Seeing is Believing (3/10)
Name: Seeing is Believing (3/10)
Pairing: Quinn/Rachel
Rating: PG-13
Summary: I have had many adventures as an invisible man - H.G. Wells
Author's Note: Look, I'm sorry! SO SORRY THIS IS SO LATE. Heh. And, also, angst. Sorry again. *pouts* Also, kind of short. And hey, I officiallly know what happens in the next chapter!
[ one ] [ two ]
Rachel's day begins, unfortunately, with Santana (and Brittany, by default) at her locker when she arrives. Normally, this occurrence wouldn't be so bad, because she and the other Cheerios had gotten much closer due to her closeness with Quinn. She rather admired the two girls, for a number of reasons, but Santana's propensity towards hotheadedness was not exactly one of them. Santana's face was a mask of calmness, but the look was almost identical to the look Quinn got when she talked about her parents - Rachel could tell she was about to burst with anger. Brittany just looked sad, her eyes red-rimmed and she had a tight grip on Santana's hand.
"Did you see?" Santana asks when Rachel gets in hearing distance, stepping back a little to let her open her locker. Rachel just nods, unsure of what to say or really what Santana was even talking about. She could hear Brittany sniffle.
"Do you have any idea where she could've gone? Or if she's..." Santana starts, and at the mere notion of Quinn being dead, Brittany bursts into tears, and Rachel feels a pang of sympathy and a strong urge to cry herself. Kurt somehow materializes and grabs ahold of her, dragging her down the hallway into the girl's bathroom, patting her sympathetically as she cries into his presumably designer jacket. Rachel and Santana both watch this moment quietly, before Santana turns back to look at Rachel evenly.
"Seriously, Rach," she starts, and Rachel vaguely questions when she became such close friends with Santana Lopez that she was being called 'Rach.'
"She isn't...she isn't. She was on the phone with me when she crashed, Santana, and I tried to get there fast...but she wasn't there. She wasn't there," she whispers, and Santana has a momentary pained look on her face at the sight of Rachel with gathering tears in her eyes before she grabs hold of her shoulder and pulls the shorter girl to her in a hug.
"You couldn't have done anything," Santana whispers into Rachel's ear. "Don't you dare cry on my uniform, Coach will skin me alive, and then I will skin you alive, Berry."
Rachel gives a weak laugh into Santana's neck, knowing that the threat holds little to no weight, because if Santana even attempted to touch Rachel in any way, Quinn would kick her ass, even if she was missing or dead or whatever.
//
The rest of the day moves at a snail's pace, with random people staring at her intently. It appears the entire school has learned of Quinn's disappearance, and everyone knows that Rachel is her closest friend, due to multiple threats being issued, most of them beginning with the phrase, "If you even touch Rachel..."
Everything she sees reminds her of Quinn, of all the times they've had here, good and bad. It's ridiculously depressing to consider that she might never get a small smile as she walks towards trig and Quinn goes the opposite direction towards U.S. history, that she might never get driven home by the girl, singing along to whatever CD Quinn has in her car that day at the tops of their lungs. She almost bursts into tears when no one walks up to her after lunch, brandishing a cookie and a devilish grin, but eventually school ends and all that remains is glee.
The entire club is quiet, even the freshmen have reigned themselves in and are tucked away in a corner. Rachel sees them whisper to each other as she walks in, and the sophomores up along the back row all give tight nods, while the core glee club members gather around her quickly, all of them looking entirely too sober. Even Puck looks like he's about to cry, which isn't really all that unexpected, because Rachel's been regaled with multiple stories of Santana, Puck, and Quinn's escapades leading up to middle school, and she knows that before anything ever happened between Quinn and Puck they were close friends.
Kurt looks at her contemplatively as she quickly explains that she had been on the phone with Quinn before she crashed and by the time Rachel had gotten to the wreck, Quinn was gone.
It had taken a good amount of time for both Rachel and Kurt to come to the easy friendship they now shared. In fact, the original twelve of the glee club had gelled to the point of almost familial levels of affection. Of course, following that metaphor, incest was constantly occurring amongst the family, and they were even reproducing, or they were. She and Quinn had commandeered some vodka on the night of Rachel's seventeenth birthday, and Rachel had explained this theory to the blond, who for her part was so tipsy that she merely smiled and didn't even make the face associated with her and Puck's one-time affair.
Mr. Shue's arrival causes them to disperse, settling into a small semi-circle at the front of the room, and Kurt leans over to whisper into Rachel's ear quickly.
"You okay?" he asks, his high voice at a low volume. She only nods, knowing exactly what he was asking.
It had been an accident - Kurt finding out how she felt about Quinn. She hadn't ever really told him, he had just figured it out somehow. It was probably around the time she had told Finn that she wasn't interested in him anymore - he had grabbed ahold of her arm while she was talking to Quinn, coincidentally enough, and pulled her off in the wrong direction, away from Quinn and her's shared physics class. It had been the very beginning of this year, probably October, and he had pulled her as close as was appropriate and comfortable and told her he knew.
She had actually fainted, and later on, waking up in the nurse's office, she had found Kurt hovering over her with a lazy smile and an ice pack placed on his head artfully, held up by a multicolored bandana, with Quinn on the end of her cot with an ice pack on her hand. It had taken much brain power to figure out what had happened there, and eventually she came to trust Kurt despite his propensity to spread gossip. He recognized how he had felt in Rachel, really, and knew that this was not something that the entire glee club needed to know.
Rachel knows that he doesn't believe her because he reaches over and grabs her hand just as Mike slides into the seat next to her, settling his arm around the back of her chair. She knows exactly what everyone's doing, but she knows its not just for her benefit too - the entire group of them have settled close enough to each other for her to realize they're all feeling a little off.
Quinn was an integral member of the twelve and of the entire club, due to her co-captaincy and place as the level-headed, smart influence that no one else seemed to be able to fill besides her, and her voice was actually necessary at the current moment, because she and Artie had been hard at work on the duet they had planned for states, which was in only a week. Today was supposed to be their first run-through of the set list, and now they were down a member and their remaining co-captain looked as if she was on her last legs.
Eventually, they struggle through two of the five songs needed for states, one of them Mercedes' solo and the other a group routine, with Puck paired off to empty air.
Afterwards, they gather once more in a circle in the center of the choir room, and it's Brittany who suggests that they pray. Rachel almost wants to point out that she really doesn't do that, and anyway, they don't need to pray, because Quinn's fine, she's about to walk through the door and shrug her shoulders and say she was sorry, but Quinn doesn't, and so Rachel doesn't, she just nods along to the whispered words coming out of Brittany's mouth and says 'amen' when it's finished.
She walks home, glancing occasionally up at the clouds gathering in the sky and pulling her light jacket tighter around her. It's spring now and normally Rachel would feel refreshed at the thought of the endless winter finally giving way to the blooming of flowers and greenness being restored to the earth, but mostly it makes her sad, because she should be with Quinn now, wherever she was.
It's this thought that makes her pause.
She starts to head back toward the scene of the accident, to examine the blood spots or something or anything because there must be some clue to where Quinn has gone, because she can't be dead, she can't be kidnapped, she's safe and alive and somewhere tangible.
She feels the first raindrop hit her arm as she's walking down Berger Avenue, and she starts running, but it's too late by the time she gets there. Neither the car or the shoes or the blood are there and if it weren't for the skid marks on the sidewalk, it would seem as if nothing ever happened. So Rachel just sits there, on the ground in the pouring rain, because it feels heavy to be standing there while she has no idea where Quinn is, where the love of her life is.
Rachel is pulled out of her staring intently at the pole that Quinn's car had been crashed into by the sound of a car pulling up, and being pulled up by Puck and being pulled into Santana, and crying as she feels Finn put his coat around her. It's amazing, how much all these people have changed over the past year, and it only makes her cry harder. These people are her friends, now, and they obviously care enough about her to help her, but they aren't who Rachel wants right now, really.
The five of them sit around in Rachel's living room for the next few hours, and she realizes that these are the people who have been the closes to Quinn. Brittany has been Quinn's self-proclaimed teddy bear since the age of ten (Rachel had laughed for five minutes as Quinn pouted at her after that revelation), Santana had been her protector, Puck had been her other protector and the person the most like her, and Finn had been her boyfriend for a good three years. It was strange to consider how Rachel fit into that group now, when a year ago they had been throwing slushies in her face.
By the time they leave, it's nine and her fathers are going up to bed, claiming exhaustion, looking at her as if she's about to collapse. And collapse she does, onto her bed, only to be woken by the sound of a phone ringing on her bedside table. She grabs for the lit-up object blindly, halfway wondering when she had set her ringtone to Sex on Fire.
"Rach?"
She literally falls out of bed and thunks her knees on the floor, hard, but its Quinn on the line and she can't even begin to focus on the sting that accompanies her fall.
"Quinn?" she asks breathlessly, already feeling tears pricking at her eyes.
"Rach, I need your help," she hears Quinn whisper back, and she knows just by the wavering quality to Quinn's voice that the girl is upset and on the verge of crying, knows because she's catalogued every noise and facial expression Quinn has ever made, and she's pulling on her shoes before she can even consider what she's doing, but by the time she even realizes she's pulled on her inside workout shoes to be used outside, again, she's racing down the streets to where Quinn has told her to go.
Pairing: Quinn/Rachel
Rating: PG-13
Summary: I have had many adventures as an invisible man - H.G. Wells
Author's Note: Look, I'm sorry! SO SORRY THIS IS SO LATE. Heh. And, also, angst. Sorry again. *pouts* Also, kind of short. And hey, I officiallly know what happens in the next chapter!
[ one ] [ two ]
Rachel's day begins, unfortunately, with Santana (and Brittany, by default) at her locker when she arrives. Normally, this occurrence wouldn't be so bad, because she and the other Cheerios had gotten much closer due to her closeness with Quinn. She rather admired the two girls, for a number of reasons, but Santana's propensity towards hotheadedness was not exactly one of them. Santana's face was a mask of calmness, but the look was almost identical to the look Quinn got when she talked about her parents - Rachel could tell she was about to burst with anger. Brittany just looked sad, her eyes red-rimmed and she had a tight grip on Santana's hand.
"Did you see?" Santana asks when Rachel gets in hearing distance, stepping back a little to let her open her locker. Rachel just nods, unsure of what to say or really what Santana was even talking about. She could hear Brittany sniffle.
"Do you have any idea where she could've gone? Or if she's..." Santana starts, and at the mere notion of Quinn being dead, Brittany bursts into tears, and Rachel feels a pang of sympathy and a strong urge to cry herself. Kurt somehow materializes and grabs ahold of her, dragging her down the hallway into the girl's bathroom, patting her sympathetically as she cries into his presumably designer jacket. Rachel and Santana both watch this moment quietly, before Santana turns back to look at Rachel evenly.
"Seriously, Rach," she starts, and Rachel vaguely questions when she became such close friends with Santana Lopez that she was being called 'Rach.'
"She isn't...she isn't. She was on the phone with me when she crashed, Santana, and I tried to get there fast...but she wasn't there. She wasn't there," she whispers, and Santana has a momentary pained look on her face at the sight of Rachel with gathering tears in her eyes before she grabs hold of her shoulder and pulls the shorter girl to her in a hug.
"You couldn't have done anything," Santana whispers into Rachel's ear. "Don't you dare cry on my uniform, Coach will skin me alive, and then I will skin you alive, Berry."
Rachel gives a weak laugh into Santana's neck, knowing that the threat holds little to no weight, because if Santana even attempted to touch Rachel in any way, Quinn would kick her ass, even if she was missing or dead or whatever.
//
The rest of the day moves at a snail's pace, with random people staring at her intently. It appears the entire school has learned of Quinn's disappearance, and everyone knows that Rachel is her closest friend, due to multiple threats being issued, most of them beginning with the phrase, "If you even touch Rachel..."
Everything she sees reminds her of Quinn, of all the times they've had here, good and bad. It's ridiculously depressing to consider that she might never get a small smile as she walks towards trig and Quinn goes the opposite direction towards U.S. history, that she might never get driven home by the girl, singing along to whatever CD Quinn has in her car that day at the tops of their lungs. She almost bursts into tears when no one walks up to her after lunch, brandishing a cookie and a devilish grin, but eventually school ends and all that remains is glee.
The entire club is quiet, even the freshmen have reigned themselves in and are tucked away in a corner. Rachel sees them whisper to each other as she walks in, and the sophomores up along the back row all give tight nods, while the core glee club members gather around her quickly, all of them looking entirely too sober. Even Puck looks like he's about to cry, which isn't really all that unexpected, because Rachel's been regaled with multiple stories of Santana, Puck, and Quinn's escapades leading up to middle school, and she knows that before anything ever happened between Quinn and Puck they were close friends.
Kurt looks at her contemplatively as she quickly explains that she had been on the phone with Quinn before she crashed and by the time Rachel had gotten to the wreck, Quinn was gone.
It had taken a good amount of time for both Rachel and Kurt to come to the easy friendship they now shared. In fact, the original twelve of the glee club had gelled to the point of almost familial levels of affection. Of course, following that metaphor, incest was constantly occurring amongst the family, and they were even reproducing, or they were. She and Quinn had commandeered some vodka on the night of Rachel's seventeenth birthday, and Rachel had explained this theory to the blond, who for her part was so tipsy that she merely smiled and didn't even make the face associated with her and Puck's one-time affair.
Mr. Shue's arrival causes them to disperse, settling into a small semi-circle at the front of the room, and Kurt leans over to whisper into Rachel's ear quickly.
"You okay?" he asks, his high voice at a low volume. She only nods, knowing exactly what he was asking.
It had been an accident - Kurt finding out how she felt about Quinn. She hadn't ever really told him, he had just figured it out somehow. It was probably around the time she had told Finn that she wasn't interested in him anymore - he had grabbed ahold of her arm while she was talking to Quinn, coincidentally enough, and pulled her off in the wrong direction, away from Quinn and her's shared physics class. It had been the very beginning of this year, probably October, and he had pulled her as close as was appropriate and comfortable and told her he knew.
She had actually fainted, and later on, waking up in the nurse's office, she had found Kurt hovering over her with a lazy smile and an ice pack placed on his head artfully, held up by a multicolored bandana, with Quinn on the end of her cot with an ice pack on her hand. It had taken much brain power to figure out what had happened there, and eventually she came to trust Kurt despite his propensity to spread gossip. He recognized how he had felt in Rachel, really, and knew that this was not something that the entire glee club needed to know.
Rachel knows that he doesn't believe her because he reaches over and grabs her hand just as Mike slides into the seat next to her, settling his arm around the back of her chair. She knows exactly what everyone's doing, but she knows its not just for her benefit too - the entire group of them have settled close enough to each other for her to realize they're all feeling a little off.
Quinn was an integral member of the twelve and of the entire club, due to her co-captaincy and place as the level-headed, smart influence that no one else seemed to be able to fill besides her, and her voice was actually necessary at the current moment, because she and Artie had been hard at work on the duet they had planned for states, which was in only a week. Today was supposed to be their first run-through of the set list, and now they were down a member and their remaining co-captain looked as if she was on her last legs.
Eventually, they struggle through two of the five songs needed for states, one of them Mercedes' solo and the other a group routine, with Puck paired off to empty air.
Afterwards, they gather once more in a circle in the center of the choir room, and it's Brittany who suggests that they pray. Rachel almost wants to point out that she really doesn't do that, and anyway, they don't need to pray, because Quinn's fine, she's about to walk through the door and shrug her shoulders and say she was sorry, but Quinn doesn't, and so Rachel doesn't, she just nods along to the whispered words coming out of Brittany's mouth and says 'amen' when it's finished.
She walks home, glancing occasionally up at the clouds gathering in the sky and pulling her light jacket tighter around her. It's spring now and normally Rachel would feel refreshed at the thought of the endless winter finally giving way to the blooming of flowers and greenness being restored to the earth, but mostly it makes her sad, because she should be with Quinn now, wherever she was.
It's this thought that makes her pause.
She starts to head back toward the scene of the accident, to examine the blood spots or something or anything because there must be some clue to where Quinn has gone, because she can't be dead, she can't be kidnapped, she's safe and alive and somewhere tangible.
She feels the first raindrop hit her arm as she's walking down Berger Avenue, and she starts running, but it's too late by the time she gets there. Neither the car or the shoes or the blood are there and if it weren't for the skid marks on the sidewalk, it would seem as if nothing ever happened. So Rachel just sits there, on the ground in the pouring rain, because it feels heavy to be standing there while she has no idea where Quinn is, where the love of her life is.
Rachel is pulled out of her staring intently at the pole that Quinn's car had been crashed into by the sound of a car pulling up, and being pulled up by Puck and being pulled into Santana, and crying as she feels Finn put his coat around her. It's amazing, how much all these people have changed over the past year, and it only makes her cry harder. These people are her friends, now, and they obviously care enough about her to help her, but they aren't who Rachel wants right now, really.
The five of them sit around in Rachel's living room for the next few hours, and she realizes that these are the people who have been the closes to Quinn. Brittany has been Quinn's self-proclaimed teddy bear since the age of ten (Rachel had laughed for five minutes as Quinn pouted at her after that revelation), Santana had been her protector, Puck had been her other protector and the person the most like her, and Finn had been her boyfriend for a good three years. It was strange to consider how Rachel fit into that group now, when a year ago they had been throwing slushies in her face.
By the time they leave, it's nine and her fathers are going up to bed, claiming exhaustion, looking at her as if she's about to collapse. And collapse she does, onto her bed, only to be woken by the sound of a phone ringing on her bedside table. She grabs for the lit-up object blindly, halfway wondering when she had set her ringtone to Sex on Fire.
"Rach?"
She literally falls out of bed and thunks her knees on the floor, hard, but its Quinn on the line and she can't even begin to focus on the sting that accompanies her fall.
"Quinn?" she asks breathlessly, already feeling tears pricking at her eyes.
"Rach, I need your help," she hears Quinn whisper back, and she knows just by the wavering quality to Quinn's voice that the girl is upset and on the verge of crying, knows because she's catalogued every noise and facial expression Quinn has ever made, and she's pulling on her shoes before she can even consider what she's doing, but by the time she even realizes she's pulled on her inside workout shoes to be used outside, again, she's racing down the streets to where Quinn has told her to go.