Angeles (Prologue)
The Day The Sky Caught Fire
Prologue
London, England, 1332
The first time Emma Pillsbury sees the world ending is on a rainy Thursday night.
She’s had these types of dreams before but there is something different about this one, something almost more sinister. Usually the images she sees are blurred, and she can only make out sounds, faint outlines at best.
This dream is different. Emma sees flashes, like lightening almost, but something is off, and it’s not just because she can actually make out the details this time. She sees the two people, can almost feel them and the power they bring with them. She can sense every emotion, but what surprises her is these two girls, teenagers really, they seem surprised at feeling anything at all.
Their humanity is new to them, and that’s when Emma understands her initial interpretation was wrong. She isn’t looking at two girls. She is looking at two angels. The one on the left is dangerously beautiful, almost inhumanly so. The one on the right is a brunette, a different kind of beauty. Emma continues to watch them in her dream, unsure if they are there to save the world or to end it, but she finds herself transfixed by them.
It’s in that moment that Emma realizes what the problem is- she is living this dream. She sees the angels stop in front of a small farmhouse. Somehow, she knows that it is important for the two of them enter. The angels get into a disagreement; the brunette wants to go in, the blonde wants to go leave. Eventually the blonde convinces the other angel to keep walking.
Emma loses sight of the angels after that. In her dream, she walks closer to the farmhouse, wanting to know what was so important about it, why the two angels seemed so drawn to it. She is less than a hundred feet away when she realizes why it seemed so familiar.
The farmhouse belongs to someone in the next village, Shelby Corcoran. She is still staring at it, trying to understand what two angels could possibly want to do with it, when the world begins to end.
It is still raining when Emma wakes up.
& & &
London, England, 1337
The second time Emma sees the world is on a cold Monday morning.
The dream starts the same way: there are flashes of light that resemble lightening without actually being lightening, without the natural beauty that comes along with a storm. It is vicious, fueled by an anger from someone or something she can’t understand. It is meant to hurt, meant to destroy, and she doesn’t know why.
The angels are present in the dream, too, just as beautiful as she remembered the first time she saw them five years ago. They haven’t changed at all, and Emma begins to understand while time has passed, the scene remains exactly the same.
She still wonders what these two angels could possibly want with Shelby Corcoran, why on Earth a small farmhouse is so important, and what is the cause of the dispute between the two. Similar to last time, the brunette wants to enter, the blonde is hesitant, reluctant.
While Emma isn’t close enough to actually hear the conversation between the two angels, she can still make out their features, and again she is struck by how beautiful they are. There is no doubt they were crafted by a higher being, their beauty is so flawless.
The blonde’s eyes flash with something, something that both bothers and intrigues the brunette. The angel takes a step back, and the blonde follows. She radiates a confidence that borders more on being arrogance.
Intrigued, Emma takes another step forward. She can’t understand the language the angels are speaking, but it sounds so musical, lyrical even. But then the blonde turns back towards the farmhouse, and the beautiful face is marred with something strangely resembling despair.
“Hope,” the angel says, looking at something inside the farmhouse, “does not belong to us.”
They leave, and Emma doesn’t question why she suddenly understood what the angels were saying. Instead, she moves forward, trying to see what had captured the angel’s interest.
Shelby Corcoran’s daughter is asleep, unaware of the world ending around her.
The chills Emma is feeling when she wakes up have nothing to do with the weather outside.
& & &
London, England, 1339
The third time Emma dreams of the world ending is in the middle of a snowstorm on a Sunday night.
For some reason the dream isn’t as clear as the other two dreams she had. It starts the same way - the flashes, the heightened scenes, the complete clarity, but there is something else, an unfamiliar presence in the back of her mind.
Emma doesn’t know how she knows, but she suspects she is about to understand the significance of the recurring dreams.
She is standing in front of the farmhouse again, watching as the two angels battle with a humanity that doesn’t belong to them. By now she is familiar with this dance, and there is some comfort in the brunette’s instance, the same way there is comfort in the blonde’s reluctant.
“Hope,” the blonde hisses, and again Emma wonders why she can understand the angels now when she couldn’t understand them when the dream started, “should not be dependent on them. What right do they have, walking around like faith belongs to them?”
“It is not ours,” the brunette counters. “You know that. You believe that, I’ve seen it.”
“She is a mortal,” the blonde angel snaps. The beautiful face flashes with an emotion Emma wants to describe as regret, and she is intrigued by this angel who struggles to understand what humanity is capable of feeling.
“She reeks of humanity,” the blonde continues, echoing in sorts Emma’s thoughts. “What makes her so special?”
“Please,” the brunette pleads softly, “please believe again. It’s the only way we can get back.”
& & &
Emma wakes up from the dream before they leave. She starts walking to the farmhouse, where she knows Shelby Corcoran will be beginning to wake up. She wonders how she’s supposed to explain it, wonders how she is supposed to tell a mother her daughter holds the fate of the world.
Predictably, the conversation falls apart before it can really take place. Shelby is, as expected, fiercely protective of her daughter and the other young girl staying with them.
“You are telling me,” Shelby growls, “that you had a dream where two angels were debating the fate of humanity because of my daughter?”
“Yes,” Emma says timidly. “And I know how it sounds, I do, but these dreams just felt so real…”
“They were just dreams!” Shelby snaps. “What right do you think you have, coming here and saying those things? You know the dangers, King William has outlawed hope! You can’t go around saying my baby girl is… is going to save angels? The very same creatures our King despises so much?”
“Shelby,” Emma pleads, “you don’t understand. They could make a difference, I’ve seen it. They could actually make a difference to the entire world. You owe your daughter that much…”
“Mummy?” Shelby’s daughter appears in the doorway, blinking sleepily. “Is everything ok?”
“Yes, baby, of course it is,” Shelby soothes, bringing her daughter onto her lap. From the corner of her eye, she watches Emma watching her daughter.
She’s heard the rumors, of course, about what Emma Pillsbury can do. She’s heard the whispers about the visions Emma has had, visions of the future and how they have come true. She’s heard stories about how one time Emma saw the soldiers before they arrived, and how she saved an entire village.
But she’s also heard the other type of stories, stories of how Emma is slowly falling captive to insanity, about how now she can’t tell the difference anymore between what is a dream and what is a vision. It’s just a matter of time, the town folks whisper, it’s just a matter of time before she confuses her gift with hope, and then King William will not be as tolerant.
“What did you see?” Shelby asks in a pained voice.
Emma looks up, startled. She hadn’t been expecting Shelby to actually give in to her curiosity.
“Angels,” she answers. “I saw angels, falling from the sky. But they need her, Shelby. They need her.”
“You’re too young to understand this,” Emma says as she leans down, “but in a few years, when you’re older? Two angels are going to fall from the sky. They’re going to feel really lost. So you’re going to have to help them, ok?”
The girl nods.
& & &
London, England, 1348
“Your arrogance is legendary.”
Quinn turns toward the voice, the lazy, mocking smirk that characterizes her so well playing on her lips.
“Is it still arrogance,” she drawls, “if I’m right?”
“It is arrogance when you believe you are superior.”
“But I am,” Quinn counters. “I am superior. I am better than anyone else. It is not arrogance in my case. Some may even call it humility.”
“I made you,” the voice snarls. “I made you who you are, and I can just as easily destroy you.”
“No,” Quinn snaps, “I made myself, not you. I remember who I was before this happened to me. I remember life before you. I remember everything. You did not make me. I made myself.”
The figure steps closer to the angel.
“Your beauty is almost sinful,” the voice breathes. “You took it for granted when you were a mortal and you take it for granted now. You don’t understand that these looks you have, I must have created them, humans are simply not capable of such a creation.”
“These humans,” the voice continues, “the ones you look down on so disapprovingly, they pray to us, to you even. Their faith almost feeds your beauty, and yet you reject them. You turn away from them.”
“It is not my faith,” Quinn growls, “that they are dependant on.” She shakes her head, her eyes flashing in defiance.
“Such arrogance,” the figure says, “such beautiful arrogance. Tell me, Quinn, what would it take for you to accept your gift? What would it take for you to pray? I know you can, I’ve seen you do it in your mortal days, and yet now… You deem yourself superior to faith, especially in my presence. Why is that?”
“Prayers are about faith,” Quinn responds.
“And what?” The figure looks taken back. “Are you saying you do not have faith? Quinn, look around you, everything here is built on faith. How could you no longer have it?”
“Prayers are about faith,” Quinn repeats, “and that’s the problem. It’s not that I don’t have faith in you, it’s that I believe in myself. I no longer need you.”
The figure reaches out and touches Quinn’s face.
“Such arrogance,” the figure says, a trace of anger lingering under the compassionate tone, “will not be tolerated in my kingdom. Go back amongst the mortals, Quinn. If you discover your faith again, you can come back.”
Quinn didn’t mean to reach out like that. She would have accepted her punishment alone, she was comfortable with that. But it was in Quinn’s nature to fight back. So when she was pushed out of the gates, she reached out to grab onto something.
She almost didn’t see the other angel until they were both lying on the ground.
& & &
Rachel and Brittany are coming back from the market when the sky suddenly changes color.
It is a dramatic change, the kind the local pastor talks about during Mass, the kind that usually signals the end of the world. The sky was a peaceful blue when suddenly clouds appear, swirling around it. Thunder can be heard, rumbling closer, and lightening streaks across the sky.
Rachel can’t explain it, but she knows that something is terribly, terribly wrong.
“Brittany,” Rachel says, “we need to get home, quickly. We need to go now, Mother will be upset…”
She’s trying, she really is. She’s trying to convince Brittany to just move, to get out of this storm, to get home before the world really does end. She’s trying. But then something happens.
She feels more than sees the lightening streak as it hits the ground just a few feet from where she is standing. The noise is absolutely deafening, and for a moment, Rachel is blinded by the light and the sound. She can’t do anything except stand there and wonder if this is what Death feels like.
Then, silence. Complete and total silence.
Rachel stares at Brittany, but her blonde friend isn’t looking at her, she’s looking at the sky. There’s a look on Brittany’s face she can’t describe, it’s close to awe, to a revelation almost, and she can’t help but wonder when Brittany suddenly became so enchanted by an event she had to have seen before.
“We have to go,” Rachel repeats in a hoarse whisper, “Brittany, come on, we have to go…”
She manages two steps, three at the absolute most, before they hear the noise. It’s quiet, so soft at first Rachel is almost completely sure she is imagining it, but then Brittany hesitates, and she knows whatever noise she may have heard was real. There is something to the left of them. It’s Brittany, finally, who notices the two girls first. They are lying next to each other. They are alive, Rachel can tell from the way they are gasping for breath, but only just.
It’s irrational, and Rachel knows it, but looking at them, she can’t help but wonder if this is what the prophets meant when they said the world would end. They look so innocent, so harmless, so lost. The blonde is lying there, gasping, as if she is rediscovering life but at the same time is trying to reject it. The brunette is crying. It is a beautiful, tragic sight.
And yet, according to the prophecies, they bring with them the end of the world.
“Quinn,” the brunette whispers, seemingly unaware of Rachel and Brittany’s presence, “what did you do?”
The girl, Quinn, doesn’t answer. She just lies there, trying to breathe unfamiliar oxygen into her lungs, and the only thing Rachel can think is this beautiful girl is the one who ends the world.
“What,” the brunette gasps, “is happening to me? Quinn, what’s going on? What’s happening? What did you do, Quinn, bring us back, make this stop, Quinn, what’s happening to me? Make it stop!”
Humanity, Rachel thinks.
They look like they are discovering what it feels like to be human and it terrifies them, and truthfully, it terrifies her a little as well. She doesn’t know why they are here, except to bring the end of the world, but if that’s the case, why do they look so afraid? Where is their anger, the rage, the thirst for destruction?
They look so vulnerable, Rachel thinks. They don’t look like they want to destroy humanity, they just look like they want whatever it is they’re going through to stop. Their world is the one ending, she thinks, not the one she and Brittany are living in.
Did the prophets get it wrong, then, when they said the world was going to end with the arrival of the angels? Did they mean to write, the angels’ world will end, but somehow the words were lost in translation?
“Save me,” the girl, Quinn, finally gasps, her lungs burning with every breath she takes. “Please, save me…”
It’s the last sentence she manages to utter before she blacks out again from the pain.
& & &
Quinn thinks she is dying.
It’s the only explanation she can come up with for the burning sensation taking over her body, the absolute agony she feels every time she takes a breath. She is dying, or at the very least, she is in Hell. She drifts in and one of consciousness, never aware of her surroundings for more than a minute at most. That she is aware of time passing at all terrifies her.
She forces her eyes open, trying to take in her surroundings. She’s lying in a room somewhere, but she has absolutely no recollection of how she got there, who brought her there, or anything else. She closes her eyes again, tries to regulate her breathing, anything to make the agony stop.
Having not had to breathe for so long, the sheer sensation of oxygen in her lungs is unfamiliar. It’s muscle memory at best, taking a breath in, breathing out, repeating the process, and it burns. It’s as if she is on fire from the inside out.
“It’s ok,” a voice suddenly whispers, strangely comforting. “It’s ok, everything is going to be ok, you’re not going to hurt anymore…”
She wants to turn her head, to see who is stroking her hair, who is trying to comfort her when she is dying, she must be, feeling like this. She wants to turn her head and look into the person’s eyes, to repent for whatever it is she has done, but she can’t move, can’t even speak.
“It’s ok,” the voice soothes, “you’re safe here. Everything is going to be ok.”
The last thing Quinn hears before she drifts back into unconsciousness is the sound of a melody. She continues to hear it in her dreams.
& & &
Shelby knows even before the sky begins to change that this is the day Emma saw in her dream, the vision of the world ending.
She hurries back from her walk, keeping an eye on the sky. She feels more than sees the drastic change in the sky, the way the Earth almost feels like it is ripped in two, as if two forces are clashing but neither is strong enough to win. The sky continues to be ripped apart but then, just like that, it is suddenly over.
The walk home never seemed so long, and she wonders what she will see, wonders if Rachel and Brittany made it home safely, wonders if it’s too late to confess to mistakes she hasn’t committed, wonders how she can possibly be expected to save herself when she doesn’t know how to save her own children.
Shelby is still running through her list of mistakes when she walks into the farmhouse and sees Rachel and Brittany sitting in the foyer. She knows before they speak that something has happened to them.
“Are you hurt?” She asks cautiously, walking closer to them. They don’t have any visible injuries but that doesn’t mean anything.
“Something happened, Ma,” Rachel says, and she sounds so confused, so lost, so scared that Shelby just feels her heart break into fragments.
“What is it?” She asks quietly. “Rachel, are you ok? What is it, it’s ok, you’re going to be ok, just tell me what happened and -”
She sees them. Two girls lying on the ground. The blonde is shaking, shivering, obviously in pain. The brunette is next to her, and she looks like she is in complete agony. The vulnerability is heart breaking.
But then she remembers. She whispers what the prophecy said, remembers what Emma had seen in her vision, of how the angels came to her home, and how Rachel was supposed to save them all, and she could think was how she wished, just once, Emma could have been wrong.
“No…” She whispers. “No, this can’t be true.”
Neither of her girls say anything, but then Shelby isn’t really expecting them to. The silence is occasionally broken by a gasp of pain coming from the two girls lying on the ground.
“They’re hurting,” Rachel eventually says. “We couldn’t just leave them there, not like that. You can tell how much pain they’re in. We couldn’t… I couldn’t just walk away, Ma. I just couldn’t.”
“Do you know where they came from?” Shelby asks, even though she’s terrified of the answer. But there is a part of her that has to know, that has to be sure what Emma Pillsbury saw all those years ago was actually correct… Even though she has never prayed so hard that the vision was wrong.
For the longest time Rachel doesn’t answer, and Shelby suddenly realizes that her daughter doesn’t actually know. That much, at least, gives her a peace of mind. Emma Pillsbury was wrong, and maybe these are just two girls who were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. She’s still holding on to that hope when Brittany speaks up.
“They fell from the sky, Ma,” Brittany says quietly.
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Disclaimers:
- I don't own Glee
- This has nothing to do with "How You Came to Leave". I just wanted to try something different
- Special thanks to kreia03 for looking over it
- The religious views aren't mine
Prologue
London, England, 1332
The first time Emma Pillsbury sees the world ending is on a rainy Thursday night.
She’s had these types of dreams before but there is something different about this one, something almost more sinister. Usually the images she sees are blurred, and she can only make out sounds, faint outlines at best.
This dream is different. Emma sees flashes, like lightening almost, but something is off, and it’s not just because she can actually make out the details this time. She sees the two people, can almost feel them and the power they bring with them. She can sense every emotion, but what surprises her is these two girls, teenagers really, they seem surprised at feeling anything at all.
Their humanity is new to them, and that’s when Emma understands her initial interpretation was wrong. She isn’t looking at two girls. She is looking at two angels. The one on the left is dangerously beautiful, almost inhumanly so. The one on the right is a brunette, a different kind of beauty. Emma continues to watch them in her dream, unsure if they are there to save the world or to end it, but she finds herself transfixed by them.
It’s in that moment that Emma realizes what the problem is- she is living this dream. She sees the angels stop in front of a small farmhouse. Somehow, she knows that it is important for the two of them enter. The angels get into a disagreement; the brunette wants to go in, the blonde wants to go leave. Eventually the blonde convinces the other angel to keep walking.
Emma loses sight of the angels after that. In her dream, she walks closer to the farmhouse, wanting to know what was so important about it, why the two angels seemed so drawn to it. She is less than a hundred feet away when she realizes why it seemed so familiar.
The farmhouse belongs to someone in the next village, Shelby Corcoran. She is still staring at it, trying to understand what two angels could possibly want to do with it, when the world begins to end.
It is still raining when Emma wakes up.
& & &
London, England, 1337
The second time Emma sees the world is on a cold Monday morning.
The dream starts the same way: there are flashes of light that resemble lightening without actually being lightening, without the natural beauty that comes along with a storm. It is vicious, fueled by an anger from someone or something she can’t understand. It is meant to hurt, meant to destroy, and she doesn’t know why.
The angels are present in the dream, too, just as beautiful as she remembered the first time she saw them five years ago. They haven’t changed at all, and Emma begins to understand while time has passed, the scene remains exactly the same.
She still wonders what these two angels could possibly want with Shelby Corcoran, why on Earth a small farmhouse is so important, and what is the cause of the dispute between the two. Similar to last time, the brunette wants to enter, the blonde is hesitant, reluctant.
While Emma isn’t close enough to actually hear the conversation between the two angels, she can still make out their features, and again she is struck by how beautiful they are. There is no doubt they were crafted by a higher being, their beauty is so flawless.
The blonde’s eyes flash with something, something that both bothers and intrigues the brunette. The angel takes a step back, and the blonde follows. She radiates a confidence that borders more on being arrogance.
Intrigued, Emma takes another step forward. She can’t understand the language the angels are speaking, but it sounds so musical, lyrical even. But then the blonde turns back towards the farmhouse, and the beautiful face is marred with something strangely resembling despair.
“Hope,” the angel says, looking at something inside the farmhouse, “does not belong to us.”
They leave, and Emma doesn’t question why she suddenly understood what the angels were saying. Instead, she moves forward, trying to see what had captured the angel’s interest.
Shelby Corcoran’s daughter is asleep, unaware of the world ending around her.
The chills Emma is feeling when she wakes up have nothing to do with the weather outside.
& & &
London, England, 1339
The third time Emma dreams of the world ending is in the middle of a snowstorm on a Sunday night.
For some reason the dream isn’t as clear as the other two dreams she had. It starts the same way - the flashes, the heightened scenes, the complete clarity, but there is something else, an unfamiliar presence in the back of her mind.
Emma doesn’t know how she knows, but she suspects she is about to understand the significance of the recurring dreams.
She is standing in front of the farmhouse again, watching as the two angels battle with a humanity that doesn’t belong to them. By now she is familiar with this dance, and there is some comfort in the brunette’s instance, the same way there is comfort in the blonde’s reluctant.
“Hope,” the blonde hisses, and again Emma wonders why she can understand the angels now when she couldn’t understand them when the dream started, “should not be dependent on them. What right do they have, walking around like faith belongs to them?”
“It is not ours,” the brunette counters. “You know that. You believe that, I’ve seen it.”
“She is a mortal,” the blonde angel snaps. The beautiful face flashes with an emotion Emma wants to describe as regret, and she is intrigued by this angel who struggles to understand what humanity is capable of feeling.
“She reeks of humanity,” the blonde continues, echoing in sorts Emma’s thoughts. “What makes her so special?”
“Please,” the brunette pleads softly, “please believe again. It’s the only way we can get back.”
& & &
Emma wakes up from the dream before they leave. She starts walking to the farmhouse, where she knows Shelby Corcoran will be beginning to wake up. She wonders how she’s supposed to explain it, wonders how she is supposed to tell a mother her daughter holds the fate of the world.
Predictably, the conversation falls apart before it can really take place. Shelby is, as expected, fiercely protective of her daughter and the other young girl staying with them.
“You are telling me,” Shelby growls, “that you had a dream where two angels were debating the fate of humanity because of my daughter?”
“Yes,” Emma says timidly. “And I know how it sounds, I do, but these dreams just felt so real…”
“They were just dreams!” Shelby snaps. “What right do you think you have, coming here and saying those things? You know the dangers, King William has outlawed hope! You can’t go around saying my baby girl is… is going to save angels? The very same creatures our King despises so much?”
“Shelby,” Emma pleads, “you don’t understand. They could make a difference, I’ve seen it. They could actually make a difference to the entire world. You owe your daughter that much…”
“Mummy?” Shelby’s daughter appears in the doorway, blinking sleepily. “Is everything ok?”
“Yes, baby, of course it is,” Shelby soothes, bringing her daughter onto her lap. From the corner of her eye, she watches Emma watching her daughter.
She’s heard the rumors, of course, about what Emma Pillsbury can do. She’s heard the whispers about the visions Emma has had, visions of the future and how they have come true. She’s heard stories about how one time Emma saw the soldiers before they arrived, and how she saved an entire village.
But she’s also heard the other type of stories, stories of how Emma is slowly falling captive to insanity, about how now she can’t tell the difference anymore between what is a dream and what is a vision. It’s just a matter of time, the town folks whisper, it’s just a matter of time before she confuses her gift with hope, and then King William will not be as tolerant.
“What did you see?” Shelby asks in a pained voice.
Emma looks up, startled. She hadn’t been expecting Shelby to actually give in to her curiosity.
“Angels,” she answers. “I saw angels, falling from the sky. But they need her, Shelby. They need her.”
“You’re too young to understand this,” Emma says as she leans down, “but in a few years, when you’re older? Two angels are going to fall from the sky. They’re going to feel really lost. So you’re going to have to help them, ok?”
The girl nods.
& & &
London, England, 1348
“Your arrogance is legendary.”
Quinn turns toward the voice, the lazy, mocking smirk that characterizes her so well playing on her lips.
“Is it still arrogance,” she drawls, “if I’m right?”
“It is arrogance when you believe you are superior.”
“But I am,” Quinn counters. “I am superior. I am better than anyone else. It is not arrogance in my case. Some may even call it humility.”
“I made you,” the voice snarls. “I made you who you are, and I can just as easily destroy you.”
“No,” Quinn snaps, “I made myself, not you. I remember who I was before this happened to me. I remember life before you. I remember everything. You did not make me. I made myself.”
The figure steps closer to the angel.
“Your beauty is almost sinful,” the voice breathes. “You took it for granted when you were a mortal and you take it for granted now. You don’t understand that these looks you have, I must have created them, humans are simply not capable of such a creation.”
“These humans,” the voice continues, “the ones you look down on so disapprovingly, they pray to us, to you even. Their faith almost feeds your beauty, and yet you reject them. You turn away from them.”
“It is not my faith,” Quinn growls, “that they are dependant on.” She shakes her head, her eyes flashing in defiance.
“Such arrogance,” the figure says, “such beautiful arrogance. Tell me, Quinn, what would it take for you to accept your gift? What would it take for you to pray? I know you can, I’ve seen you do it in your mortal days, and yet now… You deem yourself superior to faith, especially in my presence. Why is that?”
“Prayers are about faith,” Quinn responds.
“And what?” The figure looks taken back. “Are you saying you do not have faith? Quinn, look around you, everything here is built on faith. How could you no longer have it?”
“Prayers are about faith,” Quinn repeats, “and that’s the problem. It’s not that I don’t have faith in you, it’s that I believe in myself. I no longer need you.”
The figure reaches out and touches Quinn’s face.
“Such arrogance,” the figure says, a trace of anger lingering under the compassionate tone, “will not be tolerated in my kingdom. Go back amongst the mortals, Quinn. If you discover your faith again, you can come back.”
Quinn didn’t mean to reach out like that. She would have accepted her punishment alone, she was comfortable with that. But it was in Quinn’s nature to fight back. So when she was pushed out of the gates, she reached out to grab onto something.
She almost didn’t see the other angel until they were both lying on the ground.
& & &
Rachel and Brittany are coming back from the market when the sky suddenly changes color.
It is a dramatic change, the kind the local pastor talks about during Mass, the kind that usually signals the end of the world. The sky was a peaceful blue when suddenly clouds appear, swirling around it. Thunder can be heard, rumbling closer, and lightening streaks across the sky.
Rachel can’t explain it, but she knows that something is terribly, terribly wrong.
“Brittany,” Rachel says, “we need to get home, quickly. We need to go now, Mother will be upset…”
She’s trying, she really is. She’s trying to convince Brittany to just move, to get out of this storm, to get home before the world really does end. She’s trying. But then something happens.
She feels more than sees the lightening streak as it hits the ground just a few feet from where she is standing. The noise is absolutely deafening, and for a moment, Rachel is blinded by the light and the sound. She can’t do anything except stand there and wonder if this is what Death feels like.
Then, silence. Complete and total silence.
Rachel stares at Brittany, but her blonde friend isn’t looking at her, she’s looking at the sky. There’s a look on Brittany’s face she can’t describe, it’s close to awe, to a revelation almost, and she can’t help but wonder when Brittany suddenly became so enchanted by an event she had to have seen before.
“We have to go,” Rachel repeats in a hoarse whisper, “Brittany, come on, we have to go…”
She manages two steps, three at the absolute most, before they hear the noise. It’s quiet, so soft at first Rachel is almost completely sure she is imagining it, but then Brittany hesitates, and she knows whatever noise she may have heard was real. There is something to the left of them. It’s Brittany, finally, who notices the two girls first. They are lying next to each other. They are alive, Rachel can tell from the way they are gasping for breath, but only just.
It’s irrational, and Rachel knows it, but looking at them, she can’t help but wonder if this is what the prophets meant when they said the world would end. They look so innocent, so harmless, so lost. The blonde is lying there, gasping, as if she is rediscovering life but at the same time is trying to reject it. The brunette is crying. It is a beautiful, tragic sight.
And yet, according to the prophecies, they bring with them the end of the world.
“Quinn,” the brunette whispers, seemingly unaware of Rachel and Brittany’s presence, “what did you do?”
The girl, Quinn, doesn’t answer. She just lies there, trying to breathe unfamiliar oxygen into her lungs, and the only thing Rachel can think is this beautiful girl is the one who ends the world.
“What,” the brunette gasps, “is happening to me? Quinn, what’s going on? What’s happening? What did you do, Quinn, bring us back, make this stop, Quinn, what’s happening to me? Make it stop!”
Humanity, Rachel thinks.
They look like they are discovering what it feels like to be human and it terrifies them, and truthfully, it terrifies her a little as well. She doesn’t know why they are here, except to bring the end of the world, but if that’s the case, why do they look so afraid? Where is their anger, the rage, the thirst for destruction?
They look so vulnerable, Rachel thinks. They don’t look like they want to destroy humanity, they just look like they want whatever it is they’re going through to stop. Their world is the one ending, she thinks, not the one she and Brittany are living in.
Did the prophets get it wrong, then, when they said the world was going to end with the arrival of the angels? Did they mean to write, the angels’ world will end, but somehow the words were lost in translation?
“Save me,” the girl, Quinn, finally gasps, her lungs burning with every breath she takes. “Please, save me…”
It’s the last sentence she manages to utter before she blacks out again from the pain.
& & &
Quinn thinks she is dying.
It’s the only explanation she can come up with for the burning sensation taking over her body, the absolute agony she feels every time she takes a breath. She is dying, or at the very least, she is in Hell. She drifts in and one of consciousness, never aware of her surroundings for more than a minute at most. That she is aware of time passing at all terrifies her.
She forces her eyes open, trying to take in her surroundings. She’s lying in a room somewhere, but she has absolutely no recollection of how she got there, who brought her there, or anything else. She closes her eyes again, tries to regulate her breathing, anything to make the agony stop.
Having not had to breathe for so long, the sheer sensation of oxygen in her lungs is unfamiliar. It’s muscle memory at best, taking a breath in, breathing out, repeating the process, and it burns. It’s as if she is on fire from the inside out.
“It’s ok,” a voice suddenly whispers, strangely comforting. “It’s ok, everything is going to be ok, you’re not going to hurt anymore…”
She wants to turn her head, to see who is stroking her hair, who is trying to comfort her when she is dying, she must be, feeling like this. She wants to turn her head and look into the person’s eyes, to repent for whatever it is she has done, but she can’t move, can’t even speak.
“It’s ok,” the voice soothes, “you’re safe here. Everything is going to be ok.”
The last thing Quinn hears before she drifts back into unconsciousness is the sound of a melody. She continues to hear it in her dreams.
& & &
Shelby knows even before the sky begins to change that this is the day Emma saw in her dream, the vision of the world ending.
She hurries back from her walk, keeping an eye on the sky. She feels more than sees the drastic change in the sky, the way the Earth almost feels like it is ripped in two, as if two forces are clashing but neither is strong enough to win. The sky continues to be ripped apart but then, just like that, it is suddenly over.
The walk home never seemed so long, and she wonders what she will see, wonders if Rachel and Brittany made it home safely, wonders if it’s too late to confess to mistakes she hasn’t committed, wonders how she can possibly be expected to save herself when she doesn’t know how to save her own children.
Shelby is still running through her list of mistakes when she walks into the farmhouse and sees Rachel and Brittany sitting in the foyer. She knows before they speak that something has happened to them.
“Are you hurt?” She asks cautiously, walking closer to them. They don’t have any visible injuries but that doesn’t mean anything.
“Something happened, Ma,” Rachel says, and she sounds so confused, so lost, so scared that Shelby just feels her heart break into fragments.
“What is it?” She asks quietly. “Rachel, are you ok? What is it, it’s ok, you’re going to be ok, just tell me what happened and -”
She sees them. Two girls lying on the ground. The blonde is shaking, shivering, obviously in pain. The brunette is next to her, and she looks like she is in complete agony. The vulnerability is heart breaking.
But then she remembers. She whispers what the prophecy said, remembers what Emma had seen in her vision, of how the angels came to her home, and how Rachel was supposed to save them all, and she could think was how she wished, just once, Emma could have been wrong.
“No…” She whispers. “No, this can’t be true.”
Neither of her girls say anything, but then Shelby isn’t really expecting them to. The silence is occasionally broken by a gasp of pain coming from the two girls lying on the ground.
“They’re hurting,” Rachel eventually says. “We couldn’t just leave them there, not like that. You can tell how much pain they’re in. We couldn’t… I couldn’t just walk away, Ma. I just couldn’t.”
“Do you know where they came from?” Shelby asks, even though she’s terrified of the answer. But there is a part of her that has to know, that has to be sure what Emma Pillsbury saw all those years ago was actually correct… Even though she has never prayed so hard that the vision was wrong.
For the longest time Rachel doesn’t answer, and Shelby suddenly realizes that her daughter doesn’t actually know. That much, at least, gives her a peace of mind. Emma Pillsbury was wrong, and maybe these are just two girls who were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. She’s still holding on to that hope when Brittany speaks up.
“They fell from the sky, Ma,” Brittany says quietly.
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Disclaimers:
- I don't own Glee
- This has nothing to do with "How You Came to Leave". I just wanted to try something different
- Special thanks to kreia03 for looking over it
- The religious views aren't mine