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'Cause in my head
In my head, I do everything right
When you call, I'll forgive and not fight
All the moments I play in the dark
Wild and fluorescent
Come home to my heart
-Lorde, Supercut
Shirley didn't expect to come back to Greendale and find everyone gone.
Well, that's not quite accurate. Britta and Jeff are still eternally tangled in that strange knot of lust, friendship, and broken hearts as always. The Dean is still flitting about, carrying chaos and school dances wherever he goes. Chang is still there, and he's actually the first one to greet her at the door.
Chang ghosts a hand over little Ben's head. "How's the little guy hanging on?" he asks, and there's something about him that's different. He's still somewhat unhinged, still something that rankles her skin, but there's also something about him that feels almost...settled. At home. Unlikely to keep moving.
She offers him a faint smile. "As good as always. Guess it turns out that he was always going to end up with a second father."
Chang flashes her and Ben a smile. "You deserve it, kid."
Ben waves his dinosaur. He's a kind child, always optimistic, but he's never been the most clever save when it comes to his dinosaurs. In some ways- in that specific way- it's almost like having a tiny Abed with her. Shirley loves him fiercely, incomparably. "Do you like dinos?"
"Do I ever, kid," Chang says, "I'm sure you don't need me to tell you about how they discovered the dinos in my home town, land of the Changs, do I?"
Ben offers up the true facts, a giant smile on his lips, and Shirley offers Chang a small smile that doesn't feel as tight as it once did as they all head for the study room, Reggie behind her.
When her fiance had asked about coming back to Greendale at the end of her year, she hadn't expected him to offer to pay for the tickets and to fly home with her. And yet there Reggie Butcher was, willing to put up with airlines and their crappy treatment of his wheelchair, just to meet the people that meant the world to her.
"I want to see your sandwich shop and your family and your friends, sweetheart," he said, nothing condescending in his tone. That's the thing about Reginald- as stern and focused as he was, he's always earnest. Always genuine. Almost devastatingly so. "And you know I wouldn't mind moving somewhere a little less...swampy."
Shirley had let out a shriek of relieved delight and hugged him fiercely but carefully, as to not jostle his chair, and so Reggie is wheeling in beside her as she enters the study room, steady and unwavering and loving by her side.
Shirley takes in a deep breath. The study room is not the same as it once was. The seats are occupied by a completely different motley crew of folks, most faces familiar but not quite right for this room.
Her heart squeezes. They're all gone. She'd left for her year-long position, expecting to return husbandless to those that were still there.
But she has Reggie by her side, and in return Abed and Annie have joined Troy and Pierce outside of Colorado. Her kids- and she does have to admit it to herself, after all this time- have scattered to the four corners of the world (or at least the country).
Britta jumps from her seat and wraps her arms around Shirley. "You're back!" she half-shouts into Shirley's ear, and Shirley can't help but notice the differences in her loudest friend since she left. This Britta has her hair in a side ponytail- a hairstyle that she can't remember ever seeing her wearing before- and a blue sweater on. She seems softer, older, than she once was.
"Who's the silver fox?" Jeff asks nonchalantly from his seat. His tone is casual, his fingers tucked around that eternal phone of his, but Shirley knows this man. She grew up, however tangentially, with this boy. She can see the way his mouth curves, the way his pinky finger trembles just slightly. She smiles. He's glad to have her back.
"Everyone, meet Detective Reggie Butcher, my fiance. Reggie, meet the study group. They're my family." Her gaze casts across the table, moving past Chang who has already seated Ben in Abed's old seat for the two of them to babble about dinosaurs, past the Dean in the once-empty seat next to Jeff, to Pierce's old seat. To a woman with possibly the most straight-across smile she's ever seen, immaculate posture, hair so straight it could function as a wood plank, and a kindness to her eyes that sets Shirley at ease. "And who might this new addition be?" she asks sweetly.
"Francesca Dart," the woman says in a tone that might sound monotone to most, but to Shirley's ears, which have missed Abed for a year, sounds familiar. Kind. Almost excited, perhaps. Maybe Shirley knew Abed better than she gave herself credit for.
"Friends call her Frankie," Jeff says even as he reaches out to shake Reggie's hand. The Dean, surprisingly, anticipates someone else's needs for once as he jumps up, yanks out Annie's old chair, and dramatically bows to gesture Reggie to the empty spot. (Alright, Shirley might be a little off there. That definitely feels like the Dean: overdramatic and kinder than appearances might suggest.)
"That's nice," Shirley says as she takes her old seat between Reggie and Frankie. It feels somehow both wrong and right at once, like returning to an old home but finding that a new family has moved in. Almost like how it felt when she returned from Georgia to see Elijah and Jordan at Andre's house, after she'd only gotten to see them at her Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, and Memorial Day breaks.
Except- that's not quite right. Because the seats might be different, but she knows almost every soul here. Even Frankie is familiar, even if she's not the same. She's an echo of what once was.
And at the end of the day, aren't they all? None of them are who they were they first night, their first fight, their first moment of understanding, their first coming together. They are all echoes, shadows, of what they once were.
The Shirley that once forbade Jeff from her Christmas party is not the same Shirley who played foosball with him, not the same Shirley who got remarried in a study room, not the same Shirley that made Shirley Island and kicked ass in paintball and runs a sandwich shop and loves these misfits with all her aching heart.
Shirley's home here is as unshakeable as her faith. As comforting as kneeling in a pew and sending up a prayer.
Reggie leans over and kisses Shirley's cheek. Britta and the Dean coo. Jeff offers up a small grin of congratulations. Chang is too busy genuinely engaging with Ben to look up. Frankie's brow twitches, but the strange widening of the eyes is similar enough to Abed's not-quite-smile for Shirley to appreciate.
And Shirley basks in all of this love that she is receiving.
Things have changed, yes. Things will never be the same. But since the moment she set foot in Greendale, when has Shirley Bennett ever been able to hold onto normalcy? When has she ever found comfort in remaining the same heartbroken divorcee she entered as?
Troy once called her the bad-ass of the study group. Shirley can't let that title down. Even as Troy left to find himself, Shirley found herself here, in the midst of all the chaos Greendale could throw at her.
Shirley can continue to build something here, with her sandwich shop and a man that loves her and a family that, flawed and broken as can be, is still hers to love as fiercely as the day she met them.
Nothing can tear that away. Never again.