Back to the Start Chapter 7: Fighting Together, a glee fanfic

Mr. Schue was sitting backwards in a chair. I couldn't believe that he was doing that. When were adults going to figure out that it wasn't cool? I was glad that I hadn't done that when I was in charge of the Glee club. I couldn't help but wonder what happened with them. I hoped that they won Nationals, but I had no connection with my home. All I knew was they knew that I was dead. I wished that I could talk to them to let them know that I was okay, but I didn't have a way to do that.

"So as we prepare for Sectionals, I want to know what kind of music you want to do." He stated. Coach Kiernan hadn't really done anything with the Glee club yet. As far as I knew, she really didn't hate us, but she seemed mostly indifferent to having the job as co-director. Actually, I was pretty sure that she didn't want to do it. "Do you have any suggestions?"

"Well I've noticed that we've been doing a lot of music by white people." Ben declared.

"And a lot of it has been showtunes." Jasmine added. Not to mention, they weren't even modern showtunes.

"This is Glee club, not Crunk club." Rachel piped in. Why was she being so racist? One of her dads is black…I think. I hadn't met them in this new universe, but it was still pretty racist.

"And here comes the racism." Quinn remarked.

"Thank you for the input, Ben, Jasmine." Mr. Schue interrupted. It was probably good to disrupt that, but Rachel probably did need to be reprimanded for that. "Anything else?"

"I can pop and lock." Mike declared. You know I was pretty sure that I didn't know what that was. I knew it was some kind of dance, but as someone who couldn't dance, I didn't know what it meant.

"I was looking for more singing-related things but noted Mike." Mr. Schue declared. The thing was Mr. Schue really wasn't good at treating the non-white students well. I was pretty sure that it wasn't because he was racist, it was probably because he was afraid to step out of his comfort zone. I couldn't help but wonder if I should try to talk to him about it. The only problem was talking about it, especially as someone who wasn't personally affected by it was kind of hard.

After school, Quinn and I were in the doctor's office. I had Chrissy take us because it was less embarrassing than having Mr. Schue take us. I was glad that I had someone else that I could lean on, even though I liked having him as a father figure.

"I'm freaking out." Quinn told me. I was beginning to think that Sam was not okay with the fact that the baby was someone else's.

"It's going to be okay." I assured her.

"Relax at your age the baby should be fine." The doctor replied. I wasn't sure when it became frowned upon for girls to have babies at such young ages. Then again, it used to be frowned upon to have children out of wedlock, which she was also doing. "This is going to be a little cold."

"Can you please be careful with my uniform?" Quinn requested. I was pretty sure that stuff would wash out.

"You know it's not very common that we get teen lesbian couples in here." The doctor responded. I blushed. "Have you two decided what you're going to do with the baby?"

"We're not a couple." I replied. I didn't know if I could refer to myself as a lesbian. I mean I was pretty sure that I didn't like guys, but thinking of myself as a lesbian also meant thinking of myself as a girl.

"I don't even know yet." Quinn admitted. I couldn't help but wonder if she was considering adoption, but the problem was that she didn't know anyone who wanted the baby and she didn't want to give it to a stranger. I didn't know what I would do if I was in her situation, but I knew that I didn't want to get pregnant.

"Well it looks like the baby is healthy." The doctor declared.

"Is it a boy or girl?" I asked. I remember being told this before.

"I can't tell you that yet. It's too early to tell." She answered. How did the other doctor know then? Did they have some kind of special machine?

They were doing a few more tests that I didn't need to be around for. I couldn't help but feel weird being back here. I went over to Chrissy.

"Thanks for bringing us." I told her.

"Well you're my sister and Quinn's my friend." She told me. "How is she?"

"She's good." I answered. "So have you ever been in a place like this before?"

Even though she was my father, I didn't know how much time that she had to be involved in that stuff.

"No, I was deployed during a lot of this stuff. I did get to come back for you to be born. It was then that everything started to go wrong." She admitted. She probably didn't want to give me the details that led to her death, which I understood because I imagined that it wasn't easy to talk about. "So maybe you should try to take your driver's test soon. I won't always be available to chauffeur you around and Quinn isn't going to be able to drive pretty soon."

"Yeah, that was why I got it before. I'll have to talk to Mom about it." I declared. At that point, Quinn came out of the office. "We should get going."

The following day, I was school when I suddenly found that Jacob Ben Israel was at my locker.

"Can I help you?" I asked him.

"Well word on the street is you're the hottest girl in the school." He told me. I just started to walk away. I had never noticed how creepy the guy was. Maybe it was because I had never been on the receiving end of his affection. Even if I did like guys, I would stay far away from him. "So I happen to have some juicy gossip that I know you're just dying to hear. Or maybe you want it to remain a secret."

"Is this guy bothering you?" Someone interrupted. It was muscular guy with brown hair and a British accent.

"You know I should probably get going. I'll talk to you later." Jacob responded before he hastily exited.

"What was that about?" I inquired. I figured that I should also ask who he was, but that didn't seem to be my top concern about the moment.

"Oh, he's probably just scared because I spent some time in a detention center." He answered. "I'm James."

"Faith." I replied. "I didn't need you to come to my rescue though."

"I'll keep that in mind." He responded before he walked off.

"Ooh do you like bad boys?" Quinn replied as she grabbed me and she started to walk us to class.

"I don't even know who he is," I responded with a blush. It probably was the first time that I thought a guy was good-looking.

"You don't remember James Bower?" She asked. "He went to Juvie last year. Though to be fair, it looked like he bulked up a little. You should ask him out."

"It's probably not a good idea for me to go out with someone who went to Juvie." I declared.

We went to Glee club and we found that Coach Kiernan was there.

"So I don't really have enough time to get to know all of you, so I'm just going to take some of you and try to work with you individually." She announced.

"So, what are you just going to take the jocks and cheerleaders then?" Mr. Schue inquired. I don't think she was trying to divide us the way Sue was.

"I wasn't but that's probably easier than us just picking teams." Coach Kiernan declared. "So I'll take all of the athletes and you can have everyone else."

I wasn't expecting that to be honest. I went over with Quinn, Brittany, Santana, Chrissy, Mike, Sam, and Jasmine. She took us to the gym. I wasn't sure how I felt about this. She then separated the four of us who weren't cheerleaders and I didn't know what she was doing.

"So I want to start by getting to know the four of you." She stated. "But to do that, you probably have to get to know me. I know I seem like an emotionally-detached person. I guess I am. I've lost a lot of people in my life. I don't really listen to a lot of music, but I'm going to try to do this since I have to. So now that that's out of the way, who wants to go first?"

"I guess I will." Mike stated. "My name is Mike Chang. I play football and I'm in the Beta club, but I like to dance. I've wanted to do it for a long time but my dad doesn't really understand."

"It's a shame that there's not a dance team at the school." Coach Kiernan replied. "Who's next? What about you? You're Chrissy's sister, right?"

"Yeah I am." I replied. "I guess I'm the more sporty one of us. I play football too…sorry Coach wants me to call it that. I'm here because I like to sing. People are always complimenting me on my voice."

"Well I can't just take your word for it." She stated. "Let's see what's a good song to show off some vocal range. Do you know 'Open Arms' by Journey?"

"Yeah." I answered. I had never tried to sing that high though. She then motioned for me to start singing.

Lying beside you, here in the dark feeling your heart beat with mine
Softly you whisper, you're so sincere, how could our love be so blind

We sailed on together, but drifted apart
And here you are by my side

So now I come to you with open arms
Nothing to hide, believe what I say
So here I am, with open arms
Hoping you'll see what you're love means to me
Open arms

Living without you, living alone, this empty house seems so cold
Wanting to hold you, wanting you near how much I wanted home

But now that you've come back tonight and today
I need you to stay

So now I come to you with open arms
Nothing to hide, believe what I say
So here I am, with open arms
Hoping you'll see what you're love means to me
Open arms

I was out of breath when I finished. I was not used to all of that belting because Rachel or Blaine were usually the ones doing that. Also singing Journey felt weird, but at least she hadn't asked me to sing "Faithfully." Everyone clapped for me when I was done.

"Yeah, you can sing." Coach Kiernan declared. "Go get some water."

I then went to the water fountain. It was there, I came across someone.

"Hi." Rachel greeted me. "What are you doing out here?"

"Coach Kiernan told me to get some water because I just sang a Journey song." I explained.

"Yeah, breath control is a big thing when you're singing songs like that." She remarked. I started to walk away from her. "So, what, now you don't like me?"

"You called me a skank and accused me of my dating my best friend." I pointed out. I had to admit that stuff hurt. I wanted to like Rachel but she was doing a lot of stuff to make me not like her. "Not to mention, you're kind of racist."

"I'm not racist. One of my dads is black." She pointed out. "And I'm sorry about that other stuff. I just want you to give me another chance."

"I don't know." I replied before I went back to the gym.

I had to admit that I was pleasantly surprised with Coach Kiernan. She did seem like she was a good coach. Perhaps maybe I shouldn't have been surprised since I had heard good things about her from both Chrissy and Quinn about her. Of course, I had heard bad things about her from Coach Tweedy, but part of that may have been because she had a crush on her. I was still debating if I should set them up or not.

One thing that I wasn't sure of was how things between Mr. Schue and Coach Kiernan were. I didn't think that there was as much bad blood as with Sue, but that didn't mean that there wasn't any. Did I have any right to get involved if their behavior wasn't detrimental to us at all? Maybe the right thing to do would just be to talk to him about it, so I decided to do that after Spanish class.

"Hey, Mr. Schue can I talk to you about something?" I asked. He stopped there for a second. "I just wanted to see how you were holding up."

"Well my wife is a little hard to handle right now and this Glee club thing is a little much too." He admitted. "I guess I'm a little overwhelmed that I'm going to be a father."

"You are going to be one, right? I mean you've seen the baby, haven't you?" I asked.

"Yes…" He retorted. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine." I replied. He probably thought I was crazy for asking that. You know I couldn't help but wonder what things were going to be like with him actually having a kid.

"So what do you think of Coach Kiernan?" He inquired.

"Would you be mad at me if I say that I like her?" I asked. "The first thing that she did was ask us to introduce ourselves and then she had me sing a song that would let me belt. It was fun."

After school, at practice, I couldn't help but notice that Coach Tweedy seemed a little distracted. I kind of felt like if I kicked a ball her way that it would hit her in the face. I needed to talk to her to see what was up.

"Coach?" I asked.

"What?" She retorted. "I mean why aren't you practicing?"

"You just seem a little bit lost in thought." I explained. "Is everything okay?"

"Yes, everything is fine." She told me. "You don't need to worry about me."

She was looking over to the Cheerios and yeah it seemed like it was obvious that she had a crush. I didn't know if I should encourage because I still barely knew Coach Kiernan and while I didn't know Coach Tweedy that well either, she was still someone that I was close to. She felt kind of like a big sister.

Speaking of people who felt like sisters, Quinn and I were hanging out after school.

"So have you heard the new JoJo song yet?" She asked me.

"JoJo has a new song out?" I responded. I remembered her from when I was in middle school but she kind of disappeared after that.

"Yeah she won a lawsuit against her record label and now she's going to be releasing new music on a much better one." She told me before she took out her phone. "Here listen to it. I think it's going to be huge."

I listened to the song and I did think it was really good. Was that one of the differences of this universe beyond the little things. I was pretty sure that I could get behind music like that.

"So how are things with Sam?" I inquired.

"I'm starting to think that he doesn't want to do this with me." She declared. "I mean I asked if he wanted to come to the ultrasound with me but he said that he was busy with practice."

"Maybe he couldn't afford to skip practice." I pointed out. Part of me did think that he resented the fact that the baby wasn't his.

"You skipped practice to come with me." She pointed out. "Then again, I guess you don't really need to practice. I wish I was good at sports like you are. Frannie was always the athlete of the family."

"You don't really talk about your sister that much." I commented.

"It's because I haven't gotten a chance to talk to her in a while." She answered. "She's busy at college and she's also engaged."

I thought her sister was supposed to be older than that. Actually, I had no idea how old her sister was because I had never met her.

The next day at school I was wearing a navy sleeveless vest top and jeans. I was learning a lot more about clothes than I ever knew before. I once again found myself face-to-face with my least favorite blogger.

"What do you want?" I asked.

"Now that your boyfriend is gone, we need to continue our discussion." He replied. Did he just say that James was my boyfriend? I didn't even know the guy…not that I would go out with him even I did. Was that something that he put on his blog?

"He's not my boyfriend." I argued.

"Well regardless of what you're doing with him, I have a scoop that you may not want to get out." He stated. "Word on the street is that the head cheerleader, your best friend has a bun in the oven."

"You can't print that." I told him.

"I considerable myself a reasonable man." He declared. "I think an arrangement can be made to prevent me from publishing this juicy gossip."

"What are you talking about?" I inquired.

"I want you to give me a pair of your panties and this story will all go away." He stated. Ew. Ew. That was one of the most disgusting things that I had ever heard.

"What? No." I retorted. I seriously hoped that I had never been that perverted and it made me feel extremely uncomfortable that he was harassing me like that. "I am going to tell Principal Figgins about this."

"Do you honestly think that he's going to do anything?" He challenged. "He's the one who let Coach Sylvester get away with whatever she wanted for years."

Okay, he had a bit of a point. Did he also have some sort of blackmail on Principal Figgins.

"I'll give you until tomorrow if you decide to change your mind." He declared before he walked away.

Part of me thought that I should just talk to Quinn about this. I remembered that in my world he had been harassing Rachel about such a thing. She ended up doing it and the story ended up getting out anyway. I was pretty sure that it was Sue's fault. I thought maybe I should do it to protect her, but I didn't want to degrade myself in order to do it. The other idea I had was asking someone to beat him up, but I was against bullying, even if the person in question was a huge perv.

After school, everyone got together in the choir room. Things did seem to be going a lot better. There didn't seem to be a war going on between Mr. Schue and Coach Kiernan. It seemed to be mostly normal. We were all together in the choir room singing Taylor Swift's "You Belong with Me" together. We were having a blast. Well I was and it seemed like everyone else was as well. I liked being able to hang out with everyone even though it was a bit of a different group than I knew.

"I miss being able to hang out like this." I replied.

"Yeah, it's so much better when we're all together." Ben remarked. "I think this is what we need to do."

"Why don't we just tell Mr. Schue and Coach Kiernan that we want to stay together?" Jasmine asked.

"We could ask them to let us stay together." Brittany declared.

"Britt, that's what she just said." Quinn pointed out.

"What are you all doing here?" Mr. Schue asked as he walked into the room. Maybe it was time to tell him.

"Mr. Schue, we all want to perform together." I declared. "We don't want to be split up."

"We're not splitting you up." He stated.

"It sure seems that way." Rachel declared. "Whatever problems you have with Coach Kiernan, you shouldn't take them out on us."

"Do we have problems, Will?" Coach Kiernan asked as she walked into the room.

"No." Mr. Schue replied. "She's just trying to get to know you all better."

"I actually wanted to be with the rest of you today." Coach Kiernan requested. "I can't be a good coach if I don't know you that well. I have to know what your strengths are. I'm sorry if you think I'm trying to divide you."

"Can I just sing something for all of you?" Rachel requested.

"Sure, Rachel." Mr. Schue told her as Rachel began to sing. She gave me a look.

I'm trying not to pretend, it won't happen again and again like that
Never thought it would end cause you got up in my head in my head like that
You made me happy baby, love is crazy, so amazing, but it's changing rearranging
I don't think I can take any more

Cause the walls burned up and our love fell down
Turn into whatever, now we're saying never
Feel the fire cause it's all around
And it's burning for forever and always
We got let it go be on our way
Look for another day cause it aint the same my baby
Watch it all fall to the ground
No happy ever after, just disaster

You shot the bullet, you shot the bullet that killed me
Not feeling my heartbeat and I was dying
I've been through all the agony
And now my eyes are trying no more crying, lying's just a game
So disaster strikes and I'm alright cause my love's on the way
Yeah burning up for forever and alwauys

We all clapped. Rachel knew how to perform even if her voice was a little bit weaker.

I walked out with Quinn into the hallway even though the meeting wasn't over yet.

"So I have something that I need to tell you." I stated. "Jacob Ben Israel found out that you're pregnant and he told me that he's going to post it on his blog…unless I give him a pair of my panties."

"You're not going to do it, are you?" She asked.

"I was thinking about it." I admitted.

"Faith, I can't ask you to do that for me. If you do this, he's not just going to leave you alone." She replied. "You need to tell a teacher about this."

"It doesn't feel like they're going to do anything." I pointed out.

"Is everything alright?" Coach Kiernan asked as she came out into the hallway.

"No. Someone is harassing Faith." Quinn declared.

"Tell me who it is." She demanded.

"Jacob Ben Israel." I answered.

"I'll talk to him." She promised. I couldn't help but wonder what she was going to do.

The next day, I found out that Jacob was suspended. I couldn't believe that Coach Kiernan had come through for us. She took us into her office to tell us about it.

"There was something else that I needed to talk to you two about." She stated. "Quinn, he told me that you're pregnant. Is this true?"

"Yes…" Quinn admitted through her tears.

"I'm afraid you're not going to be cheering anymore." Coach Kiernan declared.

"Okay, I'll go get changed." Quinn relented. She seemed like she knew this was going to be coming.

"I'm not kicking you off the squad. I can't let you cheer anymore." The coach declared. "It's too much of a liability."

"Oh." She replied.

"I wish you well with your child." She replied. "I hope things turn out better than they did with mine."

"I didn't know you had a child." I stated.

"You two should go." She stated. "And tell Will that I think he's doing fine as choir director and he can do it by himself."

In Glee club we were performing a familiar song in support of Quinn because Jacob still posted the story on his blog and it spread throughout the school.

You're not alone, together we stand
I'll be by your side you know I'll take your hand
When it gets cold and it feels like the end
There's no place to go no I won't give in
No I won't give in

Keep holding on
Cause you know we'll make it through, we'll make it through
Just stay strong
Cause you know I'm here for you, I'm here for you
There's nothing you can say, there's nothing you can do
There's no other way when it comes to the truth
So keep holding on cause you know we'll make it through make it through

Here me when I say when I say I believe
There's nothing gonna change gonna change destiny
Whatever's meant to be will work out perfectly
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

Keep holding on cause you know we'll make it through, we'll make it through
Just stay strong cause you know I'm here for you, I'm here for you
There's nothing you can say, there's nothing you can do
There's no other way when it comes to the truth
So keep holding on cause you know we'll make it through make it through

After the song was over, we all surrounded her for a big group hug.

So this episode delved a little more into Coach Kiernan's character., though there are still quite a few mysteries to her. Not to mention, Faith found herself on the end receiving of Jacob's lust. Also she met a guy that she may or may not like. James is played by Dominic Sherwood. The JoJo song is "Disaster" which should have been a bigger hit. Please don't forget to review.