Ladies And Gentlemen, Listen Up Please (I Don't Want To Be Your Hero) (26/29)
Title: Ladies And Gentlemen, Listen Up Please (I Don’t Want To Be Your Hero) (26/29)
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.”
There are a great many things Quinn Fabray can say, with utter honesty, that she has never expected to see outside of her television screen. Of those great many options, even fewer have crossed her mind as actual behaviors she herself might indulge.
For example, hovering stealthily on a New York street corner clutching an illegal weapon-not the sort of event a college graduate puts in her day planner.
No one seems to be taking notice of her-or, indeed, any of their messily congregated group-which would be surprising if not for the determined crease of Rachel’s brow. Quinn anxiously thinks things could be going worse-in all honesty, she fully anticipated Finn to blink them into the middle of traffic, only to attract the immediate attention of half a dozen police officers. The fact that countless eyes seem to slide right over them feels like the first thing that has gone right today.
Not that it makes her feel any more comfortable and Noah Puckerman and his flaming sword. Or the murderous look in Tina’s red-rimmed eyes. Or the dead-pale expression on Brittany’s face as she leans heavily against Santana’s panther body.
I take it back, she’s tempted to blurt, this is a really, really awful idea. It’s not an option, she knows; this is the sort of experience the movies would characterize as ‘now or never’, after all. She just wonders how much good she’s going to do with sweaty palms and an internal energy that seems more willing to tear her sanity apart from the inside out than anything productive.
“You…really think this is the best way?” she asks uneasily, staring straight ahead at the building looming before them.
Rachel’s head bobs lightly. “I really do.”
“But…what if someone notices? A civilian or-“
“As far as they can see, there is nothing standing there but the dilapidated skeleton of a burned-down multiplex,” the brunette murmurs. When Quinn shoots her a confused expression, her lips purse. “Not my doing. I don’t have nearly enough power to maintain an illusion of that magnitude while shrouding our little operation.”
“Rayne doesn’t think much of random interruptions,” Kurt adds, hefting his weight from foot to foot a little more shiftily than Quinn would like. “He’s had this blanket up for years.”
“But I can see just fine,” Quinn observes, tilting her head. Beside her, Mike raises a hand silently. “Oh. That’s…convenient.”
“They do keep me around for more than my good looks,” he replies, so mildly that she can’t detect whether or not he’s being sarcastic. She settles for accepting that there are more terrifying things to worry about.
Like how they’re staring at a massive, luxurious hotel, a structure positively swarming with self-hating powers operating on orders to beat them senseless. The front door of which Rachel plans to waltz right through.
Sometimes, Rachel Berry seems no less than certifiably off her gourd.
“Everybody ready?” Finn asks, more grimly than Quinn likes to hear from his generally-pleasant self. Santana gives a rumbling growl, pawing the concrete impatiently. Brittany scratches behind her ears as if she were nothing more than a docile housecat.
“You know the drill,” Puck snaps off with military efficiency. “Straight in, prepped for attack. Don’t dick around, don’t get separated. We find Rayne together.”
“And whatever you do,” Kurt drawls, “please avoid getting yourselves killed.”
The plan is exactly that: go in, get Rayne, stay alive. Quinn has heard of more extraordinary strategies in her life, mostly in the context of history classes and ill-tempered games of Risk, but she has to admit this might qualify as a keep-it-simple-stupid situation.
Complexities add to the body count.
Clutching her staff so hard, her hand cramps a little, she takes a breath and steps in time with Rachel on her right and Tina on her left. The street they cross is depressingly vacant of traffic; she decides not to take that as an omen, since there’s no way of telling what it might imply. It seems wiser to take another breath, doing her best to calm her shaking fingers, and listen to the voice in her head.
Rip him apart, the beast has been chanting for too long now. Rip him, tear him, shred him. Take him. Take him before he takes you, me, us.
What a world, that psychosis could be so comforting. She swallows.
Rayne’s hotel is as meticulous as their own apartment complex is sagging. Under other circumstances, Quinn thinks she wouldn’t mind staying overnight in a place like this, with its glowing white walls and expensive Ionic columns. It’s the sort of place that can make a girl feel like Audrey Hepburn.
Or, that would be the case, if it weren’t for the uniformed men and women trolling the floor like they’re waiting for a war to begin then and there. She inhales sharply.
“We’re fucked,” she hisses into Rachel’s ear. Brown eyes narrow, one small finger pressed to full lips.
“Step lightly, men,” she hears Finn mutter, banging his free hand against his thigh. “Any minute now-“
“Oh, fuck this,” Puck snaps, hefting his sword in the air and releasing a blood-curdling scream. Every head in the lobby jolts towards the door just in time to see him lift the flaming weapon above his head and run straight across the tile.
“How the hell has he stayed alive so long?” Quinn demands. Rachel rolls her eyes. Anywhere else, they’d probably strike up a witty conversation based entirely around making fun of the mohawked wonder, but this doesn’t really feel like the time. Not with so many guns being unholstered as far as the eye can see.
Although Santana’s words ring fresh in her mind, the very sight of those metallic, handheld articles of death lock her knees on the spot. She can’t help it; it’s automatic, instinctual. Claws fitted through the slats of her ribcage, the power inside gives an anxious snarl.
“Move!” Rachel cries behind her. “Quinn! Keep moving!”
A hand closes around her bicep, wrenching her forward. Finn’s eyes are hard, a muscle jumping violently in his jaw.
“Can’t sit still, Quinn,” he says firmly. “Still is dead.”
“I thought they wouldn’t shoot to kill,” she argues weakly. He shakes his head, blinking them both to a space three feet to the left.
“Not on purpose, maybe. But they sure as hell will fire with other things.”
She doesn’t have to ask what that means; although most of the uniforms are holding handguns, they tend to be aiming their free hands more liberally. Shots of lightning crackle against nearby pillars, shattering marble and stone. Finn yanks on her sleeve just in time to dodge a thick chunk of plaster as it drops straight down from the ceiling.
“We’re gonna take this motherfuckin’ hole down!” Puck crows, lancing towards the arm of a uniform. The man’s sleeve goes up in flames, his echoing scream following in an instant.
She cringes, swinging her bowstaff weakly towards the first man to approach her. It glances off his head with all the power of a toddler; when he staggers more from surprise than pain, she turns and bolts in the opposite direction.
“Don’t take it easy on them,” Mike warns as he-honest to God-pirouettes out of one uniform’s reach. Quinn stares after him.
“They won’t be so kind to you,” Tina adds, nudging her sideways and firing from all fingertips. The odor of scorched hair and cotton fills Quinn’s nostrils, gagging her. She turns away.
This is all too much. She knows it’s her fault they’re here; she is the one who decided it was time, after all. But that doesn’t change anything. This is an hand-to-God battle, right here in the most beautiful hotel lobby she’s ever set foot in, and Quinn doesn’t feel it’s being too self-deprecating to admit she has no idea what she’s doing here. She definitely doesn’t belong, not with the others moving so fluidly through this dance of death.
Because people are dying-and if not that, at least losing considerable amounts of blood. There is so much noise, and light, and smoke; her ears are throbbing with the weight of screams and roars, strangled curses and Santana’s fierce yowls. She feels for all the world like a fifth grader standing in the very center of a university stadium, perhaps in the middle of the football game of the season: very small, very afraid, and incredibly worthless.
All around her, there is action-save for Kurt, who has stowed himself away somewhere, apparently a nod to his relatively powerless state. Tina is firing at anyone who steps into her eyesight, while Puck alternates between blowing icy holes in the décor and swinging his sword with blind fervor. Finn keeps popping in and out of sight, ramming wild punches into heads and noses before he can even be spotted. Santana’s fur is ruffled, her right shoulder dark with blood that Quinn assumes is her own; her muzzle has been painted a similar shade. Quinn figures that belongs to someone else entirely.
Even the three passive powers are moving with deadly grace, wielding knives and staffs as they duck and dodge every potential blow. Mike and Matt seem to be of the same mold, one twirling while the other attacks, covering each other’s backs like they do this every day. Brittany, obviously exhausted though she is, exudes a powerful calm, moving with a smooth steadiness Quinn can’t help but envy.
As for Rachel…
Rachel is scarier than anything in hell right now.
Her face is flushed and beautiful, her brow tight with concentration, and all around her, the world is coming apart. Uniforms are turning on one another, faces serene, their minds no longer their own. As Quinn watches, unable to prevent her own horror, one calmly unholsters his pistol, cocks back, and unloads three bullets into the chest of his fellow. The wounded man drops like a sack of laundry, flames dying on his fingertips.
Good, the power inside hungers. Good. Make them feel it. Make them hurt. Make them weak. Their weakness is his weakness, and we need-
“No,” Quinn hisses, clenching her fists around the staff as it bucks inside, rocking against its leash. “No. Not yet.”
Now, it grumbles, rearing backwards and lunging. Her control slips a fraction of an inch, tractionless sneakers on rain-soaked grass. Now, now, now.
She can’t-not yet, not now, not on these people. She hopes to God she doesn’t wind up regretting it, but there is no way she can rationalize unleashing this murderous force on anyone in this room. Not when she thinks she can sort of understand their motivation.
They don’t want to be what they are. And maybe they’re navigating that dislike in the most cowardly way possible, but it isn’t like she can blame them for feeling that way to begin with.
Powers are not blessings. Not always.
She can’t vindicate them either, of course-not with how viciously they are firing blasts of raw energy at her friends, not with how they are so gracelessly defending a man who would just as soon see them all in body bags. She can’t justify their actions in the least.
But there is a long, dirty road between not being able to justify something and committing horrible, soul-damaging murder.
Now, it urges, railing forward with more force than ever. Quinn grits her teeth, bashing a woman upside the head and spinning to dodge one of Santana’s less well-choreographed lunges.
“No,” she says again, not caring when Tina slides her a decidedly uneasy glance. “You are staying where you are. I’m not letting you out, so stop asking.”
That’s the thing, though: it isn’t asking. It has never asked for anything. It only demands, and demands, and rattles the bars of its feeble little cage, and with every punch and growl, she can feel her feet slipping further and further-
Across the lobby, Rachel’s handiwork is spiraling like a set of tumbling dominos. One woman catches a man in the crotch with the butt of her gun; another man full-out tackles one of his peers to the ground, slamming his skull with a thud against the seared tile. Finn, bleeding lightly from a scratch over one eye, blinks in just long enough to grasp the uniform nearest to Rachel and teleport them both a safe distance away. The sound of his fist colliding with the young man’s teeth is fascinatingly vile.
Puck is still screaming things straight out of a C-level action movie, and Tina is still blasting everyone in the vicinity, and Santana has her teeth buried in the thigh of a man who has already gone pasty with blood loss. Out of the corner of her eye, Quinn sees Mike tap a woman on the shoulder; when she turns, gun raised, Brittany kicks her square in the back.
The gorgeous flooring is stained all over, riddled with slumped bodies, and Quinn can’t tell which ones are even still breathing. Bile lurches in her throat, sour in her mouth, and still she continues to swing that stupid bowstaff because dammit-this is what Artie died for.
Let me out, let me out, we can avenge him together.
It’s tempting. She can’t deny how tempting, as she aggressively winds up and pounds an incoming uniform the gut. He grunts and backpedals, bent double and gasping; the beast inside rears up and chuckles with delight.
Let me out. It would be so much better than this. This is weak, this is child’s play, we could-
“Quinn!” Rachel’s voice. Shrill and worried. Operating on instinct alone, Quinn drops to the floor just in time to avoid taking a fireball to the back of the head. Rachel’s jaw goes tight, her eyes narrowing, and Quinn knows without a doubt that the man who just tried his luck with her won’t be leaving this building in one piece.
The thought makes her sick to her stomach, and also-perversely-a little cheerful.
She figures that last part can be attributed to her over-energetic internal friend.
Now, now, we’re running out of time-
Santana is snarling, snapping her jaws, and trying not to look like she’s limping. Behind her, Puck roars in pain when a blast of energy catches him in his sword arm. They’re not in awful shape, not quite yet, but Quinn suspects they can’t hold out a whole lot longer like this.
And then, just when she’s thinking maybe ‘not a whole lot longer’ is going to be much shorter than expected (Mike just took one hell of a punch, and Brittany is slowing down at a frighteningly steady rate), she hears Kurt cry out.
“Get off of me, you animals!”
Before she has turned, she knows she’s too late-it’s the kind of knowledge that comes like a pre-packaged sucker punch, all feeling and no rationale. Before she can do anything better than glance over her shoulder, she knows he’s gone-out of reach, beyond her power. There is just too much going on, too much excitement, too many fallen forms. Some of the uniforms have taken to anxiously firing their guns into the air, as if what they really need is more sound pollution. Finn, Puck, Santana-they’re all bleeding now. They’re growing more useless by the second, and still there are so many uniforms…
Kurt is struggling, all frail, flailing legs and windmilling arms, but the man who has him around the middle would look perfectly at home in a gorilla pen. Even as the Seer shrieks, his captor motions to another man, who promptly wacks Kurt across the back of his skull. He slumps, eyes rolling back.
“No!” Finn bellows, bolting a few steps in Kurt’s direction. A gun goes off, aimed dangerously near to his midsection; Santana throws herself against his legs, blocking his path before they decide to fire again.
“Drop him, fuckwads,” Puck warns, to no avail. Words mean nothing right now, and with so many people obstructing the lobby, the uniform manhandling Kurt is too far away for action to be remotely possible. He slides a wink back over his shoulder and disappears down the nearest hall.
Quinn swears in the next moment to break her no-kill rule if they don’t find Kurt alive and well.
“We need to move,” Rachel grimly notes, shoulder brushing Quinn’s. “We need to move now. Odds are good that Rayne will keep him as bait, but if he doesn’t-“
“No fuckin’ way am I buying that,” Puck cuts in furiously, freezing the next uniform that catches his eye. “He can’t have Hummel.”
“He can’t have anyone,” Tina corrects. “We’ll find him.”
“Now,” Puck insists, breathing hard. “No time to fuck around. We need to-“ He pauses long enough to slam the hilt of his sword into a bald man’s head. “Follow them. Now.”
Rachel tilts her head back, anxiously surveying the room. “All right. I can hold them back for just a minute. Just one, you understand, or I won’t have the strength to help when we find Rayne. Brace yourselves.”
For what, Quinn wants to ask, but it’s too late: Rachel’s focus is on the room at large. She feels one of Puck’s hands close around her elbow, smells the staleness of his breath when he whispers, “Count of three, Princess. One. Two-“
He doesn’t wait. On what should be two and a half, every uniform left standing halts where they are, malfunctioning robots on a homicidal assembly line. The hand on her elbow jerks, and she is running like her life depends upon it, surrounded on all sides by sweaty, bleeding friends who are bolting just as hard.
They reach the hall where Kurt was last visible. As if working on the same mechanism, Tina and Puck spin in unison, blasting the lobby with jolt after jolt of energy. When nothing appears unharmed by either flame or electricity-when, Quinn realizes, they are satisfied that picking up a tail would be damn near impossible from that direction-they turn back.
“Where now?” Tina demands. Rachel frowns.
“I don’t…”
She’s trying, Quinn can tell, to reach out with her mind. Her eyelids clench, her teeth grinding together. Impatiently, the others shuffle, Brittany holding to the scruff of Santana’s neck, Finn planting a barely-restraining hand on Puck’s shoulder.
She’s trying, but it doesn’t seem to be getting them anywhere fast. Quinn’s stomach twists.
You could have stopped this, the thing inside taunts. We could have ended it all. If you had only let me out…
Useless. It’s useless to think that way. The past needs to be left where it lies, end of discussion. Uncapping that bottle will only lead to guilt and frustration, neither of which is productive in the least.
Let me out, it hisses. Let me out. There’s still time. Listen to me. Listen.
It’s a bad idea. Letting go of the wheel is always a bad idea. Without any real idea of how to rein herself back in, there is no brilliance in letting go in the first place. But Rachel looks like she’s giving herself the mother of all migraines, and Tina keeps chewing on her lip hard enough to draw blood, and Puck is obviously ready to murder the first person who stumbles upon them. And what have they been saying?
There isn’t time to dick around. Not if she wants to find Kurt while he still has a pulse.
She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, slowly loosening the cord around her invisible partner’s neck. It’s all in her head, she knows, but she swears she can hear its leisurely exhale of triumph.
Not so fast, she warns it, clenching her fists until her arms begin to shake. Not all the way. Just enough to find him.
It’s all in her head, but she swears she can hear it chuckle even as her senses start to open up. Her vision grows clearer, her hearing crisper. The energy so carefully contained under her breastbone slithers its way up and down every nerve ending, digging its talons in and warming her to the core. It’s all her in head, but damn, does it sound real when it snickers with anticipation, sending signals she can’t possibly comprehend that tell her ears and nose exactly where Kurt is.
It’s a start.
She raises her head and follows the pull.
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.”
There are a great many things Quinn Fabray can say, with utter honesty, that she has never expected to see outside of her television screen. Of those great many options, even fewer have crossed her mind as actual behaviors she herself might indulge.
For example, hovering stealthily on a New York street corner clutching an illegal weapon-not the sort of event a college graduate puts in her day planner.
No one seems to be taking notice of her-or, indeed, any of their messily congregated group-which would be surprising if not for the determined crease of Rachel’s brow. Quinn anxiously thinks things could be going worse-in all honesty, she fully anticipated Finn to blink them into the middle of traffic, only to attract the immediate attention of half a dozen police officers. The fact that countless eyes seem to slide right over them feels like the first thing that has gone right today.
Not that it makes her feel any more comfortable and Noah Puckerman and his flaming sword. Or the murderous look in Tina’s red-rimmed eyes. Or the dead-pale expression on Brittany’s face as she leans heavily against Santana’s panther body.
I take it back, she’s tempted to blurt, this is a really, really awful idea. It’s not an option, she knows; this is the sort of experience the movies would characterize as ‘now or never’, after all. She just wonders how much good she’s going to do with sweaty palms and an internal energy that seems more willing to tear her sanity apart from the inside out than anything productive.
“You…really think this is the best way?” she asks uneasily, staring straight ahead at the building looming before them.
Rachel’s head bobs lightly. “I really do.”
“But…what if someone notices? A civilian or-“
“As far as they can see, there is nothing standing there but the dilapidated skeleton of a burned-down multiplex,” the brunette murmurs. When Quinn shoots her a confused expression, her lips purse. “Not my doing. I don’t have nearly enough power to maintain an illusion of that magnitude while shrouding our little operation.”
“Rayne doesn’t think much of random interruptions,” Kurt adds, hefting his weight from foot to foot a little more shiftily than Quinn would like. “He’s had this blanket up for years.”
“But I can see just fine,” Quinn observes, tilting her head. Beside her, Mike raises a hand silently. “Oh. That’s…convenient.”
“They do keep me around for more than my good looks,” he replies, so mildly that she can’t detect whether or not he’s being sarcastic. She settles for accepting that there are more terrifying things to worry about.
Like how they’re staring at a massive, luxurious hotel, a structure positively swarming with self-hating powers operating on orders to beat them senseless. The front door of which Rachel plans to waltz right through.
Sometimes, Rachel Berry seems no less than certifiably off her gourd.
“Everybody ready?” Finn asks, more grimly than Quinn likes to hear from his generally-pleasant self. Santana gives a rumbling growl, pawing the concrete impatiently. Brittany scratches behind her ears as if she were nothing more than a docile housecat.
“You know the drill,” Puck snaps off with military efficiency. “Straight in, prepped for attack. Don’t dick around, don’t get separated. We find Rayne together.”
“And whatever you do,” Kurt drawls, “please avoid getting yourselves killed.”
The plan is exactly that: go in, get Rayne, stay alive. Quinn has heard of more extraordinary strategies in her life, mostly in the context of history classes and ill-tempered games of Risk, but she has to admit this might qualify as a keep-it-simple-stupid situation.
Complexities add to the body count.
Clutching her staff so hard, her hand cramps a little, she takes a breath and steps in time with Rachel on her right and Tina on her left. The street they cross is depressingly vacant of traffic; she decides not to take that as an omen, since there’s no way of telling what it might imply. It seems wiser to take another breath, doing her best to calm her shaking fingers, and listen to the voice in her head.
Rip him apart, the beast has been chanting for too long now. Rip him, tear him, shred him. Take him. Take him before he takes you, me, us.
What a world, that psychosis could be so comforting. She swallows.
Rayne’s hotel is as meticulous as their own apartment complex is sagging. Under other circumstances, Quinn thinks she wouldn’t mind staying overnight in a place like this, with its glowing white walls and expensive Ionic columns. It’s the sort of place that can make a girl feel like Audrey Hepburn.
Or, that would be the case, if it weren’t for the uniformed men and women trolling the floor like they’re waiting for a war to begin then and there. She inhales sharply.
“We’re fucked,” she hisses into Rachel’s ear. Brown eyes narrow, one small finger pressed to full lips.
“Step lightly, men,” she hears Finn mutter, banging his free hand against his thigh. “Any minute now-“
“Oh, fuck this,” Puck snaps, hefting his sword in the air and releasing a blood-curdling scream. Every head in the lobby jolts towards the door just in time to see him lift the flaming weapon above his head and run straight across the tile.
“How the hell has he stayed alive so long?” Quinn demands. Rachel rolls her eyes. Anywhere else, they’d probably strike up a witty conversation based entirely around making fun of the mohawked wonder, but this doesn’t really feel like the time. Not with so many guns being unholstered as far as the eye can see.
Although Santana’s words ring fresh in her mind, the very sight of those metallic, handheld articles of death lock her knees on the spot. She can’t help it; it’s automatic, instinctual. Claws fitted through the slats of her ribcage, the power inside gives an anxious snarl.
“Move!” Rachel cries behind her. “Quinn! Keep moving!”
A hand closes around her bicep, wrenching her forward. Finn’s eyes are hard, a muscle jumping violently in his jaw.
“Can’t sit still, Quinn,” he says firmly. “Still is dead.”
“I thought they wouldn’t shoot to kill,” she argues weakly. He shakes his head, blinking them both to a space three feet to the left.
“Not on purpose, maybe. But they sure as hell will fire with other things.”
She doesn’t have to ask what that means; although most of the uniforms are holding handguns, they tend to be aiming their free hands more liberally. Shots of lightning crackle against nearby pillars, shattering marble and stone. Finn yanks on her sleeve just in time to dodge a thick chunk of plaster as it drops straight down from the ceiling.
“We’re gonna take this motherfuckin’ hole down!” Puck crows, lancing towards the arm of a uniform. The man’s sleeve goes up in flames, his echoing scream following in an instant.
She cringes, swinging her bowstaff weakly towards the first man to approach her. It glances off his head with all the power of a toddler; when he staggers more from surprise than pain, she turns and bolts in the opposite direction.
“Don’t take it easy on them,” Mike warns as he-honest to God-pirouettes out of one uniform’s reach. Quinn stares after him.
“They won’t be so kind to you,” Tina adds, nudging her sideways and firing from all fingertips. The odor of scorched hair and cotton fills Quinn’s nostrils, gagging her. She turns away.
This is all too much. She knows it’s her fault they’re here; she is the one who decided it was time, after all. But that doesn’t change anything. This is an hand-to-God battle, right here in the most beautiful hotel lobby she’s ever set foot in, and Quinn doesn’t feel it’s being too self-deprecating to admit she has no idea what she’s doing here. She definitely doesn’t belong, not with the others moving so fluidly through this dance of death.
Because people are dying-and if not that, at least losing considerable amounts of blood. There is so much noise, and light, and smoke; her ears are throbbing with the weight of screams and roars, strangled curses and Santana’s fierce yowls. She feels for all the world like a fifth grader standing in the very center of a university stadium, perhaps in the middle of the football game of the season: very small, very afraid, and incredibly worthless.
All around her, there is action-save for Kurt, who has stowed himself away somewhere, apparently a nod to his relatively powerless state. Tina is firing at anyone who steps into her eyesight, while Puck alternates between blowing icy holes in the décor and swinging his sword with blind fervor. Finn keeps popping in and out of sight, ramming wild punches into heads and noses before he can even be spotted. Santana’s fur is ruffled, her right shoulder dark with blood that Quinn assumes is her own; her muzzle has been painted a similar shade. Quinn figures that belongs to someone else entirely.
Even the three passive powers are moving with deadly grace, wielding knives and staffs as they duck and dodge every potential blow. Mike and Matt seem to be of the same mold, one twirling while the other attacks, covering each other’s backs like they do this every day. Brittany, obviously exhausted though she is, exudes a powerful calm, moving with a smooth steadiness Quinn can’t help but envy.
As for Rachel…
Rachel is scarier than anything in hell right now.
Her face is flushed and beautiful, her brow tight with concentration, and all around her, the world is coming apart. Uniforms are turning on one another, faces serene, their minds no longer their own. As Quinn watches, unable to prevent her own horror, one calmly unholsters his pistol, cocks back, and unloads three bullets into the chest of his fellow. The wounded man drops like a sack of laundry, flames dying on his fingertips.
Good, the power inside hungers. Good. Make them feel it. Make them hurt. Make them weak. Their weakness is his weakness, and we need-
“No,” Quinn hisses, clenching her fists around the staff as it bucks inside, rocking against its leash. “No. Not yet.”
Now, it grumbles, rearing backwards and lunging. Her control slips a fraction of an inch, tractionless sneakers on rain-soaked grass. Now, now, now.
She can’t-not yet, not now, not on these people. She hopes to God she doesn’t wind up regretting it, but there is no way she can rationalize unleashing this murderous force on anyone in this room. Not when she thinks she can sort of understand their motivation.
They don’t want to be what they are. And maybe they’re navigating that dislike in the most cowardly way possible, but it isn’t like she can blame them for feeling that way to begin with.
Powers are not blessings. Not always.
She can’t vindicate them either, of course-not with how viciously they are firing blasts of raw energy at her friends, not with how they are so gracelessly defending a man who would just as soon see them all in body bags. She can’t justify their actions in the least.
But there is a long, dirty road between not being able to justify something and committing horrible, soul-damaging murder.
Now, it urges, railing forward with more force than ever. Quinn grits her teeth, bashing a woman upside the head and spinning to dodge one of Santana’s less well-choreographed lunges.
“No,” she says again, not caring when Tina slides her a decidedly uneasy glance. “You are staying where you are. I’m not letting you out, so stop asking.”
That’s the thing, though: it isn’t asking. It has never asked for anything. It only demands, and demands, and rattles the bars of its feeble little cage, and with every punch and growl, she can feel her feet slipping further and further-
Across the lobby, Rachel’s handiwork is spiraling like a set of tumbling dominos. One woman catches a man in the crotch with the butt of her gun; another man full-out tackles one of his peers to the ground, slamming his skull with a thud against the seared tile. Finn, bleeding lightly from a scratch over one eye, blinks in just long enough to grasp the uniform nearest to Rachel and teleport them both a safe distance away. The sound of his fist colliding with the young man’s teeth is fascinatingly vile.
Puck is still screaming things straight out of a C-level action movie, and Tina is still blasting everyone in the vicinity, and Santana has her teeth buried in the thigh of a man who has already gone pasty with blood loss. Out of the corner of her eye, Quinn sees Mike tap a woman on the shoulder; when she turns, gun raised, Brittany kicks her square in the back.
The gorgeous flooring is stained all over, riddled with slumped bodies, and Quinn can’t tell which ones are even still breathing. Bile lurches in her throat, sour in her mouth, and still she continues to swing that stupid bowstaff because dammit-this is what Artie died for.
Let me out, let me out, we can avenge him together.
It’s tempting. She can’t deny how tempting, as she aggressively winds up and pounds an incoming uniform the gut. He grunts and backpedals, bent double and gasping; the beast inside rears up and chuckles with delight.
Let me out. It would be so much better than this. This is weak, this is child’s play, we could-
“Quinn!” Rachel’s voice. Shrill and worried. Operating on instinct alone, Quinn drops to the floor just in time to avoid taking a fireball to the back of the head. Rachel’s jaw goes tight, her eyes narrowing, and Quinn knows without a doubt that the man who just tried his luck with her won’t be leaving this building in one piece.
The thought makes her sick to her stomach, and also-perversely-a little cheerful.
She figures that last part can be attributed to her over-energetic internal friend.
Now, now, we’re running out of time-
Santana is snarling, snapping her jaws, and trying not to look like she’s limping. Behind her, Puck roars in pain when a blast of energy catches him in his sword arm. They’re not in awful shape, not quite yet, but Quinn suspects they can’t hold out a whole lot longer like this.
And then, just when she’s thinking maybe ‘not a whole lot longer’ is going to be much shorter than expected (Mike just took one hell of a punch, and Brittany is slowing down at a frighteningly steady rate), she hears Kurt cry out.
“Get off of me, you animals!”
Before she has turned, she knows she’s too late-it’s the kind of knowledge that comes like a pre-packaged sucker punch, all feeling and no rationale. Before she can do anything better than glance over her shoulder, she knows he’s gone-out of reach, beyond her power. There is just too much going on, too much excitement, too many fallen forms. Some of the uniforms have taken to anxiously firing their guns into the air, as if what they really need is more sound pollution. Finn, Puck, Santana-they’re all bleeding now. They’re growing more useless by the second, and still there are so many uniforms…
Kurt is struggling, all frail, flailing legs and windmilling arms, but the man who has him around the middle would look perfectly at home in a gorilla pen. Even as the Seer shrieks, his captor motions to another man, who promptly wacks Kurt across the back of his skull. He slumps, eyes rolling back.
“No!” Finn bellows, bolting a few steps in Kurt’s direction. A gun goes off, aimed dangerously near to his midsection; Santana throws herself against his legs, blocking his path before they decide to fire again.
“Drop him, fuckwads,” Puck warns, to no avail. Words mean nothing right now, and with so many people obstructing the lobby, the uniform manhandling Kurt is too far away for action to be remotely possible. He slides a wink back over his shoulder and disappears down the nearest hall.
Quinn swears in the next moment to break her no-kill rule if they don’t find Kurt alive and well.
“We need to move,” Rachel grimly notes, shoulder brushing Quinn’s. “We need to move now. Odds are good that Rayne will keep him as bait, but if he doesn’t-“
“No fuckin’ way am I buying that,” Puck cuts in furiously, freezing the next uniform that catches his eye. “He can’t have Hummel.”
“He can’t have anyone,” Tina corrects. “We’ll find him.”
“Now,” Puck insists, breathing hard. “No time to fuck around. We need to-“ He pauses long enough to slam the hilt of his sword into a bald man’s head. “Follow them. Now.”
Rachel tilts her head back, anxiously surveying the room. “All right. I can hold them back for just a minute. Just one, you understand, or I won’t have the strength to help when we find Rayne. Brace yourselves.”
For what, Quinn wants to ask, but it’s too late: Rachel’s focus is on the room at large. She feels one of Puck’s hands close around her elbow, smells the staleness of his breath when he whispers, “Count of three, Princess. One. Two-“
He doesn’t wait. On what should be two and a half, every uniform left standing halts where they are, malfunctioning robots on a homicidal assembly line. The hand on her elbow jerks, and she is running like her life depends upon it, surrounded on all sides by sweaty, bleeding friends who are bolting just as hard.
They reach the hall where Kurt was last visible. As if working on the same mechanism, Tina and Puck spin in unison, blasting the lobby with jolt after jolt of energy. When nothing appears unharmed by either flame or electricity-when, Quinn realizes, they are satisfied that picking up a tail would be damn near impossible from that direction-they turn back.
“Where now?” Tina demands. Rachel frowns.
“I don’t…”
She’s trying, Quinn can tell, to reach out with her mind. Her eyelids clench, her teeth grinding together. Impatiently, the others shuffle, Brittany holding to the scruff of Santana’s neck, Finn planting a barely-restraining hand on Puck’s shoulder.
She’s trying, but it doesn’t seem to be getting them anywhere fast. Quinn’s stomach twists.
You could have stopped this, the thing inside taunts. We could have ended it all. If you had only let me out…
Useless. It’s useless to think that way. The past needs to be left where it lies, end of discussion. Uncapping that bottle will only lead to guilt and frustration, neither of which is productive in the least.
Let me out, it hisses. Let me out. There’s still time. Listen to me. Listen.
It’s a bad idea. Letting go of the wheel is always a bad idea. Without any real idea of how to rein herself back in, there is no brilliance in letting go in the first place. But Rachel looks like she’s giving herself the mother of all migraines, and Tina keeps chewing on her lip hard enough to draw blood, and Puck is obviously ready to murder the first person who stumbles upon them. And what have they been saying?
There isn’t time to dick around. Not if she wants to find Kurt while he still has a pulse.
She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, slowly loosening the cord around her invisible partner’s neck. It’s all in her head, she knows, but she swears she can hear its leisurely exhale of triumph.
Not so fast, she warns it, clenching her fists until her arms begin to shake. Not all the way. Just enough to find him.
It’s all in her head, but she swears she can hear it chuckle even as her senses start to open up. Her vision grows clearer, her hearing crisper. The energy so carefully contained under her breastbone slithers its way up and down every nerve ending, digging its talons in and warming her to the core. It’s all her in head, but damn, does it sound real when it snickers with anticipation, sending signals she can’t possibly comprehend that tell her ears and nose exactly where Kurt is.
It’s a start.
She raises her head and follows the pull.