How You Came to Leave (Part XII)
Part I: An' Another Thing
Part II: Last to Know
Part III: Wicked Game
Part IV: Talking to the Moon
Part V: Look What You've Done
Part VI: Knife Going In
Part VII: I'm Not Calling You a Liar
Part VIII: Told You So
Part IX: I Gave You All
Part X: I Adore You
Part XI: Love Is No Big Truth
Part XII: Escape
And I wonder now, will you be there too, with all the time I thought of you… (Smith Point, Escape)
There are worse crimes a lover can commit than infidelity.
After you, you’ve learnt from the best - you don’t actually have to cheat on someone to be unfaithful. You can be there, right next to the person you love more than anything - but there’s a part of you, be it your heart, or maybe your soul, that is with someone else. The one you’re meant to be with.
You know what it’s like as you experienced it for the better part of 18 months when you were with Rachel. She loved you, but you loved her more. You still feel more for her than she does for you, and for the most, you’ve come to terms with it. Yes, she wrote a musical about her relationship with you, but at the end of the day, you were the one left with the guilt and a broken heart, whereas Rachel moved on.
She was doing just fine without you. The manuscript, and her relationship with Finn, made that very, very clear to you. There was life before you, and life after you, and Rachel has no problem separating the two.
You don’t have that luxury. You are constantly plagued with thoughts of what could have been; memories of when you had it all until a scout came along and said that Berkeley could offer you what Rachel couldn’t. What had she meant, exactly? It wasn’t happiness per say, because you were happy with Rachel in high school, Berkeley gave you the intellectual simulation you so frequently craved. The university appealed to your intellectual vanity, and you were never that good at resisting that kind of temptation to begin with.
It was, perhaps, the desire to make a difference that ultimately swayed you. Maybe there was a degree of selfishness behind it. You knew the number of lives Rachel could touch if she made it on Broadway and there was a part of you, as irrational as it may have been, that craved the same thing. You wanted to make a difference, and you couldn’t do it if you played dotted girlfriend to Rachel while she was in New York.
But you miscalculated in your intentions to save the world. You didn’t think it would hurt so much, leaving Rachel behind. And you were just so certain that Rachel would go to New York - it had always been such a big part in her Life Plans that you just couldn’t imagine Rachel being anywhere but on Broadway.
And then Santana showed up on your doorstep and confessed that Rachel had -foolishly? - waited for you to come back. Julliard and Broadway hadn’t paid her the same courtesy, and your desire to change the world resulted in ending Rachel’s. A lover’s selfish arrogance in thinking their words would last forever in the anecdotes of a stranger’s poem.
A lover’s greatest sin perhaps is their own vanity. They want to believe they are capable of making a difference, of leaving an imprint on their true love’s heart. But what happens when that heart gets broken? When there’s a crack in it, when it becomes splintered beyond repair? Do words still matter in that instance, or are they better left forgotten?
“Come look at the stars with me,” you say softly. For a moment Rachel hesitates, and you wonder if this is it, if this is the day (night?) when Rachel is going to say no simply for the sake of saying no.
“Why?” She asks, and it hurts a little, the trace of insecurity in her voice after all this time. Haven’t you proven by now you are not the same person from before? Doesn’t she believe you when you whisper in her ear that you have changed, this time for the better?
“It’s the stars,” you shrug. But then you bite your lip because that’s not the real reason.
“Yeah?” Rachel drawls, and finally, there’s a trace of something in her eyes, a hint of defiance, and it’s enough for you to believe you haven’t lost her, after all. This part you know well, this song and dance you’ve come to perfect over the past eighteen months. You know this choreography; you know it well, even though Rachel was the one who invented it.
“Don’t you see?” You plead. “The stars, they’re not just stars, they’re so much bigger than that, so much bigger than anything we could even possibly understand. Look at History, look at how long humanity has been obsessed with understanding Astrology, so desperate to uncover its secrets…”
There’s an excitement in your voice that you don’t know how to hide because this - this is coming from you. This is who you are, really, when you’re stripped of your cheerleading uniform and you have escaped from the outside world.
“But what’s it got to do with us?” Rachel blinks at you in confusion.
You laugh and pull her towards you. You begin a slow dance under the starlit sky. There’s no real rhythm and although you know that bothers Rachel a little, she plays along with you anyway. Sometimes love is about compromising on the little details.
“Why live in the clouds when you dance among the stars?” You ask, and finally you have Rachel’s undivided attention. “The stars have all these beautiful stories written about them, let’s write our own fairytale, and we can base it a long story that’s been building ever since a philosopher was walking in Ancient Greece and looked up at the stars in wonder…”
“That’s how I look at you,” Rachel confesses quietly. “I can’t always believe you’re real, that you actually exist, that you’re really here.” She gives you a small smile. “The love you feel for the stars is nothing compared to what I feel for you, Quinn.”
But what does she feel for you now? You don’t know for sure. Yes, she whispers into the phone that she’s not over you, stands in your office doorway and say she wants you back. You know all that.
But you also know she chose Finn Hudson over you, also know there’s a manuscript that includes a list of sins you committed in your head but confessed to out loud, and the thought that someone else will utter those words makes you feel so conflicted.
These are your thoughts, your words, your memories. Who is Rachel to give them to someone? Who is Rachel to determine someone else will be eloquent in delivering your confessions?
Is this your final punishment, one last act you have to repent for before the final blow? Or is this the final nail in the coffin? Doesn’t Rachel understand how much it hurts to know she sold your confessions to someone else? You know how these memories play out, you replay them all the time in your mind - but it’s your regrets that you see in high definition. Who is she to bring them to live through someone else?
Regrets are personal because the individual is the one who is haunted by what could have been. It’s the individual, not the spectator, who is plagued by guilt. The rest of the world becomes unwelcomed interlopers. However, sometimes - not very often, but sometimes - the barrier is breached.
It’s the poet who opens his mind in an effort to find the muse he left behind, the musician who exiles herself to a forgotten beach house to fall in love with the crowds she left behind. Sometimes, it is about who you keep in your past, because those are the people who once upon a time knew the real you.
You’re not the same person you were when you lived back in Lima, and Rachel being here, in Los Angeles, is an acute reminder of these differences. You used to feel you had control over something, even it was your career. You had made yourself. You had built yourself an empire and you could look down at the world in your office and feel like all you had to do was reach out and touch it, and whatever you wanted could be yours.
You were someone new. The old Quinn, the one you buried in Lima, she was weak. She was human and your job description depends on your ability to compartmentalize, to switch off your emotions at will. What you feel should have nothing to do with your job. It’s a skill you’ve had to learn but now that you do know it, have had the chance to perfect it.
Then Rachel starts showing up in your dreams and makes it worse by being in your office, and the intuition you’ve prided yourself on for the past few years suddenly failed you. You could have sworn you had buried the person you used to be but all it took was one small trigger and the person you were so desperate to leave behind was the one you couldn’t escape from.
You need Rachel gone, both for the sake of your sanity and for your career. She throws you off, confuses you when you’re around her. Your vision becomes hazy because all you see is her. All you can think of is her. You start to see her features in everyone you meet and that will prove to be your downfall in terms of your career because you need not to see at all in order for the individual to stand out.
It’s not about putting her features onto someone else because you don’t need to be told that singers like Rachel, they don’t come along every day. But it would be unfair to expect everyone else to suddenly be her, because that implies that anyone can have her talent. It’s raw, what Rachel has. It is raw and pure and untainted and to force it onto others, to make her become them, would be to poison the perfect rose.
You’ve committed a lot of sins in your life but that is one you refuse to be condemned for.
You will not make others into Rachel Berry because you now know how that tale ends. You refuse to be held accountable for Julliard and Broadway to fall in love with someone only to forget about them. You will not let Los Angeles and Hollywood make that same mistake, you will not let them believe in someone only to determine that hope is superficial at best.
So, yes, you need Rachel out of Los Angeles. But you need Rachel out of your head, too.
Doesn’t she see what she is doing to you? Can’t she read the symptoms of a recurring insomnia that won’t leave you no matter how far away you run? Can’t she listen to the silence and hear the epic novels you have dedicated to hear?
She used to be able to read you so beautifully. Why can’t she understand what you are saying through your silence? It’s never been about the words between the two of you, has she forgotten that? And yet, and yet… Now she wants you to find the words. She wants an epic declaration that she’s the only love you’ve ever known but she’s the one who is constantly choosing others over you. You have never known any other love, but for Rachel, you are just another name on a list of lovers she’s left behind.
You left her once and spent four years paying the price of a heartbreak you never fully got over. Rachel left you and was fine with it, until she needed inspiration and came back to tell the world the tales of a love that in many ways really was doomed from the start. You know everyone deals with things in different ways, but still, you are allowed to be jaded over this.
She chose Finn over you, but it’s your words that are inspiring this musical. How are you supposed to be feel anything but jaded? If she loved you as much as she claimed to, this manuscript would be based on Finn. Your words would not feature, and critics would not be murmuring about the impact of such a tragic love, ready to grace a darkened Broadway stage.
Your confessions were not for sale but you can’t help but feel Rachel sold them to the highest bidder. And then, there’s the even scarier thought, that she wrote it to get back at you, to even the score a little. She holds you accountable for Julliard having gotten over her, for Broadway never knowing her talent. She blames you for that, she’s said as much. What better way, therefore, to even the score than by writing a musical about the one person who took it all away from her?
This is punishment, and you’ll take it as such. As such, you reserve the right to not return calls, to ignore voicemails filled with pleas of pick up the phone, Quinn, please, I just want to hear your voice, just once; confessions of insomnia I can’t sleep, Quinn… I know you can’t, either, so pick up the phone, please? We can be sleepless together…
Ah yes, her famous insomnia.
It was Finn who originally told you about it, when he first came to see you in Los Angeles to rub in the fact she chose him over you. But there was another point to his visit - a desperation, a plea for you to just stay away from her. “Stop making her feel so confused,” he begged you. But now you’re the one feeling confused.
You wonder what, exactly, is keeping Rachel up that night, what thoughts are plaguing her, which regrets are playing in high definition at the back of her mind. There are worse crimes than infidelity, and just thoughts of someone else is one of them. The selfish, selfish part of you - the one that once ruled the Cheerios, the one who had the world at her fingertips and took whatever she wanted, regardless of the consequences - wonders if it’s thoughts of you that are keeping her up.
She haunts you, you might as well haunt her, you think snidely to yourself.
It’s a form of pettiness, of selfishness, that makes you pick your phone to call her. If you can’t sleep, you’re going to make damn sure she won’t either. But as you do, as you feel the cool metal slide into your palm, your vision is filled with a distant memory, and the bitterness instantly fades away, filling you instead with nostalgia.
“I sleep better when you’re with me,” Rachel confesses quietly. You look up from your textbook, your eyes filled with something akin to adoration.
“I sleep better when you’re there, too,” you tell her, and then turn your attention back to the Physics textbook.
“Why?” She asks, and you sigh, turning around to face her fully. What you see takes you by surprise. There’s a vulnerability, a hint of fear, that you aren’t used to seeing in her eyes. It fills you with panic, and you’re suddenly terrified you’ve done something terribly wrong.
“Is everything ok?” You ask, panicked. She smiles slightly but you notice it doesn’t quite reach her eyes.
“Everything is fine.” It makes you flinch, the dismissive tone in her voice, and you’re frantically trying to read her eyes but there’s a wall there and you don’t know how to break them down, don’t know how to read this language you’ve never seen before.
“What does it mean, Quinn?” She repeats softly, and even though her tone of voice suggests she cares, her eyes are telling you a different story. “What does it mean to you, that you sleep better when I am there?”
“It means I don’t sleep well when you’re gone,” you offer. You lean back, trying to establish some distance between the two of you. “It means that you make the world a whole less scary just by being there.”
“Tell me what you want,” you plead. “Tell me what you want me to say and I’ll say it. Tell me what promise you want me to make and I’ll make it. Tell me what secrets you want me to confess and they will be yours. Just tell me what you want from me, anything at all, and I will give it to you.”
For the longest time, Rachel doesn’t say anything. She just continues to watch you, her eyes trailing along your face, committing to memory details she surely already knows by heart. You wonder what answers she is looking for, what riddles she is trying to solve.
Slowly, so slowly you almost miss it, she reaches out and traces the outline of your hand on the page of the textbook. It’s the faintest gesture, and you wonder - wonder what storm has passed in her mind, and whether it will come back to haunt her once more.
“If you asked me to,” she says, very softly, another stolen secret shared between the two of you, “I would crawl into your dreams and fight the darkness with you. You’d never have to be alone, even if I’m not next to you. The darkness will never be something to fear again, Quinn.”
The trouble is, now the demons you are fighting in your dreams are your memories of Rachel. It is one of the few situations where she can’t be the savior you’ve been craving for your entire life because she is partly responsible for the state you have find yourself in. You can’t fight someone who isn’t there; you have been forced to learn that mantra off by heart. In turn, Rachel has become your perfect renegade.
They don’t tell you about that, what it means to fall in love with someone who left, and how hard it is for you when they come back. Lovers get abandoned all the time but the real test of character is how they deal when the one who broke them apart wanders back into their life.
There’s a term for that, you think to yourself. Buyer’s remorse. But it has nothing to do with actually buying something and then realizing you made a mistake, that you didn’t want it as much as you thought of it. This - this push and pull you have going on with Rachel - stems from something else entirely. It comes from a vicious cycle - you left me once so I’ll leave you twice except you’ve stopped keeping score long ago and Rachel seems intent on rewriting the rules.
Poets have written endless sonnets about losing the one you love the most and philosophers try and understand the obsession with being left behind but no one has the remedy for when the perfect renegade comes back.
It’s a conflicting message, what Rachel keeps sending you. While you left Lima behind, she’s the one who has perfected the act of walking away, time and again. She’s the one who made it perfectly clear there was life after you, leaving you to be haunted by the thoughts and memories of what could have been.
But like all renegades, she’s also perfected the art of coming back, and that’s what hurts. It was easier, really, to deal with Rachel when she was just a distant figure of your past, when the image you had created of her wasn’t distorted by reality’s own infidelity.
You want answers, though truth be told, the very thought of them terrifies you. You don’t want to know why, exactly, Rachel chose this relationship as inspiration because there’s an answer lingering at the back of your mind - it ended, Quinn, that’s why I can write about it - and in true artist form, she always did hate works in progress.
You’re not quite like that. You like to see things develop in front of your eyes, like to see the way an artist creates a masterpiece from thoughts scribbled on a napkin. The finished product is always gorgeous but the true beauty lies in thought. There’s something about creativity, about seeing a creator - and you use that term deliberately - work through a problem, trying to find to find the solution. Yes, people remember the sonnets and epic novels, but didn’t those very words stem from anecdotes written in a margin?
It’s not the final product that makes people fall in love; it’s the work in progress that holds the mystery. It’s the inception of the idea - the way it grows, changes forms, lingers at the back of the writer’s mind until they are driven insane by these thoughts and only then can they bring the words to life.
Is that the only reason Rachel is here, in Los Angeles? Because the thoughts won’t leave her alone and so she came here, to seek you out, in a desperate attempt to regain her grip on sanity? Is that the reason why she can’t sleep - it isn’t thoughts of you keeping her up at night, but rather just something else entirely: inspiration of what could have been.
You lie in your bed, staring at the ceiling, trying to ignore the thoughts swirling around in your head. Next to you, a band you had almost forgotten you had on your iPod whispers about escaping, and yes, you’d be lying if you said you weren’t tempted by the idea. But where would you go? You can’t run away, because everywhere you go reminds you of something you left behind, and for once, you just want to be clear of your conscious. You want to go somewhere where your thoughts don’t matter, a place you can learn how to separate yourself from this identity you’ve created.
You entertain the thought for a moment, but then you turn your head and the bright neon lights of your alarm clock stare back at you. You’re almost blinded by the digits and in that moment that you finally start to see things clearly.
“I too am a painter,” Correggio said in awe when he saw beauty for what it was. Plato spent his whole life thanking the heavens he was born under the same stars as Socrates and Rousseau spent his career defending reason to reasonable men. It is all defined by mere moments, knee-jerk reactions that no one can really predict, but then - then you understand, it all makes sense.
You’re not a painter, and while philosophy has always held a certain intrigue for you, it’s the stars that matter the most. You can look up and that’s where you find the words you’ve been searching for all along, painted against the night canvas.
The stars make sense. Your memories have never been clearer than when you’re staring at the sky. Santana was right, that early morning in Lima, where she stabbed at the dark and argued that you spend your time in Los Angeles avoiding looking at the stars - surely she knows, better than anyone, what looking at stars can mean. What it should mean to you. And why, after all this time, you don’t.
Because there are some things you don’t want to remember, some thoughts you’re better off never reminiscing about.
The stars have always been tainted with romanticism and maybe that’s why it hurts so much to look at them now. You’d give anything, anything at all, to look up at the stars in wonder again because right now all you feel is guilt and remorse. You may be suffering from insomnia but there’s a reason you confine yourself to your home at night. Alone in your exile, you are plagued by your memories but not the constellation.
But your self-imposed solitude doesn’t always have the effect you want it to. Sometimes, when you’re lying on your bed, and it’s just you and your iPod and a glass of wine, your mind starts to play tricks on you.
You can feel the heat of Rachel’s body as she lies down next to you. In these moments, she doesn’t say a word; she just lies there on the bed. It seems strangely domestic, and although at the back of your subconscious this is just a creation of your imagination, you allow yourself to indulge in thoughts of what could have happened, if a rainy evening in Lima, the scout from Berkeley convinced you to sell your soul in exchange for protecting a lover’s heart.
You’ve noticed it’s usually raining when you meet with Heather, and while there’s a part of you that finds it mildly amusing, it’s also a little bit of a cause for concern as well.
But there’s also something strangely comforting in meeting Heather, and that’s why you agree to meet with her even though you suspect your actions are only encouraging her to write a future that you haven’t exactly consented to. You’d be lying, too, if the attention wasn’t entirely unwelcome.
You just want to feel wanted, and Heather plays on that like a master.
“Nice of you to take time out of your precious schedule to meet,” Heather drawls, but there’s a hint of affection under the sarcasm.
“Regionals are coming up,” you defend yourself, and Heather raises an eyebrow.
“Yes,” she says, “it is.” Her smile doesn’t quite reach her eyes and it’s never seemed so cold. What happened to the scout you almost consider as a friend, the one who buys you coffee and jokes about Ohio State’s streak in football and paints a picture of everything you could ever want?
“We have a chance this year.” You don’t know why you’re so desperate to convince her, why you’re standing up for Glee Club even though Sue has been whispering sweet nothings in your ear for the past six months.
“I’m sure you do.” Again, the smile doesn’t quite reach her eyes. You bite your lip, suddenly overcome with emotional insecurities. Where’s the Heather who was overcome with bitterness?
“Is everything ok?” You ask softly. “You’re usually more… You’re usually much muchier? You’ve love your muchness.”
“Stop quoting Alice in Wonderland.” Heather stares at you, looking vaguely appalled. Then, the blank mask you’ve become increasingly familiar with glides across her face with such ease, such familiarity, it’s as if she never felt anything to begin with me. “And I’m fine. But let’s talk business.”
“You know what I want,” you tell her. “I made that clear from the start.”
“Yes,” Heather smiles, and there’s something in her eyes - bitterness? Pride? You can’t tell them apart anymore, and that scares you. Is this what has become of you? “Yes,” she repeats quietly, “you did.”
“So what’s the problem?” You press. “We wouldn’t be here if you didn’t want something. If you were to agree with the terms of condition you’d have lost interest from the start. But you’re still waiting for me to sign. You’re still agreeing to meet with me. So what do you want?”
“You’re under the impression you can dictate the terms of condition,” Heather shrugs. “You and I both know that’s a rather ridiculous assumption, don’t you agree?”
“Those are my conditions,” you repeat firmly. “I want Berkeley. But I’m also going to need something else from you guys.”
Heather suddenly leans forwards, anger flashing in her eyes, Her teeth clash together, fury coming off her in waves. This is the Heather you’ve been waiting for. This is the one who will be open to negotiation based on emotions rather than a financial incentive.
“These are mine,” she hisses in your face. “You give up your singer and we give you the world. If you don’t, we take everything away from you. You think any other university will turn a blind eye to this affair of yours? Your relationship with her is toxic. You’re nothing but damaged goods with her.”
“She isn’t damaged goods!” You snap.
Heather laughs bitterly. The sound makes you flinch.
“No,” she agrees, but her teeth are bared and she’s basically snarling the words at you. “She isn’t the damaged goods. You are. You’re holding her back, Quinntus.” The use of a pet name sounds more mocking than reassuring. “You’re nothing but dead weight with her. Your affair is not endearing. It is not the stuff of love stories. Tragedies are based on what you are.”
“I love her,” you whisper quietly. “I love her more than anything else in the world.”
“I’m sure you do,” she shrugs, indifference back on her face. “I’m sure you do, Quinntus. But the issue here isn’t whether or not you love her. No one here has really debated that, though you and I both know I consider your feelings for her to be inconvenient at best.”
“Your point?” You spit out through gritted teeth.
“All love ends eventually,” she says. “You think you know someone but what guarantee do you have that the person you love is the real them? Yeah, she’s sweet now, murmurs promises of eternal love in your ear now. But what sweet nothings will she be whispering in your ear when she has Broadway as well as you? You make her smile, Quinn. But you and I both know Broadway makes her live. Are you really willing to be her death sentence?”
“It doesn’t have to come down to me or Broadway,” you argue.
“Yeah?” Heather half smirks at you. “How many times have you ever heard of someone having both their high school lover and the Broadway stage?” She leans forwards, her eyes shining with something strangely resembling victory. “Do the math, Quinn. How many times would you have to roll the dice for the odds to turn out in your favor?”
The doorbell rings, pulling you out of your memory. You glance at the clock and the bright neon numbers stare back at you. You hesitate for a moment - it’s late, and you don’t want to deal with people right now - but you have a suspicion as to who it might be.
“I figured it would be you,” you say softly as you open the door. Rachel gives you a small smile.
“I was never the mysterious one between us,” she smiles. “That was always you. Even now I don’t know how to figure you out.”
“What do you want, Rachel?” You ask. You’re exhausted and you just don’t have the energy to fight, not anymore.
“Same thing I’ve always wanted,” she answers. “I want to know what you’re thinking.” She reaches up and slips her hand through streaks of gold.
“I just really need you out of my head,” you confess brokenly. “I need my thoughts back, Rachel, I need you out of my head.”
“Oh, Quinntus,” she smiles at you, but it doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “After all this time, do you really think it’s your head I want in?” She taps your chest. “It’s your heart I’m interested in.”
Not stealing if you don't acknowledge it:
- Starving college grads don't usually own Glee
- Title taking from Smith Point's "Escape"
- Special thanks to Erika for overlooking drunken emails about plot development and still agrees to look things over
- Quinn's musings about infidelity are a play on Racine's philosophy on infidelity in the play 'Andromaque', where he claims "you have be loved in order for you to be unfaithful (otherwise it's not cheating)".
- Quinn's line about humanity's obsession with the stars dating back to Ancient Greece is taking from a graduation speech I heard in May. It stayed with me, for obvious reasons.
Part XIII: No Longer What You Require
Part XIV: This Will All Make Perfect Sense Someday
Part XV: Our Love
Part II: Last to Know
Part III: Wicked Game
Part IV: Talking to the Moon
Part V: Look What You've Done
Part VI: Knife Going In
Part VII: I'm Not Calling You a Liar
Part VIII: Told You So
Part IX: I Gave You All
Part X: I Adore You
Part XI: Love Is No Big Truth
Part XII: Escape
And I wonder now, will you be there too, with all the time I thought of you… (Smith Point, Escape)
There are worse crimes a lover can commit than infidelity.
After you, you’ve learnt from the best - you don’t actually have to cheat on someone to be unfaithful. You can be there, right next to the person you love more than anything - but there’s a part of you, be it your heart, or maybe your soul, that is with someone else. The one you’re meant to be with.
You know what it’s like as you experienced it for the better part of 18 months when you were with Rachel. She loved you, but you loved her more. You still feel more for her than she does for you, and for the most, you’ve come to terms with it. Yes, she wrote a musical about her relationship with you, but at the end of the day, you were the one left with the guilt and a broken heart, whereas Rachel moved on.
She was doing just fine without you. The manuscript, and her relationship with Finn, made that very, very clear to you. There was life before you, and life after you, and Rachel has no problem separating the two.
You don’t have that luxury. You are constantly plagued with thoughts of what could have been; memories of when you had it all until a scout came along and said that Berkeley could offer you what Rachel couldn’t. What had she meant, exactly? It wasn’t happiness per say, because you were happy with Rachel in high school, Berkeley gave you the intellectual simulation you so frequently craved. The university appealed to your intellectual vanity, and you were never that good at resisting that kind of temptation to begin with.
It was, perhaps, the desire to make a difference that ultimately swayed you. Maybe there was a degree of selfishness behind it. You knew the number of lives Rachel could touch if she made it on Broadway and there was a part of you, as irrational as it may have been, that craved the same thing. You wanted to make a difference, and you couldn’t do it if you played dotted girlfriend to Rachel while she was in New York.
But you miscalculated in your intentions to save the world. You didn’t think it would hurt so much, leaving Rachel behind. And you were just so certain that Rachel would go to New York - it had always been such a big part in her Life Plans that you just couldn’t imagine Rachel being anywhere but on Broadway.
And then Santana showed up on your doorstep and confessed that Rachel had -foolishly? - waited for you to come back. Julliard and Broadway hadn’t paid her the same courtesy, and your desire to change the world resulted in ending Rachel’s. A lover’s selfish arrogance in thinking their words would last forever in the anecdotes of a stranger’s poem.
A lover’s greatest sin perhaps is their own vanity. They want to believe they are capable of making a difference, of leaving an imprint on their true love’s heart. But what happens when that heart gets broken? When there’s a crack in it, when it becomes splintered beyond repair? Do words still matter in that instance, or are they better left forgotten?
“Come look at the stars with me,” you say softly. For a moment Rachel hesitates, and you wonder if this is it, if this is the day (night?) when Rachel is going to say no simply for the sake of saying no.
“Why?” She asks, and it hurts a little, the trace of insecurity in her voice after all this time. Haven’t you proven by now you are not the same person from before? Doesn’t she believe you when you whisper in her ear that you have changed, this time for the better?
“It’s the stars,” you shrug. But then you bite your lip because that’s not the real reason.
“Yeah?” Rachel drawls, and finally, there’s a trace of something in her eyes, a hint of defiance, and it’s enough for you to believe you haven’t lost her, after all. This part you know well, this song and dance you’ve come to perfect over the past eighteen months. You know this choreography; you know it well, even though Rachel was the one who invented it.
“Don’t you see?” You plead. “The stars, they’re not just stars, they’re so much bigger than that, so much bigger than anything we could even possibly understand. Look at History, look at how long humanity has been obsessed with understanding Astrology, so desperate to uncover its secrets…”
There’s an excitement in your voice that you don’t know how to hide because this - this is coming from you. This is who you are, really, when you’re stripped of your cheerleading uniform and you have escaped from the outside world.
“But what’s it got to do with us?” Rachel blinks at you in confusion.
You laugh and pull her towards you. You begin a slow dance under the starlit sky. There’s no real rhythm and although you know that bothers Rachel a little, she plays along with you anyway. Sometimes love is about compromising on the little details.
“Why live in the clouds when you dance among the stars?” You ask, and finally you have Rachel’s undivided attention. “The stars have all these beautiful stories written about them, let’s write our own fairytale, and we can base it a long story that’s been building ever since a philosopher was walking in Ancient Greece and looked up at the stars in wonder…”
“That’s how I look at you,” Rachel confesses quietly. “I can’t always believe you’re real, that you actually exist, that you’re really here.” She gives you a small smile. “The love you feel for the stars is nothing compared to what I feel for you, Quinn.”
But what does she feel for you now? You don’t know for sure. Yes, she whispers into the phone that she’s not over you, stands in your office doorway and say she wants you back. You know all that.
But you also know she chose Finn Hudson over you, also know there’s a manuscript that includes a list of sins you committed in your head but confessed to out loud, and the thought that someone else will utter those words makes you feel so conflicted.
These are your thoughts, your words, your memories. Who is Rachel to give them to someone? Who is Rachel to determine someone else will be eloquent in delivering your confessions?
Is this your final punishment, one last act you have to repent for before the final blow? Or is this the final nail in the coffin? Doesn’t Rachel understand how much it hurts to know she sold your confessions to someone else? You know how these memories play out, you replay them all the time in your mind - but it’s your regrets that you see in high definition. Who is she to bring them to live through someone else?
Regrets are personal because the individual is the one who is haunted by what could have been. It’s the individual, not the spectator, who is plagued by guilt. The rest of the world becomes unwelcomed interlopers. However, sometimes - not very often, but sometimes - the barrier is breached.
It’s the poet who opens his mind in an effort to find the muse he left behind, the musician who exiles herself to a forgotten beach house to fall in love with the crowds she left behind. Sometimes, it is about who you keep in your past, because those are the people who once upon a time knew the real you.
You’re not the same person you were when you lived back in Lima, and Rachel being here, in Los Angeles, is an acute reminder of these differences. You used to feel you had control over something, even it was your career. You had made yourself. You had built yourself an empire and you could look down at the world in your office and feel like all you had to do was reach out and touch it, and whatever you wanted could be yours.
You were someone new. The old Quinn, the one you buried in Lima, she was weak. She was human and your job description depends on your ability to compartmentalize, to switch off your emotions at will. What you feel should have nothing to do with your job. It’s a skill you’ve had to learn but now that you do know it, have had the chance to perfect it.
Then Rachel starts showing up in your dreams and makes it worse by being in your office, and the intuition you’ve prided yourself on for the past few years suddenly failed you. You could have sworn you had buried the person you used to be but all it took was one small trigger and the person you were so desperate to leave behind was the one you couldn’t escape from.
You need Rachel gone, both for the sake of your sanity and for your career. She throws you off, confuses you when you’re around her. Your vision becomes hazy because all you see is her. All you can think of is her. You start to see her features in everyone you meet and that will prove to be your downfall in terms of your career because you need not to see at all in order for the individual to stand out.
It’s not about putting her features onto someone else because you don’t need to be told that singers like Rachel, they don’t come along every day. But it would be unfair to expect everyone else to suddenly be her, because that implies that anyone can have her talent. It’s raw, what Rachel has. It is raw and pure and untainted and to force it onto others, to make her become them, would be to poison the perfect rose.
You’ve committed a lot of sins in your life but that is one you refuse to be condemned for.
You will not make others into Rachel Berry because you now know how that tale ends. You refuse to be held accountable for Julliard and Broadway to fall in love with someone only to forget about them. You will not let Los Angeles and Hollywood make that same mistake, you will not let them believe in someone only to determine that hope is superficial at best.
So, yes, you need Rachel out of Los Angeles. But you need Rachel out of your head, too.
Doesn’t she see what she is doing to you? Can’t she read the symptoms of a recurring insomnia that won’t leave you no matter how far away you run? Can’t she listen to the silence and hear the epic novels you have dedicated to hear?
She used to be able to read you so beautifully. Why can’t she understand what you are saying through your silence? It’s never been about the words between the two of you, has she forgotten that? And yet, and yet… Now she wants you to find the words. She wants an epic declaration that she’s the only love you’ve ever known but she’s the one who is constantly choosing others over you. You have never known any other love, but for Rachel, you are just another name on a list of lovers she’s left behind.
You left her once and spent four years paying the price of a heartbreak you never fully got over. Rachel left you and was fine with it, until she needed inspiration and came back to tell the world the tales of a love that in many ways really was doomed from the start. You know everyone deals with things in different ways, but still, you are allowed to be jaded over this.
She chose Finn over you, but it’s your words that are inspiring this musical. How are you supposed to be feel anything but jaded? If she loved you as much as she claimed to, this manuscript would be based on Finn. Your words would not feature, and critics would not be murmuring about the impact of such a tragic love, ready to grace a darkened Broadway stage.
Your confessions were not for sale but you can’t help but feel Rachel sold them to the highest bidder. And then, there’s the even scarier thought, that she wrote it to get back at you, to even the score a little. She holds you accountable for Julliard having gotten over her, for Broadway never knowing her talent. She blames you for that, she’s said as much. What better way, therefore, to even the score than by writing a musical about the one person who took it all away from her?
This is punishment, and you’ll take it as such. As such, you reserve the right to not return calls, to ignore voicemails filled with pleas of pick up the phone, Quinn, please, I just want to hear your voice, just once; confessions of insomnia I can’t sleep, Quinn… I know you can’t, either, so pick up the phone, please? We can be sleepless together…
Ah yes, her famous insomnia.
It was Finn who originally told you about it, when he first came to see you in Los Angeles to rub in the fact she chose him over you. But there was another point to his visit - a desperation, a plea for you to just stay away from her. “Stop making her feel so confused,” he begged you. But now you’re the one feeling confused.
You wonder what, exactly, is keeping Rachel up that night, what thoughts are plaguing her, which regrets are playing in high definition at the back of her mind. There are worse crimes than infidelity, and just thoughts of someone else is one of them. The selfish, selfish part of you - the one that once ruled the Cheerios, the one who had the world at her fingertips and took whatever she wanted, regardless of the consequences - wonders if it’s thoughts of you that are keeping her up.
She haunts you, you might as well haunt her, you think snidely to yourself.
It’s a form of pettiness, of selfishness, that makes you pick your phone to call her. If you can’t sleep, you’re going to make damn sure she won’t either. But as you do, as you feel the cool metal slide into your palm, your vision is filled with a distant memory, and the bitterness instantly fades away, filling you instead with nostalgia.
“I sleep better when you’re with me,” Rachel confesses quietly. You look up from your textbook, your eyes filled with something akin to adoration.
“I sleep better when you’re there, too,” you tell her, and then turn your attention back to the Physics textbook.
“Why?” She asks, and you sigh, turning around to face her fully. What you see takes you by surprise. There’s a vulnerability, a hint of fear, that you aren’t used to seeing in her eyes. It fills you with panic, and you’re suddenly terrified you’ve done something terribly wrong.
“Is everything ok?” You ask, panicked. She smiles slightly but you notice it doesn’t quite reach her eyes.
“Everything is fine.” It makes you flinch, the dismissive tone in her voice, and you’re frantically trying to read her eyes but there’s a wall there and you don’t know how to break them down, don’t know how to read this language you’ve never seen before.
“What does it mean, Quinn?” She repeats softly, and even though her tone of voice suggests she cares, her eyes are telling you a different story. “What does it mean to you, that you sleep better when I am there?”
“It means I don’t sleep well when you’re gone,” you offer. You lean back, trying to establish some distance between the two of you. “It means that you make the world a whole less scary just by being there.”
“Tell me what you want,” you plead. “Tell me what you want me to say and I’ll say it. Tell me what promise you want me to make and I’ll make it. Tell me what secrets you want me to confess and they will be yours. Just tell me what you want from me, anything at all, and I will give it to you.”
For the longest time, Rachel doesn’t say anything. She just continues to watch you, her eyes trailing along your face, committing to memory details she surely already knows by heart. You wonder what answers she is looking for, what riddles she is trying to solve.
Slowly, so slowly you almost miss it, she reaches out and traces the outline of your hand on the page of the textbook. It’s the faintest gesture, and you wonder - wonder what storm has passed in her mind, and whether it will come back to haunt her once more.
“If you asked me to,” she says, very softly, another stolen secret shared between the two of you, “I would crawl into your dreams and fight the darkness with you. You’d never have to be alone, even if I’m not next to you. The darkness will never be something to fear again, Quinn.”
The trouble is, now the demons you are fighting in your dreams are your memories of Rachel. It is one of the few situations where she can’t be the savior you’ve been craving for your entire life because she is partly responsible for the state you have find yourself in. You can’t fight someone who isn’t there; you have been forced to learn that mantra off by heart. In turn, Rachel has become your perfect renegade.
They don’t tell you about that, what it means to fall in love with someone who left, and how hard it is for you when they come back. Lovers get abandoned all the time but the real test of character is how they deal when the one who broke them apart wanders back into their life.
There’s a term for that, you think to yourself. Buyer’s remorse. But it has nothing to do with actually buying something and then realizing you made a mistake, that you didn’t want it as much as you thought of it. This - this push and pull you have going on with Rachel - stems from something else entirely. It comes from a vicious cycle - you left me once so I’ll leave you twice except you’ve stopped keeping score long ago and Rachel seems intent on rewriting the rules.
Poets have written endless sonnets about losing the one you love the most and philosophers try and understand the obsession with being left behind but no one has the remedy for when the perfect renegade comes back.
It’s a conflicting message, what Rachel keeps sending you. While you left Lima behind, she’s the one who has perfected the act of walking away, time and again. She’s the one who made it perfectly clear there was life after you, leaving you to be haunted by the thoughts and memories of what could have been.
But like all renegades, she’s also perfected the art of coming back, and that’s what hurts. It was easier, really, to deal with Rachel when she was just a distant figure of your past, when the image you had created of her wasn’t distorted by reality’s own infidelity.
You want answers, though truth be told, the very thought of them terrifies you. You don’t want to know why, exactly, Rachel chose this relationship as inspiration because there’s an answer lingering at the back of your mind - it ended, Quinn, that’s why I can write about it - and in true artist form, she always did hate works in progress.
You’re not quite like that. You like to see things develop in front of your eyes, like to see the way an artist creates a masterpiece from thoughts scribbled on a napkin. The finished product is always gorgeous but the true beauty lies in thought. There’s something about creativity, about seeing a creator - and you use that term deliberately - work through a problem, trying to find to find the solution. Yes, people remember the sonnets and epic novels, but didn’t those very words stem from anecdotes written in a margin?
It’s not the final product that makes people fall in love; it’s the work in progress that holds the mystery. It’s the inception of the idea - the way it grows, changes forms, lingers at the back of the writer’s mind until they are driven insane by these thoughts and only then can they bring the words to life.
Is that the only reason Rachel is here, in Los Angeles? Because the thoughts won’t leave her alone and so she came here, to seek you out, in a desperate attempt to regain her grip on sanity? Is that the reason why she can’t sleep - it isn’t thoughts of you keeping her up at night, but rather just something else entirely: inspiration of what could have been.
You lie in your bed, staring at the ceiling, trying to ignore the thoughts swirling around in your head. Next to you, a band you had almost forgotten you had on your iPod whispers about escaping, and yes, you’d be lying if you said you weren’t tempted by the idea. But where would you go? You can’t run away, because everywhere you go reminds you of something you left behind, and for once, you just want to be clear of your conscious. You want to go somewhere where your thoughts don’t matter, a place you can learn how to separate yourself from this identity you’ve created.
You entertain the thought for a moment, but then you turn your head and the bright neon lights of your alarm clock stare back at you. You’re almost blinded by the digits and in that moment that you finally start to see things clearly.
“I too am a painter,” Correggio said in awe when he saw beauty for what it was. Plato spent his whole life thanking the heavens he was born under the same stars as Socrates and Rousseau spent his career defending reason to reasonable men. It is all defined by mere moments, knee-jerk reactions that no one can really predict, but then - then you understand, it all makes sense.
You’re not a painter, and while philosophy has always held a certain intrigue for you, it’s the stars that matter the most. You can look up and that’s where you find the words you’ve been searching for all along, painted against the night canvas.
The stars make sense. Your memories have never been clearer than when you’re staring at the sky. Santana was right, that early morning in Lima, where she stabbed at the dark and argued that you spend your time in Los Angeles avoiding looking at the stars - surely she knows, better than anyone, what looking at stars can mean. What it should mean to you. And why, after all this time, you don’t.
Because there are some things you don’t want to remember, some thoughts you’re better off never reminiscing about.
The stars have always been tainted with romanticism and maybe that’s why it hurts so much to look at them now. You’d give anything, anything at all, to look up at the stars in wonder again because right now all you feel is guilt and remorse. You may be suffering from insomnia but there’s a reason you confine yourself to your home at night. Alone in your exile, you are plagued by your memories but not the constellation.
But your self-imposed solitude doesn’t always have the effect you want it to. Sometimes, when you’re lying on your bed, and it’s just you and your iPod and a glass of wine, your mind starts to play tricks on you.
You can feel the heat of Rachel’s body as she lies down next to you. In these moments, she doesn’t say a word; she just lies there on the bed. It seems strangely domestic, and although at the back of your subconscious this is just a creation of your imagination, you allow yourself to indulge in thoughts of what could have happened, if a rainy evening in Lima, the scout from Berkeley convinced you to sell your soul in exchange for protecting a lover’s heart.
You’ve noticed it’s usually raining when you meet with Heather, and while there’s a part of you that finds it mildly amusing, it’s also a little bit of a cause for concern as well.
But there’s also something strangely comforting in meeting Heather, and that’s why you agree to meet with her even though you suspect your actions are only encouraging her to write a future that you haven’t exactly consented to. You’d be lying, too, if the attention wasn’t entirely unwelcome.
You just want to feel wanted, and Heather plays on that like a master.
“Nice of you to take time out of your precious schedule to meet,” Heather drawls, but there’s a hint of affection under the sarcasm.
“Regionals are coming up,” you defend yourself, and Heather raises an eyebrow.
“Yes,” she says, “it is.” Her smile doesn’t quite reach her eyes and it’s never seemed so cold. What happened to the scout you almost consider as a friend, the one who buys you coffee and jokes about Ohio State’s streak in football and paints a picture of everything you could ever want?
“We have a chance this year.” You don’t know why you’re so desperate to convince her, why you’re standing up for Glee Club even though Sue has been whispering sweet nothings in your ear for the past six months.
“I’m sure you do.” Again, the smile doesn’t quite reach her eyes. You bite your lip, suddenly overcome with emotional insecurities. Where’s the Heather who was overcome with bitterness?
“Is everything ok?” You ask softly. “You’re usually more… You’re usually much muchier? You’ve love your muchness.”
“Stop quoting Alice in Wonderland.” Heather stares at you, looking vaguely appalled. Then, the blank mask you’ve become increasingly familiar with glides across her face with such ease, such familiarity, it’s as if she never felt anything to begin with me. “And I’m fine. But let’s talk business.”
“You know what I want,” you tell her. “I made that clear from the start.”
“Yes,” Heather smiles, and there’s something in her eyes - bitterness? Pride? You can’t tell them apart anymore, and that scares you. Is this what has become of you? “Yes,” she repeats quietly, “you did.”
“So what’s the problem?” You press. “We wouldn’t be here if you didn’t want something. If you were to agree with the terms of condition you’d have lost interest from the start. But you’re still waiting for me to sign. You’re still agreeing to meet with me. So what do you want?”
“You’re under the impression you can dictate the terms of condition,” Heather shrugs. “You and I both know that’s a rather ridiculous assumption, don’t you agree?”
“Those are my conditions,” you repeat firmly. “I want Berkeley. But I’m also going to need something else from you guys.”
Heather suddenly leans forwards, anger flashing in her eyes, Her teeth clash together, fury coming off her in waves. This is the Heather you’ve been waiting for. This is the one who will be open to negotiation based on emotions rather than a financial incentive.
“These are mine,” she hisses in your face. “You give up your singer and we give you the world. If you don’t, we take everything away from you. You think any other university will turn a blind eye to this affair of yours? Your relationship with her is toxic. You’re nothing but damaged goods with her.”
“She isn’t damaged goods!” You snap.
Heather laughs bitterly. The sound makes you flinch.
“No,” she agrees, but her teeth are bared and she’s basically snarling the words at you. “She isn’t the damaged goods. You are. You’re holding her back, Quinntus.” The use of a pet name sounds more mocking than reassuring. “You’re nothing but dead weight with her. Your affair is not endearing. It is not the stuff of love stories. Tragedies are based on what you are.”
“I love her,” you whisper quietly. “I love her more than anything else in the world.”
“I’m sure you do,” she shrugs, indifference back on her face. “I’m sure you do, Quinntus. But the issue here isn’t whether or not you love her. No one here has really debated that, though you and I both know I consider your feelings for her to be inconvenient at best.”
“Your point?” You spit out through gritted teeth.
“All love ends eventually,” she says. “You think you know someone but what guarantee do you have that the person you love is the real them? Yeah, she’s sweet now, murmurs promises of eternal love in your ear now. But what sweet nothings will she be whispering in your ear when she has Broadway as well as you? You make her smile, Quinn. But you and I both know Broadway makes her live. Are you really willing to be her death sentence?”
“It doesn’t have to come down to me or Broadway,” you argue.
“Yeah?” Heather half smirks at you. “How many times have you ever heard of someone having both their high school lover and the Broadway stage?” She leans forwards, her eyes shining with something strangely resembling victory. “Do the math, Quinn. How many times would you have to roll the dice for the odds to turn out in your favor?”
The doorbell rings, pulling you out of your memory. You glance at the clock and the bright neon numbers stare back at you. You hesitate for a moment - it’s late, and you don’t want to deal with people right now - but you have a suspicion as to who it might be.
“I figured it would be you,” you say softly as you open the door. Rachel gives you a small smile.
“I was never the mysterious one between us,” she smiles. “That was always you. Even now I don’t know how to figure you out.”
“What do you want, Rachel?” You ask. You’re exhausted and you just don’t have the energy to fight, not anymore.
“Same thing I’ve always wanted,” she answers. “I want to know what you’re thinking.” She reaches up and slips her hand through streaks of gold.
“I just really need you out of my head,” you confess brokenly. “I need my thoughts back, Rachel, I need you out of my head.”
“Oh, Quinntus,” she smiles at you, but it doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “After all this time, do you really think it’s your head I want in?” She taps your chest. “It’s your heart I’m interested in.”
Not stealing if you don't acknowledge it:
- Starving college grads don't usually own Glee
- Title taking from Smith Point's "Escape"
- Special thanks to Erika for overlooking drunken emails about plot development and still agrees to look things over
- Quinn's musings about infidelity are a play on Racine's philosophy on infidelity in the play 'Andromaque', where he claims "you have be loved in order for you to be unfaithful (otherwise it's not cheating)".
- Quinn's line about humanity's obsession with the stars dating back to Ancient Greece is taking from a graduation speech I heard in May. It stayed with me, for obvious reasons.
Part XIII: No Longer What You Require
Part XIV: This Will All Make Perfect Sense Someday
Part XV: Our Love