the numbness or the pain (so intense to feel)
I've been neglecting lj for a while and I'm so sorry for that. Maybe when I'm not having a total crackhead moment of being awake at 4 am, I'll upload the things I have but haven't uploaded here. Anyway, this is me [SPOILER WARNING KIND OF] trying to make sense of Finn's upcoming death and Quinn not going to the funeral. Uh, enjoy?
--
Santana calls her.
"To what do I owe the pleasure," Quinn asks. Santana is quiet for a moment and it’s so out of character that Quinn genuinely thinks Santana somehow managed to butt dial her. But then there’s a faint noise, almost like a cry, before Quinn hears the unmistakeable noise of the loft door close. "Santana?"
"I don’t know how to-" There’s a sharp intake of breath and then it rushes out. "Finn is dead," Santana whispers.
Quinn’s eyebrows furrow and she looks down at her art history textbook. Santana doesn’t play games like this. This isn’t a joke Santana would pull, not now, probably not ever, but that would mean… “Santana, I was studying. I don’t have time for whatever this is.”
Santana takes an audible breath and Quinn can hear the tears Santana is trying to keep in when she repeats, “Finn is dead.”
Quinn glances at the calendar above her desk and then swivels in her chair to look at the clock. She watches the minute change from 13 to 14. She realizes then that she hasn’t taken a breath.
Just as Santana starts to say something, Quinn cuts her off. “I have to go.”
She turns off her phone as soon as she ends the call.
-
She doesn’t cry. Not at first.
She goes into the kitchen and drinks a tall glass of water. She goes to the bathroom. When she reaches for toilet paper, she realizes she’s shaking. She washes her hands with water so hot it burns. It gives the shaking an excuse.
She goes back to her room and as soon as the door shuts, she starts breathing heavy, rapidly. She leans against her door, scratching at her chest as she squeezes her eyes shut. She counts to twenty. By the end, her chest is red and raw and she still can’t breathe comfortably.
She puts on a record and then turns her phone back on. There’s one text from Santana, explaining everything she knows, and Quinn doesn’t know what to make of any of this.
Finn can’t be dead. And he certainly couldn’t have died that way. He was Finn Hudson.
She blinks as she slumps on to her bed. When was the last time she had thought about him before now? The last time they even spoke?
She looks up and studies her reflection in the mirror she has propped up against the wall. This isn’t right. This reaction isn’t appropriate. She’s a disgusting mess. This is the look of a mother, of a brother, of a lover, hell, of a friend. Quinn’s not sure she was any of those things, at least not recently.
She wishes she could be angry at him for dying the way he did, instead of angry at herself for acting like this.
Quinn has to take a pill to stop herself from hyperventilating again.
-
She’s been listening to records all night. She’s tried to sleep, tried to study, but nothing can stop her mind from racing.
It’s a little passed three when a thought strikes her. If Beth had been Finn’s, or if they could have been the family she was never sure they could be, this wouldn’t have happened. Even if Finn hated her, he never hated the baby. He would’ve done better then, if he had someone who counted on him.
She swallows thickly. She could’ve saved him the second time around too, maybe. If she had learned to control her jealousy, learned to open up, if she stopped viewing him as this weight that would keep her in Lima forever.
She wonders briefly if something similar is going through Rachel’s head right now too.
The record ends and instead soft scratching fills the room.
She, Quinn Fabray, ruined Finn Hudson.
At 3:37, four hours after hearing the news, Quinn cries.
-
Santana only texts her (and Quinn has never been more thankful).
Puck calls her.
She almost doesn’t answer. She’s too scared that he’ll somehow blame her (after all, she ruined him too). But she knows that Puck wouldn’t call unless he needed her. “Yeah,” she answers softly.
He coughs. “So, I’m in New Haven.”
She gives him her address and when he arrives twenty minutes later, she wishes he wouldn’t have come.
He looks just as bad as the time they gave Beth away.
-
They sit awkwardly in her room and he’s crying when he asks how she can still be such a fucking robot.
"After everything," she breathes out, "I’m not sure I deserve to cry."
Something about that makes him cry harder than she’s ever seen him cry. He pulls her to him roughly and tells her it should’ve been him. It would’ve made sense. No one would’ve missed him.
She hates him for saying that. Hates that she had the same thought about herself last night.
She cradles his head against her chest as a sob rips from her throat and his fingers dig into her sides so hard that she thinks she’ll bruise.
-
The next morning, he asks if she wants to go back to Lima together. Santana sent a similar text late last night.
When she tells both of them that she’s not going, only Puck asks if she’s sure. “You can’t… This isn’t something you’ll get a redo on, Q.”
She nods. “I know,” she says softly. “But it wouldn’t be right.”
He doesn’t ask her to explain.
-
The day of the funeral, Quinn wears a black dress. She goes to class but doesn’t contribute. She thinks about Lima and reassures herself that she made the right choice. If she had gone, it would’ve been a mess. Stoic or emotional… neither would’ve been right. Not from her.
Quinn has always belonged on the outside.
When she gets home, she puts on The Joshua Tree and cries until the album ends.