Seeing is Believing (2/10)
Name: Seeing and Believing (2/10)
Pairing: Quinn/Rachel
Rating: PG-13
Summary: I have had many adventures as an invisible man - H.G. Wells
Author's Note: So this took so long because I had to figure out how to approach it. I wrote like eight different versions. But I like this one. So, hey, angst. Sorry? And I really liked hearing from a whole bunch of people who I've never seen comment on my stuff before, so thanks! Read on, adventurers.
part one
She leaves as quickly as possible, her car smoking a little and specks of blood on the pavement. She doesn't exactly consider what kind of scene people will see from their eyes when they see a teenage girl's car almost wrapped around a telephone pole and no teenage girl, just her blood and her shoes (Quinn takes those off when she realizes they're visible). She just leaves it behind and hides.
She goes back home, bypasses the house entirely and goes into the woods behind it, wandering around with a vague purpose before she stops at the large oak tree she and Santana and Puck had been so enamored with one summer that her father had built a treehouse so they wouldn't fall out and break anything. The man had a gift for sweetness when he wasn't drowning in disappointment.
Climbing up the fraying ladder, she pulls herself into the heavily supported tiny house situated a good fifteen feet off the ground, and drags herself into the corner where a small cabinet sits, and pulls out blankets covered in Strawberry Shortcake. Quinn came here first the day she found out she was pregnant, just sat in this corner and cried to herself while wrapped up in what she once was - a small little girl who her daddy called his little angel. She had been in sixteen and pregnant by her boyfriend's best friend and it hurt so much to see what had happened to her life between those years.
And now? Now she was seventeen and invisible and in love with her best friend who was a girl.
Quinn vaguely considers whether she has done something inherently wrong that has caused the universe to pick on her so much.
Instead, she focuses on trying to think over something that could've caused this. She feels herself move occasionally and sees nothing, and it's kind of terrifying. After shifting in the blanket for a good five minutes with a sick fascination she makes a dive for the front entrance and throws up, before she can't even see straight her head hurts so much.
She somewhat remembers that she was just in a car accident and should probably be seeking help for her injuries - but it's not as though anything is broken, and it's not like a doctor could even see anything on her. Because, invisibility.
Finally though, she realizes she's exhausted, through some combination of being invisible and staying up until seven the night before and running as fast as possible from the car wreck, and she drifts off to sleep imagining Rachel's singing to her, because that always calms Quinn down.
//
On the other side of town, Rachel bursts out her front door in her midday clothing, practically hyperventilating. She had tried calling Quinn back about twenty times and had yelled at her dads for a good five minutes more about not allowing her to leave the house to barge onto the scene of a possible accident. Eventually she had just ignored their warnings and thrown on her workout shoes, temporarily forgiving herself for using her inside workout shoes outside, and now she was sprinting down her street, following the route she would normally take over to Quinn's house.
It's on the corner of Johnson and Goodman that she finds Quinn's bright red car, smoking heavily in the evening sun, it's front end crunched to a size too small to comfortably hold an engine, pressed tightly into a telephone pole which seems no worse for wear. The driver's side door is flung open as wide as it can go, the window smashed, and as she moves closer Rachel can see Quinn's phone on the floor, almost under the seat.
She pulls it out and sees that it's still technically on the line with her, still flipped open. She closes it only because the silence she hears from it is unnerving and tucks it into her skirt's inside pocket, carefully stepping over glass scattered on the pavement and looking for any sign of Quinn.
She finally finds two things, neither of them comforting. Quinn's shoes are flung further down the street, somehow, and there's blood everywhere.
Well, that isn't especially true, but there's enough for Rachel to be concerned for Quinn's safety and current blood levels. There's nothing anywhere to indicate that Quinn is around, because there's a few specks of blood down the street in the opposite direction of her shoes, towards Quinn's house, but Rachel doesn't know what to make of any of this.
She replays it over in her head: she was about to explain to Quinn her feelings on the statement 'assuming makes an ass out of you and me' despite the fact that she knew Quinn was simply listening to her, probably smiling widely. These days, Rachel doesn't say things just to hear herself talk, not like she used to, she says things that make Quinn smile. It isn't a hard thing to do, because more and more Quinn seems to smile at everything Rachel does or says.
But now Quinn is gone, somehow, and Rachel isn't sure if she's ever going to see her smile again.
Eventually, her dads catch up to her, only to find Rachel sitting on the pavement facing Quinn's car, rocking back and forth with silent tears running down her face. She's given up on slowing her immediate reaction to go into full-on panic mode, and now she's just hoping that Quinn will jump out of the trees and scream 'April Fool's' so Rachel can finally tell her, finally say it.
Her brain almost doesn't register when her daddy pulls her up off the ground, pulling her into him while her dad calls the police. An ambulance and cop car arrive quickly, and they pile out ready to get an injured high schooler to the nearest hospital, and Rachel can't even bring herself to explain that Quinn isn't here.
When her dads finally get her home, they wrap her in a blanket and put her in bed, turning on her Wicked soundtrack in an attempt to draw a smile out of her, but she doesn't feel like smiling so much as curling up into a little ball and shaking. They leave her alone when she closes her eyes and draws deep breaths and she finally falls asleep.
//
Her dream is strange, stranger than normal.
She finds herself in the middle of the music room at school, alone. She can hear Quinn singing, quietly, somewhere in the room, singing Rachel's favorite song. It was strange because Quinn wasn't anywhere, wasn't visible.
But Rachel could still feel her there, could still hear her.
Eventually she just sat down on the floor and closed her eyes and listened, wondering if this was all she'd ever get of Quinn, if she was gone forever. A car wreck and blood and shoes and memories of her voice wrapping around her. She can see the entire scene laid out in front of her, the car and no Quinn, no nothing to prove that she was alive or kidnapped or anything. It was almost like she didn't exist.
When the song stops, Rachel raises her head and knows she's crying, knows she's desperate, but she does it anyway.
"Where are you?" she asks the empty room, and she gasps when she feels a hand land on her shoulder, pulling Rachel around to meet Quinn's hazel eyes, a lazy smile flickering across her face.
"I'll find my way home. Promise me you'll wait," Quinn whispers, and Rachel knows now that this is a dream, because Quinn is pressing closer, pressing her lips onto Rachel's with sweetness and want behind the simple touch.
"I'll wait," Rachel answers, knowing that Quinn is about to slip away. "I love you," she says, and Quinn only nods, smiling.
It's the first time she's ever said it to Quinn, in a dream or in life, and it kills her to know that it could be the last.
"Wait for me."
Quinn kisses her one more time before she's gone, and Rachel wakes up.
//
She sits up slowly, feeling the tears run down her face and pulls herself out of the bed.
Rachel Berry knows that she shouldn't love Quinn Fabray. She should probably hate her, really. The girl threw slushies in her face until her own social respectability dropped beneath Rachel's, and even then, she was vindictive and cruel. But Rachel was forgiving to a fault, and Quinn Fabray needed forgiveness.
It wasn't until she was practically carrying Quinn home after a marathon session at Rachel's dance studio, after having learned Thriller to a level of perfection that Gene Kelly would undoubtedly be proud of that she realized she was Quinn's friend, and that Quinn was hers. It was strange - she had always assumed that eventually Quinn would realize that she had the possibility of power back in her grasp and would take it without hesitation and leave Rachel at the bottom of the heap, despite the help Rachel had given her. It was pessimistic and bitter, and it hurt Rachel to think of the day Quinn would order another slushy in her face - but it never happened. Quinn trusted her, as evidenced by her willingness to cling to Rachel as she pulled them along to Rachel's car, muttering things about Caroline and sniffling occasionally. Even if she was exhausted to the point that inane things excited her (Rachel remembers looking over at Quinn in suspicion of her sobriety when she clapped happily at a few ducks in a pond), she had talked about all sorts of things that Rachel was sure Quinn would never say to anyone.
But it didn't stop. Quinn stayed with Rachel and her dads for a week or two after Caroline's birth, and she had opened up completely to Rachel, to the point that she became a new person to Rachel. And when she moved back to her parents and rejoined the Cheerios, she regained some of that old Quinn Fabray air of excessive anger repressed by the bright red armor of her cheerleading uniform, but she smiled at Rachel in the hallways and called her every Thursday.
And Rachel fell in love.
It was unexpected. She had never felt anything much for a girl up to that point, nothing beyond a vague appreciation for shape and an unhelpful spark of attraction that arose whenever Brittany would dance around and her skirt would flip up. She didn't dwell on those things, but when Quinn Fabray became her best friend and Rachel fell in love with the person underneath the girl surface it was almost impossible to ignore her love for the body that encased her soul. Quinn was sweet, and protective, and flippant, and assertive, unafraid to say no to Rachel. And she was a beautiful girl, beautiful for all those traits and her seemingly flawless bone structure and the way her hair fell in waves around her face.
Rachel spent a lot of time contemplating Quinn Fabray, obviously.
She loved Quinn Fabray, and Quinn Fabray was, at the very least, missing. Remembering her dream in the midst of her musings, Rachel can almost feel Quinn whispering into her ear, "Wait for me."
So, Rachel pulls herself out onto the section of roof underneath her window, the overhang of their porch and sits there quietly until the sun rises and her alarm goes off, announcing school begins in two hours and her morning workout begins now.
On the news, Quinn is declared as a missing person due to no body being found after a car wreck on the corner of Johnson and Goodman streets, and Rachel goes to school, still waiting.
Pairing: Quinn/Rachel
Rating: PG-13
Summary: I have had many adventures as an invisible man - H.G. Wells
Author's Note: So this took so long because I had to figure out how to approach it. I wrote like eight different versions. But I like this one. So, hey, angst. Sorry? And I really liked hearing from a whole bunch of people who I've never seen comment on my stuff before, so thanks! Read on, adventurers.
part one
She leaves as quickly as possible, her car smoking a little and specks of blood on the pavement. She doesn't exactly consider what kind of scene people will see from their eyes when they see a teenage girl's car almost wrapped around a telephone pole and no teenage girl, just her blood and her shoes (Quinn takes those off when she realizes they're visible). She just leaves it behind and hides.
She goes back home, bypasses the house entirely and goes into the woods behind it, wandering around with a vague purpose before she stops at the large oak tree she and Santana and Puck had been so enamored with one summer that her father had built a treehouse so they wouldn't fall out and break anything. The man had a gift for sweetness when he wasn't drowning in disappointment.
Climbing up the fraying ladder, she pulls herself into the heavily supported tiny house situated a good fifteen feet off the ground, and drags herself into the corner where a small cabinet sits, and pulls out blankets covered in Strawberry Shortcake. Quinn came here first the day she found out she was pregnant, just sat in this corner and cried to herself while wrapped up in what she once was - a small little girl who her daddy called his little angel. She had been in sixteen and pregnant by her boyfriend's best friend and it hurt so much to see what had happened to her life between those years.
And now? Now she was seventeen and invisible and in love with her best friend who was a girl.
Quinn vaguely considers whether she has done something inherently wrong that has caused the universe to pick on her so much.
Instead, she focuses on trying to think over something that could've caused this. She feels herself move occasionally and sees nothing, and it's kind of terrifying. After shifting in the blanket for a good five minutes with a sick fascination she makes a dive for the front entrance and throws up, before she can't even see straight her head hurts so much.
She somewhat remembers that she was just in a car accident and should probably be seeking help for her injuries - but it's not as though anything is broken, and it's not like a doctor could even see anything on her. Because, invisibility.
Finally though, she realizes she's exhausted, through some combination of being invisible and staying up until seven the night before and running as fast as possible from the car wreck, and she drifts off to sleep imagining Rachel's singing to her, because that always calms Quinn down.
//
On the other side of town, Rachel bursts out her front door in her midday clothing, practically hyperventilating. She had tried calling Quinn back about twenty times and had yelled at her dads for a good five minutes more about not allowing her to leave the house to barge onto the scene of a possible accident. Eventually she had just ignored their warnings and thrown on her workout shoes, temporarily forgiving herself for using her inside workout shoes outside, and now she was sprinting down her street, following the route she would normally take over to Quinn's house.
It's on the corner of Johnson and Goodman that she finds Quinn's bright red car, smoking heavily in the evening sun, it's front end crunched to a size too small to comfortably hold an engine, pressed tightly into a telephone pole which seems no worse for wear. The driver's side door is flung open as wide as it can go, the window smashed, and as she moves closer Rachel can see Quinn's phone on the floor, almost under the seat.
She pulls it out and sees that it's still technically on the line with her, still flipped open. She closes it only because the silence she hears from it is unnerving and tucks it into her skirt's inside pocket, carefully stepping over glass scattered on the pavement and looking for any sign of Quinn.
She finally finds two things, neither of them comforting. Quinn's shoes are flung further down the street, somehow, and there's blood everywhere.
Well, that isn't especially true, but there's enough for Rachel to be concerned for Quinn's safety and current blood levels. There's nothing anywhere to indicate that Quinn is around, because there's a few specks of blood down the street in the opposite direction of her shoes, towards Quinn's house, but Rachel doesn't know what to make of any of this.
She replays it over in her head: she was about to explain to Quinn her feelings on the statement 'assuming makes an ass out of you and me' despite the fact that she knew Quinn was simply listening to her, probably smiling widely. These days, Rachel doesn't say things just to hear herself talk, not like she used to, she says things that make Quinn smile. It isn't a hard thing to do, because more and more Quinn seems to smile at everything Rachel does or says.
But now Quinn is gone, somehow, and Rachel isn't sure if she's ever going to see her smile again.
Eventually, her dads catch up to her, only to find Rachel sitting on the pavement facing Quinn's car, rocking back and forth with silent tears running down her face. She's given up on slowing her immediate reaction to go into full-on panic mode, and now she's just hoping that Quinn will jump out of the trees and scream 'April Fool's' so Rachel can finally tell her, finally say it.
Her brain almost doesn't register when her daddy pulls her up off the ground, pulling her into him while her dad calls the police. An ambulance and cop car arrive quickly, and they pile out ready to get an injured high schooler to the nearest hospital, and Rachel can't even bring herself to explain that Quinn isn't here.
When her dads finally get her home, they wrap her in a blanket and put her in bed, turning on her Wicked soundtrack in an attempt to draw a smile out of her, but she doesn't feel like smiling so much as curling up into a little ball and shaking. They leave her alone when she closes her eyes and draws deep breaths and she finally falls asleep.
//
Her dream is strange, stranger than normal.
She finds herself in the middle of the music room at school, alone. She can hear Quinn singing, quietly, somewhere in the room, singing Rachel's favorite song. It was strange because Quinn wasn't anywhere, wasn't visible.
But Rachel could still feel her there, could still hear her.
Eventually she just sat down on the floor and closed her eyes and listened, wondering if this was all she'd ever get of Quinn, if she was gone forever. A car wreck and blood and shoes and memories of her voice wrapping around her. She can see the entire scene laid out in front of her, the car and no Quinn, no nothing to prove that she was alive or kidnapped or anything. It was almost like she didn't exist.
When the song stops, Rachel raises her head and knows she's crying, knows she's desperate, but she does it anyway.
"Where are you?" she asks the empty room, and she gasps when she feels a hand land on her shoulder, pulling Rachel around to meet Quinn's hazel eyes, a lazy smile flickering across her face.
"I'll find my way home. Promise me you'll wait," Quinn whispers, and Rachel knows now that this is a dream, because Quinn is pressing closer, pressing her lips onto Rachel's with sweetness and want behind the simple touch.
"I'll wait," Rachel answers, knowing that Quinn is about to slip away. "I love you," she says, and Quinn only nods, smiling.
It's the first time she's ever said it to Quinn, in a dream or in life, and it kills her to know that it could be the last.
"Wait for me."
Quinn kisses her one more time before she's gone, and Rachel wakes up.
//
She sits up slowly, feeling the tears run down her face and pulls herself out of the bed.
Rachel Berry knows that she shouldn't love Quinn Fabray. She should probably hate her, really. The girl threw slushies in her face until her own social respectability dropped beneath Rachel's, and even then, she was vindictive and cruel. But Rachel was forgiving to a fault, and Quinn Fabray needed forgiveness.
It wasn't until she was practically carrying Quinn home after a marathon session at Rachel's dance studio, after having learned Thriller to a level of perfection that Gene Kelly would undoubtedly be proud of that she realized she was Quinn's friend, and that Quinn was hers. It was strange - she had always assumed that eventually Quinn would realize that she had the possibility of power back in her grasp and would take it without hesitation and leave Rachel at the bottom of the heap, despite the help Rachel had given her. It was pessimistic and bitter, and it hurt Rachel to think of the day Quinn would order another slushy in her face - but it never happened. Quinn trusted her, as evidenced by her willingness to cling to Rachel as she pulled them along to Rachel's car, muttering things about Caroline and sniffling occasionally. Even if she was exhausted to the point that inane things excited her (Rachel remembers looking over at Quinn in suspicion of her sobriety when she clapped happily at a few ducks in a pond), she had talked about all sorts of things that Rachel was sure Quinn would never say to anyone.
But it didn't stop. Quinn stayed with Rachel and her dads for a week or two after Caroline's birth, and she had opened up completely to Rachel, to the point that she became a new person to Rachel. And when she moved back to her parents and rejoined the Cheerios, she regained some of that old Quinn Fabray air of excessive anger repressed by the bright red armor of her cheerleading uniform, but she smiled at Rachel in the hallways and called her every Thursday.
And Rachel fell in love.
It was unexpected. She had never felt anything much for a girl up to that point, nothing beyond a vague appreciation for shape and an unhelpful spark of attraction that arose whenever Brittany would dance around and her skirt would flip up. She didn't dwell on those things, but when Quinn Fabray became her best friend and Rachel fell in love with the person underneath the girl surface it was almost impossible to ignore her love for the body that encased her soul. Quinn was sweet, and protective, and flippant, and assertive, unafraid to say no to Rachel. And she was a beautiful girl, beautiful for all those traits and her seemingly flawless bone structure and the way her hair fell in waves around her face.
Rachel spent a lot of time contemplating Quinn Fabray, obviously.
She loved Quinn Fabray, and Quinn Fabray was, at the very least, missing. Remembering her dream in the midst of her musings, Rachel can almost feel Quinn whispering into her ear, "Wait for me."
So, Rachel pulls herself out onto the section of roof underneath her window, the overhang of their porch and sits there quietly until the sun rises and her alarm goes off, announcing school begins in two hours and her morning workout begins now.
On the news, Quinn is declared as a missing person due to no body being found after a car wreck on the corner of Johnson and Goodman streets, and Rachel goes to school, still waiting.