fic: deus ex machina
Title: Deus Ex Machina [god in the machine]
Chapter: Seven | 1/2
Author: lifeawakening
Words: 8,849 (5,766 for part 1)
Rating: R (For future scary images, language, and sexual references)
Summary: Rachel Berry always knew that she was a little bit psychic. In fact, Rachel Berry thought she knew just about everything. That is, until a spirit that refused to die entered her life like a train-wreck. It's only after Rachel's fallen in love that she realizes life doesn't exactly go as planned; and neither does death, for that matter.
Author's Note: Well, two days late is better than a month, right...? Also, sorry for the split, apparently LJ doesn't like chapters that are over 8k. For the second part of this chapter, hit the next button right up there ^.
Rachel Berry was not a forgetful girl. It simply was not programmed within her superior DNA to forget things that were important. Ever since she was six months old she had kept track of exactly when her birthday was; everything down to the exact minute (4:48 a.m.) to the moon cycle on that day. That’s why, when Rachel woke up the morning after her encounter with Quinn, she was shocked to see balloons and streamers surrounding her bed and her overeager fathers at the foot of her bed, staring at her.
“What’s going on?” Rachel groggily questioned as she pushed herself onto her elbows and blew her bangs out of her eyes.
Hiram feigned a gasp and clutched his hand over his heart as he turned to his husband and said, scandalized, “Leroy, I think the little teenager has forgotten her own birthday!”
Leroy looked down at his husband with equally with eyes and said, “I believe you’re right, darling! Does that mean we can take back the music note styled vegan birthday cake that we ordered special?”
Rachel gasped as she launched herself out of bed and skidded across her room in her footy pajamas towards her calendar. The little diva gasped again as her finger stopped on the circled date, December 18th, her birthday, indeed. “I forgot my own birthday,” she whispered to herself under her breath as her eyes stayed glued to the calendar, “How did I forget my own birthday?”
“Sweetie, I do believe that’s what happens when you put someone before yourself and focus on them more,” Leroy said, mumbling the “oomph” he let out when Hiram elbowed him in the ribs.
“What your father means,” Hiram delineated, “is that you’ve put Quinn and those ungrateful glee children before your own needs, and that’s how you forgot your own birthday. There’s a first time for everything.”
Rachel slowly turned from the calendar and, as if she had heard known of what they had just said, and enquired, “Did you say vegan birthday cake?” as she made her way out of the room and down the stairs, leaving her fathers behind her.
Rachel heard their laughter trailing behind her as she skipped down the stairs. However, halfway down the stairs, her father’s laughter seemed to sound as if it were too far away, and Rachel’s feet seemed to slow down as she bounded down the stairs. Just as if time had completely slowed down, Rachel furrowed her brows in confusion as a wind tunnel opened itself up and pounded on her eardrums as she silently wondered why it was taking her so long to get down the stairs and what was going on.
That thought had no sooner coiled around her brain when a black figure stepped around the corner and stood at the foot of the staircase, staring directly at Rachel. The brunette briefly wondered if her fathers were behind her, and she thought that she should probably check to see if they were, but as soon as her eyes locked on the face of the man, where his eyes should have been if he’d had any, the wind tunnel she had been hearing was immediately replaced with the sound of a sickly shriek.
Unable to stop herself, Rachel helplessly began to fall as she lost her footing and began plummeting towards the black figure. Just its presence alone had her filled with unspeakable horror, and Rachel briefly wondered if she was about to die and if her fathers really could get a refund on that cake.
Suddenly, there was a loud cry that drowned out the black figure’s death shriek, and Rachel recognized this new voice as soon as she heard it. Within a second, the black figure was gone and Rachel was engulfed in complete torturous pins and needles again before hitting the wall across the small hallway from the staircase. She only hit it with a dull thud, though, because she hit something that slowed her down.
“Ra-” Rachel heard, foggily and distant, “Rach-Rachel open your eyes.” So Rachel did, slowly. She blinked up at her fathers worried faces from flat on her back.
“Rachel,” Hiram breathed out in relief, “Are you all right? My goodness, that was quite the fall. Here, Leroy, get her up.”
Leroy bent down and used his strong arms to help Rachel up and into a chair in the dining room. For her part, the brunette was still trying to process what had just happened and wrap her mind around the fact that it had all happened in the span of about five seconds.
“Did you see that?” Rachel quietly asked Leroy as Hiram puttered around the sink, getting Rachel a class of water.
“See you fall? Yes, baby, I saw that.”
“No,” Rachel urged, “Did you see anything at the bottom of the stairs?”
Leroy stared at Rachel carefully before shaking his head. “No, I didn’t,” he said, “we were right behind you, Rachel, we would’ve seen if there had been anything down there.”
Rachel nodded slowly, blinking rapidly as her gaze lowered to the glass of water that Hiram had just set on the table. She took a drink of the water and shuddered as she felt path that the ice coldness took throughout her body. She didn’t bring up the black figure again, but she did wonder where Quinn went.
----------
Three hours and two pieces of cake later, Rachel finally went upstairs to change. Alone in her room, she cautiously looked around to make sure she was actually alone. Closet, check. Under the bed, check. Behind her doors, check. Check. Check. Check. Finally, Rachel flopped onto her bed and let out a shaky sigh. There was only one explanation for what that thing had been, though Rachel didn’t want to believe it.
Regardless, only one word was flashing in her mind; Ombra. She tried to push it away, push it back and lock it away in the back of her mind so she wouldn’t think of it. Quinn’s words flashed through her mind, telling her that thinking about them was like calling them. Still, from the second the black figure stepped in front of her, Rachel had the nagging notion at the back of her mind that they had found her, this was it.
Quinn. Quinn had saved her, again. The voice Rachel had heard was Quinn’s, and the Ombra had disappeared after the cry had been shouted. “Quinn!” Rachel nearly yelled at the empty room as she sat up on her bed with her feet dangling off of the edge, “Quinn.”
Nothing. The hopeful smile that had appeared on Rachel’s face slowly faded. “Quinn?” she repeated, quieter. Nothing.
Silence. Rachel’s eyes flickered across the room as she waited for a sign, anything, any noise from the girl, but she was met with nothing.
Ten minutes of agonizing silence passed before Rachel noiselessly got up and headed to her closet. She pulled on a pair of Capri’s and a pink sweater with a terrier on it. Rachel clipped her bangs back with a pink barrette and slipped on her Hush Puppies. She crossed over her keyboard rug and leaned on her vanity counter as she gazed into the mirror at herself.
Rachel met her own eyes and almost didn’t recognize herself. She couldn’t remember a time where she had such dark rings under her eyes from lack of sleep, which she felt was ironic, because she had spent the past two weeks not leaving her bed.
Her thoughts were interrupted as she heard the doorbell from downstairs followed by her father calling her downstairs.
Great, she thought as she cast one more look at herself before making her way downstairs. She took the steps two at a time until she hit the first floor and stopped dead in her tracks.
“Noah?” Rachel questioned hesitantly, “What are you doing here?”
Leroy hesitantly leaves them alone in the alcove by the front door, and Rachel leans against the table by the door as she watches Puck run a nervous hand over his mohawk.
“Well, two reasons,” Puck began, not leaving the doorway, “First is this.” He pulled his other hand out from inside his brown suede jacket and handed Rachel a rectangular shaped box wrapped in Star Wars wrapping paper. “Happy birthday,” he said, almost whispering, “I bet you thought I forgot, huh? Well I didn’t ‘cause I’m a friggan awesome Jewbro.”
Rachel involuntarily smiled as she took the box from Puck. Delicately, she unwrapped it and pulled out a gleaming, golden Star of David necklace. Rachel bit her lip as a few stray tears welled up in her eyes. “Thank you so much, Noah,” the brunette breathed out as she reached up and put the necklace on. She brushed her fingers against the star as she looked up at Puck, “And the second reason?”
Puck licked his lips nervously as he looked around and over Rachel’s head, making sure they were alone. “Can I talk to you, in private?”
Rachel nodded as she nodded towards her room. Puck shut the door behind him as he followed her up the stairs and into her room. Rachel watched him take a deep breath and take in his surroundings before running his hand over his mohawk again.
“Have a seat,” Rachel urged as Puck took off his jacket and scratched his chest over his black collared shirt.
“What can I do for-”
“It’s about Quinn,” Puck said bluntly, his mouth moving wordlessly after, as if he was shocked that he’d managed to say those three words.
Rachel stopped pacing dead in her tracks as she met Puck’s eyes from across the room. She took a seat in her wooden chair and stared across at Puck who was seated on the edge of her bed.
“Quinn?” Rachel repeated, dumbly.
Puck rolled his eyes and frowned. “Don’t play stupid, Berry-”
“I’m not playing anything, Puckerman,” Rachel snapped abruptly, fed up with being talked down to by her teammates, “It’s an honest question because right now I’m wondering why you came to talk to me about-”
“A dead chick?” Puck said, taking his turn in interrupting her.
Rachel blinked, momentarily taken aback by the use of the term dead when referring to Quinn. “Yes,” she whispered after a brief hesitation, never leaving Puck’s eyes, “a dead chick.”
Puck stared hard into Rachel’s eyes before stating, not asking, “She’s your ghost, isn’t she? Finn says you’re insane because you’ve been hunting and now hanging out with a ghost, but I believe you. Shit, I think I believed you when your dads showed up at the hospital to save you and you said we dragged you from Quinn's house. The night I told you about the Fabray's ghost, I never said her name.”
Rachel cocked her head and creased her forehead as she looked at Puck in complete shock. “Y-you actually believe me?”
“I have an older brother, you know,” he said, as if changing the subject.
Rachel’s chest tightened but she remained quiet as she waited for Puck to continue. “He’s twenty-six now,” Puck added, “Maybe twenty-seven, I don’t know, it’s been years since I’ve seen him.”
“I didn’t know that, no. However, I’m not-”
“When he was a sophomore in high school he was involved in a really bad car crash,” Puck said as he broke their gaze and glanced at his hands in his lap. Rachel couldn’t breath as the gears in her mind started turning out of control. No…it couldn’t be.
“His name’s Michael,” Puck said, abruptly bringing his eyes back to meet Rachel’s.
As if he knew that was the last puzzle piece Rachel needed, he leaned back on his elbows and waited for her to react.
“Your brother killed Quinn,” Rachel exhaled.
Puck said nothing as Rachel’s teary eyes met his.
“What happened, Noah? Was he charged with anything?”
Puck sat back up and shrugged. “He was underage, I mean it’s not like they could’a sent him to prison for murder. He was kicked out of McKinley and sent to juvie until he hit 18. I was only eight, but I remember that once he was out of there, he never came home. He just ran. I saw him once at the mini-mart by my house before he left. Mike was…” Puck trailed off, shuddering at the memory, “he was fucked up. He kept talking about being haunted and seeing Quinn everywhere and that he needed to get out of Lima. So he did, and I haven’t seen him since.”
Rachel wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand and brought her hands up to rest at the bridge of her nose. Puck waited in silence for Rachel to process everything.
Eventually, she raised her eyes to meet his. “I think I love her, Noah.”
The boys eyebrows shot up as he dropped his widened eyes to the floor. Rachel briefly wondered if maybe she had said too much, but then Puck smiled.
“I remember her, you know. She was hot,” he said through a laugh and smiling when he earned a small laugh from Rachel, “I mean, hot by an eight-year-old’s standards but, whatever.”
“Noah,” Rachel whispered, only half chastising.
“Sorry, Berry.”
“Thank you for believing me,” she added firmly.
Puck shrugged. “Just let me know if I can do anything to help. I bet it sucks balls to be in love with a ghost. I just have two favors.”
Rachel arched an eyebrow, ignoring his in love remark. “And they would be?”
“One,” Puck counted off on his fingers, “Let me talk to her sometime. Two,” he added another finger, “Don’t go doing anything stupid so you can be with her-”
This immediately caught Rachel’s attention. So much so, that she completely tuned Puck out when he added a third favor of making out in exchange for giving her the information that he did. Don’t do anything stupid to be with Quinn? What if that was it? What if that was why Quinn was there? Maybe Rachel was dying, or meant to die, and Quinn was there to take her to her life after death!
“Rach? Is that a no to making out?”
----------
“Rachel,” Finn greeted, almost in relief, as he opened the front door to his home and saw the tiny brunette standing there on the porch.
Rachel glanced back to Leroy, who was in the car waiting for her at the end of the Hudson driveway, and wrapped her coat tighter around her. “Finn, I need to have a word with you.”
Finn’s grin faltered as he looked over her head at Leroy and then stepped aside. “Do you want to come in? Kurt’s down in his room with Blaine and mom and Burt are out.”
Rachel nodded as she worried her lip between her gleaming teeth, agreeing, “All right, Finn,” and followed him inside. She kept her head high as she walked past him and into his kitchen where she took a seat at their table.
Finn dragged a chair up next to her and turned it around, straddling it as he sat down and faced her. Rachel inwardly winced against the hopeful gleam in his eyes as he asked, “How are you? You look tired as hell.”
“I’m all right, Finn,” Rachel said as she suppressed an eye roll at his tactlessness, “but I did not actually come here to talk about myself.”
Finn looked a little surprised but nodded seriously. “All right, what’s up then, Rach?”
“We’re over, right?” Rachel vocalized, blunter than she’d meant to.
Finn paused. “I mean, you did call me mentally unstable and tell me I needed help and then physically dragged me against my will to a hospital to get me locked up and I did say you needed to find another girlfriend so, I am correct in inferring from all of that that we are still over, right?”
Finn seemed to gape before looking down at his hands then back at Rachel. “I really care about you, Rachel, I just wanted to help you….”
“And I understand and even appreciate that, Finn,” she clarified, “but that doesn’t change the fact that you went behind my back and lied to me over dealing with Quinn, then going behind my back again to get me locked up because you legitimately think I’m crazy.”
“I think you broke up with me unfairly,” he stammered out, almost angrily.
Rachel’s gaze softened as she smiled briefly. “Because you were only trying to help me, right?” she supplied.
“Right,” Finn said, grabbing onto the life-line with relief.
“What day is it today, Finn?”
“Uh, Friday?”
The brunette smiled and took his hand in her own. “Finn, you know you’re one of my best friends, and you have been for a while. However, I think that’s it, I believe that we’re just better as friends.”
Confusion and acceptance crossed Finn’s features as he gently pulled his hand from Rachel’s. “I admit I screwed up a few times, but there’s always hope for us, Rach.”
“I just came to make sure that it was over, Finn, on both sides. I need it to be over, I need to move on. I think we’re taking two separate directions in life now and want different things. Think of it this way, now you don’t have me and my crazy holding you back from being prom king and being the glee stud that you want to be,” Rachel said with no hostility in her voice.
Finn frowned as he shook his head. “I don’t want to let you go,” he said firmly.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Rachel replied as she placed her right hand on his cheek and smiled, “You know as well as I do that we lost our chance and we’re better off as friends now.”
“I love you,” Finn said firmly, not trying to coerce Rachel into anything, just so she’d know. And she did.
“I know,” Rachel said sweetly, moving her hand from his cheek to his neck as she pulled him in for a hug. “We’ll be great friends, I think.”
“We always have been,” Finn said with a weak smile as he watched Rachel stand up to go.
“It’s her, huh?” he questioned as Rachel felt his eyes on her back.
She turned and met his gaze as she stood in the doorway of the kitchen. Finn continued, “You fell in love with her, didn’t you?”
Rachel’s chin rose a little higher as she dropped Finn’s gaze and smiled to herself. “Then, for your sake, I hope that she’s real, ghost or not, because it would be just like you to fall in love with yourself or some split personality of yourself,” Finn said through a soft, playful grin.
Rachel squinted her eyes in a mock glare and huffed as she stormed out of the kitchen. There were few things in life that Rachel was grateful for at that time, but one of the big ones was being okay with Finn.
----------
“Happy birthday,” was whispered into Rachel’s ear at exactly 11:37 P.M.
“Cutting it a bit close, Quinn, aren’t you?” Rachel asked as she cracked one eye open and glanced at the clock on her nightstand.
“You’re lucky I made it back this soon,” Quinn said from her new spot on Rachel’s bed, next to her.
Rachel opened her other eye and rolled her head to the right where she thought Quinn was. “Thank you,” the brunette stated firmly, “for saving me from the Ombra earlier.”
Hesitation lingered in the air as Rachel’s eyes searched for Quinn. “How did you know it was an Ombra?”
Rachel’s forehead creased in confusion before she rubbed some sleep out of her eyes. Blinking sleepily, Rachel tried to wake herself up as she mumbled, “So, I was correct?”
She heard a frustrated exhale from Quinn before a bit out, “Rachel, you need to tell me what happened and how you knew it was an Ombra.”
Rachel completely rolled over onto her side so she was facing Quinn. “Where are you?” Rachel whispered, her voice cracking before she cleared her throat.
A quiet sigh was followed by a brief tingling of Rachel’s left cheek that trailed down to her left hand that was tucked up under her chin by her pillow. “I’m right here, Rachel,” the brunette heard, and by the placement of Quinn’s voice, Rachel could tell that Quinn was at eye-level with her, mirroring her position on the bed.
“I just knew,” Rachel began once she was sure of Quinn’s position and where her eyes were, “it was at the back of my mind from the moment it stepped in front of me at the bottom of the staircase.”
Quinn remained silent as Rachel began to feel the tension radiating off of her. After a minute, the brunette tentatively broke through the silence with, “Quinn, I understand that we can’t discuss these things for fear of them finding us, and I do mean us because I know that you’ve been trying to protect me from them for a while. However, I think it’s time you tell me what I need to do, because they have found me.”
There was a brush of electricity across Rachel’s forehead where her bangs were, as always, clinging to her forehead and falling into her eyes. Rachel brought her hand up and gently brushed them away for Quinn, as she imagined that’s what Quinn was doing.
“I wish I could still feel….” the ghost said quietly, reluctantly, and Rachel didn’t miss the clandestine way Quinn hid the “you” at the end of her breath, laced into the way the blond’s exhale hitched a moment later.
Rachel suddenly wanted to take Quinn’s pain away, to remove the hurt that she heard in the blond’s voice. She briefly allowed the Ombra to slip onto the back burner as she scooted a little closer to the patch of freezing air. “I went to Finn’s today,” Rachel began.
“…oh,” Quinn breathed out in surprise as her voice cracked on the questioning inflection she half-heartedly attempted to add to the word.
“Mhmm,” Rachel continued, her eyes raking over where Quinn’s face would be and inwardly imaging the girl’s features, “I wanted to discuss the nature of our relationship and where we stood at this-”
“I can’t-” Quinn interrupted.
“Point in time,” Rachel added, annoyed at being interrupted.
“Rachel, if you’re seriously about to give me the details about you and Finn being back-”
“I wanted to make sure that he and I were on the same page about being broken up and I wanted him to understand that I needed to,” Rachel paused, her gaze searching for a broken thought in the space across the room before she smiled and continued, “that I have moved on.”
The brunette adjusted her position on the bed a bit as she waited for Quinn to respond.
A soft, “Oh,” was all she was graced with.
“Were you really thinking that I was going to tell you that Finn and I were back together? Especially after that-”
“Rach,” Quinn interrupted. The brunette’s mouth snapped shut as Quinn continued, “As much as I would love to hear this - and trust me, I would love to hear this - I can’t. Not right now. Not when the only thing I can focus on is the fact that you were almost taken today and it’s driving me insane because I can’t figure out how to keep you safe.”
Rachel’s gaze lingered on the indent on the bed where - “Quinn,” she said suddenly.
“Hm?” the blond questioned, clearly buried under her own thoughts.
“You’re indenting again.”
“Oh, sorry - Wait, what?”
Rachel laughed almost involuntarily as the tears in her eyes took her by surprise. “I can see your indent, now,” she said as she tentatively reached her hand out and smiled as her fingertips brushed against a solid cheek.
“This better not be the same crap as last time,” Rachel heard Quinn mutter as the blond rolled her face so her nose was nuzzling the brunette’s palm. Quinn placed a kiss there.
“Language, Quinn,” Rachel chastised as she felt Quinn bring both hands up to grasp Rachel’s. Rachel scooted closer, as Quinn did the same, bringing their foreheads together.
“I’m solid again and you’re worried about the language I’m using?” Quinn scoffed. Rachel felt the blond’s legs curl up to gently press her knees into Rachel’s stomach, searching for all possible contact.
“There are other ways to communicate your feelings without using curse words,” Rachel murmured sternly as she fumbled for and gripped the hem of Quinn’s shirt with both hands and let her knuckles feather against the bare skin underneath. Rachel noted that Quinn was cold to the touch. Not ice cold, but chilly. As if someone had held their hand out of the car window for too long and pulled it back in, only to feel how numb it had gotten.
“I’ll leave the long-winded explanations up to you, then, thanks,” Rachel heard Quinn murmur, her lips an inch from the brunette’s.
----------
Quinn had her eyes tightly closed as she let herself re-memorize the feel of Rachel’s skin pressed against her own. Maybe it was because it had been ten years since anyone had been pressed against her like that, or maybe it was just because it was Rachel, but Quinn felt like she actually had warmth in her body. Like she had taken a long drink from a steaming cup of hot chocolate after being in the cold for hours. Every touch Rachel placed against her skin (was it skin? This ghost thing was so complicated) seemed to boil the blood beneath the girl’s fingertips.
“How long do you think it will last this time?” Rachel asked with the air of the question traveling into Quinn’s parted lips. Quinn let the question bounce around her mouth and felt how it tasted on her tongue as she let her fingers skim over the goosebumps on Rachel’s arms.
“Not long enough,” Quinn replied as her eyes fluttered up to stare into Rachel’s. She watched the fascination dimmer a bit in Rachel’s eyes as the brunette processed her words. Quinn didn’t like the way the gleam in her eyes dimmed. “We can enjoy it now, though,” the ghost added quickly to soothe Rachel’s disappointment.
Rachel closed the miniscule gap between their parted lips and swiftly kissed Quinn. Before her eyes slid closed, Quinn noticed the tears freeing themselves from underneath Rachel’s closed eyelids.
“Come here,” Quinn said after pulling back from Rachel.
She watched the brunette furrow her brows before looking amused. “Quinn,” Rachel said, “I don’t believe I can get much closer.”
Quinn rolled her eyes before looping her arms around Rachel’s neck and pulling their foreheads apart as she tucked the brunette into her collar bone, under her neck.
“What are you doing, Quinn?” Rachel whispered into the underside of Quinn’s jaw before Quinn felt her lean up and place her lips there, briefly, as if it were the most natural thing in the world for Rachel to do. As if it were the most natural thing in the world for Quinn to smile about.
“Making the most of this,” Quinn replied decidedly.
“What about the Ombra? You said-”
“I know what I said, Rach. Just-”
“Shut up?”
“No,” Quinn said, slightly taken aback, “Just talk about something other than all of the bad things going on. Just close your eyes and pretend-”
“I don’t need to pretend anything, Quinn,” Rachel began, the tone of her voice making Quinn’s neck tingle, “you’re right here.”
The ghost blinked back tears as she held Rachel tighter. After three minutes of counting the seconds and listening to Rachel talk about what she did on her birthday, Quinn stopped counting seconds and began counting the breaths Rachel took. Every time Quinn felt the rise and fall of Rachel’s chest under her arms, she exhaled her own forced breath of relief.
Hours later, when Rachel’s birthday had been a matter of hours prior, Quinn was still awake. Rachel had fallen asleep in her arms. In her arms. The blond raised an eyebrow to the sky as she said under her breath, “Thank you.”
Rachel shifted in Quinn’s arms and Quinn smiled. Whatever this was between her and Rachel, whatever happened, one thing was for sure…. Dead or alive, no one had ever touched her the way Rachel had. God help her for when the sun rose and Quinn had to leave her personal Heaven to deal with her own personal Hell; the Hell that Rachel had been dragged into courtesy of the Ombra and the God above her that Quinn was seriously starting to doubt knew what He was actually doing.
The brunette suddenly stirred in Quinn’s arms, whimpering in her sleep and Quinn immediately ducked her head down to see the pained creases in Rachel’s forehead. She was having a nightmare, and it was probably the Ombra’s doing.
Quinn sighed and let out a shaky breath as she stared up at Rachel’s dark ceiling, tears welling up in her eyes. She couldn’t protect Rachel; Quinn was no superman. She was literally nothing. How could she protect the tiny brunette asleep in her arms?
Another whimper escaped Rachel’s lips. The blond stayed staring at the ceiling, pursing her lips as invisible tears cascaded down her cheeks and hit the bed with no mark. Quinn was no hero. Rachel needed a hero. Hell, if it weren’t for Quinn, Rachel wouldn’t have even been in that position.
“God,” Quinn breathed out painfully.
----------
“Quinn?” Rachel questioned the empty air after sitting up in her bed. The sunlight was streaming in through her curtains and Rachel sighed. “Or not.”
“You’re a year older than me now,” was suddenly heard from the chair in front of Rachel’s desk. Her laptop was open and on. Google was on the screen and the keyboard seemed to be moving on its own.
“Technically you’re nine years older than me,” Rachel amended off-handedly as she sat and blinked groggily towards Quinn. “I see you’re still solid.”
“Damnet,” Rachel heard Quinn mutter quietly before she seemed to respond absent-mindedly, “Oh, yeah, sort of.”
“Sort of?” Rachel asked, frustrated at Quinn’s standoffish behavior.
“Yeah, Rachel, sort of.”
Fine, Rachel thought. The brunette pushed her hair back and dropped her bare feet onto the white carpet. Padding across the room, she stood behind Quinn and leaned against the back of her shoulders as she read the computer screen.
“You’re Googling ghosts?”
Rachel felt a tingling of hair briefly cross her arms as she imagined Quinn turning to look back at her. “I’ve never really been able to use this Google thing before, but it’s so cool. I’m Googling physically solid ghosts.”
Rachel bit her lip and turned away. She lifted her arms from Quinn’s shoulders and turned to sit on the edge of her bed. “Quinn.”
“What?” Rachel got in response.
“Please turn off Google and come have a conversation with me.”
“I can’t, Rachel. I keep flickering on and off solid wise and I’m having an ‘on’ moment so I need to keep looking-”
“Quinn!” Rachel yelled sternly. The typing on the keyboard abruptly stopped. The empty chair swiveled to face Rachel.
“What?” Quinn asked calmly, her question hanging thickly in the air.
“What’s wrong?” the brunette asked.
“Nothing.”
“Quinn.”
“Stop it, Rachel.”
“No, Quinn.”
“I said stop it!” Quinn yelled which caused Rachel’s hair to billow from the force of the ghost’s energy.
Rachel remained completely stoic. She fixed her hair and met where she thought Quinn’s eyes were. “What’s going on?”
“Have you looked in a mirror lately, Rachel?” Quinn asked her. Rachel’s jaw dropped. “No, Rach, I’m not calling you ugly. But how long has it been since you’ve actually slept without nightmares? Since you’ve actually gotten a full night of sleep?”
Rachel’s mouth moved wordlessly as she tried to come up with an adequate lie.
“That’s what I thought,” Quinn continued, “You look like you have two black eyes because your bags are so deep. Rachel, we need to end this.”
In that moment it was as if time slowed down as a wave of realization washed over Rachel and across her features. What had Quinn planned while she had slept? Why did she suddenly have a innate sense of fear?
“End what, Quinn?”
“The only reason you’re being haunted right now is because of me!” Quinn snapped, “This could seriously screw you up, Rach. It could end you.”
“Rachel had been shaking her head throughout Quinn’s entire mini-rant. “No, no Quinn you’re wrong. None of this is your fault-”
“Yes, it is!” Quinn cut her off, yelling again.
“Would you please refrain from both interrupting me and screeching at me?” Rachel yelled in exasperation as she threw her hands up into the air and grasped at the air with her hands in frustration.
“Not when what you’re going to say is wrong.”
“That’s it, Quinn Fabray,” Rachel seethed as she stood up abruptly and loomed over Quinn, “I don’t care about any noble and undoubtedly stupid plan that you have. I don’t care if you think you leaving or passing on will save me, because I’m going to assume that’s what you’re thinking. I don’t think you grasp the fact that you are what saved me! You are infuriating, Quinn, because you think I’m dying now, when I didn’t even know how to appreciate or love life until you came along!” Rachel’s chest heaved as she listened to the stung silence after her tirade. She couldn’t take the silence after a few seconds, and so Rachel turned and fled from her room and into her bathroom, locking the door behind her.
Rachel leaned against her marble sink as she took in her reflection in the mirror. Quinn was right, the bags under Rachel’s eyes almost looked like two bruised eyes. Rachel gingerly traced the shades of black under her eyes as she sniffed lightly. She wasn’t going to let herself cry.
“Here,” Rachel heard whispered into her left ear as a tissue floated in the air in front of her. She let out a choked laugh while simultaneously not being able to fight her tears anymore. Rachel felt a solid form press into her back as a chin was laid onto her left shoulder. Staring into the mirror, Rachel only saw her own reflection. She cried harder.
“Rachel, maybe it’s time for me to move on.”
Chapter: Seven | 1/2
Author: lifeawakening
Words: 8,849 (5,766 for part 1)
Rating: R (For future scary images, language, and sexual references)
Summary: Rachel Berry always knew that she was a little bit psychic. In fact, Rachel Berry thought she knew just about everything. That is, until a spirit that refused to die entered her life like a train-wreck. It's only after Rachel's fallen in love that she realizes life doesn't exactly go as planned; and neither does death, for that matter.
Author's Note: Well, two days late is better than a month, right...? Also, sorry for the split, apparently LJ doesn't like chapters that are over 8k. For the second part of this chapter, hit the next button right up there ^.
Rachel Berry was not a forgetful girl. It simply was not programmed within her superior DNA to forget things that were important. Ever since she was six months old she had kept track of exactly when her birthday was; everything down to the exact minute (4:48 a.m.) to the moon cycle on that day. That’s why, when Rachel woke up the morning after her encounter with Quinn, she was shocked to see balloons and streamers surrounding her bed and her overeager fathers at the foot of her bed, staring at her.
“What’s going on?” Rachel groggily questioned as she pushed herself onto her elbows and blew her bangs out of her eyes.
Hiram feigned a gasp and clutched his hand over his heart as he turned to his husband and said, scandalized, “Leroy, I think the little teenager has forgotten her own birthday!”
Leroy looked down at his husband with equally with eyes and said, “I believe you’re right, darling! Does that mean we can take back the music note styled vegan birthday cake that we ordered special?”
Rachel gasped as she launched herself out of bed and skidded across her room in her footy pajamas towards her calendar. The little diva gasped again as her finger stopped on the circled date, December 18th, her birthday, indeed. “I forgot my own birthday,” she whispered to herself under her breath as her eyes stayed glued to the calendar, “How did I forget my own birthday?”
“Sweetie, I do believe that’s what happens when you put someone before yourself and focus on them more,” Leroy said, mumbling the “oomph” he let out when Hiram elbowed him in the ribs.
“What your father means,” Hiram delineated, “is that you’ve put Quinn and those ungrateful glee children before your own needs, and that’s how you forgot your own birthday. There’s a first time for everything.”
Rachel slowly turned from the calendar and, as if she had heard known of what they had just said, and enquired, “Did you say vegan birthday cake?” as she made her way out of the room and down the stairs, leaving her fathers behind her.
Rachel heard their laughter trailing behind her as she skipped down the stairs. However, halfway down the stairs, her father’s laughter seemed to sound as if it were too far away, and Rachel’s feet seemed to slow down as she bounded down the stairs. Just as if time had completely slowed down, Rachel furrowed her brows in confusion as a wind tunnel opened itself up and pounded on her eardrums as she silently wondered why it was taking her so long to get down the stairs and what was going on.
That thought had no sooner coiled around her brain when a black figure stepped around the corner and stood at the foot of the staircase, staring directly at Rachel. The brunette briefly wondered if her fathers were behind her, and she thought that she should probably check to see if they were, but as soon as her eyes locked on the face of the man, where his eyes should have been if he’d had any, the wind tunnel she had been hearing was immediately replaced with the sound of a sickly shriek.
Unable to stop herself, Rachel helplessly began to fall as she lost her footing and began plummeting towards the black figure. Just its presence alone had her filled with unspeakable horror, and Rachel briefly wondered if she was about to die and if her fathers really could get a refund on that cake.
Suddenly, there was a loud cry that drowned out the black figure’s death shriek, and Rachel recognized this new voice as soon as she heard it. Within a second, the black figure was gone and Rachel was engulfed in complete torturous pins and needles again before hitting the wall across the small hallway from the staircase. She only hit it with a dull thud, though, because she hit something that slowed her down.
“Ra-” Rachel heard, foggily and distant, “Rach-Rachel open your eyes.” So Rachel did, slowly. She blinked up at her fathers worried faces from flat on her back.
“Rachel,” Hiram breathed out in relief, “Are you all right? My goodness, that was quite the fall. Here, Leroy, get her up.”
Leroy bent down and used his strong arms to help Rachel up and into a chair in the dining room. For her part, the brunette was still trying to process what had just happened and wrap her mind around the fact that it had all happened in the span of about five seconds.
“Did you see that?” Rachel quietly asked Leroy as Hiram puttered around the sink, getting Rachel a class of water.
“See you fall? Yes, baby, I saw that.”
“No,” Rachel urged, “Did you see anything at the bottom of the stairs?”
Leroy stared at Rachel carefully before shaking his head. “No, I didn’t,” he said, “we were right behind you, Rachel, we would’ve seen if there had been anything down there.”
Rachel nodded slowly, blinking rapidly as her gaze lowered to the glass of water that Hiram had just set on the table. She took a drink of the water and shuddered as she felt path that the ice coldness took throughout her body. She didn’t bring up the black figure again, but she did wonder where Quinn went.
----------
Three hours and two pieces of cake later, Rachel finally went upstairs to change. Alone in her room, she cautiously looked around to make sure she was actually alone. Closet, check. Under the bed, check. Behind her doors, check. Check. Check. Check. Finally, Rachel flopped onto her bed and let out a shaky sigh. There was only one explanation for what that thing had been, though Rachel didn’t want to believe it.
Regardless, only one word was flashing in her mind; Ombra. She tried to push it away, push it back and lock it away in the back of her mind so she wouldn’t think of it. Quinn’s words flashed through her mind, telling her that thinking about them was like calling them. Still, from the second the black figure stepped in front of her, Rachel had the nagging notion at the back of her mind that they had found her, this was it.
Quinn. Quinn had saved her, again. The voice Rachel had heard was Quinn’s, and the Ombra had disappeared after the cry had been shouted. “Quinn!” Rachel nearly yelled at the empty room as she sat up on her bed with her feet dangling off of the edge, “Quinn.”
Nothing. The hopeful smile that had appeared on Rachel’s face slowly faded. “Quinn?” she repeated, quieter. Nothing.
Silence. Rachel’s eyes flickered across the room as she waited for a sign, anything, any noise from the girl, but she was met with nothing.
Ten minutes of agonizing silence passed before Rachel noiselessly got up and headed to her closet. She pulled on a pair of Capri’s and a pink sweater with a terrier on it. Rachel clipped her bangs back with a pink barrette and slipped on her Hush Puppies. She crossed over her keyboard rug and leaned on her vanity counter as she gazed into the mirror at herself.
Rachel met her own eyes and almost didn’t recognize herself. She couldn’t remember a time where she had such dark rings under her eyes from lack of sleep, which she felt was ironic, because she had spent the past two weeks not leaving her bed.
Her thoughts were interrupted as she heard the doorbell from downstairs followed by her father calling her downstairs.
Great, she thought as she cast one more look at herself before making her way downstairs. She took the steps two at a time until she hit the first floor and stopped dead in her tracks.
“Noah?” Rachel questioned hesitantly, “What are you doing here?”
Leroy hesitantly leaves them alone in the alcove by the front door, and Rachel leans against the table by the door as she watches Puck run a nervous hand over his mohawk.
“Well, two reasons,” Puck began, not leaving the doorway, “First is this.” He pulled his other hand out from inside his brown suede jacket and handed Rachel a rectangular shaped box wrapped in Star Wars wrapping paper. “Happy birthday,” he said, almost whispering, “I bet you thought I forgot, huh? Well I didn’t ‘cause I’m a friggan awesome Jewbro.”
Rachel involuntarily smiled as she took the box from Puck. Delicately, she unwrapped it and pulled out a gleaming, golden Star of David necklace. Rachel bit her lip as a few stray tears welled up in her eyes. “Thank you so much, Noah,” the brunette breathed out as she reached up and put the necklace on. She brushed her fingers against the star as she looked up at Puck, “And the second reason?”
Puck licked his lips nervously as he looked around and over Rachel’s head, making sure they were alone. “Can I talk to you, in private?”
Rachel nodded as she nodded towards her room. Puck shut the door behind him as he followed her up the stairs and into her room. Rachel watched him take a deep breath and take in his surroundings before running his hand over his mohawk again.
“Have a seat,” Rachel urged as Puck took off his jacket and scratched his chest over his black collared shirt.
“What can I do for-”
“It’s about Quinn,” Puck said bluntly, his mouth moving wordlessly after, as if he was shocked that he’d managed to say those three words.
Rachel stopped pacing dead in her tracks as she met Puck’s eyes from across the room. She took a seat in her wooden chair and stared across at Puck who was seated on the edge of her bed.
“Quinn?” Rachel repeated, dumbly.
Puck rolled his eyes and frowned. “Don’t play stupid, Berry-”
“I’m not playing anything, Puckerman,” Rachel snapped abruptly, fed up with being talked down to by her teammates, “It’s an honest question because right now I’m wondering why you came to talk to me about-”
“A dead chick?” Puck said, taking his turn in interrupting her.
Rachel blinked, momentarily taken aback by the use of the term dead when referring to Quinn. “Yes,” she whispered after a brief hesitation, never leaving Puck’s eyes, “a dead chick.”
Puck stared hard into Rachel’s eyes before stating, not asking, “She’s your ghost, isn’t she? Finn says you’re insane because you’ve been hunting and now hanging out with a ghost, but I believe you. Shit, I think I believed you when your dads showed up at the hospital to save you and you said we dragged you from Quinn's house. The night I told you about the Fabray's ghost, I never said her name.”
Rachel cocked her head and creased her forehead as she looked at Puck in complete shock. “Y-you actually believe me?”
“I have an older brother, you know,” he said, as if changing the subject.
Rachel’s chest tightened but she remained quiet as she waited for Puck to continue. “He’s twenty-six now,” Puck added, “Maybe twenty-seven, I don’t know, it’s been years since I’ve seen him.”
“I didn’t know that, no. However, I’m not-”
“When he was a sophomore in high school he was involved in a really bad car crash,” Puck said as he broke their gaze and glanced at his hands in his lap. Rachel couldn’t breath as the gears in her mind started turning out of control. No…it couldn’t be.
“His name’s Michael,” Puck said, abruptly bringing his eyes back to meet Rachel’s.
As if he knew that was the last puzzle piece Rachel needed, he leaned back on his elbows and waited for her to react.
“Your brother killed Quinn,” Rachel exhaled.
Puck said nothing as Rachel’s teary eyes met his.
“What happened, Noah? Was he charged with anything?”
Puck sat back up and shrugged. “He was underage, I mean it’s not like they could’a sent him to prison for murder. He was kicked out of McKinley and sent to juvie until he hit 18. I was only eight, but I remember that once he was out of there, he never came home. He just ran. I saw him once at the mini-mart by my house before he left. Mike was…” Puck trailed off, shuddering at the memory, “he was fucked up. He kept talking about being haunted and seeing Quinn everywhere and that he needed to get out of Lima. So he did, and I haven’t seen him since.”
Rachel wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand and brought her hands up to rest at the bridge of her nose. Puck waited in silence for Rachel to process everything.
Eventually, she raised her eyes to meet his. “I think I love her, Noah.”
The boys eyebrows shot up as he dropped his widened eyes to the floor. Rachel briefly wondered if maybe she had said too much, but then Puck smiled.
“I remember her, you know. She was hot,” he said through a laugh and smiling when he earned a small laugh from Rachel, “I mean, hot by an eight-year-old’s standards but, whatever.”
“Noah,” Rachel whispered, only half chastising.
“Sorry, Berry.”
“Thank you for believing me,” she added firmly.
Puck shrugged. “Just let me know if I can do anything to help. I bet it sucks balls to be in love with a ghost. I just have two favors.”
Rachel arched an eyebrow, ignoring his in love remark. “And they would be?”
“One,” Puck counted off on his fingers, “Let me talk to her sometime. Two,” he added another finger, “Don’t go doing anything stupid so you can be with her-”
This immediately caught Rachel’s attention. So much so, that she completely tuned Puck out when he added a third favor of making out in exchange for giving her the information that he did. Don’t do anything stupid to be with Quinn? What if that was it? What if that was why Quinn was there? Maybe Rachel was dying, or meant to die, and Quinn was there to take her to her life after death!
“Rach? Is that a no to making out?”
----------
“Rachel,” Finn greeted, almost in relief, as he opened the front door to his home and saw the tiny brunette standing there on the porch.
Rachel glanced back to Leroy, who was in the car waiting for her at the end of the Hudson driveway, and wrapped her coat tighter around her. “Finn, I need to have a word with you.”
Finn’s grin faltered as he looked over her head at Leroy and then stepped aside. “Do you want to come in? Kurt’s down in his room with Blaine and mom and Burt are out.”
Rachel nodded as she worried her lip between her gleaming teeth, agreeing, “All right, Finn,” and followed him inside. She kept her head high as she walked past him and into his kitchen where she took a seat at their table.
Finn dragged a chair up next to her and turned it around, straddling it as he sat down and faced her. Rachel inwardly winced against the hopeful gleam in his eyes as he asked, “How are you? You look tired as hell.”
“I’m all right, Finn,” Rachel said as she suppressed an eye roll at his tactlessness, “but I did not actually come here to talk about myself.”
Finn looked a little surprised but nodded seriously. “All right, what’s up then, Rach?”
“We’re over, right?” Rachel vocalized, blunter than she’d meant to.
Finn paused. “I mean, you did call me mentally unstable and tell me I needed help and then physically dragged me against my will to a hospital to get me locked up and I did say you needed to find another girlfriend so, I am correct in inferring from all of that that we are still over, right?”
Finn seemed to gape before looking down at his hands then back at Rachel. “I really care about you, Rachel, I just wanted to help you….”
“And I understand and even appreciate that, Finn,” she clarified, “but that doesn’t change the fact that you went behind my back and lied to me over dealing with Quinn, then going behind my back again to get me locked up because you legitimately think I’m crazy.”
“I think you broke up with me unfairly,” he stammered out, almost angrily.
Rachel’s gaze softened as she smiled briefly. “Because you were only trying to help me, right?” she supplied.
“Right,” Finn said, grabbing onto the life-line with relief.
“What day is it today, Finn?”
“Uh, Friday?”
The brunette smiled and took his hand in her own. “Finn, you know you’re one of my best friends, and you have been for a while. However, I think that’s it, I believe that we’re just better as friends.”
Confusion and acceptance crossed Finn’s features as he gently pulled his hand from Rachel’s. “I admit I screwed up a few times, but there’s always hope for us, Rach.”
“I just came to make sure that it was over, Finn, on both sides. I need it to be over, I need to move on. I think we’re taking two separate directions in life now and want different things. Think of it this way, now you don’t have me and my crazy holding you back from being prom king and being the glee stud that you want to be,” Rachel said with no hostility in her voice.
Finn frowned as he shook his head. “I don’t want to let you go,” he said firmly.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Rachel replied as she placed her right hand on his cheek and smiled, “You know as well as I do that we lost our chance and we’re better off as friends now.”
“I love you,” Finn said firmly, not trying to coerce Rachel into anything, just so she’d know. And she did.
“I know,” Rachel said sweetly, moving her hand from his cheek to his neck as she pulled him in for a hug. “We’ll be great friends, I think.”
“We always have been,” Finn said with a weak smile as he watched Rachel stand up to go.
“It’s her, huh?” he questioned as Rachel felt his eyes on her back.
She turned and met his gaze as she stood in the doorway of the kitchen. Finn continued, “You fell in love with her, didn’t you?”
Rachel’s chin rose a little higher as she dropped Finn’s gaze and smiled to herself. “Then, for your sake, I hope that she’s real, ghost or not, because it would be just like you to fall in love with yourself or some split personality of yourself,” Finn said through a soft, playful grin.
Rachel squinted her eyes in a mock glare and huffed as she stormed out of the kitchen. There were few things in life that Rachel was grateful for at that time, but one of the big ones was being okay with Finn.
----------
“Happy birthday,” was whispered into Rachel’s ear at exactly 11:37 P.M.
“Cutting it a bit close, Quinn, aren’t you?” Rachel asked as she cracked one eye open and glanced at the clock on her nightstand.
“You’re lucky I made it back this soon,” Quinn said from her new spot on Rachel’s bed, next to her.
Rachel opened her other eye and rolled her head to the right where she thought Quinn was. “Thank you,” the brunette stated firmly, “for saving me from the Ombra earlier.”
Hesitation lingered in the air as Rachel’s eyes searched for Quinn. “How did you know it was an Ombra?”
Rachel’s forehead creased in confusion before she rubbed some sleep out of her eyes. Blinking sleepily, Rachel tried to wake herself up as she mumbled, “So, I was correct?”
She heard a frustrated exhale from Quinn before a bit out, “Rachel, you need to tell me what happened and how you knew it was an Ombra.”
Rachel completely rolled over onto her side so she was facing Quinn. “Where are you?” Rachel whispered, her voice cracking before she cleared her throat.
A quiet sigh was followed by a brief tingling of Rachel’s left cheek that trailed down to her left hand that was tucked up under her chin by her pillow. “I’m right here, Rachel,” the brunette heard, and by the placement of Quinn’s voice, Rachel could tell that Quinn was at eye-level with her, mirroring her position on the bed.
“I just knew,” Rachel began once she was sure of Quinn’s position and where her eyes were, “it was at the back of my mind from the moment it stepped in front of me at the bottom of the staircase.”
Quinn remained silent as Rachel began to feel the tension radiating off of her. After a minute, the brunette tentatively broke through the silence with, “Quinn, I understand that we can’t discuss these things for fear of them finding us, and I do mean us because I know that you’ve been trying to protect me from them for a while. However, I think it’s time you tell me what I need to do, because they have found me.”
There was a brush of electricity across Rachel’s forehead where her bangs were, as always, clinging to her forehead and falling into her eyes. Rachel brought her hand up and gently brushed them away for Quinn, as she imagined that’s what Quinn was doing.
“I wish I could still feel….” the ghost said quietly, reluctantly, and Rachel didn’t miss the clandestine way Quinn hid the “you” at the end of her breath, laced into the way the blond’s exhale hitched a moment later.
Rachel suddenly wanted to take Quinn’s pain away, to remove the hurt that she heard in the blond’s voice. She briefly allowed the Ombra to slip onto the back burner as she scooted a little closer to the patch of freezing air. “I went to Finn’s today,” Rachel began.
“…oh,” Quinn breathed out in surprise as her voice cracked on the questioning inflection she half-heartedly attempted to add to the word.
“Mhmm,” Rachel continued, her eyes raking over where Quinn’s face would be and inwardly imaging the girl’s features, “I wanted to discuss the nature of our relationship and where we stood at this-”
“I can’t-” Quinn interrupted.
“Point in time,” Rachel added, annoyed at being interrupted.
“Rachel, if you’re seriously about to give me the details about you and Finn being back-”
“I wanted to make sure that he and I were on the same page about being broken up and I wanted him to understand that I needed to,” Rachel paused, her gaze searching for a broken thought in the space across the room before she smiled and continued, “that I have moved on.”
The brunette adjusted her position on the bed a bit as she waited for Quinn to respond.
A soft, “Oh,” was all she was graced with.
“Were you really thinking that I was going to tell you that Finn and I were back together? Especially after that-”
“Rach,” Quinn interrupted. The brunette’s mouth snapped shut as Quinn continued, “As much as I would love to hear this - and trust me, I would love to hear this - I can’t. Not right now. Not when the only thing I can focus on is the fact that you were almost taken today and it’s driving me insane because I can’t figure out how to keep you safe.”
Rachel’s gaze lingered on the indent on the bed where - “Quinn,” she said suddenly.
“Hm?” the blond questioned, clearly buried under her own thoughts.
“You’re indenting again.”
“Oh, sorry - Wait, what?”
Rachel laughed almost involuntarily as the tears in her eyes took her by surprise. “I can see your indent, now,” she said as she tentatively reached her hand out and smiled as her fingertips brushed against a solid cheek.
“This better not be the same crap as last time,” Rachel heard Quinn mutter as the blond rolled her face so her nose was nuzzling the brunette’s palm. Quinn placed a kiss there.
“Language, Quinn,” Rachel chastised as she felt Quinn bring both hands up to grasp Rachel’s. Rachel scooted closer, as Quinn did the same, bringing their foreheads together.
“I’m solid again and you’re worried about the language I’m using?” Quinn scoffed. Rachel felt the blond’s legs curl up to gently press her knees into Rachel’s stomach, searching for all possible contact.
“There are other ways to communicate your feelings without using curse words,” Rachel murmured sternly as she fumbled for and gripped the hem of Quinn’s shirt with both hands and let her knuckles feather against the bare skin underneath. Rachel noted that Quinn was cold to the touch. Not ice cold, but chilly. As if someone had held their hand out of the car window for too long and pulled it back in, only to feel how numb it had gotten.
“I’ll leave the long-winded explanations up to you, then, thanks,” Rachel heard Quinn murmur, her lips an inch from the brunette’s.
----------
Quinn had her eyes tightly closed as she let herself re-memorize the feel of Rachel’s skin pressed against her own. Maybe it was because it had been ten years since anyone had been pressed against her like that, or maybe it was just because it was Rachel, but Quinn felt like she actually had warmth in her body. Like she had taken a long drink from a steaming cup of hot chocolate after being in the cold for hours. Every touch Rachel placed against her skin (was it skin? This ghost thing was so complicated) seemed to boil the blood beneath the girl’s fingertips.
“How long do you think it will last this time?” Rachel asked with the air of the question traveling into Quinn’s parted lips. Quinn let the question bounce around her mouth and felt how it tasted on her tongue as she let her fingers skim over the goosebumps on Rachel’s arms.
“Not long enough,” Quinn replied as her eyes fluttered up to stare into Rachel’s. She watched the fascination dimmer a bit in Rachel’s eyes as the brunette processed her words. Quinn didn’t like the way the gleam in her eyes dimmed. “We can enjoy it now, though,” the ghost added quickly to soothe Rachel’s disappointment.
Rachel closed the miniscule gap between their parted lips and swiftly kissed Quinn. Before her eyes slid closed, Quinn noticed the tears freeing themselves from underneath Rachel’s closed eyelids.
“Come here,” Quinn said after pulling back from Rachel.
She watched the brunette furrow her brows before looking amused. “Quinn,” Rachel said, “I don’t believe I can get much closer.”
Quinn rolled her eyes before looping her arms around Rachel’s neck and pulling their foreheads apart as she tucked the brunette into her collar bone, under her neck.
“What are you doing, Quinn?” Rachel whispered into the underside of Quinn’s jaw before Quinn felt her lean up and place her lips there, briefly, as if it were the most natural thing in the world for Rachel to do. As if it were the most natural thing in the world for Quinn to smile about.
“Making the most of this,” Quinn replied decidedly.
“What about the Ombra? You said-”
“I know what I said, Rach. Just-”
“Shut up?”
“No,” Quinn said, slightly taken aback, “Just talk about something other than all of the bad things going on. Just close your eyes and pretend-”
“I don’t need to pretend anything, Quinn,” Rachel began, the tone of her voice making Quinn’s neck tingle, “you’re right here.”
The ghost blinked back tears as she held Rachel tighter. After three minutes of counting the seconds and listening to Rachel talk about what she did on her birthday, Quinn stopped counting seconds and began counting the breaths Rachel took. Every time Quinn felt the rise and fall of Rachel’s chest under her arms, she exhaled her own forced breath of relief.
Hours later, when Rachel’s birthday had been a matter of hours prior, Quinn was still awake. Rachel had fallen asleep in her arms. In her arms. The blond raised an eyebrow to the sky as she said under her breath, “Thank you.”
Rachel shifted in Quinn’s arms and Quinn smiled. Whatever this was between her and Rachel, whatever happened, one thing was for sure…. Dead or alive, no one had ever touched her the way Rachel had. God help her for when the sun rose and Quinn had to leave her personal Heaven to deal with her own personal Hell; the Hell that Rachel had been dragged into courtesy of the Ombra and the God above her that Quinn was seriously starting to doubt knew what He was actually doing.
The brunette suddenly stirred in Quinn’s arms, whimpering in her sleep and Quinn immediately ducked her head down to see the pained creases in Rachel’s forehead. She was having a nightmare, and it was probably the Ombra’s doing.
Quinn sighed and let out a shaky breath as she stared up at Rachel’s dark ceiling, tears welling up in her eyes. She couldn’t protect Rachel; Quinn was no superman. She was literally nothing. How could she protect the tiny brunette asleep in her arms?
Another whimper escaped Rachel’s lips. The blond stayed staring at the ceiling, pursing her lips as invisible tears cascaded down her cheeks and hit the bed with no mark. Quinn was no hero. Rachel needed a hero. Hell, if it weren’t for Quinn, Rachel wouldn’t have even been in that position.
“God,” Quinn breathed out painfully.
----------
“Quinn?” Rachel questioned the empty air after sitting up in her bed. The sunlight was streaming in through her curtains and Rachel sighed. “Or not.”
“You’re a year older than me now,” was suddenly heard from the chair in front of Rachel’s desk. Her laptop was open and on. Google was on the screen and the keyboard seemed to be moving on its own.
“Technically you’re nine years older than me,” Rachel amended off-handedly as she sat and blinked groggily towards Quinn. “I see you’re still solid.”
“Damnet,” Rachel heard Quinn mutter quietly before she seemed to respond absent-mindedly, “Oh, yeah, sort of.”
“Sort of?” Rachel asked, frustrated at Quinn’s standoffish behavior.
“Yeah, Rachel, sort of.”
Fine, Rachel thought. The brunette pushed her hair back and dropped her bare feet onto the white carpet. Padding across the room, she stood behind Quinn and leaned against the back of her shoulders as she read the computer screen.
“You’re Googling ghosts?”
Rachel felt a tingling of hair briefly cross her arms as she imagined Quinn turning to look back at her. “I’ve never really been able to use this Google thing before, but it’s so cool. I’m Googling physically solid ghosts.”
Rachel bit her lip and turned away. She lifted her arms from Quinn’s shoulders and turned to sit on the edge of her bed. “Quinn.”
“What?” Rachel got in response.
“Please turn off Google and come have a conversation with me.”
“I can’t, Rachel. I keep flickering on and off solid wise and I’m having an ‘on’ moment so I need to keep looking-”
“Quinn!” Rachel yelled sternly. The typing on the keyboard abruptly stopped. The empty chair swiveled to face Rachel.
“What?” Quinn asked calmly, her question hanging thickly in the air.
“What’s wrong?” the brunette asked.
“Nothing.”
“Quinn.”
“Stop it, Rachel.”
“No, Quinn.”
“I said stop it!” Quinn yelled which caused Rachel’s hair to billow from the force of the ghost’s energy.
Rachel remained completely stoic. She fixed her hair and met where she thought Quinn’s eyes were. “What’s going on?”
“Have you looked in a mirror lately, Rachel?” Quinn asked her. Rachel’s jaw dropped. “No, Rach, I’m not calling you ugly. But how long has it been since you’ve actually slept without nightmares? Since you’ve actually gotten a full night of sleep?”
Rachel’s mouth moved wordlessly as she tried to come up with an adequate lie.
“That’s what I thought,” Quinn continued, “You look like you have two black eyes because your bags are so deep. Rachel, we need to end this.”
In that moment it was as if time slowed down as a wave of realization washed over Rachel and across her features. What had Quinn planned while she had slept? Why did she suddenly have a innate sense of fear?
“End what, Quinn?”
“The only reason you’re being haunted right now is because of me!” Quinn snapped, “This could seriously screw you up, Rach. It could end you.”
“Rachel had been shaking her head throughout Quinn’s entire mini-rant. “No, no Quinn you’re wrong. None of this is your fault-”
“Yes, it is!” Quinn cut her off, yelling again.
“Would you please refrain from both interrupting me and screeching at me?” Rachel yelled in exasperation as she threw her hands up into the air and grasped at the air with her hands in frustration.
“Not when what you’re going to say is wrong.”
“That’s it, Quinn Fabray,” Rachel seethed as she stood up abruptly and loomed over Quinn, “I don’t care about any noble and undoubtedly stupid plan that you have. I don’t care if you think you leaving or passing on will save me, because I’m going to assume that’s what you’re thinking. I don’t think you grasp the fact that you are what saved me! You are infuriating, Quinn, because you think I’m dying now, when I didn’t even know how to appreciate or love life until you came along!” Rachel’s chest heaved as she listened to the stung silence after her tirade. She couldn’t take the silence after a few seconds, and so Rachel turned and fled from her room and into her bathroom, locking the door behind her.
Rachel leaned against her marble sink as she took in her reflection in the mirror. Quinn was right, the bags under Rachel’s eyes almost looked like two bruised eyes. Rachel gingerly traced the shades of black under her eyes as she sniffed lightly. She wasn’t going to let herself cry.
“Here,” Rachel heard whispered into her left ear as a tissue floated in the air in front of her. She let out a choked laugh while simultaneously not being able to fight her tears anymore. Rachel felt a solid form press into her back as a chin was laid onto her left shoulder. Staring into the mirror, Rachel only saw her own reflection. She cried harder.
“Rachel, maybe it’s time for me to move on.”