, the boys obliged, making an attempt to return her smile. "I'm sure you know why you're here."
Both boys just nodded. "Because of Puck." Mike said quietly, avoiding her concerned gaze.
Emma could tell the boys were trying to put on a brave face. "Its okay guys, no need to be brave in here. Tell me what you're thinking, how you feel. Nothing you say leaves my office." Emma thought back to the many times she was in therapy for her obsessive compulsion about cleanliness, not knowing what to say she spoke the words every therapist she had ever been to said to her, not knowing if they would help. "Why don't you tell me what happened, sometimes that helps."
Mike sighed before glancing over to Matt. "We were all at Hummel's; Puck told Q he was going outside to call his mom and a couple of minutes later we heard a bunch of yelling, by the time we got outside Puck was on the ground...there was so much blood, we tried to stop it. We should have tried harder. Mike bowed his head down, gazing at his lap as if he were ashamed, as if he thought it was his fault. Emma watched as Matt mimicked the action.
"Boys this is not your fault. I'm sure you did everything you could to-"
Matt stood up, interrupting her and kicking his chair over, shouting. "Shit like this doesn't happen in Lima and it doesn't happen to our friends, to guys like Puck. I can't fucking deal with this." He quickly stormed out of the room. Mike gave Emma an apologetic look before slowly exiting her office to go after his friend.
Tina
Do-do-do I have to be here?" Tina stammered as she sat down across from Emma. Dressed plainly, similar to the day Principal Figgins banned her usual attire. Her one of a kind makeup was missing as well.
"I think it may help." Emma thought back to a conversation she had with Will several months ago regarding Tina's stutter. "There is no need to put up a wall, Tina. Why don't you tell me what happened,
sometimes it helps." Emma said, noting the girl's change in appearance.
Tina started out her story, which at first mirrored Matt and Mike's. "By the time we got outside. I knew he was hurt but I didn't expect him to..." Tina didn't finish her sentence she only glanced up at Emma as a stray tear made it's way down her bare cheek. "I'd really like to get back to English class." she said after over a minute of silence.
Emma nodded watching the girl go, cursing herself for not saying anything, for not knowing what to say to these kids.
ARTIE
"Why don't you tell me what happened, sometimes it helps." Emma listened intently once Artie began to speak, hoping this time she'd be able to find the words to help him more than she did the others.
"So I was helpless, because of this damn chair I couldn't help Matt and Mike. I couldn't do anything but sit and watch him die." Artie made no attempt to hide his anger. His anger towards the thugs who took his friend away, his disability, and even Puck who probably said smartass remarks provoking the thugs who took his life.
"Artie, there was probably nothing you could have done. And you did do something, you were his friend while he was alive."
Artie gave her a small smile before wheeling out of her office. Emma let out a sigh of relief, that had gone better than the previous sessions with Matt, Mike, and Tina.
MERCEDES
Emma stared at the stone-faced girl in front of her, no emotion was seen on her face. "Mercedes, why don't you tell me what happened, sometimes it helps."
Mercedes grimaced as she flashed back to Friday night, letting the wall she built up around her emotions down for a split second. "Shouldn't you be talking to Quinn, she's his baby mama. Or Rachel, you know how dramatic she can be." Mercedes scowled, vowing that she would not cry.
Emma pursed her lips, this clearly was not going to as smoothly as Artie's session. "I will be speaking to them, but now I want to see how you are doing."
"I'm doing just fine, i'd be doing a lot better if you would quit wasting everyone's time and actually help my friends who need it, not me." Mercedes calmly got up and walked out of the office, leaving Emma speechless. Somehow, Mercedes managed to keep her composure before reaching the girls bathroom, slamming a stall door as she gave into her tears. Fighting to get the images of the boy, who had admittedly been on her nerves more times than not, out of her head. He may have driven her crazy but he was a part of her group of friends, a group she knew was forever changed.
SANTANA AND BRITTANY
"Girls.". Emma smiled as she greeted the cheerios, her smile turning into a slight frown as Brittany desperately exclaimed that she was no longer keeping birds in her locker. "No, sweetie, that's not what this is about. I wanted to talked to you about Puck."
Tears instantly welled up in Brittany's eyes. "I've never known anybody dead before."
Santana narrowed her eyes at Emma, she had spent all weekend comforting her friend, and she didn't like that the guidance counselor was upsetting Brittany all over again. "Is this really necessary?"
"Well, Santana, why don't you tell me what happened, sometimes it helps." Emma tried to hide how obviously intimidated she was by the head cheerio.
"Tell you what happened? Puck died, he's dead, that's what happened; rehashing every single detail about the night he died will not bring him back." Santana's voice cracked as she fought back any kind of emotion. "People die every day. Life goes on, people move on. The seasons will change, Quinn will have her baby, we will leave this hell hole that is Lima Ohio and somehow we will move on. And then there will be days that pass without thoughts of Puck running through our minds, those days will turn into weeks, maybe even months. Then we won't remember what his voice sounded like, struggle to picture his face in our minds. Eventually it will take us a few minutes to remember when his birthday was. We will have to think for a few seconds to remember the date he died, we will ask ourselves "was it a Friday? Maybe it was a Saturday." Over time we won't remember what we wore that night or the way the breeze in the air seemed to sting our wet cheeks, despite it being spring. The sounds of him dying, Quinn screaming, and the ambulance wailing in the background will move to the back of our minds, always there, but filed away. We won't know how we did it, but we will all find a way to be okay." Santana quickly blinked away the tears in her eyes, squeezing Brittany's hand for support "Listen, Ms. Pillsbury, I watched both my parents die, you never get over it and you will never be the same again but you manage to move forward and somehow your life starts to make sense again, they don't know it now but one day we will walk into the choir room and our focus will be on set lists and whatever obnoxious thing Rachel Berry happens to be doing that day and not on his empty chair and abandoned guitar, the glee club will move on, we will perform again with smiles on our faces. But talking about his death incessantly is not going to make it happen, time will." Santana stood up, motioning for Brittany to follow her, linking arms with the girl as they exited the office.
Emma sat back in her chair, not expecting to hear so much from the Cheerio. She thought about what she said and wondered if she was right, maybe she was just wasting all of these kids' time and making things worse for them.
KURT
"Hi Ms. Pillsbury." Kurt said softly as he sat his designer messenger bag down next to the chair. Unlike the others, Kurt didn't bother with putting up walls, after dealing with the loss of his mother ten years ago he knew better.
"Well Kurt, we can go ahead and get started, why don't you tell me what happened, sometimes it helps."
Kurt gave her a polite smile, he already knew that. He didn't bother going into detail about the people fleeing from the scene, the way Puck fell to the ground or all of the crying his friends were doing a they watched Puck die. He didn't tell her about Quinn's scream as Puck took his last breath and the way she began frantically pushing on his chest, causing Puck's lifeless body to rise and fall with each compression or the way he heard the anguished cry that escaped Quinn's lips as she was forcibly dragged away from Puck ever time he closed his eyes to sleep. He didn't want to waste her time, knowing she would probably hear those details ten other times today. "Rachel wanted to have the movie night at her house." He began.
Ms. Pillsbury was confused for a second. "Im sorry?" She asked, seeking clarification.
"It was supposed to be at Rachel's but I was concerned there would be a lack of organic snacks, so I talked her into letting us do it at Finn and I's." Kurt closed his eyes tightly as he forced himself to continue. "Puck died in MY neighborhood, on MY street. If we had done it at Rachel's, Puck would still be here."
"Kurt, I told this to several of your teammates as well, you cannot blame yourself."
Kurt couldn't help it, someone had to be blamed for this. It was different when his mom died. Her death wasn't preventable like Puck's was. No one could be blamed for the disease that rampaged through her body, shutting it down slowly piece by piece. Nothing anybody did differently could have changed the out come, there were no what ifs or maybe we should haves when she died, but Kurt could think of dozens of ways that things could have been different with Puck. Hindsight is 20/20 Kurt said to himself.
FINN
"I don't know why I'm here." Finn said coldly after sitting down in Emma's office.
Emma swallowed hard. "Your best friend was killed a few days ago, Finn. Why don't you tell me what happened, sometimes that helps."
"Best friend? Yeah right." It was clear to Ms. Pillsbury that Finn was using anger in an attempt to mask his grief; after all it was a hell of a lot easier to be angry than to feel the sorrow and grief involved in mourning. "He stole my girlfriend, got her pregnant, and then he left her, after all the times he swore he'd be there for Quinn and the baby, he just leaves!" Finn knew he was shouting, but he didn't care, he also knew there were tears slowly falling from his eyes, but he didn't care about that either.
"Finn, Puck didn't leave you guys by any choice of his own." Emma reminded him softly.
"He should have fought harder! He didn't fight hard enough, he gave up and he died. He didn't care enough about any of us to bother putting up a fight." Finn knew in his mind that what he was saying was ridiculous, and probably made no sense to Ms. Pillsbury. But it made things easier for him, being mad at Puck hurt a lot less than missing him, and he definetly missed his friend. "I wasted so many months being angry at him, ignoring him, saying awful things to him. God the way I looked him...Oh God I was horrible to him and I can never take it back, I can never tell him how sorry I am."
By now Finn had broken down, loud sobs shook his entire body, Emma knew this was not the time to talk it out, ignoring the urge to consider how many germs may be on the boy, she got up from her desk and pulled him into a tight hug. Inwardly cringing as a mixture of snot and tears pooled on her cardigan.
RACHEL
Emma grabbed several boxes of tissues to place on her desk in preparation for her conversation with Rachel. She knew how close to the surface Rachel kept her emotions and how her love and loyalty for her fellow glee clubbers had grown fierce over the course of the school year. She was surprised to see Rachel walk into her office relatively composed. Dark circles traced the undersides of her eyes on
her makeup-less face and her dark hair was thrown into a ponytail. "Rachel, have a seat." Emma said politely pointing to the chair.
Rachel did as she was told. "I don't know what you want me to say."
"Well, why don't you tell me what happened, sometimes it helps." Emma waited patiently for a response, but the girl in front of her just looked away, pretending to focus on the posters that covered the wall. "Okay, we don't have to go into what happened if you aren't ready. How about you just tell me how you are doing?"
Rachel sighed, not wanting to do this. "I have Quinn at my house, she's doing okay, given the circumstances, I've been making sure she is getting sleep and eating well for the baby."
"Rachel, I asked about you, not Quinn. You lost somebody that day too."
Rachel finally broke down, she had been keeping herself together the best she could, for Quinn's sake, but she couldn't hold it together anymore. "I miss him, most people think he was a stupid boy that didn't care about anything other than dip, sex, and video games. But that wasn't true, he cared about us, all eleven of us. He may not have shown it all the time but when performed you could see it in his eyes. He would have done anything for us, and we couldn't even keep him alive."
Emma's heart broke every time one of the kids blamed themselves for what had happened to Puck. "You all did everything you could, the only people to blame are the ones who attacked him."
In her head Rachel knew that, but she couldn't stop the guilt that consumed her. Why Puck? It could have just as easily been her when she went out to her car less than fifteen minutes earlier to retrieve sheet music. "Puck was a good guy." She repeated as she forced her brain to forever remember the look on Puck's face every time he felt his daughter move, the way the corners of his mouth went up every time he played guitar, and the way he always fought to do right by every member of their club, despite their past differences.
QUINN
Emma did a double take when Quinn walked through her door. The usually very well put together girl looked like a mess. The green sweater, that Emma knew had to have come from the closet of Rachel Berry stretched across the blondes abdomen, the poorly knit thread threatening to split apart at any second. Her messy hair and dark circles mirrored those of Rachel Berry who had left just a minutes prior.
"Quinn. Please sit down. I know you must be going through a lot right now, and I can't imagine your grief, but why don't you tell me what happened, sometimes it helps." Emma tried to choice her words cautiously.
Quinn rolled her eyes, she was agitated. "You know what happened, I'm sure you've been told ten times already. I'm not going to talk about it." Quinn didn't have to talk about it, she relived those five minutes in her head every second of everyday.
"Thats fine, I'm not going to force you to discuss anything you don't want to. Will you at least tell me how you are feeling?"
Quinn rolled her eyes once more before deciding to just give in and talk to Ms. Pillsbury, figuring the sooner she did it the sooner she could leave this suffocating office with it's stupid, lying inspirational posters. "I'm feeling tired. I pretend to sleep enough so Rachel and get dads don't worry but sleep rarely comes die to the real life nightmare that replays in my head constantly."
"Im sorry Quinn, things will get better. Is there anything else?"
"Im worried about Rachel, she holds all the sadness she's feeling inside and she thinks I don't notice, but I do and I hate that she thinks she needs to do that." Quinn continued talking about Rachel, going on and on about everything, from the house to the ferrets until Ms. Pillsbury interrupted her
"Quinn? You've been talking about Rachel for about five minutes now. Are you using her as a subject to ignore your own feelings?"
Quinn thought for a second, she hadn't been doing that on purpose, however Rachel was a nice distraction from the nightmare record player in her head. "I'm sorry Ms. Pillsbury. But speaking of, school is out and Rachel is my ride home."
Emma laid her head down on her desk, after properly sanitizing it, of course, once Quinn had left. "Emma?" She jerked her head up at the sound of her name.
"Will." She said in a tired voice. "How are you doing?"
Will shrugged his shoulders, taking a seat in the chair that had been occupied most of the day. "How were the kids? I cancelled Glee, I figured it was the last place they wanted to be."
Emma began to cry. "They're devastated, Will. And I did nothing to help him, I am useless, I would serve a better purpose to this school being a lunch lady or a janitor." Emma cringed as she thought back to the eleven conversations she had today. Maybe she shouldn't have asked them to talk about it, maybe it was too soon, maybe those ten simple words she thought would help so much had done nothing but hurt the kids even worse.
Will snapped her out of her thoughts. "Why don't you talk to me about it? It might help?" So she did, and it did help, she just hoped she helped the kids as much today as Will was helping her. Perhaps those ten little words were more helpful than she had ever expected.
A/N: I realize Quinn's emotions weren't really touched on in this chapter, however, I wanted to get inside the head of the other gleeks, since they have been pretty much ignored in this fic. Quinn's grieving will be touched upon in the next chapter, which happens to be the funeral, expect some uninvited guests to add some tension.
