15 Minute Ficlet - Glee, "Christmas"

[quinnavyre]

The word of the week I used is from this entry.

Title: Christmas
Fandom/original: Glee (SPOILERS for the whole first season – but not enough to ruin the plot, I think. Partly because the plot isn't great anyway. :P)
Characters: Quinn Fabray, Quinn's sister, (mentions Judy & Russell Fabray)
Rating: PG?
Word count: 481

I've always loved the scent of pine. It always reminds me of Christmas. It's the one time when my family seems happy and together. My mother always seems to drink less, and my father to be less concerned with his public profile. The atmosphere was always just lighter, and my sister and her husband have always helped with the mood.

This Christmas, that all went to hell. My father had been kicked out for kissing a "tattooed freak" (like the tattoos somehow make what he did worse), and my mother is still not really over my getting pregnant and making them a public laughing stock. My parents have always been all about image, and never about emotions. Bad feelings are just ignored. My mother never even admitted to having realised I was pregnant before it all came out. It was why I wanted to ignore my pregnancy, to set it aside, and hope it went away. I didn't want to ruin the precarious balance my family had, where my parents loved me as long as I kept being the perfect daughter.

So much for that plan.

So this Christmas, we still had a tree – my mother was trying vainly to pretend that this was a normal Christmas – but the branches seemed somehow droopier than usual, and the scent muted. It almost smelt like despair. To my relief, my sister – Georgia – and her husband still came. With them there, the mood lightened.

Georgia wasn't there when I was pregnant, but that's only because I hadn't wanted to admit it to anyone, least of all my big sister, who'd been almost like a mother to me. She hadn't even known I'd been kicked out until after I moved back home. Apparently she'd called a few times while I was gone, but my mother kept saying I was out. As though I could just walk back in the door any moment; as though nothing had changed.

If only Georgia didn't live so far away, and with such a hectic job that she couldn't get away often. As soon as she saw me, she called my name and pulled me in for a hug. I fell into her arms, tears starting to spill from my eyes. I couldn't even blame the pregnancy hormones anymore. But I'd missed her. In all the hell I'd been through in the last few months, being in her arms somehow made things okay, at least for a little while. I could forget the mistakes I'd made, the people I'd hurt, the baby I'd had to give away.

"George," I sobbed.

"It's okay, Quinn, it's going to be okay." She brushed my hair out of my eyes, and kissed my forehead. It almost felt like a benediction. Maybe in time, everything really would be okay. I had to hold onto the hope that it would; it was all I had left.

Comments

[katiefoolery.livejournal.com]

I think it's neat the way you worked both meanings of the prompt word into this fic. You start with the scent of pine, then continue with a sense of Quinn pining for a proper family, or for things to be the way they used to be. Quite clever.