Ladies And Gentlemen, Listen Up Please (I Don’t Want To Be Your Hero) (3/29)
Title: Ladies And Gentlemen, Listen Up Please (I Don’t Want To Be Your Hero) (3/29)
Pairing: Rachel Berry/Quinn Fabray, Santana Lopez/Brittany Pierce, minor Artie Abrams/Tina Cohen-Chang
Rating: R
Disclaimer: Nothing owned, no profit gained.
Spoilers: AU
Summary: “Sometimes, people are born a little different.”
The building Rachel takes her to is nicer than she expects-although, since she was expecting some dank heroin cubbyhole, she supposes that’s not especially surprising. There is no doorman, but the walls aren’t exactly crumbling and most of the paint is still on the doors. The carpet is uglier than sin, but this is not the décor capital of the western world. You can’t have everything.
The apartment in question is on the fifth floor; to get there, they pile into an elevator that sounds as though it’s seen better lifetimes. Quinn counts backwards from forty with her eyes shut, praying she has not come this far in life to plunge to a miserable death with a psychotic bleeding midget at her side.
Of all the diners in all the world, fucking crazies always walk into mine. What’s up with that?
“Come on,” Rachel says, reaching out to take Quinn’s hand yet again and pulling her from the elevator. “It’s just down the hall. Keep up.”
She wishes the girl would at least stop ordering her around. It’s making her more than a little edgy, all things considered; she suspects getting kidnapped has the tendency to bring these feelings out in a person.
“Here,” Rachel adds, skidding to a stop before a door with-seriously?-a large foil star plastered above the peephole. She fumbles in her pocket, wincing. Quinn sighs.
“Let me.”
It’s weird to stuff your hand into a stranger’s pants before you’ve even exchanged numbers, but from the way Rachel’s been leaning, she’s pretty sure the girl has some severely bruised ribs. Digging for her keys is exactly the kind of simple act that might take ages without a little aid.
“Thank you,” Rachel mutters, taking the tarnished silver key ring and seeking out the correct piece for the door. Quinn buries her hands in her own pockets and shrugs.
“Don’t mention it.”
Rachel leads the way, holding once again to her damaged ribcage. “Lock it behind you. The last thing we need right now is another visitor.”
Quinn does what she’s asked-told, more like-and drags her feet after the girl. “Are you going to answer some questions now?” she demands. “Because I am really not in the mood for this kind of bull-“
She rounds the same corner Rachel has just disappeared around and halts, eyes wide. “Shit,” she finishes uneasily, taking in the numerous pairs of eyes. “Um. Hello.”
There are no fewer than eleven other people in this room, including Rachel, and every single one of them is staring at her. Quinn has the sudden sense that she’s back in high school, locked in one of those brutal nightmares in which she’s supposed to perform a monologue she’s never heard of. In French. In her underwear.
If I look down and my uniform’s gone, I swear to God, I’m taking to the window.
“Quinn Fabray,” Rachel says firmly, leaning against the side of a couch like it’s the last thing holding her upright. “Meet New Directions. Guys…Quinn.”
New Directions? Quinn’s palms have begun to sweat, her hair standing on end. A gang. Rachel has brought her to a gang, all shut up in this weird little apartment-which, actually, is not so little as she thought-and every single person is gaping at her like they’ve never seen a waitress before. Suddenly, Quinn wishes she carried mace.
Weirdly, though, they don’t look particularly gang-like. Not that they don’t look tough, because they really, really do; every single face is stony, more than a few pock-marked with minor scars, and the guy on the far left of the couch is massive. But most of the others look more rag-tag than brutal; there’s a young man with the fine features of a boy, a heavyset black woman with liquid eyes, and-Christ-even a man in a wheelchair. She’s never heard of a gang like this.
Then again, there is also the giant in the corner, a bronze-skinned guy with a mohawk, and an Asian girl who looks more or less capable of ripping out a person’s throat with her glare alone. Not to mention the ferocious-looking Latina seated on the chair, mashed up against a willowy blonde with icy blue eyes.
The Latina.
She’s seen that girl before, standing just inside the diner in her flowing brown trenchcoat, nursing a black eye with a sweating glass of ice water. She looked tortured then, frustrated. Now, she looks murderous.
“Um,” Quinn says, her voice squeaking unproductively. “What…”
Rachel’s brow is sweating, her eyes half-closed. She sucks in a breath and immediately winces. “I’ll answer your questions in a moment, Quinn. I just need…a moment.”
As if on cue, the plastic cover draped over the room tears open. The mohawked man and giant leap off the couch, grasping Rachel gingerly by the arms and guiding her to sit. Wheelchair Guy and Tough Asian Chick go rummaging in a bag, coming up with bandages and rubbing alcohol. The Angry Latina continues to watch Quinn with predatory eyes. She swallows.
“You walked right into him, didn’t you?” the babyfaced man asks haughtily. Rachel raises her chin.
“Certainly not. He knows. We knew that. I couldn’t get close without crossing his path.”
“Bad idea, little one,” Mohawk warns, carefully wiping at the wound above her eye. “This one’ll scar.”
“I didn’t have a choice, Noah,” she snaps. He shrugs, moving to her hand. The Giant reaches for the hem of her layered shirts, and she adds, “Finn, I can take care of it. Go get a change of clothes for Quinn.”
“What’s wrong with this?” Quinn demands, feeling strangely offended. Rachel’s eyes meet hers; surprisingly, the girl smiles.
“You can’t go wandering around in a waitress uniform. It’s simply not conducive to free motion.”
Quinn bristles. “It is perfectly conducive to…what kind of motion?”
“The running kind,” Angry Latina cuts in, baring her teeth in what Quinn thinks might be a smile. The blonde beside her runs a hand up the young woman’s arm, stilling her. Rachel sighs.
“Santana, I would appreciate you not terrifying the girl just now.”
“Yeah, Lopez,” the man known as Noah sneers. “Can it.”
“I will cut your balls off, Puckerman,” Santana fires back, grinning wickedly. The blonde leans down and presses her lips to the woman’s ear; instantly, Santana sobers and leans back.
The giant-Finn-returns with an armful of ragged clothing, all in shades of black, gray, brown. Quinn arches an eyebrow.
“What, are you guys allergic to the rainbow?”
“More like allergic to dying,” Santana quips, leaning her head against the blonde’s and smirking. Finn shrugs.
“Bright colors attract attention,” he says calmly, pressing the bundle into Quinn’s hands. “This is better for moving under cover of darkness.”
“Besides,” Babyface drawls, “black never goes out of style. It’s perfect on all levels.”
They’re crazy, Quinn realizes numbly. She had thought them simple hostile, but now it seems they’re truly insane. The real kind of insanity, Girl, Interrupted-wacky, sharing one big hallucination of…what?
“I’m aware this is not customary,” Rachel says quietly, as if hearing Quinn’s thoughts. “This must all seem very strange to you. And very much like a felony.”
“Kidnapping is kind of a bitch move,” Quinn agrees sharply. Rachel smiles.
“I agree. However, I would prefer you not to think of what I’ve done as kidnapping so much as…rescuing.”
“Rescuing from what?” Quinn growls, hugging the clothing protectively against her chest. “I was at work. Not a lot to rescue me from there, apart from dirty dishes and mopwater.”
“From a very unpleasant man, actually,” Rachel says, oddly serene for someone currently hiking her three shirts up under her arm. She gives a faint nod to Tough Asian Chick, hissing when the other woman moves to press an ice pack to the angry bruises crawling up her side.
“Nice bruises, Berry,” Noah leers, rubbing a hand over his dark mohawk. Quinn thinks she sees something like fear lurking behind his eyes; he actually seems to care.
They all do, to one degree or another, even Babyface, with his arrogantly crossed arms, and the two silent men in the corner. They might be crazy, but at least they all seem to genuinely give a damn. That’s more than most lunatics can claim.
“Baseball bat?” Wheelchair Guy queries, eyes fixed on the brownish-purple patterns. Rachel nods.
“He was feeling particularly human today, it seemed. Maybe he’s still weak from last time.”
“Hell yeah, he would be,” Santana drawls, head lolling back lazily. “I torched that motherfucker good.”
“You shouldn’t have been out,” Rachel says sharply. The Latina straightens up, scowling; Quinn gets the feeling she’s about to witness a repetitive sort of argument.
“I had a chance. I took it.”
“And nearly lost your life in the process,” Rachel snaps, pushing the ice pack away and gesturing towards a roll of wrappings. “We can’t afford to lose anyone else, Santana. Not with Karofsky and Azimo out of the picture. Our numbers are dwindling.”
“Our numbers are fucking fine,” Santana jeers. “You’re just jealous I got out and took a chunk out of him first.”
“Guys,” the blonde on the chair speaks up, brushing a tendril of hair from her eyes. “We don’t need this right now. We can talk about it later.”
Quinn feels very much like she’s watching the tennis match of the century. None of this makes sense, the tension in this room is far too high, and she doesn’t particularly like the way Noah and Finn are eyeing her.
“Well,” she says with faux brightness, “this has been fun. But I really should be going, you know, my roommate will be waiting up-“
“You don’t have a roommate,” Rachel interrupts calmly, helping Tough Asian Chick wind bandages tightly around her middle. “You live alone with a landlord who can’t remember breakfast, much less your name. Your family is in Ohio, hundreds of miles away, and they haven’t called or written since last November. You’ve lost touch with nearly everyone you’ve ever met, and you’re happy that way. Alone. It’s safe.”
She’s more than anxious now; she’s horrified. “How the fuck do you know-“
Seemingly unperturbed, Rachel goes on. “I feel I must correct that last sentiment: it was safe. Before. But now that things have gotten bad-really, desperately bad-you can’t afford to live that way anymore. You need a pack to rely upon. You need help, Quinn Fabray, and as lovely as he seemed, that Carl fellow in the diner isn’t going to be enough to protect you. Not from him.”
In every movie Quinn has ever seen, this is the scene where it all falls apart. The people sprawled around this apartment will rise and advance upon her, backing her into a corner where they might have their violent, awful way with her. This is the part where she drinks the Kool-Aid or loses a whole lot of blood, and frankly, she’s not feeling it tonight.
She can feel it welling within her, black and strong, fear mixed with something else. She backs away.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she denies, hands outstretched as peaceably as she can manage. “I don’t know who you are, or what you want. But I think it’s time I left.”
“You’re not going anywhere,” Rachel murmurs, meeting her gaze and holding fast. Quinn’s feet still upon the carpet.
“Rachel,” Wheelchair Guy warns. “Don’t.”
“I’m not doing a thing,” she replies, peaceful as you please. Quinn sways in place, equal parts frustrated and dazed. “I’m only requesting she stays and listens to what we have to say.”
“Requests usually leave room for refusal,” Babyface intones, blue eyes sharp. Rachel lowers her head.
The sensation in Quinn’s gut reels on, harder and stronger than ever. She gulps against it, holding it down.
“I apologize,” Rachel says, and though Quinn has no idea what she’s apologizing for, she feels a bit better. “That was uncalled for. But Quinn, you need to understand. This is important, more important than anything, and you need to stay and hear us out. Hear me out. Now.”
She pauses in the doorway, struggling against the desire to just run for it. The feeling within coils tight, waiting. Her eyes close.
“Fine,” she says wearily. “What the hell do you want from me?”
Rachel brightens, shoulders evening out. “We want to help you, Quinn. We want to make you strong.”
It sounds stupid and strange, but not half as much so as her next sentence.
“We want to make you a hero.”
Pairing: Rachel Berry/Quinn Fabray, Santana Lopez/Brittany Pierce, minor Artie Abrams/Tina Cohen-Chang
Rating: R
Disclaimer: Nothing owned, no profit gained.
Spoilers: AU
Summary: “Sometimes, people are born a little different.”
The building Rachel takes her to is nicer than she expects-although, since she was expecting some dank heroin cubbyhole, she supposes that’s not especially surprising. There is no doorman, but the walls aren’t exactly crumbling and most of the paint is still on the doors. The carpet is uglier than sin, but this is not the décor capital of the western world. You can’t have everything.
The apartment in question is on the fifth floor; to get there, they pile into an elevator that sounds as though it’s seen better lifetimes. Quinn counts backwards from forty with her eyes shut, praying she has not come this far in life to plunge to a miserable death with a psychotic bleeding midget at her side.
Of all the diners in all the world, fucking crazies always walk into mine. What’s up with that?
“Come on,” Rachel says, reaching out to take Quinn’s hand yet again and pulling her from the elevator. “It’s just down the hall. Keep up.”
She wishes the girl would at least stop ordering her around. It’s making her more than a little edgy, all things considered; she suspects getting kidnapped has the tendency to bring these feelings out in a person.
“Here,” Rachel adds, skidding to a stop before a door with-seriously?-a large foil star plastered above the peephole. She fumbles in her pocket, wincing. Quinn sighs.
“Let me.”
It’s weird to stuff your hand into a stranger’s pants before you’ve even exchanged numbers, but from the way Rachel’s been leaning, she’s pretty sure the girl has some severely bruised ribs. Digging for her keys is exactly the kind of simple act that might take ages without a little aid.
“Thank you,” Rachel mutters, taking the tarnished silver key ring and seeking out the correct piece for the door. Quinn buries her hands in her own pockets and shrugs.
“Don’t mention it.”
Rachel leads the way, holding once again to her damaged ribcage. “Lock it behind you. The last thing we need right now is another visitor.”
Quinn does what she’s asked-told, more like-and drags her feet after the girl. “Are you going to answer some questions now?” she demands. “Because I am really not in the mood for this kind of bull-“
She rounds the same corner Rachel has just disappeared around and halts, eyes wide. “Shit,” she finishes uneasily, taking in the numerous pairs of eyes. “Um. Hello.”
There are no fewer than eleven other people in this room, including Rachel, and every single one of them is staring at her. Quinn has the sudden sense that she’s back in high school, locked in one of those brutal nightmares in which she’s supposed to perform a monologue she’s never heard of. In French. In her underwear.
If I look down and my uniform’s gone, I swear to God, I’m taking to the window.
“Quinn Fabray,” Rachel says firmly, leaning against the side of a couch like it’s the last thing holding her upright. “Meet New Directions. Guys…Quinn.”
New Directions? Quinn’s palms have begun to sweat, her hair standing on end. A gang. Rachel has brought her to a gang, all shut up in this weird little apartment-which, actually, is not so little as she thought-and every single person is gaping at her like they’ve never seen a waitress before. Suddenly, Quinn wishes she carried mace.
Weirdly, though, they don’t look particularly gang-like. Not that they don’t look tough, because they really, really do; every single face is stony, more than a few pock-marked with minor scars, and the guy on the far left of the couch is massive. But most of the others look more rag-tag than brutal; there’s a young man with the fine features of a boy, a heavyset black woman with liquid eyes, and-Christ-even a man in a wheelchair. She’s never heard of a gang like this.
Then again, there is also the giant in the corner, a bronze-skinned guy with a mohawk, and an Asian girl who looks more or less capable of ripping out a person’s throat with her glare alone. Not to mention the ferocious-looking Latina seated on the chair, mashed up against a willowy blonde with icy blue eyes.
The Latina.
She’s seen that girl before, standing just inside the diner in her flowing brown trenchcoat, nursing a black eye with a sweating glass of ice water. She looked tortured then, frustrated. Now, she looks murderous.
“Um,” Quinn says, her voice squeaking unproductively. “What…”
Rachel’s brow is sweating, her eyes half-closed. She sucks in a breath and immediately winces. “I’ll answer your questions in a moment, Quinn. I just need…a moment.”
As if on cue, the plastic cover draped over the room tears open. The mohawked man and giant leap off the couch, grasping Rachel gingerly by the arms and guiding her to sit. Wheelchair Guy and Tough Asian Chick go rummaging in a bag, coming up with bandages and rubbing alcohol. The Angry Latina continues to watch Quinn with predatory eyes. She swallows.
“You walked right into him, didn’t you?” the babyfaced man asks haughtily. Rachel raises her chin.
“Certainly not. He knows. We knew that. I couldn’t get close without crossing his path.”
“Bad idea, little one,” Mohawk warns, carefully wiping at the wound above her eye. “This one’ll scar.”
“I didn’t have a choice, Noah,” she snaps. He shrugs, moving to her hand. The Giant reaches for the hem of her layered shirts, and she adds, “Finn, I can take care of it. Go get a change of clothes for Quinn.”
“What’s wrong with this?” Quinn demands, feeling strangely offended. Rachel’s eyes meet hers; surprisingly, the girl smiles.
“You can’t go wandering around in a waitress uniform. It’s simply not conducive to free motion.”
Quinn bristles. “It is perfectly conducive to…what kind of motion?”
“The running kind,” Angry Latina cuts in, baring her teeth in what Quinn thinks might be a smile. The blonde beside her runs a hand up the young woman’s arm, stilling her. Rachel sighs.
“Santana, I would appreciate you not terrifying the girl just now.”
“Yeah, Lopez,” the man known as Noah sneers. “Can it.”
“I will cut your balls off, Puckerman,” Santana fires back, grinning wickedly. The blonde leans down and presses her lips to the woman’s ear; instantly, Santana sobers and leans back.
The giant-Finn-returns with an armful of ragged clothing, all in shades of black, gray, brown. Quinn arches an eyebrow.
“What, are you guys allergic to the rainbow?”
“More like allergic to dying,” Santana quips, leaning her head against the blonde’s and smirking. Finn shrugs.
“Bright colors attract attention,” he says calmly, pressing the bundle into Quinn’s hands. “This is better for moving under cover of darkness.”
“Besides,” Babyface drawls, “black never goes out of style. It’s perfect on all levels.”
They’re crazy, Quinn realizes numbly. She had thought them simple hostile, but now it seems they’re truly insane. The real kind of insanity, Girl, Interrupted-wacky, sharing one big hallucination of…what?
“I’m aware this is not customary,” Rachel says quietly, as if hearing Quinn’s thoughts. “This must all seem very strange to you. And very much like a felony.”
“Kidnapping is kind of a bitch move,” Quinn agrees sharply. Rachel smiles.
“I agree. However, I would prefer you not to think of what I’ve done as kidnapping so much as…rescuing.”
“Rescuing from what?” Quinn growls, hugging the clothing protectively against her chest. “I was at work. Not a lot to rescue me from there, apart from dirty dishes and mopwater.”
“From a very unpleasant man, actually,” Rachel says, oddly serene for someone currently hiking her three shirts up under her arm. She gives a faint nod to Tough Asian Chick, hissing when the other woman moves to press an ice pack to the angry bruises crawling up her side.
“Nice bruises, Berry,” Noah leers, rubbing a hand over his dark mohawk. Quinn thinks she sees something like fear lurking behind his eyes; he actually seems to care.
They all do, to one degree or another, even Babyface, with his arrogantly crossed arms, and the two silent men in the corner. They might be crazy, but at least they all seem to genuinely give a damn. That’s more than most lunatics can claim.
“Baseball bat?” Wheelchair Guy queries, eyes fixed on the brownish-purple patterns. Rachel nods.
“He was feeling particularly human today, it seemed. Maybe he’s still weak from last time.”
“Hell yeah, he would be,” Santana drawls, head lolling back lazily. “I torched that motherfucker good.”
“You shouldn’t have been out,” Rachel says sharply. The Latina straightens up, scowling; Quinn gets the feeling she’s about to witness a repetitive sort of argument.
“I had a chance. I took it.”
“And nearly lost your life in the process,” Rachel snaps, pushing the ice pack away and gesturing towards a roll of wrappings. “We can’t afford to lose anyone else, Santana. Not with Karofsky and Azimo out of the picture. Our numbers are dwindling.”
“Our numbers are fucking fine,” Santana jeers. “You’re just jealous I got out and took a chunk out of him first.”
“Guys,” the blonde on the chair speaks up, brushing a tendril of hair from her eyes. “We don’t need this right now. We can talk about it later.”
Quinn feels very much like she’s watching the tennis match of the century. None of this makes sense, the tension in this room is far too high, and she doesn’t particularly like the way Noah and Finn are eyeing her.
“Well,” she says with faux brightness, “this has been fun. But I really should be going, you know, my roommate will be waiting up-“
“You don’t have a roommate,” Rachel interrupts calmly, helping Tough Asian Chick wind bandages tightly around her middle. “You live alone with a landlord who can’t remember breakfast, much less your name. Your family is in Ohio, hundreds of miles away, and they haven’t called or written since last November. You’ve lost touch with nearly everyone you’ve ever met, and you’re happy that way. Alone. It’s safe.”
She’s more than anxious now; she’s horrified. “How the fuck do you know-“
Seemingly unperturbed, Rachel goes on. “I feel I must correct that last sentiment: it was safe. Before. But now that things have gotten bad-really, desperately bad-you can’t afford to live that way anymore. You need a pack to rely upon. You need help, Quinn Fabray, and as lovely as he seemed, that Carl fellow in the diner isn’t going to be enough to protect you. Not from him.”
In every movie Quinn has ever seen, this is the scene where it all falls apart. The people sprawled around this apartment will rise and advance upon her, backing her into a corner where they might have their violent, awful way with her. This is the part where she drinks the Kool-Aid or loses a whole lot of blood, and frankly, she’s not feeling it tonight.
She can feel it welling within her, black and strong, fear mixed with something else. She backs away.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she denies, hands outstretched as peaceably as she can manage. “I don’t know who you are, or what you want. But I think it’s time I left.”
“You’re not going anywhere,” Rachel murmurs, meeting her gaze and holding fast. Quinn’s feet still upon the carpet.
“Rachel,” Wheelchair Guy warns. “Don’t.”
“I’m not doing a thing,” she replies, peaceful as you please. Quinn sways in place, equal parts frustrated and dazed. “I’m only requesting she stays and listens to what we have to say.”
“Requests usually leave room for refusal,” Babyface intones, blue eyes sharp. Rachel lowers her head.
The sensation in Quinn’s gut reels on, harder and stronger than ever. She gulps against it, holding it down.
“I apologize,” Rachel says, and though Quinn has no idea what she’s apologizing for, she feels a bit better. “That was uncalled for. But Quinn, you need to understand. This is important, more important than anything, and you need to stay and hear us out. Hear me out. Now.”
She pauses in the doorway, struggling against the desire to just run for it. The feeling within coils tight, waiting. Her eyes close.
“Fine,” she says wearily. “What the hell do you want from me?”
Rachel brightens, shoulders evening out. “We want to help you, Quinn. We want to make you strong.”
It sounds stupid and strange, but not half as much so as her next sentence.
“We want to make you a hero.”