fic: deus ex machina
Title: Deus Ex Machina [god in the machine]
Chapter: Four
Author: lifeawakening
Words: 7,052
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.
Rachel woke up with a start, her bangs plastered to her forehead from sweat and her heart racing. She jumped, her hands gripping her bed sheets as she sat up, whipping her gaze around the room. “What’s going on?”
“You needed to wake up,” she heard from right next to her, causing the brunette to jump again.
“Quinn? What are you doing in my room? What’s wrong?” Rachel asked, hastily throwing her sheets to the side as she stood up from her bed.
The brunette felt a cold slap of wind as her hair flew back from her face before she heard an eerie, “Do not move.”
Rachel froze, her eyes widening in fear. “Quinn, you’re scaring me.”
“Good!” Quinn snapped, now from in front of Rachel’s window, as the curtains flew open before closing again, as if she was looking outside. “You should be scared. You can’t associate with me anymore, Rachel!”
Rachel raised her eyebrows, her chest heaving as she tried to catch her breath. “Excuse me? You can’t just come into my private residence, wake me up, scare the -”
A panicked “shut up” was whispered into her ear as all of the hair on her arms stood up. Quinn was standing right behind her now, and Rachel’s lips tingled as if the ghost actually had her hand over her mouth. “They can hear you. They can hear you breath, and they can feel you shaking,” Rachel listened as Quinn’s words ran through her mind, her ear tingling where she imagined the ghost’s lips were, “I can’t let them find you. That’s why I woke you up, they’ll hunt you through your dreams. They know I told you about them. If we can just avoid them this once, then we’ll be okay. If they just don’t find you…”
Rachel focused her gaze on the window, listening intently for any noises. The Ombra were after her now? Her hands started to tremble as she realized how terrifying these spirits must be if they were hunting her so soon.
“Stop shaking,” she heard running through her mind.
Rachel squeezed her eyes shut tightly as she focused on quietly thinking, “Can you hear my thoughts?”
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Quinn watched the brunette’s hands stop shaking, cocking her eyebrow as she quickly focused on sending more words to Rachel’s mind. “And don’t think either. Try to keep your mind blank; that shouldn’t be a challenge for you.”
She stood behind Rachel, her arm wrapped around the brunette’s torso and a hand covering her mouth. Quinn knew it was futile, that Rachel couldn’t feel it, but it had been her automatic reaction to stop the brunette from getting them both caught; she saw no use in stopping now. It seemed to have work, anyway.
The room was near pitch black with the moon barely shining through the now closed curtains. Quinn watched the brunette’s chest rise and fall steadily, her hands now completely still. Quinn had no idea what Rachel was thinking, but she knew that the second Rachel stopped panicking, that her thoughts would focus on trying to assess the situation and, God, even worse, actually speak to Quinn.
Quinn tried to concentrate her thoughts on the movements of the Ombra. She could see them in her mind’s eye; she could track their movements and stay off of their radar if she kept her mind quiet enough. Of course, that was proving difficult when she had her arms around Rachel. Quinn bit her lip as she brought her lips back to Rachel’s ear. “I’m going to let go of you, now. Stay absolutely quiet, and stay absolutely still. Force your mind to concentrate on pure blackness, nothing else.
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Rachel held her breath; so, her ghost did have her hand over her mouth. Interesting. Rachel filed that away for future thought and research before concentrating on focusing on a wall of blackness.
After what felt like hours later, Rachel’s bedside lamp clicked on. The brunette gasped in shock as she stumbled backward. “Quinn?”
“Sit down, Rachel. We need to have a little chat.”
Rachel turned stoic as she sat down on the edge of the bed, the light from her lamp making her wince after focusing on darkness for so long. “If you think that you’re going to yell at me for what happened here tonight, I’m here to inform you that you are sorely -”
“Rachel,” the brunette heard from in front of her, and she could imagine that Quinn was standing there, scowling at her, “I’m not going to yell at you. This was my own damn fault, actually. I shouldn’t have told you about them. I was just trying to scare you off.”
Rachel looked away, trying to mask the fact that Quinn’s statement hurt her. “When are you going to realize that I’m not going anywhere, Quinn? You can’t scare me off.”
“They almost got you!” Quinn shouted, making Rachel’s hair whip back lightly, but not making Rachel flinch at all.
“May I point out that they didn’t?” She heard Quinn sigh before she got a chill down her right side. Rachel turned her head to the right, assuming Quinn was sitting next to her now. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be obstinate. It’s just, you make it seem like every time that I’m around you, it’s this huge sacrifice on your part, and like I’m somehow causing you a great deal of distress. You think of the most ridiculous excuses to get me to leave you alone that, when a legitimate one happens, I react the same way I did when you said that because I was annoying, I was lowering your chances of getting into Heaven. As if that has anything to do with-”
“Oh my God, shut up,” Quinn barked out.
Rachel cocked an eyebrow. “Don’t take that tone of voice with me, Quinn. And stop glaring at me too, for that matter.” She heard Quinn sputter, and she smiled. “Please, with all of the exaggerated sighs you send my way and the rude tone of your voice most of the time, I’m willing to put money on the fact that you have a perpetual scowl on your face when you’re around me.”
She was met with silence. Rachel glanced down at her fidgeting hands in her lap, worrying that she’d made a mistake and maybe pushed her ghost too far before her thoughts were interrupted. “I don’t want you to feel like that.” Rachel raised an eyebrow in confusion. “I don’t want you to feel like it’s a sacrifice for me to talk to you.”
“It’s not?” Rachel questioned, hopefully.
“Well, it kind of is,” Rachel’s face dropped at the admittance before it was quickly followed up, “But not the way that you think it is. It’s… complicated. You were never a part of my plan, Rachel.”
Rachel laughed lightly, dropping her head and shrugging her shoulders. “I don’t seem to be a part of anyone’s plan.”
“You didn’t let me finish.” Rachel raised her head and looked back in Quinn’s general direction. “You wrote yourself into my plan, yes, but I don’t want to write you out of it. Do I accept that you won’t leave me alone? Yes. Do I still want you to? Sometimes. I’m slowly figuring out that I have to accept that you’re here to stay. But what happened tonight cannot happen again.”
Rachel’s eyes roamed the air in front of her and for the first time, she wished more than anything that she could actually see Quinn. “Thank you, Quinn… I’m afraid that if you want to avoid a repeat of tonight’s incident, you’ll have to tell me more about your situation.”
----------
Quinn sighed, casting an unseen glare at Rachel. She hated that the diva was right about this. Quinn had been terrified when she had sensed the Ombra heading for Rachel’s house. She hadn’t felt terror like that in… well, years. The ghost didn’t think twice as she had blinked herself into Rachel’s house and screamed into the girl’s ear to wake up. She knew if she could get her to wake up, she could protect her. Why Quinn needed to protect her, and why she cared so much in the first place, was irrelevant. For the moment.
She raised her eyes to meet Rachel’s wandering gaze. The brunette had so much compassion and worry in her eyes that Quinn couldn’t help but smile. Rachel really cared about Quinn, and it was nice. Still hard getting used to, but nice. And try as Quinn might, she cared about Rachel, too. On some level, Quinn knew that’s what drove her to run to save her an hour before. It’s also what was going to drive her to do what she was about to do. “Get comfortable. It’s a long story.”
Hazel eyes watched Rachel’s face light up with unmasked relief as she propped herself against her pillows. Quinn opened her mouth to speak when Rachel interrupted her. “You may feel free to get comfortable yourself, Quinn. You could sit by me on the bed, here. My father’s imported these pillows special for me and I must say, they’re quite comfortable. I’m not sure if you can actually feel them but -”
Quinn groaned from her new spot next to Rachel, leaning against the “comfortable” pillows against her headboard. “Wonderful pillows, really. No, I can’t feel them. Can I start my story now?”
Rachel bit her lip, hiding a smile Quinn guessed, as she nodded. “By all means.”
Quinn took a steadying breath, wringing her hands in the lap of her faded, red McKinley High sweats. She didn’t know what it meant that she was about to tell Rachel her story; but she knew that if she over thought it, she would panic and run. She needed to get her story out there. She highly doubted that she would be forced to move on to the “great beyond” at this point; telling Rachel would do nothing but possibly ease her soul. Quinn looked into Rachel’s expectant eyes. Somehow she felt like she owed this to Rachel, like this was the time she was destined to tell Rachel her story. She couldn’t explain why she felt this way, just that she did; so she took that as a sign. She was grasping at straws when it came to any sign she was given, at this point.
“The year was 2000. I was the head Cheerio at McKinley, and I had it all,” she scoffs, bitterly, “I was popular, the typical definition of beautiful, and I was dating the captain of the hockey team. It was October 24th, and my boyfriend and I were on the way to this ridiculously stupid pre-Halloween party at some idiot jock’s house. I didn’t want to go in the first place, but Michael - my boyfriend at the time - dragged me there anyway.”
Quinn paused, taking in a deep breath in an attempt to steady her voice. It failed, however, and her voice wavered as she continued. “In the car on the way there, he started drinking a beer that I didn’t even know he had in there. I hated it when he did that, and he knew it. I guess the whole thing was partly my fault, to be honest. We got into an argument over his drinking and the fact that I hated parties, yet he still dragged me to them. That was typical, for us; we were together for our reputations, nothing more. I demanded that he pull the car over so I could get out because I refused to drive with an alcoholic. We were on the main street, the one you can see from the park by my house, you know.
He was screaming at me, I was screaming at him, and I remember the radio was playing that stupid Lonestar Amazed song. Michael lost control of the wheel when he was turning a corner and smashed into an electrical box by the stoplight.”
Quinn sucked in another shaky breath. The irony of the fact that she didn’t even need to breathe never escaped her. She chanced a glance at Rachel, and watched the girl desperately try to cover up the tears that were pouring from her eyes. “It’s okay to cry,” Quinn said, nonchalantly, “I cry, too, when I think about it.” And it was true, Quinn thought, as she felt her own tears wet her face.
Rachel shook her head gently, staring deep into Quinn’s eyes as if she knew exactly where she was looking. “Did it hurt?”
Quinn was silent for a long while after that question. She pulled her knees to her chest and stared off in the distance, mentally reliving the experience for the first time in years.
“Yes,” she finally breathed out, her voice perfectly steady.
“Did you… die… almost instantly?” Rachel asked, her voice cracking on almost every syllable as she tried to speak through her tears. Her bangs hung in her eyes and her hands were shaking as she unconsciously reached her hand out to comfort Quinn. The ghost watched Rachel search the air in front of her with her gaze before sighing and drawing her hand back into her lap.
“I don’t know,” Quinn admitted, “I remember a few seconds of horrendous pain, and I heard Michael unbuckle his seatbelt and say something right before the entire car blew. I remember going through the windshield but not feeling it. It was only after a few minutes of standing on the street and watching the car burn before I realized something was… really wrong.”
“You were already dead…”
“Yeah,” Quinn choked out, staring at the window across from Rachel’s room, “I realized there was no way I could have gotten out of the car before it blew, and there was no way I could have gone through the windshield and stand up, feeling fine. A few firefighters ran straight through me, and I got it.”
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Rachel sat in stunned silence, the only noise coming from her being her labored breathing. She had tried as hard as she could to not cry, to not let Quinn see how much this whole thing was affecting her. But she had come so far! She never thought she’d be sitting on her bed, listening to her ghost tell her story. Quinn had gone silent; understandably so, Rachel thought.
She perked up a bit when she heard Quinn speak again; almost missing it with how quietly her ghost was speaking at that point. “And then my parents came… and my mom…” Rachel moved her gaze from her lap to the wall across from her, her eyes widening as a dark realization slowly crept up from the back of her mind. Her breath hitched in her throat and her chest tightened up painfully as a memory came rushing back to her.
“Your mom… dropped to her knees in the middle of the street and screamed.” Rachel slowly looked from the window to the space where Quinn was, chilled by the intense silence that blanketed the room like a tomb, after the words left her mouth.
“…How did you know that?” Quinn asked, her voice a terrified whisper.
Rachel’s entire body was numb, and her brain barely registered the world outside of her bedroom at the moment. For Rachel, this was it. The crash she had witnessed when she was six years old, all of the times she couldn’t bring herself to Google the victim’s names, the vivid nightmares about the crash that she had been plagued with constantly for ten years… It was all build-up for this moment.
The brunette licked her lips, trying to bring some moisture back to her mouth. “Rachel,” she heard from next to her, calmer this time, “how did you know that my mom did that after the crash?”
Rachel cocked her head to the right, staring through the wall in front of her and seeing everything from the crash in vivid reds and yellows. The way the fire burned and the way the heat from it radiated through the windows of the other cars on the street. She couldn’t imagine the sort of pain Quinn had gone through… Rachel opened her mouth, ignoring Quinn’s question as a result of being so deep in her own thoughts; “Do you think that it’s possible to transfer a part of yourself to someone else in moments of extreme trauma?” she asked.
Rachel waited a few moments for Quinn to respond before turning to face the air next to her, looking expectant. A full minute of silence passed before Quinn answered, “You’re legitimately insane, aren’t you?”
Rachel slapped her palms onto the bed in front of her, sitting in a cross-legged position, and rolled her eyes. “Do you think that’s possible, Quinn?”
“Seriously? I’ve been a ghost for ten years and you’re asking me if I think something is possible? Anything is possible. Anything,” Quinn answered, frustrated, “But you didn’t answer my-”
“So, theoretically,” Rachel pushed on over Quinn, “Say, someone witnesses someone else’s moment of extreme trauma, and felt raw emotion because that person was at such a young age. Would it be possible if the victim of the trauma somehow transferred a part of themselves to the child witnessing it? Residual energy of some sort?”
Quinn let out a frustrated groan, and Rachel looked at her questioningly. “I’m not following your psycho babble, Berry. Would you please make your point so you can answer my damn question.”
“I was there,” Rachel rushed out, almost cutting Quinn off at the end of her sentence, “I saw the crash, Quinn.”
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Impossible. Quinn stared at Rachel, hard. This girl had to be insane, she had to be. There was no way she was at that crash. Maybe she really was a psychic and could read minds, and read Quinn’s mind and that’s how she knew about -
“I know what you’re thinking, Quinn. I am not reading your mind or doing something equally as impossible right now,” Rachel began.
Quinn cut her off, laughing, “I’m sorry? Mind reading is impossible, but you witnessing the crash that killed me and me somehow transferring magical Quinn energy to you, isn’t?”
Quinn cocked an eyebrow as Rachel set her jaw, slowly folding her arms over her chest. “Are you saying that I didn’t see that crash, Quinn?”
“Yes.”
“Are you calling me a liar, Quinn?”
Quinn thought for a moment before pursing her lips and shrugging. “Yes.” There was no other explanation. She couldn’t have been there. She couldn’t have.
“Are you calling me crazy, Quinn?”
Quinn’s eyes automatically jumped to Rachel’s when she heard the tone of the question. Quinn gazed softly into Rachel’s eyes, for once grateful of having the advantage of being invisible and being able to study anyone for as long as she wanted to. She noticed the hardness that Rachel was trying to convey, the false anger, but Quinn saw the fear in her dark eyes. There was a deeply rooted terror that shone through, and Quinn inwardly grimaced as she remembered what that idiot Finn had said to Rachel. Quinn sighed; what reason would Rachel have for making this up? For lying about something that was such a sensitive subject to Quinn? That would be out of character, and Rachel Berry was nothing if not constantly in character.
“No. Explain this to me, though. Explain to me how you were there.”
Quinn watched Rachel nod before smiling softly. She took that as an unspoken “thank you” for not thinking Rachel was crazy. The brunette stretched her legs out in front of her, checking the time and shaking her head. “Five A.M, I’m going to be forced to skip my elliptical exercising in an hour.”
“Rachel.”
“Oh, right, pardon me. Well, ten years ago, when I was merely a child of six years, I was on my way home from my intermediate ballet class.” Quinn scoffed; Rachel ignored her, continuing, “My father had picked me up, and I was in the backseat listening to him and daddy arguing on the phone over what to have for dinner. They had stopped traffic after the initial crash, I suppose. We were the second car back, and we had a clear view of yours… And then…,” Rachel paused, losing herself in her thoughts again, “it exploded. The fire was incredible; at the time I didn’t know something could get so big.
"It hurt, though… I was terrified. I could feel the heat from it coming through the windows of the car. I wanted to know who was in the car, and if they had gotten out. Somehow… I knew they hadn’t. Well, I knew you hadn’t. I remember I had started crying at some point, and my chest hurt really, really bad, like something had been ripped out of it. My father tried to talk to me, to calm me down, but there was nothing he could have done. I saw, whom I correctly assumed at the time to be, your parents. Your father seemed upset, understandably so, but not as upset as your mother. I remember… I saw the exact moment when realization struck her, it just…” Rachel made a gesture in the air, “It just crossed over her face and it physically hurt to watch. She dropped onto her knees and practically shrieked. It was one of the worst sounds I’ve ever heard in my life. At that point we were being ushered on to drive by so they could close off the roads and clean everything up…”
Quinn had not taken her eyes off of Rachel once during the story; she had the intent to watch her eyes to make sure she wasn’t lying, but in the end, Quinn was fascinated with the emotions that had crossed Rachel’s features. This story wasn’t something that Rachel just remembered, this was something that Rachel thought about constantly.
“Do you ever have nightmares about it?” Quinn asked quietly.
Rachel nodded slowly. “I do. At least once every couple of months.”
“For the past ten years?” Quinn asked, in shock.
Rachel smiled softly. “For the past ten years. Do you see now? Do you understand why I thought a part of you had been transferred to me? I know it seems stupid but it makes sense, doesn’t it? The reason why I found you, why I’m the only one who can hear you! Doesn’t there seem to be some sort of irrevocable connection?”
The blond leaned her head back, cracking and rubbing her neck as she closed her eyes. She never thought ghosts could get headaches, until she met Rachel. “I don’t know, all right? I’m still trying to process the fact that you basically watched me die.”
“So, you believe me then?”
“Of course I believe you,” Quinn bit out, not seeing Rachel’s teary eyes, “Why wouldn’t I?”
Quinn opened her eyes and saw Rachel quickly brush some tears away. “It’s just nice to have someone believe me for once, believe in me and not think I’m just some crazy girl.”
Quinn cocked an eyebrow, casting a quick glance at the beginning of a few sunrays peaking in through the curtains. “If anyone should be grateful for someone believing in them, it should be me, Rachel.” Quinn couldn’t help but smile back as Rachel opened her mouth and smiled fully in her direction. God, she was going soft.
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Rachel sat in her desk chair, pushing herself from side to side with the toe of her black pair of Converse. Well, her only pair of Converse. She had her laptop in its case and sitting on her lap. Despite the life-changing experience she had with Quinn mere hours ago, Rachel still had to push on with her plan of contacting all of her friends via her PowerPoint. She pressed her phone against her ear as the ringing finally stopped and a very annoyed Mercedes answered the phone. “How many times does it have to ring before you realize I’m not going to pick up?”
Rachel’s lips formed a straight line as she furrowed her brow in thought. “But, Mercedes, you did pick up. After the fifty-seventh ring, to be exact. May I inquire as to why you don’t have a voicemail recording? I thought that it was standard practice-”
“What in the hell do you want?” Mercedes snapped through the phone, cutting Rachel off. The brunette dropped her head, closing her eyes and taking a steadying breath.
“I was calling because today I’ve made it my mission,” she pushed on, ignoring Mercedes’ rude groan of exasperation, “to go around to each of my fellow gleek’s residences and show then PowerPoint I made that explains why each member needs to keep up with their vocal exercises over break.”
Rachel listened to the silence from the other end for a minute before asking, “Mercedes? Are you still there? Did you hear me?”
“Unfortunately. I wouldn’t suggest doing that, Rachel, okay? No one’s going to wanna see your face over break, much less hear you babbling on about how ya want them to practice so they can be better.”
Rachel shook her head. “N-no no, Mercedes, that’s not at all why I was doing-”
“And I know I’m speaking for everyone when I say, we aren’t going to practice over break. This is our break. From you. Go enjoy your break by yourself, get some rest and take some chill pills. Just take a breather, Rachel, but don’t come knockin’ on our doors and expect a response.” Rachel heard the click signaling she’d been hung up on. She pulled the phone away from her ear and stared at it in disbelief.
“What does she know,” Rachel mumbled, briskly closing her phone and putting it in her jacket pocket. She stood up with her laptop case, smoothed out her skirt, and sucked in a deep breath. “They’re my friends. They’ll appreciate what I’m trying to do for them.” Rachel left her room and set off into the snow, her laptop case clutched tightly to her chest.
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Two hours later, only Tina had opened the door for Rachel, and that was only because Mike had been there and had made her because of how cold it was. Santana had openly laughed at Rachel through her door, and Brittany had yelled through the same door that she wasn’t there with Santana, either. Kurt refused to acknowledge Rachel’s knocking, even though she did it for ten minutes straight. When she had knocked on Puck’s door, she heard Lauren yelling from inside, and even Rachel had enough good sense in her to know when to run from a potential fight.
“Listen Rachel, I’m sure you have the best intentions at heart, but we don’t want to sing over break. Just go home and get warm, you look like you’re freezing,” Tina said, sympathetically, shutting the door on Rachel.
The small brunette stood on Tina’s doorstep, closing her eyes and sighing dejectedly as she heard the lock click into place. She turned and slowly made her way down the steps, her shoes crunching on the snow. Rachel bit her lip and pretended that the tears coming from her eyes were from the freezing winds, and nothing else.
“You need to go home.” Rachel hardly flinched as she trekked up the street against the harsh winds.
“No,” Rachel responded resolutely. Her arms were on fire from carrying around her laptop for miles, and her entire body was numb and stinging, but she wouldn’t stop.
“This is insane, you need to get home. You’re going to catch pneumonia.”
“I’m not stopping, Quinn.”
“You’ll stop soon enough when you freeze over. If the first seven didn’t let you in, what makes you think the rest will? And why in the hell are you walking? Why didn’t you have your dad drive you?”
Rachel sighed heavily, falling on deaf ears as the wind carried it away before Quinn heard it. “This is exactly why I didn’t have my father drive me. He would have seen that no one opened the door for me, and… I don’t want them to know…”
“That your friends are ignorant idiots?”
“That I don’t have friends,” Rachel corrected Quinn, trudging through the snow.
Rachel was met with silence as she continued walking. Her body was numb, so she couldn’t have felt the electric spark that Quinn’s presence gave her if she wanted to. After a few minutes of walking, curiosity got the best of her. “Are you still here?”
“Yes.”
Rachel smiled softly, her tears slowing down. “Why?”
“I’m nervous from what happened last night. I want to make sure you’re okay.”
Rachel knew that wasn’t the whole truth. “So, have you been stalking me or can you track people with your mind?”
She heard an annoyed scoff from next to her. “Neither. I blinked myself to you.”
Rachel scrunched up her face and shot a look in Quinn’s direction. “Pardon?”
She smiled as she heard another annoyed sigh. “If I can visualize something or someone clear enough, I can get myself there. I don’t know how else to explain it. I just close my eyes and open them again, and I’m there. Not that you need to know that.”
Rachel paused on the sidewalk, her hair whipping across her face from the wind, as she asked, “You can visualize me clear enough to do that?”
Her eyes scanned the area in front of her, back and forth; as the silence drowned on, Rachel’s smile got wider. “I’m beginning to think you like spending time with me, Quinn.” Rachel ignored the sputtering she heard behind her as turned a street corner and headed in the direction of the cherry tree. “I’ll head home, but don’t think that I’ve given up on my mission, Quinn. These people are my friends, I’ll show you.”
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Quinn sat at her kitchen table watching the snow fall outside as she sipped her coffee. “God, that psychotic little midget. It’s got to be below ten degrees out there.”
“Actually,” Quinn heard from the hallway, “It’s eleven degrees. Can you not feel heat or the absence of?”
Quinn jumped, her coffee cup knocking over and disappearing on contact with the table. “What in the hell are you thinking? You can’t just - wait, I thought you were going home?”
The blond watched Rachel purse her lips as she shrugged out of her jacket, saying, “Did I say that? I must have been so delusional from the cold,” as she draped it across the back of a kitchen chair.
Quinn rolled her eyes as she stood and laid her hands flat on the table. “I’m sure your dads are worried about you.”
“I called them, actually,” Rachel said through a smile as she held up her phone, “They just told me to be safe.”
“So, you come to the hell house,” Quinn mutters, raising her head to shoot Rachel an unbelieving look, “Well, what the hell am I supposed to do with you?”
“I was thinking a question and answer session.”
“No!” Quinn shot back immediately as she shook her head, “Why would I - No, just go home, Rachel.”
“Just ten questions, Quinn,” Rachel begged, “We’ve come too far, now. We can’t go back to this cat and mouse game now… Please. Just ten questions.”
Quinn crossed her arms over her chest. No. Absolutely not. Why should she? She gave Rachel her entire death story. No way she was getting anymore than that.
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Quinn seethed as she sat on the couch with her arms crossed tightly over her chest. She glared daggers at the black Converse that were - unknowingly to the shoe wearer herself - “touching” Quinn’s white flats on legs that were crossed Indian-style on the couch. Rachel was sitting close enough that Quinn could see Rachel’s breath when she spoke from the affect Quinn had on the air.
“How old are you?”
“Sixteen.”
“… So, you were sixteen when you died?”
“Yes.”
“Which would make you twenty-six now-”
“No. I’m sixteen.” Quinn watched Rachel open her mouth to argue. “Rachel,” she snapped, cutting her off, “I’m sixteen. Next question.”
“Fine. How tall are you?”
Quinn cocked an eyebrow as she blinked a few times. “Uhm,” she began, looking down her body before shrugging again, “I’d guess 5’6”. Why?”
“I would like to be able to accurately speak with you, and I would rather not be staring at say, your chest, the entire time,” Rachel mumbled, and Quinn couldn’t help but grin in amusement at the blush rising on Rachel’s cheeks.
“Next question or do you need a moment?”
Rachel glared at Quinn, and the blond sucked in a quiet breath as Rachel met her eyes. Maybe she shouldn’t have told Rachel her height.
“What color are your eyes?”
Quinn paused, furrowing her brows, before she open and closed her mouth repeatedly as she tried to figure out why her words were caught in her throat. “Why,” Quinn managed after a moment, clearing her throat, “why do you want to know that?”
Rachel raised her eyebrows. “Why wouldn’t I, Quinn? After all of the interaction and struggling to get to this point, I believe it’s only fair that I get to see you. Apparently you know me well enough to transport yourself to me. Which is another thing that I wish to talk about with you, it seems you have amazing ghost powers and I’d be incredibly-”
Quinn slapped her palms down on her thighs as she ground out, “I’ll show you if you’ll shut up.”
The brunette’s mouth snapped shut as a satisfied smile tugged at her lips. “All right.”
“Follow me,” Quinn grudgingly said as she got up off of the couch. She made her way down the hall before pausing at the bottom of the steps. Quinn turned back to Rachel, her teeth sinking into her lip as she desperately tried to not laugh, she watched the brunette wander around the hall and cautiously peering into rooms.
“I hope you realize that I cannot see you,” Rachel breathed out in an annoyed humph.
“What, you’re not up for a game of Marco Pollo?” Quinn asked in an amused tone as she leaned against the stairway banister.
She watched Rachel’s head whip towards her direction as the brunette raised an eyebrow and threw a charming smile at Quinn. “I refused to play anything but Rachel Berry as a child.”
Quinn rolled her eyes as her lips pursed of their own accord; she scrutinized the brunette as she strode up to her and took in a breath. “Are we going upstairs?”
Quinn nodded before letting out a frustrated breath. She had to stop doing things that Rachel couldn’t see. “Yep. Do we need to play Rachel Berry or will you be able to keep up?”
Rachel glared in Quinn’s direction as she stomped her shoe on the tan carpet. “I do not find you to be amusing, Quinn. But if you wouldn’t mind, could you turn on the lights as you go so I can follow you easier?”
Quinn’s flats were noiseless as she walked upstairs, her fingers ghosting over the hand rail; Rachel’s a second behind. The ghost gave Rachel no response, but as soon as she reached the top of the stairs Quinn made the overhead hall light come on. She heard a soft chuckle behind her as she moved through the hallway, turning right at the last (and second) door on the right. Quinn paused in the doorway as her eyes slowly roamed the room. There were no cobwebs and dust in the house; Quinn made sure to do her part. She could sweep. It had taken her a year but she figured out how to manipulate the air enough to “sweep” the house, and so she did, once a month.
Quinn heard Rachel come to a stop in the hallway behind her; that snapped Quinn out of her thoughts as she used her mind to turn the light on. The ceiling lamp illuminated a light purple room with walls adorned with pictures and trophies. There was a bed off to one side with a dozen stuffed animals placed lovingly on it. On the wall opposite the trophy wall stood the wall lined with pictures. Pictures of Quinn.
Quinn turned her head slightly to the right as she heard a quiet intake of breath from next to her as Rachel stepped into the room. “Was this your room?”
Quinn shook her head. “Not really. This whole house was my aunt and uncle’s, and this was the guest room that I used to stay in when I was here. I did stay here a lot, though. They made it into this after I… died. My aunt calls it the “memory room.”
Rachel moved forward, seemingly pulled by an outside force, as she headed to the end of the picture wall; the most current pictures. Quinn scoffed, most current pictures? The last pictures.
----------
Rachel quietly took in the room as she walked through. It wasn’t quite a shrine; it was just as Quinn’s aunt called it, a memory room. A room full of memories, indeed, Rachel thought. She immediately gravitated toward the picture wall. Focused eyes walked past baby pictures of Quinn, past family trips, past everything until she reached Quinn’s senior pictures.
Quinn Fabray was written in gold script at the bottom of the picture. Quinn Fabray. Rachel never knew that putting a face to a name could make the entire world fall into place. Her hand shook as she brought it up to touch the glass of the frame. Her fingers traced Quinn’s golden blond hair that fell over her shoulders in curls. Rachel chewed on her lip as she looked into the most intense eyes she’d ever seen. She couldn’t tell if they were hazel or green, but she assumed that they probably changed depending on Quinn’s mood. Quinn.
Rachel turned back towards the doorway while keeping her fingers pressed against the glass of the picture. “How long was this taken before…?”
“One month.”
The brunette could now imagine Quinn, leaning against the doorway watching Rachel with her arms folded across her chest, staring at her with those eyes. Rachel shook her head lightly. No, she shouldn’t be having thoughts like that. Rachel didn’t get into sexuality details - her motto was you love who you love and that’s that - but she did get into life and death details, and falling for a ghost was definitely not on her to-do list. She had to admit, though…
“You’re gorgeous,” Rachel breathed out, smiling in Quinn’s direction, “I imagine you look like you did here?”
The room was silent for a moment before Rachel heard Quinn’s voice. “I don’t know. I haven’t been able to see my own reflection in over ten years.”
Rachel groaned inwardly. How insensitive of her. Of course Quinn wouldn’t be able to. “But if it matters, my body has stayed the same. I can see myself, I just… can’t see anything from a mirror.”
Rachel cocked her head to the side, inquisitively. “So, you can see your own form, your hands… your legs… your outfit, you just can’t see your own reflection?”
“Yes.”
Rachel licked her lips as she lost herself in thought. “Interesting… I’ll have to research that later.” After another minute of silence, Rachel looked back to the picture as she let a small smile grace her features. “This is why you didn’t want me to call you twenty-six, right? I imagine you haven’t changed, Quinn. In fact, I’m willing to bet it. You would still in fact be sixteen.”
“That was only three questions."
The brunette tore her gaze away from Quinn’s picture as she turned towards the actual girl. “I don’t need anything else from you today, Quinn. Thank you for sharing what you did…”
“Did you imagine me looking different or something? You looked shocked when you saw me,” Rachel heard from the doorway.
Rachel paused. She had never even been able to accurately picture Quinn. She had never really even put a face to the name; she had always just pictured Quinn as something familiar. It was hard to put into words, or thoughts, the brunette acknowledged to herself. “No, I never… imagined you, to be honest. In my mind you were always just associated with something familiar. You know when you dream about someone, and in your dream you just accept that the person you’re dreaming of is someone familiar and comfortable, and you accept that they don’t need a face or a name because you just know them. That’s how I pictured you.”
Rachel listened patiently for Quinn to respond; turning her attention back to the pictures on the wall, she began scanning the pictures of Quinn with her family and Quinn cheerleading. She paused in front of one where Quinn was holding a trophy in her hands and Coach Sylvester’s arm wrapped around her, both smiling brightly.
“She never used to be as crazy as she is now,” Rachel heard from next to her, “But after I died she kind of… lost it. I was like a daughter to her, and sometimes she was more of a mom to me than my own mom was.”
Rachel’s eyes widened in shock. “That’s incredible… I would have never guessed.”
She felt the hair on her left side stand up and the familiar shot of electricity shoot through her; Quinn was standing close. “That must have been incredibly hard for you to watch,” Rachel mused, quietly.
“You have no idea.”
“And your parents,” Rachel began hesitantly, “are they-”
“I think that’s enough questions for one day, Rachel. Don’t you need to get home?”
Rachel nodded her head softly; opening her mouth to speak, she was interrupted by a knock on the front door downstairs. The house immediately went dark and the only noise was the wind howling as the blizzard continued. Rachel looked horrified as she heard a hurried “stay in here” whispered in her ear before her body stopped tingling, signaling Quinn’s departure. Oh God, Rachel thought, who was there?
Chapter: Four
Author: lifeawakening
Words: 7,052
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.
Rachel woke up with a start, her bangs plastered to her forehead from sweat and her heart racing. She jumped, her hands gripping her bed sheets as she sat up, whipping her gaze around the room. “What’s going on?”
“You needed to wake up,” she heard from right next to her, causing the brunette to jump again.
“Quinn? What are you doing in my room? What’s wrong?” Rachel asked, hastily throwing her sheets to the side as she stood up from her bed.
The brunette felt a cold slap of wind as her hair flew back from her face before she heard an eerie, “Do not move.”
Rachel froze, her eyes widening in fear. “Quinn, you’re scaring me.”
“Good!” Quinn snapped, now from in front of Rachel’s window, as the curtains flew open before closing again, as if she was looking outside. “You should be scared. You can’t associate with me anymore, Rachel!”
Rachel raised her eyebrows, her chest heaving as she tried to catch her breath. “Excuse me? You can’t just come into my private residence, wake me up, scare the -”
A panicked “shut up” was whispered into her ear as all of the hair on her arms stood up. Quinn was standing right behind her now, and Rachel’s lips tingled as if the ghost actually had her hand over her mouth. “They can hear you. They can hear you breath, and they can feel you shaking,” Rachel listened as Quinn’s words ran through her mind, her ear tingling where she imagined the ghost’s lips were, “I can’t let them find you. That’s why I woke you up, they’ll hunt you through your dreams. They know I told you about them. If we can just avoid them this once, then we’ll be okay. If they just don’t find you…”
Rachel focused her gaze on the window, listening intently for any noises. The Ombra were after her now? Her hands started to tremble as she realized how terrifying these spirits must be if they were hunting her so soon.
“Stop shaking,” she heard running through her mind.
Rachel squeezed her eyes shut tightly as she focused on quietly thinking, “Can you hear my thoughts?”
----------
Quinn watched the brunette’s hands stop shaking, cocking her eyebrow as she quickly focused on sending more words to Rachel’s mind. “And don’t think either. Try to keep your mind blank; that shouldn’t be a challenge for you.”
She stood behind Rachel, her arm wrapped around the brunette’s torso and a hand covering her mouth. Quinn knew it was futile, that Rachel couldn’t feel it, but it had been her automatic reaction to stop the brunette from getting them both caught; she saw no use in stopping now. It seemed to have work, anyway.
The room was near pitch black with the moon barely shining through the now closed curtains. Quinn watched the brunette’s chest rise and fall steadily, her hands now completely still. Quinn had no idea what Rachel was thinking, but she knew that the second Rachel stopped panicking, that her thoughts would focus on trying to assess the situation and, God, even worse, actually speak to Quinn.
Quinn tried to concentrate her thoughts on the movements of the Ombra. She could see them in her mind’s eye; she could track their movements and stay off of their radar if she kept her mind quiet enough. Of course, that was proving difficult when she had her arms around Rachel. Quinn bit her lip as she brought her lips back to Rachel’s ear. “I’m going to let go of you, now. Stay absolutely quiet, and stay absolutely still. Force your mind to concentrate on pure blackness, nothing else.
----------
Rachel held her breath; so, her ghost did have her hand over her mouth. Interesting. Rachel filed that away for future thought and research before concentrating on focusing on a wall of blackness.
After what felt like hours later, Rachel’s bedside lamp clicked on. The brunette gasped in shock as she stumbled backward. “Quinn?”
“Sit down, Rachel. We need to have a little chat.”
Rachel turned stoic as she sat down on the edge of the bed, the light from her lamp making her wince after focusing on darkness for so long. “If you think that you’re going to yell at me for what happened here tonight, I’m here to inform you that you are sorely -”
“Rachel,” the brunette heard from in front of her, and she could imagine that Quinn was standing there, scowling at her, “I’m not going to yell at you. This was my own damn fault, actually. I shouldn’t have told you about them. I was just trying to scare you off.”
Rachel looked away, trying to mask the fact that Quinn’s statement hurt her. “When are you going to realize that I’m not going anywhere, Quinn? You can’t scare me off.”
“They almost got you!” Quinn shouted, making Rachel’s hair whip back lightly, but not making Rachel flinch at all.
“May I point out that they didn’t?” She heard Quinn sigh before she got a chill down her right side. Rachel turned her head to the right, assuming Quinn was sitting next to her now. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be obstinate. It’s just, you make it seem like every time that I’m around you, it’s this huge sacrifice on your part, and like I’m somehow causing you a great deal of distress. You think of the most ridiculous excuses to get me to leave you alone that, when a legitimate one happens, I react the same way I did when you said that because I was annoying, I was lowering your chances of getting into Heaven. As if that has anything to do with-”
“Oh my God, shut up,” Quinn barked out.
Rachel cocked an eyebrow. “Don’t take that tone of voice with me, Quinn. And stop glaring at me too, for that matter.” She heard Quinn sputter, and she smiled. “Please, with all of the exaggerated sighs you send my way and the rude tone of your voice most of the time, I’m willing to put money on the fact that you have a perpetual scowl on your face when you’re around me.”
She was met with silence. Rachel glanced down at her fidgeting hands in her lap, worrying that she’d made a mistake and maybe pushed her ghost too far before her thoughts were interrupted. “I don’t want you to feel like that.” Rachel raised an eyebrow in confusion. “I don’t want you to feel like it’s a sacrifice for me to talk to you.”
“It’s not?” Rachel questioned, hopefully.
“Well, it kind of is,” Rachel’s face dropped at the admittance before it was quickly followed up, “But not the way that you think it is. It’s… complicated. You were never a part of my plan, Rachel.”
Rachel laughed lightly, dropping her head and shrugging her shoulders. “I don’t seem to be a part of anyone’s plan.”
“You didn’t let me finish.” Rachel raised her head and looked back in Quinn’s general direction. “You wrote yourself into my plan, yes, but I don’t want to write you out of it. Do I accept that you won’t leave me alone? Yes. Do I still want you to? Sometimes. I’m slowly figuring out that I have to accept that you’re here to stay. But what happened tonight cannot happen again.”
Rachel’s eyes roamed the air in front of her and for the first time, she wished more than anything that she could actually see Quinn. “Thank you, Quinn… I’m afraid that if you want to avoid a repeat of tonight’s incident, you’ll have to tell me more about your situation.”
----------
Quinn sighed, casting an unseen glare at Rachel. She hated that the diva was right about this. Quinn had been terrified when she had sensed the Ombra heading for Rachel’s house. She hadn’t felt terror like that in… well, years. The ghost didn’t think twice as she had blinked herself into Rachel’s house and screamed into the girl’s ear to wake up. She knew if she could get her to wake up, she could protect her. Why Quinn needed to protect her, and why she cared so much in the first place, was irrelevant. For the moment.
She raised her eyes to meet Rachel’s wandering gaze. The brunette had so much compassion and worry in her eyes that Quinn couldn’t help but smile. Rachel really cared about Quinn, and it was nice. Still hard getting used to, but nice. And try as Quinn might, she cared about Rachel, too. On some level, Quinn knew that’s what drove her to run to save her an hour before. It’s also what was going to drive her to do what she was about to do. “Get comfortable. It’s a long story.”
Hazel eyes watched Rachel’s face light up with unmasked relief as she propped herself against her pillows. Quinn opened her mouth to speak when Rachel interrupted her. “You may feel free to get comfortable yourself, Quinn. You could sit by me on the bed, here. My father’s imported these pillows special for me and I must say, they’re quite comfortable. I’m not sure if you can actually feel them but -”
Quinn groaned from her new spot next to Rachel, leaning against the “comfortable” pillows against her headboard. “Wonderful pillows, really. No, I can’t feel them. Can I start my story now?”
Rachel bit her lip, hiding a smile Quinn guessed, as she nodded. “By all means.”
Quinn took a steadying breath, wringing her hands in the lap of her faded, red McKinley High sweats. She didn’t know what it meant that she was about to tell Rachel her story; but she knew that if she over thought it, she would panic and run. She needed to get her story out there. She highly doubted that she would be forced to move on to the “great beyond” at this point; telling Rachel would do nothing but possibly ease her soul. Quinn looked into Rachel’s expectant eyes. Somehow she felt like she owed this to Rachel, like this was the time she was destined to tell Rachel her story. She couldn’t explain why she felt this way, just that she did; so she took that as a sign. She was grasping at straws when it came to any sign she was given, at this point.
“The year was 2000. I was the head Cheerio at McKinley, and I had it all,” she scoffs, bitterly, “I was popular, the typical definition of beautiful, and I was dating the captain of the hockey team. It was October 24th, and my boyfriend and I were on the way to this ridiculously stupid pre-Halloween party at some idiot jock’s house. I didn’t want to go in the first place, but Michael - my boyfriend at the time - dragged me there anyway.”
Quinn paused, taking in a deep breath in an attempt to steady her voice. It failed, however, and her voice wavered as she continued. “In the car on the way there, he started drinking a beer that I didn’t even know he had in there. I hated it when he did that, and he knew it. I guess the whole thing was partly my fault, to be honest. We got into an argument over his drinking and the fact that I hated parties, yet he still dragged me to them. That was typical, for us; we were together for our reputations, nothing more. I demanded that he pull the car over so I could get out because I refused to drive with an alcoholic. We were on the main street, the one you can see from the park by my house, you know.
He was screaming at me, I was screaming at him, and I remember the radio was playing that stupid Lonestar Amazed song. Michael lost control of the wheel when he was turning a corner and smashed into an electrical box by the stoplight.”
Quinn sucked in another shaky breath. The irony of the fact that she didn’t even need to breathe never escaped her. She chanced a glance at Rachel, and watched the girl desperately try to cover up the tears that were pouring from her eyes. “It’s okay to cry,” Quinn said, nonchalantly, “I cry, too, when I think about it.” And it was true, Quinn thought, as she felt her own tears wet her face.
Rachel shook her head gently, staring deep into Quinn’s eyes as if she knew exactly where she was looking. “Did it hurt?”
Quinn was silent for a long while after that question. She pulled her knees to her chest and stared off in the distance, mentally reliving the experience for the first time in years.
“Yes,” she finally breathed out, her voice perfectly steady.
“Did you… die… almost instantly?” Rachel asked, her voice cracking on almost every syllable as she tried to speak through her tears. Her bangs hung in her eyes and her hands were shaking as she unconsciously reached her hand out to comfort Quinn. The ghost watched Rachel search the air in front of her with her gaze before sighing and drawing her hand back into her lap.
“I don’t know,” Quinn admitted, “I remember a few seconds of horrendous pain, and I heard Michael unbuckle his seatbelt and say something right before the entire car blew. I remember going through the windshield but not feeling it. It was only after a few minutes of standing on the street and watching the car burn before I realized something was… really wrong.”
“You were already dead…”
“Yeah,” Quinn choked out, staring at the window across from Rachel’s room, “I realized there was no way I could have gotten out of the car before it blew, and there was no way I could have gone through the windshield and stand up, feeling fine. A few firefighters ran straight through me, and I got it.”
----------
Rachel sat in stunned silence, the only noise coming from her being her labored breathing. She had tried as hard as she could to not cry, to not let Quinn see how much this whole thing was affecting her. But she had come so far! She never thought she’d be sitting on her bed, listening to her ghost tell her story. Quinn had gone silent; understandably so, Rachel thought.
She perked up a bit when she heard Quinn speak again; almost missing it with how quietly her ghost was speaking at that point. “And then my parents came… and my mom…” Rachel moved her gaze from her lap to the wall across from her, her eyes widening as a dark realization slowly crept up from the back of her mind. Her breath hitched in her throat and her chest tightened up painfully as a memory came rushing back to her.
“Your mom… dropped to her knees in the middle of the street and screamed.” Rachel slowly looked from the window to the space where Quinn was, chilled by the intense silence that blanketed the room like a tomb, after the words left her mouth.
“…How did you know that?” Quinn asked, her voice a terrified whisper.
Rachel’s entire body was numb, and her brain barely registered the world outside of her bedroom at the moment. For Rachel, this was it. The crash she had witnessed when she was six years old, all of the times she couldn’t bring herself to Google the victim’s names, the vivid nightmares about the crash that she had been plagued with constantly for ten years… It was all build-up for this moment.
The brunette licked her lips, trying to bring some moisture back to her mouth. “Rachel,” she heard from next to her, calmer this time, “how did you know that my mom did that after the crash?”
Rachel cocked her head to the right, staring through the wall in front of her and seeing everything from the crash in vivid reds and yellows. The way the fire burned and the way the heat from it radiated through the windows of the other cars on the street. She couldn’t imagine the sort of pain Quinn had gone through… Rachel opened her mouth, ignoring Quinn’s question as a result of being so deep in her own thoughts; “Do you think that it’s possible to transfer a part of yourself to someone else in moments of extreme trauma?” she asked.
Rachel waited a few moments for Quinn to respond before turning to face the air next to her, looking expectant. A full minute of silence passed before Quinn answered, “You’re legitimately insane, aren’t you?”
Rachel slapped her palms onto the bed in front of her, sitting in a cross-legged position, and rolled her eyes. “Do you think that’s possible, Quinn?”
“Seriously? I’ve been a ghost for ten years and you’re asking me if I think something is possible? Anything is possible. Anything,” Quinn answered, frustrated, “But you didn’t answer my-”
“So, theoretically,” Rachel pushed on over Quinn, “Say, someone witnesses someone else’s moment of extreme trauma, and felt raw emotion because that person was at such a young age. Would it be possible if the victim of the trauma somehow transferred a part of themselves to the child witnessing it? Residual energy of some sort?”
Quinn let out a frustrated groan, and Rachel looked at her questioningly. “I’m not following your psycho babble, Berry. Would you please make your point so you can answer my damn question.”
“I was there,” Rachel rushed out, almost cutting Quinn off at the end of her sentence, “I saw the crash, Quinn.”
----------
Impossible. Quinn stared at Rachel, hard. This girl had to be insane, she had to be. There was no way she was at that crash. Maybe she really was a psychic and could read minds, and read Quinn’s mind and that’s how she knew about -
“I know what you’re thinking, Quinn. I am not reading your mind or doing something equally as impossible right now,” Rachel began.
Quinn cut her off, laughing, “I’m sorry? Mind reading is impossible, but you witnessing the crash that killed me and me somehow transferring magical Quinn energy to you, isn’t?”
Quinn cocked an eyebrow as Rachel set her jaw, slowly folding her arms over her chest. “Are you saying that I didn’t see that crash, Quinn?”
“Yes.”
“Are you calling me a liar, Quinn?”
Quinn thought for a moment before pursing her lips and shrugging. “Yes.” There was no other explanation. She couldn’t have been there. She couldn’t have.
“Are you calling me crazy, Quinn?”
Quinn’s eyes automatically jumped to Rachel’s when she heard the tone of the question. Quinn gazed softly into Rachel’s eyes, for once grateful of having the advantage of being invisible and being able to study anyone for as long as she wanted to. She noticed the hardness that Rachel was trying to convey, the false anger, but Quinn saw the fear in her dark eyes. There was a deeply rooted terror that shone through, and Quinn inwardly grimaced as she remembered what that idiot Finn had said to Rachel. Quinn sighed; what reason would Rachel have for making this up? For lying about something that was such a sensitive subject to Quinn? That would be out of character, and Rachel Berry was nothing if not constantly in character.
“No. Explain this to me, though. Explain to me how you were there.”
Quinn watched Rachel nod before smiling softly. She took that as an unspoken “thank you” for not thinking Rachel was crazy. The brunette stretched her legs out in front of her, checking the time and shaking her head. “Five A.M, I’m going to be forced to skip my elliptical exercising in an hour.”
“Rachel.”
“Oh, right, pardon me. Well, ten years ago, when I was merely a child of six years, I was on my way home from my intermediate ballet class.” Quinn scoffed; Rachel ignored her, continuing, “My father had picked me up, and I was in the backseat listening to him and daddy arguing on the phone over what to have for dinner. They had stopped traffic after the initial crash, I suppose. We were the second car back, and we had a clear view of yours… And then…,” Rachel paused, losing herself in her thoughts again, “it exploded. The fire was incredible; at the time I didn’t know something could get so big.
"It hurt, though… I was terrified. I could feel the heat from it coming through the windows of the car. I wanted to know who was in the car, and if they had gotten out. Somehow… I knew they hadn’t. Well, I knew you hadn’t. I remember I had started crying at some point, and my chest hurt really, really bad, like something had been ripped out of it. My father tried to talk to me, to calm me down, but there was nothing he could have done. I saw, whom I correctly assumed at the time to be, your parents. Your father seemed upset, understandably so, but not as upset as your mother. I remember… I saw the exact moment when realization struck her, it just…” Rachel made a gesture in the air, “It just crossed over her face and it physically hurt to watch. She dropped onto her knees and practically shrieked. It was one of the worst sounds I’ve ever heard in my life. At that point we were being ushered on to drive by so they could close off the roads and clean everything up…”
Quinn had not taken her eyes off of Rachel once during the story; she had the intent to watch her eyes to make sure she wasn’t lying, but in the end, Quinn was fascinated with the emotions that had crossed Rachel’s features. This story wasn’t something that Rachel just remembered, this was something that Rachel thought about constantly.
“Do you ever have nightmares about it?” Quinn asked quietly.
Rachel nodded slowly. “I do. At least once every couple of months.”
“For the past ten years?” Quinn asked, in shock.
Rachel smiled softly. “For the past ten years. Do you see now? Do you understand why I thought a part of you had been transferred to me? I know it seems stupid but it makes sense, doesn’t it? The reason why I found you, why I’m the only one who can hear you! Doesn’t there seem to be some sort of irrevocable connection?”
The blond leaned her head back, cracking and rubbing her neck as she closed her eyes. She never thought ghosts could get headaches, until she met Rachel. “I don’t know, all right? I’m still trying to process the fact that you basically watched me die.”
“So, you believe me then?”
“Of course I believe you,” Quinn bit out, not seeing Rachel’s teary eyes, “Why wouldn’t I?”
Quinn opened her eyes and saw Rachel quickly brush some tears away. “It’s just nice to have someone believe me for once, believe in me and not think I’m just some crazy girl.”
Quinn cocked an eyebrow, casting a quick glance at the beginning of a few sunrays peaking in through the curtains. “If anyone should be grateful for someone believing in them, it should be me, Rachel.” Quinn couldn’t help but smile back as Rachel opened her mouth and smiled fully in her direction. God, she was going soft.
----------
Rachel sat in her desk chair, pushing herself from side to side with the toe of her black pair of Converse. Well, her only pair of Converse. She had her laptop in its case and sitting on her lap. Despite the life-changing experience she had with Quinn mere hours ago, Rachel still had to push on with her plan of contacting all of her friends via her PowerPoint. She pressed her phone against her ear as the ringing finally stopped and a very annoyed Mercedes answered the phone. “How many times does it have to ring before you realize I’m not going to pick up?”
Rachel’s lips formed a straight line as she furrowed her brow in thought. “But, Mercedes, you did pick up. After the fifty-seventh ring, to be exact. May I inquire as to why you don’t have a voicemail recording? I thought that it was standard practice-”
“What in the hell do you want?” Mercedes snapped through the phone, cutting Rachel off. The brunette dropped her head, closing her eyes and taking a steadying breath.
“I was calling because today I’ve made it my mission,” she pushed on, ignoring Mercedes’ rude groan of exasperation, “to go around to each of my fellow gleek’s residences and show then PowerPoint I made that explains why each member needs to keep up with their vocal exercises over break.”
Rachel listened to the silence from the other end for a minute before asking, “Mercedes? Are you still there? Did you hear me?”
“Unfortunately. I wouldn’t suggest doing that, Rachel, okay? No one’s going to wanna see your face over break, much less hear you babbling on about how ya want them to practice so they can be better.”
Rachel shook her head. “N-no no, Mercedes, that’s not at all why I was doing-”
“And I know I’m speaking for everyone when I say, we aren’t going to practice over break. This is our break. From you. Go enjoy your break by yourself, get some rest and take some chill pills. Just take a breather, Rachel, but don’t come knockin’ on our doors and expect a response.” Rachel heard the click signaling she’d been hung up on. She pulled the phone away from her ear and stared at it in disbelief.
“What does she know,” Rachel mumbled, briskly closing her phone and putting it in her jacket pocket. She stood up with her laptop case, smoothed out her skirt, and sucked in a deep breath. “They’re my friends. They’ll appreciate what I’m trying to do for them.” Rachel left her room and set off into the snow, her laptop case clutched tightly to her chest.
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Two hours later, only Tina had opened the door for Rachel, and that was only because Mike had been there and had made her because of how cold it was. Santana had openly laughed at Rachel through her door, and Brittany had yelled through the same door that she wasn’t there with Santana, either. Kurt refused to acknowledge Rachel’s knocking, even though she did it for ten minutes straight. When she had knocked on Puck’s door, she heard Lauren yelling from inside, and even Rachel had enough good sense in her to know when to run from a potential fight.
“Listen Rachel, I’m sure you have the best intentions at heart, but we don’t want to sing over break. Just go home and get warm, you look like you’re freezing,” Tina said, sympathetically, shutting the door on Rachel.
The small brunette stood on Tina’s doorstep, closing her eyes and sighing dejectedly as she heard the lock click into place. She turned and slowly made her way down the steps, her shoes crunching on the snow. Rachel bit her lip and pretended that the tears coming from her eyes were from the freezing winds, and nothing else.
“You need to go home.” Rachel hardly flinched as she trekked up the street against the harsh winds.
“No,” Rachel responded resolutely. Her arms were on fire from carrying around her laptop for miles, and her entire body was numb and stinging, but she wouldn’t stop.
“This is insane, you need to get home. You’re going to catch pneumonia.”
“I’m not stopping, Quinn.”
“You’ll stop soon enough when you freeze over. If the first seven didn’t let you in, what makes you think the rest will? And why in the hell are you walking? Why didn’t you have your dad drive you?”
Rachel sighed heavily, falling on deaf ears as the wind carried it away before Quinn heard it. “This is exactly why I didn’t have my father drive me. He would have seen that no one opened the door for me, and… I don’t want them to know…”
“That your friends are ignorant idiots?”
“That I don’t have friends,” Rachel corrected Quinn, trudging through the snow.
Rachel was met with silence as she continued walking. Her body was numb, so she couldn’t have felt the electric spark that Quinn’s presence gave her if she wanted to. After a few minutes of walking, curiosity got the best of her. “Are you still here?”
“Yes.”
Rachel smiled softly, her tears slowing down. “Why?”
“I’m nervous from what happened last night. I want to make sure you’re okay.”
Rachel knew that wasn’t the whole truth. “So, have you been stalking me or can you track people with your mind?”
She heard an annoyed scoff from next to her. “Neither. I blinked myself to you.”
Rachel scrunched up her face and shot a look in Quinn’s direction. “Pardon?”
She smiled as she heard another annoyed sigh. “If I can visualize something or someone clear enough, I can get myself there. I don’t know how else to explain it. I just close my eyes and open them again, and I’m there. Not that you need to know that.”
Rachel paused on the sidewalk, her hair whipping across her face from the wind, as she asked, “You can visualize me clear enough to do that?”
Her eyes scanned the area in front of her, back and forth; as the silence drowned on, Rachel’s smile got wider. “I’m beginning to think you like spending time with me, Quinn.” Rachel ignored the sputtering she heard behind her as turned a street corner and headed in the direction of the cherry tree. “I’ll head home, but don’t think that I’ve given up on my mission, Quinn. These people are my friends, I’ll show you.”
----------
Quinn sat at her kitchen table watching the snow fall outside as she sipped her coffee. “God, that psychotic little midget. It’s got to be below ten degrees out there.”
“Actually,” Quinn heard from the hallway, “It’s eleven degrees. Can you not feel heat or the absence of?”
Quinn jumped, her coffee cup knocking over and disappearing on contact with the table. “What in the hell are you thinking? You can’t just - wait, I thought you were going home?”
The blond watched Rachel purse her lips as she shrugged out of her jacket, saying, “Did I say that? I must have been so delusional from the cold,” as she draped it across the back of a kitchen chair.
Quinn rolled her eyes as she stood and laid her hands flat on the table. “I’m sure your dads are worried about you.”
“I called them, actually,” Rachel said through a smile as she held up her phone, “They just told me to be safe.”
“So, you come to the hell house,” Quinn mutters, raising her head to shoot Rachel an unbelieving look, “Well, what the hell am I supposed to do with you?”
“I was thinking a question and answer session.”
“No!” Quinn shot back immediately as she shook her head, “Why would I - No, just go home, Rachel.”
“Just ten questions, Quinn,” Rachel begged, “We’ve come too far, now. We can’t go back to this cat and mouse game now… Please. Just ten questions.”
Quinn crossed her arms over her chest. No. Absolutely not. Why should she? She gave Rachel her entire death story. No way she was getting anymore than that.
----------
Quinn seethed as she sat on the couch with her arms crossed tightly over her chest. She glared daggers at the black Converse that were - unknowingly to the shoe wearer herself - “touching” Quinn’s white flats on legs that were crossed Indian-style on the couch. Rachel was sitting close enough that Quinn could see Rachel’s breath when she spoke from the affect Quinn had on the air.
“How old are you?”
“Sixteen.”
“… So, you were sixteen when you died?”
“Yes.”
“Which would make you twenty-six now-”
“No. I’m sixteen.” Quinn watched Rachel open her mouth to argue. “Rachel,” she snapped, cutting her off, “I’m sixteen. Next question.”
“Fine. How tall are you?”
Quinn cocked an eyebrow as she blinked a few times. “Uhm,” she began, looking down her body before shrugging again, “I’d guess 5’6”. Why?”
“I would like to be able to accurately speak with you, and I would rather not be staring at say, your chest, the entire time,” Rachel mumbled, and Quinn couldn’t help but grin in amusement at the blush rising on Rachel’s cheeks.
“Next question or do you need a moment?”
Rachel glared at Quinn, and the blond sucked in a quiet breath as Rachel met her eyes. Maybe she shouldn’t have told Rachel her height.
“What color are your eyes?”
Quinn paused, furrowing her brows, before she open and closed her mouth repeatedly as she tried to figure out why her words were caught in her throat. “Why,” Quinn managed after a moment, clearing her throat, “why do you want to know that?”
Rachel raised her eyebrows. “Why wouldn’t I, Quinn? After all of the interaction and struggling to get to this point, I believe it’s only fair that I get to see you. Apparently you know me well enough to transport yourself to me. Which is another thing that I wish to talk about with you, it seems you have amazing ghost powers and I’d be incredibly-”
Quinn slapped her palms down on her thighs as she ground out, “I’ll show you if you’ll shut up.”
The brunette’s mouth snapped shut as a satisfied smile tugged at her lips. “All right.”
“Follow me,” Quinn grudgingly said as she got up off of the couch. She made her way down the hall before pausing at the bottom of the steps. Quinn turned back to Rachel, her teeth sinking into her lip as she desperately tried to not laugh, she watched the brunette wander around the hall and cautiously peering into rooms.
“I hope you realize that I cannot see you,” Rachel breathed out in an annoyed humph.
“What, you’re not up for a game of Marco Pollo?” Quinn asked in an amused tone as she leaned against the stairway banister.
She watched Rachel’s head whip towards her direction as the brunette raised an eyebrow and threw a charming smile at Quinn. “I refused to play anything but Rachel Berry as a child.”
Quinn rolled her eyes as her lips pursed of their own accord; she scrutinized the brunette as she strode up to her and took in a breath. “Are we going upstairs?”
Quinn nodded before letting out a frustrated breath. She had to stop doing things that Rachel couldn’t see. “Yep. Do we need to play Rachel Berry or will you be able to keep up?”
Rachel glared in Quinn’s direction as she stomped her shoe on the tan carpet. “I do not find you to be amusing, Quinn. But if you wouldn’t mind, could you turn on the lights as you go so I can follow you easier?”
Quinn’s flats were noiseless as she walked upstairs, her fingers ghosting over the hand rail; Rachel’s a second behind. The ghost gave Rachel no response, but as soon as she reached the top of the stairs Quinn made the overhead hall light come on. She heard a soft chuckle behind her as she moved through the hallway, turning right at the last (and second) door on the right. Quinn paused in the doorway as her eyes slowly roamed the room. There were no cobwebs and dust in the house; Quinn made sure to do her part. She could sweep. It had taken her a year but she figured out how to manipulate the air enough to “sweep” the house, and so she did, once a month.
Quinn heard Rachel come to a stop in the hallway behind her; that snapped Quinn out of her thoughts as she used her mind to turn the light on. The ceiling lamp illuminated a light purple room with walls adorned with pictures and trophies. There was a bed off to one side with a dozen stuffed animals placed lovingly on it. On the wall opposite the trophy wall stood the wall lined with pictures. Pictures of Quinn.
Quinn turned her head slightly to the right as she heard a quiet intake of breath from next to her as Rachel stepped into the room. “Was this your room?”
Quinn shook her head. “Not really. This whole house was my aunt and uncle’s, and this was the guest room that I used to stay in when I was here. I did stay here a lot, though. They made it into this after I… died. My aunt calls it the “memory room.”
Rachel moved forward, seemingly pulled by an outside force, as she headed to the end of the picture wall; the most current pictures. Quinn scoffed, most current pictures? The last pictures.
----------
Rachel quietly took in the room as she walked through. It wasn’t quite a shrine; it was just as Quinn’s aunt called it, a memory room. A room full of memories, indeed, Rachel thought. She immediately gravitated toward the picture wall. Focused eyes walked past baby pictures of Quinn, past family trips, past everything until she reached Quinn’s senior pictures.
Quinn Fabray was written in gold script at the bottom of the picture. Quinn Fabray. Rachel never knew that putting a face to a name could make the entire world fall into place. Her hand shook as she brought it up to touch the glass of the frame. Her fingers traced Quinn’s golden blond hair that fell over her shoulders in curls. Rachel chewed on her lip as she looked into the most intense eyes she’d ever seen. She couldn’t tell if they were hazel or green, but she assumed that they probably changed depending on Quinn’s mood. Quinn.
Rachel turned back towards the doorway while keeping her fingers pressed against the glass of the picture. “How long was this taken before…?”
“One month.”
The brunette could now imagine Quinn, leaning against the doorway watching Rachel with her arms folded across her chest, staring at her with those eyes. Rachel shook her head lightly. No, she shouldn’t be having thoughts like that. Rachel didn’t get into sexuality details - her motto was you love who you love and that’s that - but she did get into life and death details, and falling for a ghost was definitely not on her to-do list. She had to admit, though…
“You’re gorgeous,” Rachel breathed out, smiling in Quinn’s direction, “I imagine you look like you did here?”
The room was silent for a moment before Rachel heard Quinn’s voice. “I don’t know. I haven’t been able to see my own reflection in over ten years.”
Rachel groaned inwardly. How insensitive of her. Of course Quinn wouldn’t be able to. “But if it matters, my body has stayed the same. I can see myself, I just… can’t see anything from a mirror.”
Rachel cocked her head to the side, inquisitively. “So, you can see your own form, your hands… your legs… your outfit, you just can’t see your own reflection?”
“Yes.”
Rachel licked her lips as she lost herself in thought. “Interesting… I’ll have to research that later.” After another minute of silence, Rachel looked back to the picture as she let a small smile grace her features. “This is why you didn’t want me to call you twenty-six, right? I imagine you haven’t changed, Quinn. In fact, I’m willing to bet it. You would still in fact be sixteen.”
“That was only three questions."
The brunette tore her gaze away from Quinn’s picture as she turned towards the actual girl. “I don’t need anything else from you today, Quinn. Thank you for sharing what you did…”
“Did you imagine me looking different or something? You looked shocked when you saw me,” Rachel heard from the doorway.
Rachel paused. She had never even been able to accurately picture Quinn. She had never really even put a face to the name; she had always just pictured Quinn as something familiar. It was hard to put into words, or thoughts, the brunette acknowledged to herself. “No, I never… imagined you, to be honest. In my mind you were always just associated with something familiar. You know when you dream about someone, and in your dream you just accept that the person you’re dreaming of is someone familiar and comfortable, and you accept that they don’t need a face or a name because you just know them. That’s how I pictured you.”
Rachel listened patiently for Quinn to respond; turning her attention back to the pictures on the wall, she began scanning the pictures of Quinn with her family and Quinn cheerleading. She paused in front of one where Quinn was holding a trophy in her hands and Coach Sylvester’s arm wrapped around her, both smiling brightly.
“She never used to be as crazy as she is now,” Rachel heard from next to her, “But after I died she kind of… lost it. I was like a daughter to her, and sometimes she was more of a mom to me than my own mom was.”
Rachel’s eyes widened in shock. “That’s incredible… I would have never guessed.”
She felt the hair on her left side stand up and the familiar shot of electricity shoot through her; Quinn was standing close. “That must have been incredibly hard for you to watch,” Rachel mused, quietly.
“You have no idea.”
“And your parents,” Rachel began hesitantly, “are they-”
“I think that’s enough questions for one day, Rachel. Don’t you need to get home?”
Rachel nodded her head softly; opening her mouth to speak, she was interrupted by a knock on the front door downstairs. The house immediately went dark and the only noise was the wind howling as the blizzard continued. Rachel looked horrified as she heard a hurried “stay in here” whispered in her ear before her body stopped tingling, signaling Quinn’s departure. Oh God, Rachel thought, who was there?