Nightmares
Title: Nightmares
Pairings/Characters: Rachel/Quinn, mentions Santana/Brittany, Isabelle and Olivia Fabray-Berry
Rating: PG
Length: ~2,800
Summary: Rachel and Quinn deal with Isabelle's nightmares.
Author's Note: *Puppy-verse #22* I might as well drop the bomb now and tell you that this is the first of the final five Puppy-verse stories. It's been great but I've kind of grown tired of it, you know?
Preceded by:
Puppy | My Girl(s) | Perfection | Decisions | Baby Love
Baby Love 2 | Slushies: The Next Generation | Little Gold Stars
Change | Baby Just Say Yes | (Not Quite) Nine Months
Double Trouble | Bigger is Better | Miracles | The Beginning
Mother's Day | First Date | Sick Day | Mondays | Nervous
Storms
Directory | Timeline | Original Character Bios
-November 2032-
When Isabelle started having nightmares as a toddler, Quinn wasn’t worried. It was a normal part of growing up and nightmares happened. When the girl would come running into her mothers’ room in the middle of the night the blonde would tell her there was nothing to be afraid of and send her back to bed and that was that.
Rachel, however, took a completely different approach to the situation. Isabelle quickly learned that Quinn wasn’t going to give her much sympathy and so she started going to Rachel’s side of the bed in the middle of the night. It was one of those things that Quinn and Rachel fought over incessantly because Rachel would get out of bed and go with Isabelle to quietly check her and Olivia’s room and then stay with the terrified girl until she went back to sleep. Rachel begged Quinn to just let her handle the situation and it would be fine. The blonde gave up eventually because it was very clear that Rachel wasn’t backing down.
The years progressed and Quinn was certain in her belief that she was right and Isabelle had grown out of the nightmares and everything was fine. She didn’t bring it up to Rachel, though, because she didn’t want to have another fight so she quietly celebrated her triumph and moved on.
It was a particularly cold winter that year; it had started early and everyone Quinn talked to said it was going to last a while. The heat was kept cranked up but it still got cold during the night. Quinn woke up one night to it being even colder than she knew it should be. She rolled over to snuggle up next to her wife only to find a blank space on the bed. She looked toward the bathroom door and saw no light coming from underneath it and she furrowed her eyebrows.
Quinn grabbed her thick robe and slipped on her house shoes and padded down the hallway to look down the stairwell. It was completely dark; there were no signs of light. She tiptoed down the hallway to what had once been Allie’s room but now belonged to Isabelle since the eldest daughter had moved out on her own. The blonde carefully opened the door and looked in and there was her wife, curled up in the twin bed with their daughter. Isabelle was with her back to the door, clinging onto Rachel’s front while her mother rubbed circles on her back. Quinn rolled her eyes.
“Rachel,” she hissed, “she’s too old for this, come back to bed.”
The response that came was a “shhh” and Rachel waving at Quinn to go away. Quinn sighed and retreated back to the master suite, grumbling as she crawled back into the cold bed and pulled Rachel’s pillows close to her chest.
Isabelle was quiet the next morning, as she normally was. However, Quinn noticed it was a different kind of quiet. She stuck close to Rachel for most of the morning, hardly letting her mother out of her sight. Rachel allowed it. The young girl excused herself after lunch to take a nap and Rachel pressed a kiss to her forehead and gave her a soft smile.
“You’ll be fine,” she assured her daughter.
Quinn sighed and watched the small girl exit the kitchen.
“Olivia,” she said after the girl cleared her plate, “why don’t you go…”
“Somewhere else so you guys can talk?”
“I was going to suggest that you do your homework.”
“But, really, you guys just want me to leave so you can talk?”
“I was planning on having a discussion with your mom, yes.”
“You coulda just told me that,” the young brunette said with a shrug as she bounced out of the kitchen.
Rachel looked up at her wife expectantly, Quinn sighed and weaved her fingers through her own hair.
“Babe, Isabelle’s too old for you to be getting up in the middle of the night like that. I know you want to handle this but really, it’s out of hand. She’s twelve.”
“I’m fully aware of how old our daughters are, Quinn.”
“So why do you keep doing that?”
Rachel swallowed hard. “Because it’s my fault.”
“How could that quite possibly be your fault?”
“Isabelle…what she’s having aren’t nightmares. They’re night terrors. It’s difficult to explain…Wikipedia says night terrors are a parasomnia disorder characterized by extreme terror and a temporary inability to regain full consciousness.”
“Wikipedia? Para-what?”
“Parasomnia. Abnormal sleep habits. I’ve been researching the subject since I was old enough to use the internet. Before that my dads had me taken to doctors and sleep specialists…”
“You don’t have night what? Terrors?” Quinn arched her eyebrow.
“Yes, I do. Not often and they’ve decreased in intensity as I’ve gotten older, but I do have them. The point is I’ve done the research. Night terrors, among other sleep habits, are hereditary. I know what she’s going through and she doesn’t need to be told to just get over it.”
Quinn sighed, absolutely sure that Rachel was completely overreacting. “Okay, look, whatever this is she needs to learn…”
“…to deal with it,” Rachel finished. “I’m aware of that. However, she’s still young. It’s strange in that she had them as a toddler and they subsided for quite a while until the last few months but the abnormality of the situation aside, this could quite possibly happen for the rest of her life. She needs to know we’re there for her. When she’s ready, she’ll deal with it. Until then, I’ll continue being supportive of whatever she needs. I’ve suggested a heated body pillow since that seemed to help when I was her age.”
“You couldn’t have suggested that before?”
“You weren’t interested.”
Quinn’s jaw dropped a little. “Not interested?! Rachel, she’s our daughter!”
“Yes and you seemed perfectly fine to tell her to ‘get over it’!” Rachel growled.
“I never said that to her!”
“You didn’t have to; your actions spoke loud enough and they’re still speaking!” Rachel raised her voice. Quinn rolled her eyes. “You don’t think this is serious, do you? You think it’s some bad dream she can just get over and move on! These aren’t just bad dreams, Quinn! These are…they’re vivid and very detailed when she’s able to recall them which, thank God, is very rare! They usually revolve around things that could actually happen, not monsters or aliens. She dreams about losing us, about losing her sisters…she’s trapped in these dreams with no way out and it’s terrifying to her!”
Quinn swallowed hard. She opened her mouth to speak but Rachel cut her off.
“And to top it all off, she’s been trying to keep it a secret because she thinks you don’t care! You’ve shrugged it off for so damn long that she doesn’t want to tell you anymore! She calls me, Quinn. On nights I’m working late she will call me in almost a full blown anxiety attack and I’ve begged her to wake you up but she won’t.”
Quinn felt her heart drop on top of her now knotted stomach. She couldn’t meet Rachel’s gaze but she could hear the brunette’s breathing and she knew if she looked up she’d be met with a burning hot glare.
“I just thought she was overreacting…”
“Well, she’s not. I’m assuming your parents dealt with your nightmares in a similar manner to the way you’ve tried to deal with these but it’s not what works. I know tough love works in some instances but this is not one of them.”
Quinn nodded. Her chest tightened a little more and she felt the tears well in her eyes at the thought of her baby girl being scared but not running to her. “Wh-what does work? We take her to a doctor? We…we put her on medicine?”
Quinn glanced up just enough to see Rachel shake her head. “They’re not extreme enough for them to put her on medicine. The candidates have much stronger night terrors than what Isabelle is suffering from. She does fit some of the criteria but not all of it. She's fairly certain that she does suffer from the physical symptoms of kicking and flailing in her sleep but she isn’t vocal. She’s caught in between the two extremes of simple nightmares and the most intense cases of night terrors.”
“That’s not good enough!” Quinn shrieked. She snapped her head up finally, to meet Rachel’s gaze. “I want her to see a doctor.”
“I’ve talked to her pediatrician, Quinn. There’s nothing they can do.”
“So we’ll take her to a sleep specialist.”
Rachel reached out across the kitchen table and Quinn slipped her hands into her wife’s.
“She’s okay, she just needs to know we’re here. Both of us. She understands that there’s not much we can do to make them go away but if she knows we’re both here then she’ll be fine.”
“I should talk to her.” Quinn sighed.
Rachel nodded. “Yes, you should.”
“Now is not the time for you to brag that you’re right, Rachel. I feel bad enough as it is.”
“I wasn’t gloating, simply agreeing with you. Can I do nothing right?”
Quinn smirked and pulled Rachel’s hands up to her mouth. She kissed the band resting on the diva’s left ring finger. “You did one thing right,” she murmured. “You married me.”
“Lapse of judgment,” Rachel teased.
Quinn stuck her tongue out and started clearing off the table, Rachel followed close behind. The blonde washed the dishes, her wife dried and they swayed back and forth humming not forgotten tunes from years past. Once the dishes were finished the pair joined Olivia in the living room, Rachel dropped to the couch and Quinn eyed the stairs before ascending them to check in on their other daughter. She stopped in front of Isabelle’s door and quietly opened it to peer in. She watched a few minutes before her eyebrows furrowed at Isabelle beginning to twitch in her sleep a little.
“Baby girl?” Quinn inquired softly. There was no response other than a few fully body jerks from the small girl. Quinn quickly crossed the floor and put a hand on Isabelle’s shoulder. The girl whimpered and jerked a few more times before sitting up, eyes wide open and gasping for air.
“Isabelle?”
Quinn did her best to remain calm, she gripped onto the girl’s shoulders and gently shook her a little. The young brunette whimpered and started shaking, her eyelids dropped and she relaxed before she started trembling again. Quinn panicked a little and enveloped her daughter, running her fingers through thick hair trying to calm the girl.
“Baby, wake up please. Please wake up.”
Isabelle let out another whimper and Quinn felt a little relief when the girl clung to her. The relief was gone when the young girl’s body was wracked with tremors and sobs as she cried into her mother’s shoulder.
“I’m here, okay?” Quinn assured her. “I’m right here. I’m here, alright?”
“I tried, Momma…I tried…I’m sorry. They won’t s-stop!”
“I know, baby girl. I know. You don’t apologize, okay? You didn’t do anything wrong. I’m so sorry.” Quinn reached up and wiped away the tears slipping down her face and she kissed the top of Isabelle’s head. “I understand, okay? I understand and I’m here and I’m not going anywhere.”
Isabelle snuggled deeper into her mother’s embrace and Quinn rocked her daughter and started singing softly to try and get her to relax.
"Listen to me, baby girl," Quinn whispered once the girl had calmed down a little, "you listening?"
Isabelle nodded.
"Mom said that there are a few things we can try to help out, alright? I promise you we’ll do anything to help you. I need you to promise me something, too, though.”
“Okay,” the young girl whispered.
“Come to me when this happens, alright? I’m so sorry I haven’t been here but that changes starting right now, okay?”
“I will.”
Quinn nodded and took a deep breath and blinked back her own tears. “Do you want to try to go back to sleep or do you want to come downstairs?”
“I’ll get up…it helps to get up.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“I don’t remember it…just that it was scary.”
“Okay.” Quinn kissed the top of her daughter’s head and wrapped an arm around her shoulder as she walked with her down the stairs.
The young brunette dropped to the couch between her mother and twin and snuggled up to Rachel’s side. Quinn watched as Olivia reached over and put a hand on her sister’s shoulder.
“You okay, Iz?”
Isabelle nodded. “Yeah, Liv. I’m good.” The girl glanced up at Quinn. “Momma was there.”
“I told you,” Rachel said.
“Yeah, well, I can’t help it if I can feel it,” Olivia mumbled. “It scares me, too, okay?”
“I know, sweetie.”
“So everyone knew about this but me?” Quinn grabbed the remote and shut off the TV. She sat down on the coffee table in front of her three favorite girls and sighed. “You knew?”
“She’s my twin, Momma. Of course I knew.”
“Brittany and Santana don’t know,” Rachel tried to offer.
Isabelle gave a nod. “Does that help?”
“Not really.” Quinn threaded her fingers through her hair and settled her elbows on her knees. “Girls…it’s…,” Quinn looked back up at the three brunettes. “When I was little my parents told me to get over it and go back to bed. That’s pretty much how they told me to deal with everything. Just ‘get over it’. We didn’t talk about it, we just pushed it aside like it didn’t exist. I swore I’d never do it to my own kids but apparently I…”
“Momma?” Olivia cut her off, “I love you and everything…but this isn’t a family sitcom. We get it.”
“But I just wanted to…”
“Also, we’re like, almost teenagers,” Isabelle added, lifting off of Rachel’s shoulder. “We kind of already know everything.”
Quinn blinked.
“I think your mother was simply trying to explain why…”
“We know,” came in a unison sigh.
“I thought maybe if you knew…”
“We know,” came in unison again.
“Can we go now?” Olivia asked. “Or at least turn TV back on?”
Isabelle nodded.
Quinn smirked.
“Girls, your behavior is rather out of line here,” Rachel said sternly. “Your mother was trying…are you even listening?!”
Quinn saw the blank expressions on her daughter’s faces that indicated that no, they weren’t listening.
“I give up,” the older brunette mumbled before hoisting herself off the couch and trudging to the kitchen. Quinn followed.
“What has gotten into them?!” Rachel growled. She yanked open the refrigerator so hard the contents in the door rattled.
“They’re almost teenagers, that’s what.”
“I don’t recall ever disregarding everything my dads said to me. I also don’t recall having such mood swings! Snuggling one minute and not caring the next?! That’s just…”
Quinn couldn’t help but chuckle. “Babe, you’ve had some pretty intense mood swings. You were…and still kind of are a little bit of a drama queen. I’m pretty sure that’s hereditary, too.”
Rachel growled.
-*-*-*-*-*-
Quinn joined Rachel in on her research on sleep disorders and as per suggestions from other parents they read things from they started setting a strict bedtime routine to ensure that Isabelle was getting the optimal amount of sleep for a pre-teen. Rachel made a chart which earned her an eye roll. The elder brunette later told Quinn she was absolutely certain that their daughters hated her which got her another eye roll and a giggle. Quinn slept on the couch that night.
With the combination of the bedtime schedule and addition of a weighted and heated body pillow to Isabelle’s bed there was a noticeable change in the young girl in a matter of weeks. She looked more awake in the mornings and the night terrors decreased in frequency. They still happened, though, and on nights when Rachel wasn’t home after the twins and gone to bed, Quinn would wake up to the eldest of the pair snuggled into her back and trembling a little. She’d just smile and kiss her daughter’s forehead and assure her that everything was alright. Rachel would get home eventually and settle in on the other side of the bed and smile at her wife, who was awake more often than not.
Quinn knew she wasn’t a perfect parent but she also knew that if she could fix her kids’ problems to the best of her ability and be there for them that she came pretty damn close to perfect.
Next: Like a Fine Wine (You Just Get Better with Age)
Pairings/Characters: Rachel/Quinn, mentions Santana/Brittany, Isabelle and Olivia Fabray-Berry
Rating: PG
Length: ~2,800
Summary: Rachel and Quinn deal with Isabelle's nightmares.
Author's Note: *Puppy-verse #22* I might as well drop the bomb now and tell you that this is the first of the final five Puppy-verse stories. It's been great but I've kind of grown tired of it, you know?
Preceded by:
Puppy | My Girl(s) | Perfection | Decisions | Baby Love
Baby Love 2 | Slushies: The Next Generation | Little Gold Stars
Change | Baby Just Say Yes | (Not Quite) Nine Months
Double Trouble | Bigger is Better | Miracles | The Beginning
Mother's Day | First Date | Sick Day | Mondays | Nervous
Storms
Directory | Timeline | Original Character Bios
-November 2032-
When Isabelle started having nightmares as a toddler, Quinn wasn’t worried. It was a normal part of growing up and nightmares happened. When the girl would come running into her mothers’ room in the middle of the night the blonde would tell her there was nothing to be afraid of and send her back to bed and that was that.
Rachel, however, took a completely different approach to the situation. Isabelle quickly learned that Quinn wasn’t going to give her much sympathy and so she started going to Rachel’s side of the bed in the middle of the night. It was one of those things that Quinn and Rachel fought over incessantly because Rachel would get out of bed and go with Isabelle to quietly check her and Olivia’s room and then stay with the terrified girl until she went back to sleep. Rachel begged Quinn to just let her handle the situation and it would be fine. The blonde gave up eventually because it was very clear that Rachel wasn’t backing down.
The years progressed and Quinn was certain in her belief that she was right and Isabelle had grown out of the nightmares and everything was fine. She didn’t bring it up to Rachel, though, because she didn’t want to have another fight so she quietly celebrated her triumph and moved on.
It was a particularly cold winter that year; it had started early and everyone Quinn talked to said it was going to last a while. The heat was kept cranked up but it still got cold during the night. Quinn woke up one night to it being even colder than she knew it should be. She rolled over to snuggle up next to her wife only to find a blank space on the bed. She looked toward the bathroom door and saw no light coming from underneath it and she furrowed her eyebrows.
Quinn grabbed her thick robe and slipped on her house shoes and padded down the hallway to look down the stairwell. It was completely dark; there were no signs of light. She tiptoed down the hallway to what had once been Allie’s room but now belonged to Isabelle since the eldest daughter had moved out on her own. The blonde carefully opened the door and looked in and there was her wife, curled up in the twin bed with their daughter. Isabelle was with her back to the door, clinging onto Rachel’s front while her mother rubbed circles on her back. Quinn rolled her eyes.
“Rachel,” she hissed, “she’s too old for this, come back to bed.”
The response that came was a “shhh” and Rachel waving at Quinn to go away. Quinn sighed and retreated back to the master suite, grumbling as she crawled back into the cold bed and pulled Rachel’s pillows close to her chest.
Isabelle was quiet the next morning, as she normally was. However, Quinn noticed it was a different kind of quiet. She stuck close to Rachel for most of the morning, hardly letting her mother out of her sight. Rachel allowed it. The young girl excused herself after lunch to take a nap and Rachel pressed a kiss to her forehead and gave her a soft smile.
“You’ll be fine,” she assured her daughter.
Quinn sighed and watched the small girl exit the kitchen.
“Olivia,” she said after the girl cleared her plate, “why don’t you go…”
“Somewhere else so you guys can talk?”
“I was going to suggest that you do your homework.”
“But, really, you guys just want me to leave so you can talk?”
“I was planning on having a discussion with your mom, yes.”
“You coulda just told me that,” the young brunette said with a shrug as she bounced out of the kitchen.
Rachel looked up at her wife expectantly, Quinn sighed and weaved her fingers through her own hair.
“Babe, Isabelle’s too old for you to be getting up in the middle of the night like that. I know you want to handle this but really, it’s out of hand. She’s twelve.”
“I’m fully aware of how old our daughters are, Quinn.”
“So why do you keep doing that?”
Rachel swallowed hard. “Because it’s my fault.”
“How could that quite possibly be your fault?”
“Isabelle…what she’s having aren’t nightmares. They’re night terrors. It’s difficult to explain…Wikipedia says night terrors are a parasomnia disorder characterized by extreme terror and a temporary inability to regain full consciousness.”
“Wikipedia? Para-what?”
“Parasomnia. Abnormal sleep habits. I’ve been researching the subject since I was old enough to use the internet. Before that my dads had me taken to doctors and sleep specialists…”
“You don’t have night what? Terrors?” Quinn arched her eyebrow.
“Yes, I do. Not often and they’ve decreased in intensity as I’ve gotten older, but I do have them. The point is I’ve done the research. Night terrors, among other sleep habits, are hereditary. I know what she’s going through and she doesn’t need to be told to just get over it.”
Quinn sighed, absolutely sure that Rachel was completely overreacting. “Okay, look, whatever this is she needs to learn…”
“…to deal with it,” Rachel finished. “I’m aware of that. However, she’s still young. It’s strange in that she had them as a toddler and they subsided for quite a while until the last few months but the abnormality of the situation aside, this could quite possibly happen for the rest of her life. She needs to know we’re there for her. When she’s ready, she’ll deal with it. Until then, I’ll continue being supportive of whatever she needs. I’ve suggested a heated body pillow since that seemed to help when I was her age.”
“You couldn’t have suggested that before?”
“You weren’t interested.”
Quinn’s jaw dropped a little. “Not interested?! Rachel, she’s our daughter!”
“Yes and you seemed perfectly fine to tell her to ‘get over it’!” Rachel growled.
“I never said that to her!”
“You didn’t have to; your actions spoke loud enough and they’re still speaking!” Rachel raised her voice. Quinn rolled her eyes. “You don’t think this is serious, do you? You think it’s some bad dream she can just get over and move on! These aren’t just bad dreams, Quinn! These are…they’re vivid and very detailed when she’s able to recall them which, thank God, is very rare! They usually revolve around things that could actually happen, not monsters or aliens. She dreams about losing us, about losing her sisters…she’s trapped in these dreams with no way out and it’s terrifying to her!”
Quinn swallowed hard. She opened her mouth to speak but Rachel cut her off.
“And to top it all off, she’s been trying to keep it a secret because she thinks you don’t care! You’ve shrugged it off for so damn long that she doesn’t want to tell you anymore! She calls me, Quinn. On nights I’m working late she will call me in almost a full blown anxiety attack and I’ve begged her to wake you up but she won’t.”
Quinn felt her heart drop on top of her now knotted stomach. She couldn’t meet Rachel’s gaze but she could hear the brunette’s breathing and she knew if she looked up she’d be met with a burning hot glare.
“I just thought she was overreacting…”
“Well, she’s not. I’m assuming your parents dealt with your nightmares in a similar manner to the way you’ve tried to deal with these but it’s not what works. I know tough love works in some instances but this is not one of them.”
Quinn nodded. Her chest tightened a little more and she felt the tears well in her eyes at the thought of her baby girl being scared but not running to her. “Wh-what does work? We take her to a doctor? We…we put her on medicine?”
Quinn glanced up just enough to see Rachel shake her head. “They’re not extreme enough for them to put her on medicine. The candidates have much stronger night terrors than what Isabelle is suffering from. She does fit some of the criteria but not all of it. She's fairly certain that she does suffer from the physical symptoms of kicking and flailing in her sleep but she isn’t vocal. She’s caught in between the two extremes of simple nightmares and the most intense cases of night terrors.”
“That’s not good enough!” Quinn shrieked. She snapped her head up finally, to meet Rachel’s gaze. “I want her to see a doctor.”
“I’ve talked to her pediatrician, Quinn. There’s nothing they can do.”
“So we’ll take her to a sleep specialist.”
Rachel reached out across the kitchen table and Quinn slipped her hands into her wife’s.
“She’s okay, she just needs to know we’re here. Both of us. She understands that there’s not much we can do to make them go away but if she knows we’re both here then she’ll be fine.”
“I should talk to her.” Quinn sighed.
Rachel nodded. “Yes, you should.”
“Now is not the time for you to brag that you’re right, Rachel. I feel bad enough as it is.”
“I wasn’t gloating, simply agreeing with you. Can I do nothing right?”
Quinn smirked and pulled Rachel’s hands up to her mouth. She kissed the band resting on the diva’s left ring finger. “You did one thing right,” she murmured. “You married me.”
“Lapse of judgment,” Rachel teased.
Quinn stuck her tongue out and started clearing off the table, Rachel followed close behind. The blonde washed the dishes, her wife dried and they swayed back and forth humming not forgotten tunes from years past. Once the dishes were finished the pair joined Olivia in the living room, Rachel dropped to the couch and Quinn eyed the stairs before ascending them to check in on their other daughter. She stopped in front of Isabelle’s door and quietly opened it to peer in. She watched a few minutes before her eyebrows furrowed at Isabelle beginning to twitch in her sleep a little.
“Baby girl?” Quinn inquired softly. There was no response other than a few fully body jerks from the small girl. Quinn quickly crossed the floor and put a hand on Isabelle’s shoulder. The girl whimpered and jerked a few more times before sitting up, eyes wide open and gasping for air.
“Isabelle?”
Quinn did her best to remain calm, she gripped onto the girl’s shoulders and gently shook her a little. The young brunette whimpered and started shaking, her eyelids dropped and she relaxed before she started trembling again. Quinn panicked a little and enveloped her daughter, running her fingers through thick hair trying to calm the girl.
“Baby, wake up please. Please wake up.”
Isabelle let out another whimper and Quinn felt a little relief when the girl clung to her. The relief was gone when the young girl’s body was wracked with tremors and sobs as she cried into her mother’s shoulder.
“I’m here, okay?” Quinn assured her. “I’m right here. I’m here, alright?”
“I tried, Momma…I tried…I’m sorry. They won’t s-stop!”
“I know, baby girl. I know. You don’t apologize, okay? You didn’t do anything wrong. I’m so sorry.” Quinn reached up and wiped away the tears slipping down her face and she kissed the top of Isabelle’s head. “I understand, okay? I understand and I’m here and I’m not going anywhere.”
Isabelle snuggled deeper into her mother’s embrace and Quinn rocked her daughter and started singing softly to try and get her to relax.
"Listen to me, baby girl," Quinn whispered once the girl had calmed down a little, "you listening?"
Isabelle nodded.
"Mom said that there are a few things we can try to help out, alright? I promise you we’ll do anything to help you. I need you to promise me something, too, though.”
“Okay,” the young girl whispered.
“Come to me when this happens, alright? I’m so sorry I haven’t been here but that changes starting right now, okay?”
“I will.”
Quinn nodded and took a deep breath and blinked back her own tears. “Do you want to try to go back to sleep or do you want to come downstairs?”
“I’ll get up…it helps to get up.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“I don’t remember it…just that it was scary.”
“Okay.” Quinn kissed the top of her daughter’s head and wrapped an arm around her shoulder as she walked with her down the stairs.
The young brunette dropped to the couch between her mother and twin and snuggled up to Rachel’s side. Quinn watched as Olivia reached over and put a hand on her sister’s shoulder.
“You okay, Iz?”
Isabelle nodded. “Yeah, Liv. I’m good.” The girl glanced up at Quinn. “Momma was there.”
“I told you,” Rachel said.
“Yeah, well, I can’t help it if I can feel it,” Olivia mumbled. “It scares me, too, okay?”
“I know, sweetie.”
“So everyone knew about this but me?” Quinn grabbed the remote and shut off the TV. She sat down on the coffee table in front of her three favorite girls and sighed. “You knew?”
“She’s my twin, Momma. Of course I knew.”
“Brittany and Santana don’t know,” Rachel tried to offer.
Isabelle gave a nod. “Does that help?”
“Not really.” Quinn threaded her fingers through her hair and settled her elbows on her knees. “Girls…it’s…,” Quinn looked back up at the three brunettes. “When I was little my parents told me to get over it and go back to bed. That’s pretty much how they told me to deal with everything. Just ‘get over it’. We didn’t talk about it, we just pushed it aside like it didn’t exist. I swore I’d never do it to my own kids but apparently I…”
“Momma?” Olivia cut her off, “I love you and everything…but this isn’t a family sitcom. We get it.”
“But I just wanted to…”
“Also, we’re like, almost teenagers,” Isabelle added, lifting off of Rachel’s shoulder. “We kind of already know everything.”
Quinn blinked.
“I think your mother was simply trying to explain why…”
“We know,” came in a unison sigh.
“I thought maybe if you knew…”
“We know,” came in unison again.
“Can we go now?” Olivia asked. “Or at least turn TV back on?”
Isabelle nodded.
Quinn smirked.
“Girls, your behavior is rather out of line here,” Rachel said sternly. “Your mother was trying…are you even listening?!”
Quinn saw the blank expressions on her daughter’s faces that indicated that no, they weren’t listening.
“I give up,” the older brunette mumbled before hoisting herself off the couch and trudging to the kitchen. Quinn followed.
“What has gotten into them?!” Rachel growled. She yanked open the refrigerator so hard the contents in the door rattled.
“They’re almost teenagers, that’s what.”
“I don’t recall ever disregarding everything my dads said to me. I also don’t recall having such mood swings! Snuggling one minute and not caring the next?! That’s just…”
Quinn couldn’t help but chuckle. “Babe, you’ve had some pretty intense mood swings. You were…and still kind of are a little bit of a drama queen. I’m pretty sure that’s hereditary, too.”
Rachel growled.
-*-*-*-*-*-
Quinn joined Rachel in on her research on sleep disorders and as per suggestions from other parents they read things from they started setting a strict bedtime routine to ensure that Isabelle was getting the optimal amount of sleep for a pre-teen. Rachel made a chart which earned her an eye roll. The elder brunette later told Quinn she was absolutely certain that their daughters hated her which got her another eye roll and a giggle. Quinn slept on the couch that night.
With the combination of the bedtime schedule and addition of a weighted and heated body pillow to Isabelle’s bed there was a noticeable change in the young girl in a matter of weeks. She looked more awake in the mornings and the night terrors decreased in frequency. They still happened, though, and on nights when Rachel wasn’t home after the twins and gone to bed, Quinn would wake up to the eldest of the pair snuggled into her back and trembling a little. She’d just smile and kiss her daughter’s forehead and assure her that everything was alright. Rachel would get home eventually and settle in on the other side of the bed and smile at her wife, who was awake more often than not.
Quinn knew she wasn’t a perfect parent but she also knew that if she could fix her kids’ problems to the best of her ability and be there for them that she came pretty damn close to perfect.
Next: Like a Fine Wine (You Just Get Better with Age)