Trembling Butterfly- Part 0/?
Title: Trembling Butterfly
Author: thecrncmeltodown (OR, the Chronic Meltdown)
Pairings: Quinn/Rachel, possible side Brittana.
Rating: PG-13 to borderline R.
Length: 1,132
Spoilers: Up to Theatricality.
Summary: Quinn spirals. Downwards. Rachel stands beside her. Uncertain. A shoot-out at WMHS leaves four dead and three wounded.
Author's Note: I'm new here. You can find me on Fanfiction.net. It's a little easier for me. But I'm trying. If I fail at this LJ thing, please feel free to guide me. Even if it's with a shove. If it's in the right direction, I will happily accept it.
xD Uhm, enjoy...it...?
T. B.
“Do I dare disturb the universe?”
Prologue
“I am no prophet- and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat,
and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.”
-“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, T. S. Eliot
By default and common belief, everything seems worse at night.
It’s why young women hurry home and walk in packs, and avoid shortcuts through alleyways. Because there is comfort only within the safety of daylight. Because when the sun is high in the horizon, things are more easily perceived, and only secrets lurk in shadows.
The sun moves, though, and so does the shade. Forever and forever, until the secret can no longer keep up, and is left in the open.
And people are like this, too, but the truth is that this is never spoken of. It is a subject never touched upon, but acknowledged nonetheless, in the same way that a person acknowledges the existence of sharks in large bodies of water (the Great White Shark, which grows to an average length of about eighteen feet and can live up to thirty years, and the bull shark, which, when female, can grow to a length of thirteen feet, and God, people aren’t even safe in rivers) but continues to swim at the beach (river) anyway.
And in that way, things continue without hiccups and people are people with their secrets and resentments and loves, and the verve just is. Relationships (like people) change and grow and fade away, or are severed forcefully by revelations, or are torn apart by outside forces.
And despite this, life continues without a hitch. Life continues, ruthlessly and without a second thought, until you become a vacant memory. A picture that gathers dust in the darkest recesses of an abandoned apartment.
A dying butterfly nailed to a wall by the wings, under the glare of a moonless night; you struggle in oppressive silence. (Your body shrieks, but there’s no one there to hear it. And the truth is that there are no answers.)
The truth is that no one will remember you after you die, and life (as a force, or better yet, as a whole) is indifferent to your existence. You are, and forever will be, a single speck of dust. It will not stop, for you. It will not pay its respects.
Instead, it will simply continue. Onwards, and without you.
Even when there’s a shark attack.
-o-
Once upon a time in Lima, Quinn Fabray stands at her locker.
She is around eight months pregnant. Her hair is loose, falls around her in waves. She looks like an angel, even to those who used to hate her. But they are not deceived. They know the things she’s capable of doing. They remember the person she’s capable of being.
But this morning, they don’t hate her. This morning, they are not indifferent to her. This morning, they notice her for the first time since her fall.
This morning, they see her, and the truth is that she is beautiful.
And once upon a time in Lima, Quinn Fabray stands at her locker.
She’s wearing light colors, and she has sad eyes, and she’s spinning in her locker combination with an ease so practiced it looks almost mechanic. One of her hands is resting on her baby bump. She seems tired. Several lockers away, Rachel Berry wonders if she’s been sleeping well. She shouldn’t care, not really, not after the way Quinn’s treated her, but she does. Vaguely. In the part of her brain/heart that doesn’t think the blonde’s the perfect example of a teenage trollop.
Still, Rachel remembers everything the girl has done to her, and turns away. She looks to Jesse, who is making his way towards her, and past his shoulder to Finn, who is watching her with those patented sad boy eyes she sometimes loves and sometimes hates.
She observes Puck standing in the distance, speaking with Santana. Santana, who isn’t even pretending to pay attention as she types into her phone’s keyboard, presumably sending Brittany some sort of text.
Kurt and Mercedes are walking down the hallway towards them, gossiping about something or the other.
It’s so normal that Rachel doesn’t even think twice when someone forcefully shoves her out of the way and into the arms of her now-irritated boyfriend.
“Hey.” Jesse calls angrily, his handsome face reflexively twisting into a frown, “Watch where you’re going.”
She grabs the cuff of his sleeve and tells him that it’s okay, that she doesn’t care, and really, she doesn’t, except that around ten seconds later, she hears a girl shout, “Look at me!” and she’s turning around in a mix of confusion and alarm, and she sees Puck peering almost disinterestedly at the dark haired girl before an expression of recognition dawns on his face.
“It’s you.” he says, like he’s surprised, and then his eyes grow round and wide and something akin to fear flickers across his face, for a moment, only flickers, before setting itself up for permanent residence.
And then the girl shoots, and it’s like the world has ended.
-o-
Life moves on. Forwards.
-o-
Her life erupts in noise and screaming, and while Noah collapses on the ground and Santana kneels beside him, Quinn Fabray remains standing at her locker.
She is frozen in place, in shock, a peculiar sense of terror writing horrifying poetry across her features.
She’s standing there, desperate, there, when the girl turns to face her. And she knows the face, recognizes it, acknowledges her end.
There is blood sprayed across her face, forming flowers on her shirt, seeping into her socks. She’s wearing a Cheerios uniform that she must have borrowed from someone because Quinn can very distinctly remember humiliating the girl into submission, once upon a time, during the moments where she’d been on top of the universe. She can distinctly remember the feel of her vicious smile as it curled upon her face, as she spat words of poison at this girl, this one girl, that one time, without any valid reason.
And once upon a time in Lima, Quinn Fabray stands at her locker.
As the world erupts in movement and the noise around her reaches its maximum pitch, she sees the girl’s lips move.
They say, “My, how the mighty have fallen.”
They say, “I heard you were as big as a house, but I didn’t think Brittany was being this literal.”
They tell her, “I heard you’re giving her up for adoption. It is a girl, isn’t it?”
They tell her, “Why don’t I save you the trouble?”
And Quinn thinks, Please, God, no.
-o-
Onwards.
-o-
The girl takes aim, and fires.