FEMME FATALE . QUINN FABRAY

chapter twenty . fallen angels

trigger warning // homophobic slurs, bad mothering, sad stuff

Nat took a week off school.

Of course, Finn, Quinn and Mercedes were the only ones who knew what was going on over there. It had been crazy and chaotic and emotional. And of course, once Nat came back to school, Mr Schue and the rest Glee Club wanted to know what happened.

"Well, I'm not gonna sing a song if that's what you want. Cheesy assholes," Nat grumbles, moving to the front of the room, "So I was away for a week- big deal."

"Uh, yeah," Rachel says, her eyes wide, "It's a huge deal. Regionals is only a couple of days away- you're the second soloist. You can't just take a week off, dragging our other slightly competent singers away because of a personal issue." Rachel sounds outraged.

"Your face is a personal issue, Rach." Nat grumbles, her eyes filled with an exhaustion that could only be caused by a family member.

Nat could hear Quinn's scoff. Schue smiles, "We just want to know what you were up to. We're all worried about you, Nat. And yeah, you kind of have to tell us because you missed a whole week of rehersal."

"Ugh, I hate you all. This is technically blackmail," Nat glares, "Okay, so. What happened was..."

"- You don't have to tell them," Finn cuts across, "seriously, we can all leave, and talk about it alone."

Quinn nods quickly, her hands on her very pregnant belly, "Yeah. We can leave and go back home."

"You gonna give your piece, Merc?"

Mercedes shrugs, exhausted from the clueless lesbians, "Your choice, 'Sha."

Nat smirks, "Thank you, 'Cedes. So this is what happened..."

ONE WEEK AGO

"You can't seriously be thinking about going back there!" Nat yelled, anger seeping out of pore on her skin.

Irene sneered, picking away at the leather that was falling off the couch, "I'll do what I want."

Nat felt the urge to punch a wall... or her mother, "Just stay here a week. I can help you find another place, but you can't go back to the Trailer Park."

"I'm an adult, Natasha!" Irene hissed, her eyes bright with the anger that came with the pain of withdrawal, "I make my own decisions."

"Are you sure about that?" Nat scoffed, a look of disbelief taking over, "because I remember just last week I had to pick you up from a motel where my father, the man who not only abandoned us, but broke your heart in some unfixable way, left you because he was too much of a coward to face me after you overdosed and didn't even think to call me!"

"Don't talk about him like that-!"

"Like what?" Nat questioned loudly, "like, like he didn't leave us to starve? Like he didn't take everything we had and left without saying goodbye? He ruined everything and you won't even admit it!"

Irene stood from the couch, her hands curled into shaky fists, "It wasn't his fault!"

"If it weren't for him, you wouldn't be an addict."

Irene looked lost for words, her face going a pale grey. She was blinking a mile a minute, flashes of dark brown and bright red in her eyes. Her mouth was opening and closing like a trout, gasping for air. She fell back onto the couch, her face becoming motionless.

Nat knew her mother was once beautiful. Perhaps the years of drugs and alcohol brought out a broken kind of beauty. Her ivory skin, her tousled locks of brown hair, her tired and dazed eyes. Irene held that traumatised ache of a true victim of the world's trials and tribulations that drew in the most broken, most dangerous, most greedy souls.