Quinn stood, bag slung over her shoulder, staring at the campus of McKinley. It looked smaller than when she'd last seen it. Certainly smaller than the day she'd arrived, a scared and half-broken fourteen year old girl in the care of a man she didn't know. And she'd been through so much since then. A tear threatened as she thought about it all, but she didn't let it fall. She was Quinn Fabray, she was the girl who'd recieived a nickname both mocking and accurate - Ice Queen. She did not cry.
She wondered whether she'd see Puck. He'd be in classes already, of course - Doctor Schuester had been kind enough to let her take almost a full week extra to finish adjusting to everything that had happened before returning to school. How would he react? Would he be pissed about her disappearing on him? Probably. This was Puck, after all. But whatever excuse she gave him, she knew one thing for certain - she couldn't ever, ever tell him the truth. Why she'd vanished, where she'd stayed, anything at all. It had damn near killed her, what she'd been through, and it would do much worse to him. Best that he never know, that he never even suspect.
This year, she had decided, was about her. There would be no more dating, no friends, no excuses. She would train hard, perfect her powers and do well in her classes. Nothing else mattered. She couldn't afford to care any more.
Puck was on his way through the court yard, to set up the bunker, for his next session. He was so preoccupied, he didn't even notice Quinn, until he was right on top of her. His jaw dropped when he realized, for sure, that it was her.
"Quinn?... Oh my -" He didn't finish the sentence. He instead, opted to abrupty step forward and throw his arms around her. He let go of her, when it registered that she wasn't hugging him back. "I'm sorry, it's just..." he trailed off, with a grin spread across his features. "Thank God you're okay. I... we... everyone was so worried," he finally managed to fumble through what was more-or-less a full sentence.
Dammit, was Quinn's only thought as she caught sight of him - and more importantly, he saw her. This was so hard - harder than she'd imagined it could be, harder than it had been in her nightmares. It took all of her control not to throw up a wall of ice between them to establish a physical barrier, and even with that control she still felt her fist freeze solid before she could stop it.
She didn't return his hug, just let him embrace her until he was finished. When he stepped back, she took a ragged breath and hoped that her voice wouldn't be as shaky out loud as it was in her head. "Puck," she nodded. "Yeah - I'm sorry about that," her expression wasn't contrite, though, just stoic. "I really needed to get away for a while. But I'm fine." Now, she added in her head.
Puck nodded, as though he understood, even though he didn't. "What happened? Where did you go?" He asked, before he could stop himself. Bombarding her with questions probably wasn't the best idea right now. "I mean, I tried looking for you, but I barely managed to get 30 miles, before Doc found me and jedi-mind-tricked me into coming back. Must have hurt his pride, having two runaways, inside a week."
Taking a step backward, trying to establish more distance between them, she shook her head. "Just - away. I'm sorry I didn't tell you, but I just...I couldn't. I just had to leave." She bit her lip, trying to decide how much more to say - she could tell Puck that Doctor Schue had known all about it, but she thought that might drive a wedge between them.
She finally decided on a version of the truth, hoping that it wouldn't make things worse. "I left him a note," she sighed, "the doc, I mean. Begged him not to let anyone come after me. So him dragging you back - that was my fault."
"Well," he said. "I had a feeling he knew. Guy knows everything. I'm surprised he let me get as far as he did, if I'm honest." He ran a hand through his hair. "So you're back? I mean for good? Because I... I missed you" he confessed, looking at the ground between her feet.
This was the moment, she knew - the time to make a choice. It would be so easy to fall back into the easy rapport that they'd established before she'd left - but she knew where that path had led, and even the thought of it made her heart ache painfully. And so she took the other option - to be as cold as her nickname.
"Yeah," she shrugged with a nonchalance she didn't really feel. "I'm back - I'll be sticking around. I've seen the world, and there's not much to it. Might as well stay here for now."
Puck frowned at Quinn's aloof, detatched attitude toward being back... and seeing him. He knew that she'd been happy here before she'd left, and she obviously had reasons for returning. There was also, of course, the fact that he'd missed her like he'd have missed air if it had just picked up and left - far more than he'd ever admit to the girl herself - and she didn't even seem pleased to see him. Quite the opposite, actually. So the idea that maybe she never cared about him, hurt like hell.
The usettling thought that she'd finally actually become the cold, uncaring bitch that everyone else always seemed to think she was, crossed his mind briefly, before he pushed it away. He liked to think he knew her better than that. Maybe he did, maybe he didn't, but that's what he believed. The apathy he saw on her face and heard in her voice didn't ring true to him somehow. That thought was the only thing keeping him from running scared and fighting ice with ice, by telling her that he didn't care either way, anyway.
"Good," he finally said, trying to keep the pain that was masking itself as anger, out of his voice. "That's good."
Quinn watched the emotions play across his face, and it was like having her heart ripped out. She'd convinced herself over the last months that she never really cared for him, but watching his hurt and his confusion quickly dispelled her of that notion. A thousand apologies reached her lips, but every single one was snuffed out before she could verbalize it.
It had to be this way, she knew that. It didn't stop it from hurting, though. From wanting to bury herself in his arms and tell him everything, every desperate thought and stray feeling that had pulled her apart while she was gone, every wound she'd collected in her psyche, and the pain that she had worked so hard to bury. But it couldn't happen that way. He couldn't find out. And so she swallowed all of it anew, and it burned all the way down to her soul.
"Yeah," she agreed in a too-calm voice. "So - did I miss anything good?"
Quinn pushing so hard to ignore the elephant in the room was making it worse. She knew he wanted to know why she left McKinley - why she'd left him - and in turn, she knew that he was aware of that too. So, all of this pretending made him sick to his stomach, but he went along with the trivial topic of conversation.
"Not really," he pasted a smirk onto his face, to fit in with the illusion of normal they were trying to create. "About six months ago, I convinced Hudson that he could fly, and he jumped off the stable roof..." he offered up. He'd gone through several rough patches, many of them making him behave in all sorts of nasty ways. Especially with his friends. "I'd had a bad week" he shrugged, like he wasn't even sorry. He was. He really was. Finn had broken his right femur and several ribs, and Puck could still remember how much pain his best friend had been in, before he'd healed him. The worst part was, he remembered not being sorry at the time, and that made him feel even sicker. He'd wanted someone else to be in pain, and that was just so very wrong.
Quinn frowned - internally, keeping her expression carefully neutral. That didn't sound like Puck - not the Puck that she knew. But she knew her disappearance had hurt him, badly, and she supposed that maybe he'd been lashing out at other people to compensate. It made her feel even worse, and she made a mental note to apologize to Finn when she saw him.
But she couldn't say any of that - even if she did want to break the exterior she was showing, she didn't even know how to begin a conversation like that - and so she smiled instead. "Only Hudson. How'd you convince him he could fly? Have somebody levitate him? You'd think a guy who spends so much time around other people with abilites would know you don't just grow new ones."
This was bullshit. He wanted to call her on it, to tell her to stop acting like she didn't give a crap why he'd done that. She wasn't fooling him for a New York minute, and he was beginning to find this whole thing very taxing.
He didn't call her out, like he wanted to, though. As much as she was pissing him off, he wouldn't try to force her to tell him aything. It wouldn't do any good, for one thing; Quinn Fabray was as stubborn, as she was beautiful. He could be just as stubborn too, if he wanted, but he wasn't moreso, and they'd just get into an argument, concluding in a stalemate. That was no good to anyone. Quinn and Puck at odds with one another was a scary thing, and the whole school would suffer for it.
"Got one of last year's seniors - I don't think you know him - to plant a false memory in Hudson's head... I didn't think the ginormous idiot would actually jump off a damn roof though," he replied, trying to keep his tone sounding vaguely bored.
"Well, it was Hudson, so you really can't expect too much. You're lucky he didn't throw himself off something taller. The Doc must have been pretty pissed about that one when he found out."
She hated this - the charade, the pretense, all of it. She hated being so cold, so utterly disinterested. She made a spur of the moment decision to throw him a bone - a fake one, but a bone nonetheless. She bowed her head and sighed. "Los Angeles," she whispered. "I was in Los Angeles." She'd been nowhere near the state of California, of course, but maybe it would make him feel like they were making progress toward a real coversation.
"Oh yeah," he said. "Understatement of the century. He tried to ground me, if you can believe it." Puck rolled his eyes.
"LA?" He was surprised. He'd been looking for her in totally the wrong direction, in that case. "What's in LA?" He frowned in confusion. He had no idea why she'd have gone there.
"Why do I have a feeling that would be pointless, with you?" she nearly smiled, but dialled it back at the last minute. She couldn't let that happen.
"Honestly?" she shrugged. "Nothing. No one I knew, nothing I knew, just...nothing. I just wanted to be somewhere I could blend in for a while." That much was actually true, but not for the reason she was telling him. "I just kinda bummed around - saw the walk of fame, the Hollywood sign, stuff like that. It wasn't as fun as I thought it'd be. Never did see a single famous person."
"Completely pointless. Especially in this prison-in-a-halloween-costume-dressed-as-a-school... What else did I do, but go to class, train, and sleep?"
"Somewhere you'd blend in?" He asked, genuinely confused. "You mean, like here?"
"Yeah, I can't see what grounding you would ever do. Maybe if he took away your xbox, but that'd be about the worst he could do to you."
She frowned - why was he trying to poke holes in her story? Did he honestly want this to be even more difficult? "Everyone knows me here," she explained. "Everybody knows the Ice Queen, the bitch, I just..." she sighed. "I just wanted to be Quinn. Someplace that nobody knew who I was, you know? Where I didn't have that rep hanging over me."
"Well, he did," Puck shrugged. "It isn't the only one in the whole school."
He nodded. He could definitely understand that. "Yeah, I guess that makes sense. I'm finding it a total nightmare, trying to mentor people who think I'm about to punch them. Luckily, two out of the seven people I train are new, and one's Lopez. So only four quake with unnecessary fear," he rolled his eyes.
Quinn snorted. "Why am I not surprised - hopefully you didn't hurt anyone when you took theirs."
She sighed softly, glad that he was moving away from her badly-constructed lie. "Well, you definitely don't have to worry about Santana. She'll be too busy trying to hit on you. You do know she's totally in lust with you, right?"
"You think I'm psycho now?" He laughed humorlessly. "There's no hope then. I just used Hudson's... The big lug wasn't even pissed at me for almost killing him."
"Really?" He frowned in confusion. "Nah, she's just friendly like that... Right?" He'd trained Santana, when she'd asked him to, the previous year, and hadn't noticed her "trying to hit on him." Was he that clueless?
"Not psycho," she shook her head. "But I know how...enthusiastic you are about your xbox. And Finn had probably forgot it was you anyway. Not that bright."
Quinn chuckled quietly, the first time she'd let her emotionless facade fall. "No, she's friendly, but she's not like that with anybody else. I'll even tell you a secret. After you started training her, she drew your name in little hearts in one of her notebooks. I wasn't supposed to see it, but she left it open on her desk."
Puck nodded and then smirked. "He's a good guy, but not the sharpest knife in the kitchen drawer...I've never heard the word entusiastic said like it had four letters in it, before," he laughed.
"She drew what?" he asked, even though he didn't really need her to repeat what she'd said. "Wow. I don't know whether to be flattered, or creeped out," he laughed.
"Santana is kinda cute," he thought. "Wait, am I being creepy now? How old is she?" He shook himself out of his potentially inappropriate thoughts.
"Speaking of training," he said, "did Doc send you your schedule, or is who you're stuck with a surprise?"
Quinn shook her head. "You're about the only person I know who I'd say it that way about."
"Well, if she didn't just annoy the hell out of me, I'm sure it'd be cute. Just keep an eye on her when you're training - if she's got a schoolgirl crush on you, she might get a bit aggressive."
She shook her head a second time. "No, I have no idea what my schedule looks like yet. I'm supposed to go and see him once I get settled in. Either way, you or St. James, I can take either one of you." Only a slight twitch at the corner of her mouth gave away that she was joking.
"Don't you worry your pretty little head about me, Fabray," he smirked. "I can handle Santana... And you for that matter. You're not on my list - I'm pretty sure I'd have noticed that - but I guess you only just got here, so..." he shrugged.
"Oh, I wasn't worried - I just didn't want it to be a surprise when she got all moony over you," she raised an eyebrow. "Think you can? Well, maybe the Doc'll put me in with you. Then we'll find out."
She tugged the strap of her bag higher up on her shoulder. "Anyway," she nodded, "I better go get my stuff dropped off. And I'm sure you're busy. But I'll see you soon." Her expression softened, and she gave him the first honest smile she'd managed in a long time. "It's good to see you again."
"Maybe he will" Puck shrugged. "We'll find out" he parroted, with a smirk.
"Yeah," he said. "I'm running late to a training session, and this guy'll run off, given half an excuse... It's really good to see you too," he returned the smile. "I'll see you later, or whatever."
"Absolutely," she promised. She managed to wait until she'd walked into the living quarters and out of his sight before she dropped her bag and took a deep, shuddering breath. It was going to be a hard year, she could tell already. Even a short conversation with him was enough to bring up all kinds of memories, and if she was training with him on top of everything else - well, it was going to be hard.
But if she'd learned anything good from her father and the way he'd treated her, it was that she could survive anything. She'd survive this too.