How You Came to Leave (Part XIII)
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
Part XIII: No Longer What You Require
But I was late on my return and now you’ve lost all faith (Howie Day, No Longer What You Require)
In your dreams, you are on trial.
You find yourself in an empty courtroom but it is evident to your subconscious that you are here to defend your memories. In front of you, Rachel sits behind a wooden desk, her face completely emotionless. She doesn’t care, and yet there is an element of venom, of bitterness in her voice as she demands what has become of the girl she once fell in love with.
You know better than to plead not guilty. You have accepted responsibility for your actions, evident as much by the remorse you carry around with you as the insomnia that keeps you up at night. You may have escaped Lima when you traded your old life for Berkeley, but you have not escaped the consequences of your actions.
You are very, very much aware of what you did, but still, Rachel is sitting before you as she argues that the most unforgiving part of it all was you knew what the price of Berkeley was, and you still paid it anyway. You knew what choosing Berkeley over the others would do to them, and your final choice was the university in California.
“You did this,” Rachel argues in your subconscious as she gets up and begins to pace in front of where you stand. “You can justify it any way you want but at the end of the day this is on you. You did this to me. You took all my dreams away from me, and now I’m left with - well, this.”
Maybe you are selfish, after all, because this is one plea you will gladly plead guilty to. What does it say about you, really, that you are willingly accepting responsibility for Rachel’s insomnia since you first learnt about it some six weeks ago?
You know the answer to that. In your own twisted logic, Rachel’s insomnia makes you feel less alone. You still remember the whispers of the voice mail, how broken she sounded when she pleaded with you to just be sleepless together.
“It can never be like it was before,” Rachel continues to pace in front of you. Alone in this courtroom, it is just you and your fears, and Rachel knows exactly what to say to make it hurt. It can never be like it was before, and you know that, but it’s the implicit that hurts - that she isn’t willing to negotiate, that there will be no plea bargain. You aren’t going to walk out of here, free from your demons. If anything, Rachel is insisting that you also confront hers.
She stops pacing and turns to look at you. There is something so majestic, so noble about being alone with her in this place; you know it’s just your mind playing tricks on you but for a moment you are tempted to believe that you are getting a glimpse into the future. This is what you could have become, the two of you, if you hadn’t chosen Berkeley all those years ago.
You chose your future, but you robbed Rachel of hers.
The sun continues to filter into the courtroom and the vision in front of you is just so beautiful that even your subconscious begins to acknowledge the possibility this is all a fragment of your imagination. Desperate to hold onto this vision, even if for a little while longer, you turn your attention back to Rachel. You try frantically to commit the details to memory. You want it burnt into the back of your mind. You’ll take everything, from the way the sun seems to highlight the hidden streaks of auburn in her hair to the particles of dust flickering down from the windows.
It is a scene you have completely fabricated in your mind, but it is one of the truest moments you’ve had with Rachel in years.
“This is on you,” Rachel repeats quietly, and suddenly she looks less like the district attorney your mind has portrayed her as and instead is the same girl who showed up on your doorstep wanting to be let into your heart again. “This is all on you, Quinn.”
You lie in bed with your eyes closed for a little longer, trying desperately to hold onto the shreds of the dream. Your phone vibrates next to you, and you sigh, resigned to your fate.
There’s a reason you hate Tuesdays as much as you do.
You fell in love with her on a Tuesday morning.
Your more defining moments with Rachel are usually scattered across the days of the week but for some reason the ones you remember the most always happen on a Tuesday. Sometimes you think it’s fate, sometimes you’re convinced it is just coincidence, but for what ever reason, moments with Rachel on a Tuesday usually end with you scribbling thoughts in a notebook when you’re back home.
Thoughts like, you have me wishing you and I could defy the odds, after all.
Thoughts like, I would move to New York if you asked me to. Berkeley doesn’t even compare to you.
Thoughts like, what you feel for Broadway doesn’t even come close to what I think I feel for you.
Thoughts like, there’s this vision I have, of you and me, but we’re not alone, we’re a family. Lie to me and tell me you see it, too?
Thoughts you know you can’t confess to Rachel because you saw what happened when Finn told her he loved her as much as she loved Broadway; saw the panic flash across her face and you know, you just know you couldn’t survive Rachel suddenly second-guessing what she might feel for you.
You know her; know she needs to believe that what she feels for Broadway knows no comparison. Rachel breathes that logic the same way she still breathes a desperation for approval from the other Glee members. She needs to believe that she loves Broadway more than anything else, including you, because Broadway has always been there for her. Broadway is stable, reliable, unmoving, the one thing that hasn’t let her down, the only thing in her life whose promises haven’t let her down.
She has never known any other love other than Broadway, until one day, things began to change. There was Finn, first, but he threw the ultimatum, demanded it were him or Julliard, and it had never been a decision for her. And then, and then - you stumbled into her life and without really understanding how, you found yourself competing against Broadway and Julliard.
Rachel kept rolling the dice and it kept landing on New York, but you’ve noticed that the frequency has increased in recent weeks. It’s almost like Rachel is daring fate to prove her wrong, wants to challenge the odds and see if they dare defy her, see if they dare whisper that someone can actually compete against Julliard and win.
She’ll always pick New York over you, but there’s the slightest whisper in the winds that suggests you could make her change her mind. You’re not sure who is more terrified by that: you or Rachel. Rachel’s fear is justified, and honestly you can understand that: if you ask her to give up New York for you, what else will you demand of her?
Your fear is different.
You would never issue an ultimatum, you or New York because the thing is, you don’t believe your relationship should be a choice. It should just be, and if you have to compromise on your feelings, what else will you be negotiating? Or, your deeper fear - what if it’s Rachel who wakes up one morning in New York and she’s the one whose eyes are wide open as she explains you are amongst her lists of regrets?
You know you disappointed a lot of people; you don’t know for sure if you could survive being called a disappointment by Rachel. Because Rachel isn’t just another person in your life. She’s not just someone you can dismiss the moment you get an acceptance letter from a college outside of the state of Ohio. She’s something more.
She’s - well, she’s really something else in your life, now that you take the time to think about it. She’s the smell of coffee on an early rainy morning, or a glass of red wine after a long day at work. She’s the anecdote written on a napkin in a restaurant, the lyrics that keep you up at night.
She’s special, and you’ve been through enough to know that people who can have that much of an impact on your life don’t come along every day. That’s precisely why you keep quiet, why you vow never to make her choose, why you promise yourself you will never issue the ultimatum that Finn gave her; Julliard or you.
It’s a Tuesday when you promise her you will never make her choose. You kept your promise. You never made her chose. You chose for yourself.
It’s a Tuesday when Rachel looks at you in the eyes and whispers she loves you as much as she loves Broadway.
It hasn’t been that long - several hours at most - but you could swear she’s still standing in front of you. Even in the shower, you can still feel the imprint of her hand on her chest. You close your eyes and for a moment you honestly hesitate in opening them again because you could swear that if you open them, you will see a tattoo of her imprint on your chest.
Is there something wrong, you think with yourself, with the fact you can still feel the heat of her body against yours? Without your consent, your fingers trace the outline of where Rachel had laid her palm, and you swear, her touch has been inked into your skin.
She’s there, even when she isn’t. It’s muscle memory at best and your own tortured soul at worse, this desperation to keep her in front of you even though you keep pushing her away. You know better than anyone you can’t survive having her in front of you in the flesh - you never were that good at resisting temptation, and it’s just easier to take yourself out of the equation than it is to confront the object of your desire.
You can’t want something if they aren’t there in front of you. Maybe that’s the hidden truth, really, the enigma hidden behind the beauty of the stars: you only want what you can see, and maybe if you close your eyes long enough, when you open them she’ll be there, and you can finally want something that doesn’t make you feel so guilty about the wreckage left behind.
You’re not alone, though, in the aftermath, and maybe, that’s even worse. If only you could be confined to your solitude, if only you could serve your sentence locked in the confines of your own mind… Yes, it’s a lonely world you’ll be living in, but at least you would finally be free of the eternal guilt, at least, in this world you could create, Rachel’s voicemail would stop playing in your mind.
“Let’s be sleepless together” says so much to you, and you’re just dying to know if they have the same implications to you as they do to Rachel. Does she know what those words mean to you? Is that precisely why she whispers them to an answering machine? You are a creature of habit at best; she would have known you would have listened to your voicemail even if you had once pleaded with her to stay out of your head.
Did she think it over, wonder what words would make you second guess yourself? Did she know you would stare at the answering machine long after the message ended as you try to understand what must have been going on in her mind? As you try to understand what are these feelings inside of you that keep fluttering whenever you hear her voice?
It makes you feel, and you’ve been spending the past four years trying to trick your mind into not feeling at all. It’s safer if you just turn emotions off completely because you can’t be hurt if there’s nothing there to damage. Heather was speaking the truth, after all, when she whispered harshly that you were nothing more than just damaged goods; it’s taken you a while but now you know the advantage of being cracked beyond repair is eventually people stop trying to fix you.
How can you be repaired, anyway? It’s not like you can take back what you did; at the end of the day, you still chose Berkeley, and you have to live with the consequences of your actions. Alone in Los Angeles, you weren’t forced to witness the destruction save for Santana’s occasional visit, but now Rachel has sauntered back into your life and you are abandoned on the witness stand as your true love turned prosecutor exposes the evidence of the worst kind of betrayal.
You didn’t just leave her behind, and maybe your crimes would be easier to pardon if it was just a case of neglect. But your list of offenses doesn’t end with walking away from Rachel. You didn’t just leave; you never came back as well. You became the renegade, the one thing you had promised Rachel you would never be, but not only that, you took New York with you.
Neglect, theft, your criminal record goes on and on. It is there, and you are the only one responsible, as Rachel so effortlessly argued in your subconscious. Yes, “let’s be sleepless together” has kept you up, confused your mind with thoughts you should know better than to be thinking - thoughts you are supposed to be able to control but can’t - but “this is on you” is so simple, so direct, so -
Well, maybe it’s better if you stop yourself there. It’s not so Rachel. Your ex-lover may be dead, but you’re the one who buried her. You made quite sure of that, exploiting her fears as you did, only to make them come true. You remember it well, that bitterness in her voice that night in the chapel in Lima, when she said she blamed God for your departure - fitting, really, because at one point in time, religion had been to you what Broadway was to her.
You buried your religion when you became pregnant in high school. You felt abandoned, lonely, and a little ashamed, because the one thing you had always held on to, the one thing that had always been a part of you, had turned its back on you. You had gone to the Church one morning, lost and confused and alone, and you stared up at the building as you begged for answers. Silence was the only thing that greeted you and in that moment you realized your faith had been taking away from you.
It’s a strange sensation, really, when something you believe in so fully gets ripped away from you. One moment it’s there, another it’s not, and it’s just - it’s the worse experience in the world. It’s not the feeling on the spur of the moment that you remember the most but rather everything that came after it - the acute loss of something you had once treasured. And then, suddenly, it’s gone, replaced by this void you can’t explain.
Faith, a person, their heart - everyone has lost something they know they can’t ever really get back. Yes, as individuals they can train themselves to function but there is still something missing. They still know they aren’t complete. What used to be a part of them suddenly isn’t, and they try to cope, really, they do - they try to find a way to make it through the day but it’s the night that’s even worse.
Because really, at night - you remember everything. And all the little details you had managed to suppress or ignore during the day come roaring back at night, and you can’t escape from what is no longer there - the absence is so acute it genuinely hurts. You know Rachel stayed behind in Lima during the day, you’re aware that you are in Los Angeles during the day - it’s too bright, too warm, too sunny, too healthy to be in Lima, Ohio.
But at night, when you look up and you see the faintest hint of the stars, that’s when you understand - you are alone here, which means that Rachel is there. Rachel is in Lima, where the sun doesn’t always shine but the stars are always there to remind you of something greater, of obsessions that don’t fade with time. She’s not there, and every little detail reminds you of that.
Or rather - she wasn’t there, because she’s here now, and you just don’t know what to make of that. You don’t know who to believe and it’s not like there is some sort of guide book to help you make sense of what you are feeling. The parts of Rachel that you remember from Lima - the bitterness in that chapel, the anger in the bar, how easily she chose Finn over you - it’s not like you have forgotten any of that.
And then there’s this other version of Rachel, the one who showed up in Los Angeles with a manuscript dedicated to your relationship and a confession of insomnia. Which one are you supposed to remember, really, because both are keeping you awake at night…
You keep waiting for the punch line, because you’ve experienced enough in life to know that good things always come at a cost. There is a direct correlation between what you see and what you get, and while Rachel does confess to insomnia on your answering machine and shows up in the middle of the night and murmurs she just wants to be let back into your heart, you know there’s something terribly wrong.
Because you don’t actually believe it’s Rachel who is doing those things. You don’t believe Rachel really can’t sleep at night, and you don’t believe that she really just wants things to go back to the way they were before, and you don’t believe - people change, and the person who did all those things is the same person you fell in love with in high school.
You damaged that person beyond repair. She whispered it in your subconscious but the reality of the situation is Rachel had always been most truthful when the taste of London Gin still lingered on her lips. That was the person she had become, that was the person you had created.
That, as Rachel reminded you in your subconscious, was on you. There would be no plea bargain. It had never been on the table. You had made very, very sure of that when, one foggy morning in Lima, Rachel had told you about the meaning of love and you didn’t correct her.
“Love is never unconditional.”
You look up when Rachel says that, confused. It’s not like Rachel to be so tinted with bitterness. Yes, she’s the realist between the two of you, the one who looks at things rationally while you are more willing to bargain with forever. You’re the dreamer, she’s the realist, but that had never robbed her of her belief before. This version of Rachel, who has almost given up on love, is a complete stranger to you.
“It should be,” you argue softly, your words almost drowned out by the sound of the rain tapping against her bedroom window. “When you love someone, it should be an absolute. You shouldn’t just pick and choose whichever part of a person you want to love and ignore the rest.”
“But it’s human nature to want to believe in the best of a person,” Rachel immediately counters. “By the very virtue of being human we are selected which part of a person we love and which part of them we choose to ignore.”
“Yes,” you agree. “But there’s more to it, you know? Because love isn’t about loving someone’s best quality, that’s superficial at best and damaging at worse. Love is more; it’s more complex than that. It’s about loving someone despite their flaws. It’s about seeing them for everything they are and still wanting to be with them. That’s love.”
“I suppose you’re going to want a high-five for that?” Rachel drawls, and you snicker slightly at the How I Met Your Mother reference.
“I wouldn’t say no…”
She smiles against your shoulder, and you take to tracing patterns on her skin. You’re just drawing random figures, not even words, because truth be told, you just like the heat of her skin against your palm. She is warm against you, her body the perfect blanket against the cold outside.
“You’re good with words,” she murmurs into your shoulder.
“Not really,” you say as you shake your head. “Sometimes I ramble too much, I’m not always eloquent, words tend to fail me a lot you know, especially when I’m around you.”
“Why?” Rachel asks as she lifts her head.
“Because I don’t always believe there are words to describe how much I love you. Like, the comparisons aren’t accurate enough. I know how important metaphors are to you, that’s why I think it’s so important…” You cut yourself off when you realize how much you’re rambling.
Silence falls between you, and the only sound you hear is your breathing and the rain falling gently against the window. It’s comforting in a manner it shouldn’t be, because it makes you feel that all you have in front of you is a blank page. You can write the future however you want. It’s liberating. It’s exciting. It’s everything you could ever want.
“I love you more than I love Broadway,” Rachel says quietly, her words breaking the silence. “And that’s not a metaphor.”
Maybe that’s what love is supposed to be then - loving someone not because they are your constant, but because you love them more than your constant. Without really knowing how, they somehow slipped under your skin, trickled into your mind and rewrote everything you knew until your conscious was dictated by thoughts of them.
They’re just there, even when they’re gone - they’re under your skin and in your thoughts. You feel them, breathe them, become them. And then…
And then, one day, somebody leaves.
It’s easy to love someone when they are there because they are present to remind you of things. You smell them, see them, touch them - you can’t escape from them. It’s when they leave, or you leave, that claiming you love someone becomes much more complicated. After all, how can you love someone if the only thing that defines them is their absence? All I know is you becomes all I know is that you’re gone, and there’s a substantial difference between the two statements.
The first one says that love is enough; the second statement suggests that even love falls apart.
Yes, Rachel is back now, claiming she wants back in your heart now, but what about before, what about what comes afterwards? What happened to a few weeks ago and the venom in her voice, in her confessions - where did it all go? Is it all still lingering underneath the surface, just waiting to be unleashed? Is she just biding her time, preparing for the fatal blow?
She doesn’t have to deliver it; you’re already suffering from it. It was one thing to suffer from the guilt when Rachel was back in Lima, when all you had to deal with was Santana’s nostalgia towards the days that could have been, but now, the consequences of your actions, of your decisions, wait outside your office and knock on your door and - why doesn’t Rachel understand that being around her just hurts you?
It hurts. The guilt is suffocating because by virtue of her being here, you’re acutely reminded she is not on Broadway. You are reminded that she loved you more than she loved her dream, you are reminded that she would have chosen you and instead you chose something else and yes, you are fully aware of the wreckage you left behind even if you weren’t there to witness it.
You don’t need the reminders. You don’t need to mistake the shadows in your office for Rachel’s profile anymore than you need the blinking light on your answering machine. Maybe Santana was right, maybe you really are a sucker for punishment because you can’t bring yourself to delete it.
You want to. God, you just want to erase it, pretend that you never heard Rachel make a case for both of your insomnia. You want to believe both of you are just okay because it’s not just knowing that she can’t sleep at night, it’s knowing that she knows you spend the night staring at the night sky as well.
Everyone has different coping mechanisms and while yours occasionally involve a bottle of Tequila, there’s also a fair amount of welcome solitude in watching the night sky pass you by. Time is there for the taking, or to be ignored, and you don’t have to decide right away. It’s comforting in a manner you can’t quite describe, and maybe that’s the point.
What is - or at least, what used to be - essential is that you were alone in all of that. You could pretend that you were the only one who stayed up most of the night in Los Angeles and it wasn’t because you were out partying with celebrities or actresses who have simply lost their way. You just didn’t want to fall asleep, didn’t want to be plagued by the memories, didn’t want to see the destruction you know now by heart.
That, you’ve come to realize, is why you needed to be able to pretend you were the only one seeking redemption.
But now - now you know, and there is a substantial difference between being aware of your actions and actually seeing the consequences of it. Now you know - you know you are not alone, you know that somewhere in Los Angeles, Rachel is looking at the same night sky, and now it is completely different thoughts running through your mind.
You could take the guilt because by now it also presents a degree of comfort. But this new thing lingering in your chest - something like dread, something like curiosity - well, it’s something completely new.
Because you do wonder. You are curious about what Rachel is thinking when she looks up at the sky, you do chew your lower lip as you consider the possibility that maybe, just maybe, Rachel is thinking of you, too.
And by now you know how dangerous that is. Even if Rachel is thinking of you, you don’t know what she is thinking. The girl you fell in love with doesn’t recognize you at all, and to be honest, you don’t really recognize yourself that much either, these days. The old you is dead and buried, and the new version of you still feels uncomfortable in her skin. We’re all strangers in this confusing world of ours, and maybe, that’s why we all feel so alone sometimes, even we live in a town with a million other people.
It’s dangerous to get your hopes up. It’s dangerous to want Rachel to be thinking of you because everything has a time limit and what are you supposed to do when Rachel stops thinking of you? What will become of you when the light on your answering machine stops blinking because Rachel is no longer interested in being sleepless with you?
She’s here now, but what about when she leaves?
You sigh as you head back into your home. You don’t want to be alone but the solitude is all you know, and maybe, this is your penance: eternally missing the one who you left behind. You miss her, you really do, but you’re not sure if she feels the same way. Does she miss you, or does she miss the girl who inspired the musical?
You still left, and the title of the musical is very much a reminder of that. So far the script is actually quite flattering of the relationship you two shared but how long until Rachel decides to get her revenge? How much time has to pass before she finally evens the score? You know her. You’ve seen first hand that bitterness.
You are many things but you are not naïve and there is no way Rachel is as over your actions as she would like to believe. You aren’t going to play the part of the trusting fool, not again. She loves you now - but will she still love you when she’s gone? Will she still love you when she’s standing on stage and critics just want answers?
Because at the end of the day, they will want to know. They will ask questions and demand what happened to the girl who inspired the musical and Rachel will be faced with a decision, to either tell the truth behind the wreckage or to tell a different tale. She could be honest, or she could lie, and the credibility evolves around which one she chooses.
Everything you ever did, every thought you ever had, every confession you ever made - it’s there for the taking, written plainly in black and white as two lovers confess their thoughts to each other. It’s there, they are your words, and you may have buried that girl but Rachel was the one who killed her.
It’s a little after 1.30 in the morning when you eventually go to your bedroom. You lie down and close your eyes but you know that you won’t actually be falling asleep. It’s routine, and it’s comforting, two things you can’t really afford to lose.
Your phone begins to vibrate, and it’s instinct, really, that makes you reach out. Your eyes are still closed as you stroke the cover, feeling the metal glide against your palm. Comfort. Everyone has their own definition of it. It’s muscle memory at best, too, or a bad habit at worse that makes you actually press “answer” without looking at the number.
It’s completely silent at the other end but the absence of noise is absolutely deafening. You are very, very much aware of who is on the other end of the line. Your eyes are wide open in terror but you can’t breathe, you can’t even move.
“I thought this would be easier,” Rachel says quietly into the phone. She sounds so shy, so bashful, the complete opposite of both the girl you used to know and the woman she has become. “But actually, it is a lot harder than I thought it would be.”
You frantically blink back tears even though she can’t see you. You suspect she can probably hear it in the way you’re breathing, though, the shallow breaths you’re taking as you fight to keep your composure.
“I don’t - I’m not - this isn’t an accusation,” Rachel stammers, and, really, you’ll do anything to get the confident Rachel back. You need her to be confident because it gives you strength, you need her to become the prosecutor your subconscious had created because she was in control, she knew where this was heading. You suspect neither of you know how this phone call is going to end.
“What do you want?” You ask quietly. The question seems to throw Rachel, and you can imagine the way her eyes widen as she struggles to find her place.
“I want to sleep again,” she answers softly. “But dreams are scary, you know that better than anyone, don’t you Quinn? You remember when you sleep. Do you do what I do, Quinn? Do you reach over where you imagine my body would be? I swear I can always feel you beside me, even when you’re several thousand miles away. I can smell you. You’re always there, Quinn, you never leave me alone in my dreams.”
“Stop,” you plead. “Stop talking, please, just - don’t, Rachel.”
“Why not?” She presses.
She knows why you don’t want her to talk. She knows which words you are desperate to avoid, why you don’t want to have this conversation to even be happening in the first place, why you should have looked over when your phone vibrated and even why you didn’t.
You’re a creature of habit, and some habits don’t change.
“Do you love me?” Rachel asks, and her voice is carefully void of emotion. It’s a loaded question. You close your eyes and take a breath.
“Yes,” you tell her. “I love you more than anything.”
“You promised me that before,” she says, her voice still completely neutral. “And you left. You said you loved me and you left. I told - you knew I loved you more than Broadway and you took it away from me. You took everything I loved away from me.”
“Your love is destructive,” she whispers to you as a closing argument.
You close your eyes.
“You’re the one who came back,” you whisper back at her.
Neither of you say anything after that. You just stay on the phone, completely silent, content with listening to the other breathe. Some could call it closure but it’s more like waiting for the bomb to fall; in slow motion, the blast is always most beautiful.
Not stealing if you acknowledge it:
- I don't own Glee and am in no way affiliated with the show in any shape or form
- the final line "in slow motion, the blash is always most beautiful" is a play on a line from "Somewhere A Clock Is Ticking" by Snow Patrol
- The title of the chapter is taken from Howie Day's "No Longer What You Require"
- Special thanks to Erika, who as always looks things over and plays along with plot discussions
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
Part XIII: No Longer What You Require
But I was late on my return and now you’ve lost all faith (Howie Day, No Longer What You Require)
In your dreams, you are on trial.
You find yourself in an empty courtroom but it is evident to your subconscious that you are here to defend your memories. In front of you, Rachel sits behind a wooden desk, her face completely emotionless. She doesn’t care, and yet there is an element of venom, of bitterness in her voice as she demands what has become of the girl she once fell in love with.
You know better than to plead not guilty. You have accepted responsibility for your actions, evident as much by the remorse you carry around with you as the insomnia that keeps you up at night. You may have escaped Lima when you traded your old life for Berkeley, but you have not escaped the consequences of your actions.
You are very, very much aware of what you did, but still, Rachel is sitting before you as she argues that the most unforgiving part of it all was you knew what the price of Berkeley was, and you still paid it anyway. You knew what choosing Berkeley over the others would do to them, and your final choice was the university in California.
“You did this,” Rachel argues in your subconscious as she gets up and begins to pace in front of where you stand. “You can justify it any way you want but at the end of the day this is on you. You did this to me. You took all my dreams away from me, and now I’m left with - well, this.”
Maybe you are selfish, after all, because this is one plea you will gladly plead guilty to. What does it say about you, really, that you are willingly accepting responsibility for Rachel’s insomnia since you first learnt about it some six weeks ago?
You know the answer to that. In your own twisted logic, Rachel’s insomnia makes you feel less alone. You still remember the whispers of the voice mail, how broken she sounded when she pleaded with you to just be sleepless together.
“It can never be like it was before,” Rachel continues to pace in front of you. Alone in this courtroom, it is just you and your fears, and Rachel knows exactly what to say to make it hurt. It can never be like it was before, and you know that, but it’s the implicit that hurts - that she isn’t willing to negotiate, that there will be no plea bargain. You aren’t going to walk out of here, free from your demons. If anything, Rachel is insisting that you also confront hers.
She stops pacing and turns to look at you. There is something so majestic, so noble about being alone with her in this place; you know it’s just your mind playing tricks on you but for a moment you are tempted to believe that you are getting a glimpse into the future. This is what you could have become, the two of you, if you hadn’t chosen Berkeley all those years ago.
You chose your future, but you robbed Rachel of hers.
The sun continues to filter into the courtroom and the vision in front of you is just so beautiful that even your subconscious begins to acknowledge the possibility this is all a fragment of your imagination. Desperate to hold onto this vision, even if for a little while longer, you turn your attention back to Rachel. You try frantically to commit the details to memory. You want it burnt into the back of your mind. You’ll take everything, from the way the sun seems to highlight the hidden streaks of auburn in her hair to the particles of dust flickering down from the windows.
It is a scene you have completely fabricated in your mind, but it is one of the truest moments you’ve had with Rachel in years.
“This is on you,” Rachel repeats quietly, and suddenly she looks less like the district attorney your mind has portrayed her as and instead is the same girl who showed up on your doorstep wanting to be let into your heart again. “This is all on you, Quinn.”
You lie in bed with your eyes closed for a little longer, trying desperately to hold onto the shreds of the dream. Your phone vibrates next to you, and you sigh, resigned to your fate.
There’s a reason you hate Tuesdays as much as you do.
You fell in love with her on a Tuesday morning.
Your more defining moments with Rachel are usually scattered across the days of the week but for some reason the ones you remember the most always happen on a Tuesday. Sometimes you think it’s fate, sometimes you’re convinced it is just coincidence, but for what ever reason, moments with Rachel on a Tuesday usually end with you scribbling thoughts in a notebook when you’re back home.
Thoughts like, you have me wishing you and I could defy the odds, after all.
Thoughts like, I would move to New York if you asked me to. Berkeley doesn’t even compare to you.
Thoughts like, what you feel for Broadway doesn’t even come close to what I think I feel for you.
Thoughts like, there’s this vision I have, of you and me, but we’re not alone, we’re a family. Lie to me and tell me you see it, too?
Thoughts you know you can’t confess to Rachel because you saw what happened when Finn told her he loved her as much as she loved Broadway; saw the panic flash across her face and you know, you just know you couldn’t survive Rachel suddenly second-guessing what she might feel for you.
You know her; know she needs to believe that what she feels for Broadway knows no comparison. Rachel breathes that logic the same way she still breathes a desperation for approval from the other Glee members. She needs to believe that she loves Broadway more than anything else, including you, because Broadway has always been there for her. Broadway is stable, reliable, unmoving, the one thing that hasn’t let her down, the only thing in her life whose promises haven’t let her down.
She has never known any other love other than Broadway, until one day, things began to change. There was Finn, first, but he threw the ultimatum, demanded it were him or Julliard, and it had never been a decision for her. And then, and then - you stumbled into her life and without really understanding how, you found yourself competing against Broadway and Julliard.
Rachel kept rolling the dice and it kept landing on New York, but you’ve noticed that the frequency has increased in recent weeks. It’s almost like Rachel is daring fate to prove her wrong, wants to challenge the odds and see if they dare defy her, see if they dare whisper that someone can actually compete against Julliard and win.
She’ll always pick New York over you, but there’s the slightest whisper in the winds that suggests you could make her change her mind. You’re not sure who is more terrified by that: you or Rachel. Rachel’s fear is justified, and honestly you can understand that: if you ask her to give up New York for you, what else will you demand of her?
Your fear is different.
You would never issue an ultimatum, you or New York because the thing is, you don’t believe your relationship should be a choice. It should just be, and if you have to compromise on your feelings, what else will you be negotiating? Or, your deeper fear - what if it’s Rachel who wakes up one morning in New York and she’s the one whose eyes are wide open as she explains you are amongst her lists of regrets?
You know you disappointed a lot of people; you don’t know for sure if you could survive being called a disappointment by Rachel. Because Rachel isn’t just another person in your life. She’s not just someone you can dismiss the moment you get an acceptance letter from a college outside of the state of Ohio. She’s something more.
She’s - well, she’s really something else in your life, now that you take the time to think about it. She’s the smell of coffee on an early rainy morning, or a glass of red wine after a long day at work. She’s the anecdote written on a napkin in a restaurant, the lyrics that keep you up at night.
She’s special, and you’ve been through enough to know that people who can have that much of an impact on your life don’t come along every day. That’s precisely why you keep quiet, why you vow never to make her choose, why you promise yourself you will never issue the ultimatum that Finn gave her; Julliard or you.
It’s a Tuesday when you promise her you will never make her choose. You kept your promise. You never made her chose. You chose for yourself.
It’s a Tuesday when Rachel looks at you in the eyes and whispers she loves you as much as she loves Broadway.
It hasn’t been that long - several hours at most - but you could swear she’s still standing in front of you. Even in the shower, you can still feel the imprint of her hand on her chest. You close your eyes and for a moment you honestly hesitate in opening them again because you could swear that if you open them, you will see a tattoo of her imprint on your chest.
Is there something wrong, you think with yourself, with the fact you can still feel the heat of her body against yours? Without your consent, your fingers trace the outline of where Rachel had laid her palm, and you swear, her touch has been inked into your skin.
She’s there, even when she isn’t. It’s muscle memory at best and your own tortured soul at worse, this desperation to keep her in front of you even though you keep pushing her away. You know better than anyone you can’t survive having her in front of you in the flesh - you never were that good at resisting temptation, and it’s just easier to take yourself out of the equation than it is to confront the object of your desire.
You can’t want something if they aren’t there in front of you. Maybe that’s the hidden truth, really, the enigma hidden behind the beauty of the stars: you only want what you can see, and maybe if you close your eyes long enough, when you open them she’ll be there, and you can finally want something that doesn’t make you feel so guilty about the wreckage left behind.
You’re not alone, though, in the aftermath, and maybe, that’s even worse. If only you could be confined to your solitude, if only you could serve your sentence locked in the confines of your own mind… Yes, it’s a lonely world you’ll be living in, but at least you would finally be free of the eternal guilt, at least, in this world you could create, Rachel’s voicemail would stop playing in your mind.
“Let’s be sleepless together” says so much to you, and you’re just dying to know if they have the same implications to you as they do to Rachel. Does she know what those words mean to you? Is that precisely why she whispers them to an answering machine? You are a creature of habit at best; she would have known you would have listened to your voicemail even if you had once pleaded with her to stay out of your head.
Did she think it over, wonder what words would make you second guess yourself? Did she know you would stare at the answering machine long after the message ended as you try to understand what must have been going on in her mind? As you try to understand what are these feelings inside of you that keep fluttering whenever you hear her voice?
It makes you feel, and you’ve been spending the past four years trying to trick your mind into not feeling at all. It’s safer if you just turn emotions off completely because you can’t be hurt if there’s nothing there to damage. Heather was speaking the truth, after all, when she whispered harshly that you were nothing more than just damaged goods; it’s taken you a while but now you know the advantage of being cracked beyond repair is eventually people stop trying to fix you.
How can you be repaired, anyway? It’s not like you can take back what you did; at the end of the day, you still chose Berkeley, and you have to live with the consequences of your actions. Alone in Los Angeles, you weren’t forced to witness the destruction save for Santana’s occasional visit, but now Rachel has sauntered back into your life and you are abandoned on the witness stand as your true love turned prosecutor exposes the evidence of the worst kind of betrayal.
You didn’t just leave her behind, and maybe your crimes would be easier to pardon if it was just a case of neglect. But your list of offenses doesn’t end with walking away from Rachel. You didn’t just leave; you never came back as well. You became the renegade, the one thing you had promised Rachel you would never be, but not only that, you took New York with you.
Neglect, theft, your criminal record goes on and on. It is there, and you are the only one responsible, as Rachel so effortlessly argued in your subconscious. Yes, “let’s be sleepless together” has kept you up, confused your mind with thoughts you should know better than to be thinking - thoughts you are supposed to be able to control but can’t - but “this is on you” is so simple, so direct, so -
Well, maybe it’s better if you stop yourself there. It’s not so Rachel. Your ex-lover may be dead, but you’re the one who buried her. You made quite sure of that, exploiting her fears as you did, only to make them come true. You remember it well, that bitterness in her voice that night in the chapel in Lima, when she said she blamed God for your departure - fitting, really, because at one point in time, religion had been to you what Broadway was to her.
You buried your religion when you became pregnant in high school. You felt abandoned, lonely, and a little ashamed, because the one thing you had always held on to, the one thing that had always been a part of you, had turned its back on you. You had gone to the Church one morning, lost and confused and alone, and you stared up at the building as you begged for answers. Silence was the only thing that greeted you and in that moment you realized your faith had been taking away from you.
It’s a strange sensation, really, when something you believe in so fully gets ripped away from you. One moment it’s there, another it’s not, and it’s just - it’s the worse experience in the world. It’s not the feeling on the spur of the moment that you remember the most but rather everything that came after it - the acute loss of something you had once treasured. And then, suddenly, it’s gone, replaced by this void you can’t explain.
Faith, a person, their heart - everyone has lost something they know they can’t ever really get back. Yes, as individuals they can train themselves to function but there is still something missing. They still know they aren’t complete. What used to be a part of them suddenly isn’t, and they try to cope, really, they do - they try to find a way to make it through the day but it’s the night that’s even worse.
Because really, at night - you remember everything. And all the little details you had managed to suppress or ignore during the day come roaring back at night, and you can’t escape from what is no longer there - the absence is so acute it genuinely hurts. You know Rachel stayed behind in Lima during the day, you’re aware that you are in Los Angeles during the day - it’s too bright, too warm, too sunny, too healthy to be in Lima, Ohio.
But at night, when you look up and you see the faintest hint of the stars, that’s when you understand - you are alone here, which means that Rachel is there. Rachel is in Lima, where the sun doesn’t always shine but the stars are always there to remind you of something greater, of obsessions that don’t fade with time. She’s not there, and every little detail reminds you of that.
Or rather - she wasn’t there, because she’s here now, and you just don’t know what to make of that. You don’t know who to believe and it’s not like there is some sort of guide book to help you make sense of what you are feeling. The parts of Rachel that you remember from Lima - the bitterness in that chapel, the anger in the bar, how easily she chose Finn over you - it’s not like you have forgotten any of that.
And then there’s this other version of Rachel, the one who showed up in Los Angeles with a manuscript dedicated to your relationship and a confession of insomnia. Which one are you supposed to remember, really, because both are keeping you awake at night…
You keep waiting for the punch line, because you’ve experienced enough in life to know that good things always come at a cost. There is a direct correlation between what you see and what you get, and while Rachel does confess to insomnia on your answering machine and shows up in the middle of the night and murmurs she just wants to be let back into your heart, you know there’s something terribly wrong.
Because you don’t actually believe it’s Rachel who is doing those things. You don’t believe Rachel really can’t sleep at night, and you don’t believe that she really just wants things to go back to the way they were before, and you don’t believe - people change, and the person who did all those things is the same person you fell in love with in high school.
You damaged that person beyond repair. She whispered it in your subconscious but the reality of the situation is Rachel had always been most truthful when the taste of London Gin still lingered on her lips. That was the person she had become, that was the person you had created.
That, as Rachel reminded you in your subconscious, was on you. There would be no plea bargain. It had never been on the table. You had made very, very sure of that when, one foggy morning in Lima, Rachel had told you about the meaning of love and you didn’t correct her.
“Love is never unconditional.”
You look up when Rachel says that, confused. It’s not like Rachel to be so tinted with bitterness. Yes, she’s the realist between the two of you, the one who looks at things rationally while you are more willing to bargain with forever. You’re the dreamer, she’s the realist, but that had never robbed her of her belief before. This version of Rachel, who has almost given up on love, is a complete stranger to you.
“It should be,” you argue softly, your words almost drowned out by the sound of the rain tapping against her bedroom window. “When you love someone, it should be an absolute. You shouldn’t just pick and choose whichever part of a person you want to love and ignore the rest.”
“But it’s human nature to want to believe in the best of a person,” Rachel immediately counters. “By the very virtue of being human we are selected which part of a person we love and which part of them we choose to ignore.”
“Yes,” you agree. “But there’s more to it, you know? Because love isn’t about loving someone’s best quality, that’s superficial at best and damaging at worse. Love is more; it’s more complex than that. It’s about loving someone despite their flaws. It’s about seeing them for everything they are and still wanting to be with them. That’s love.”
“I suppose you’re going to want a high-five for that?” Rachel drawls, and you snicker slightly at the How I Met Your Mother reference.
“I wouldn’t say no…”
She smiles against your shoulder, and you take to tracing patterns on her skin. You’re just drawing random figures, not even words, because truth be told, you just like the heat of her skin against your palm. She is warm against you, her body the perfect blanket against the cold outside.
“You’re good with words,” she murmurs into your shoulder.
“Not really,” you say as you shake your head. “Sometimes I ramble too much, I’m not always eloquent, words tend to fail me a lot you know, especially when I’m around you.”
“Why?” Rachel asks as she lifts her head.
“Because I don’t always believe there are words to describe how much I love you. Like, the comparisons aren’t accurate enough. I know how important metaphors are to you, that’s why I think it’s so important…” You cut yourself off when you realize how much you’re rambling.
Silence falls between you, and the only sound you hear is your breathing and the rain falling gently against the window. It’s comforting in a manner it shouldn’t be, because it makes you feel that all you have in front of you is a blank page. You can write the future however you want. It’s liberating. It’s exciting. It’s everything you could ever want.
“I love you more than I love Broadway,” Rachel says quietly, her words breaking the silence. “And that’s not a metaphor.”
Maybe that’s what love is supposed to be then - loving someone not because they are your constant, but because you love them more than your constant. Without really knowing how, they somehow slipped under your skin, trickled into your mind and rewrote everything you knew until your conscious was dictated by thoughts of them.
They’re just there, even when they’re gone - they’re under your skin and in your thoughts. You feel them, breathe them, become them. And then…
And then, one day, somebody leaves.
It’s easy to love someone when they are there because they are present to remind you of things. You smell them, see them, touch them - you can’t escape from them. It’s when they leave, or you leave, that claiming you love someone becomes much more complicated. After all, how can you love someone if the only thing that defines them is their absence? All I know is you becomes all I know is that you’re gone, and there’s a substantial difference between the two statements.
The first one says that love is enough; the second statement suggests that even love falls apart.
Yes, Rachel is back now, claiming she wants back in your heart now, but what about before, what about what comes afterwards? What happened to a few weeks ago and the venom in her voice, in her confessions - where did it all go? Is it all still lingering underneath the surface, just waiting to be unleashed? Is she just biding her time, preparing for the fatal blow?
She doesn’t have to deliver it; you’re already suffering from it. It was one thing to suffer from the guilt when Rachel was back in Lima, when all you had to deal with was Santana’s nostalgia towards the days that could have been, but now, the consequences of your actions, of your decisions, wait outside your office and knock on your door and - why doesn’t Rachel understand that being around her just hurts you?
It hurts. The guilt is suffocating because by virtue of her being here, you’re acutely reminded she is not on Broadway. You are reminded that she loved you more than she loved her dream, you are reminded that she would have chosen you and instead you chose something else and yes, you are fully aware of the wreckage you left behind even if you weren’t there to witness it.
You don’t need the reminders. You don’t need to mistake the shadows in your office for Rachel’s profile anymore than you need the blinking light on your answering machine. Maybe Santana was right, maybe you really are a sucker for punishment because you can’t bring yourself to delete it.
You want to. God, you just want to erase it, pretend that you never heard Rachel make a case for both of your insomnia. You want to believe both of you are just okay because it’s not just knowing that she can’t sleep at night, it’s knowing that she knows you spend the night staring at the night sky as well.
Everyone has different coping mechanisms and while yours occasionally involve a bottle of Tequila, there’s also a fair amount of welcome solitude in watching the night sky pass you by. Time is there for the taking, or to be ignored, and you don’t have to decide right away. It’s comforting in a manner you can’t quite describe, and maybe that’s the point.
What is - or at least, what used to be - essential is that you were alone in all of that. You could pretend that you were the only one who stayed up most of the night in Los Angeles and it wasn’t because you were out partying with celebrities or actresses who have simply lost their way. You just didn’t want to fall asleep, didn’t want to be plagued by the memories, didn’t want to see the destruction you know now by heart.
That, you’ve come to realize, is why you needed to be able to pretend you were the only one seeking redemption.
But now - now you know, and there is a substantial difference between being aware of your actions and actually seeing the consequences of it. Now you know - you know you are not alone, you know that somewhere in Los Angeles, Rachel is looking at the same night sky, and now it is completely different thoughts running through your mind.
You could take the guilt because by now it also presents a degree of comfort. But this new thing lingering in your chest - something like dread, something like curiosity - well, it’s something completely new.
Because you do wonder. You are curious about what Rachel is thinking when she looks up at the sky, you do chew your lower lip as you consider the possibility that maybe, just maybe, Rachel is thinking of you, too.
And by now you know how dangerous that is. Even if Rachel is thinking of you, you don’t know what she is thinking. The girl you fell in love with doesn’t recognize you at all, and to be honest, you don’t really recognize yourself that much either, these days. The old you is dead and buried, and the new version of you still feels uncomfortable in her skin. We’re all strangers in this confusing world of ours, and maybe, that’s why we all feel so alone sometimes, even we live in a town with a million other people.
It’s dangerous to get your hopes up. It’s dangerous to want Rachel to be thinking of you because everything has a time limit and what are you supposed to do when Rachel stops thinking of you? What will become of you when the light on your answering machine stops blinking because Rachel is no longer interested in being sleepless with you?
She’s here now, but what about when she leaves?
You sigh as you head back into your home. You don’t want to be alone but the solitude is all you know, and maybe, this is your penance: eternally missing the one who you left behind. You miss her, you really do, but you’re not sure if she feels the same way. Does she miss you, or does she miss the girl who inspired the musical?
You still left, and the title of the musical is very much a reminder of that. So far the script is actually quite flattering of the relationship you two shared but how long until Rachel decides to get her revenge? How much time has to pass before she finally evens the score? You know her. You’ve seen first hand that bitterness.
You are many things but you are not naïve and there is no way Rachel is as over your actions as she would like to believe. You aren’t going to play the part of the trusting fool, not again. She loves you now - but will she still love you when she’s gone? Will she still love you when she’s standing on stage and critics just want answers?
Because at the end of the day, they will want to know. They will ask questions and demand what happened to the girl who inspired the musical and Rachel will be faced with a decision, to either tell the truth behind the wreckage or to tell a different tale. She could be honest, or she could lie, and the credibility evolves around which one she chooses.
Everything you ever did, every thought you ever had, every confession you ever made - it’s there for the taking, written plainly in black and white as two lovers confess their thoughts to each other. It’s there, they are your words, and you may have buried that girl but Rachel was the one who killed her.
It’s a little after 1.30 in the morning when you eventually go to your bedroom. You lie down and close your eyes but you know that you won’t actually be falling asleep. It’s routine, and it’s comforting, two things you can’t really afford to lose.
Your phone begins to vibrate, and it’s instinct, really, that makes you reach out. Your eyes are still closed as you stroke the cover, feeling the metal glide against your palm. Comfort. Everyone has their own definition of it. It’s muscle memory at best, too, or a bad habit at worse that makes you actually press “answer” without looking at the number.
It’s completely silent at the other end but the absence of noise is absolutely deafening. You are very, very much aware of who is on the other end of the line. Your eyes are wide open in terror but you can’t breathe, you can’t even move.
“I thought this would be easier,” Rachel says quietly into the phone. She sounds so shy, so bashful, the complete opposite of both the girl you used to know and the woman she has become. “But actually, it is a lot harder than I thought it would be.”
You frantically blink back tears even though she can’t see you. You suspect she can probably hear it in the way you’re breathing, though, the shallow breaths you’re taking as you fight to keep your composure.
“I don’t - I’m not - this isn’t an accusation,” Rachel stammers, and, really, you’ll do anything to get the confident Rachel back. You need her to be confident because it gives you strength, you need her to become the prosecutor your subconscious had created because she was in control, she knew where this was heading. You suspect neither of you know how this phone call is going to end.
“What do you want?” You ask quietly. The question seems to throw Rachel, and you can imagine the way her eyes widen as she struggles to find her place.
“I want to sleep again,” she answers softly. “But dreams are scary, you know that better than anyone, don’t you Quinn? You remember when you sleep. Do you do what I do, Quinn? Do you reach over where you imagine my body would be? I swear I can always feel you beside me, even when you’re several thousand miles away. I can smell you. You’re always there, Quinn, you never leave me alone in my dreams.”
“Stop,” you plead. “Stop talking, please, just - don’t, Rachel.”
“Why not?” She presses.
She knows why you don’t want her to talk. She knows which words you are desperate to avoid, why you don’t want to have this conversation to even be happening in the first place, why you should have looked over when your phone vibrated and even why you didn’t.
You’re a creature of habit, and some habits don’t change.
“Do you love me?” Rachel asks, and her voice is carefully void of emotion. It’s a loaded question. You close your eyes and take a breath.
“Yes,” you tell her. “I love you more than anything.”
“You promised me that before,” she says, her voice still completely neutral. “And you left. You said you loved me and you left. I told - you knew I loved you more than Broadway and you took it away from me. You took everything I loved away from me.”
“Your love is destructive,” she whispers to you as a closing argument.
You close your eyes.
“You’re the one who came back,” you whisper back at her.
Neither of you say anything after that. You just stay on the phone, completely silent, content with listening to the other breathe. Some could call it closure but it’s more like waiting for the bomb to fall; in slow motion, the blast is always most beautiful.
Not stealing if you acknowledge it:
- I don't own Glee and am in no way affiliated with the show in any shape or form
- the final line "in slow motion, the blash is always most beautiful" is a play on a line from "Somewhere A Clock Is Ticking" by Snow Patrol
- The title of the chapter is taken from Howie Day's "No Longer What You Require"
- Special thanks to Erika, who as always looks things over and plays along with plot discussions
Part XIV: This Will All Make Perfect Sense Someday
Part XV: Our Love