FIC: Free Falling From a Work in Progress - Glee (Brittany/Santana, Rachel/Quinn) - 5/7
TITLE: Free Falling From a Work in Progress (Part 5/7)
AUTHOR: Misty Flores
Email: mistiec_flores@yahoo.com
GENRE: Glee, but borrows from some of the spy mythology from 'Chuck'
PAIRING: Santana/Brittany, Rachel/Quinn
RATING: M
WORD COUNT: ~ 56,000
SUMMARY: Eight years after being recruited into the NSA, Special Agent Santana Lopez, aka Molly Chambers, is given a new assignment: track down the stolen Government Intersect and protect it from harm.
SPOILERS: 3.04 'Duets' and beyond pretty much destroyed my head canon for this, but let's move on and pretend it didn't.
SPECIAL THANKS TO: zep1980 for the amazing beta job. I would have been lost without you!
CHAPTERS: Prologue | Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Part Five | Part Six | Part Seven |
NOTES: For the Glee Femslash Big Bang Challenge. Based on this prompt from the glee kink meme.
PART FIVE
You fooled me with your kisses
You cheated and you schemed
Heaven knows how you lied to me
You’re not the way you seemed
-‘(You’re the) Devil In Disguise’, Elvis Presley
****
In the dark evening hours, Quinn Fabray toed a very thin line that blurred both her reality and her persona.
She had come here tonight with every intention of seducing Rachel.
Mission accomplished. Sort of.
Had she been allowed more than one moment to even consider the reason it had happened, or how it had come to pass, she would have been terrified, because the truth was that she had allowed herself to be seduced.
By Rachel Berry.
Worse than that, she had allowed herself to have been made love to, and though her mind, trained to bleed every bit of emotion out of her in even these most intimate moments, fought hard to separate her from the act itself, Quinn had lost control.
Once again, she had been infected by Rachel Berry, drugged with lust and a deeper emotion that overpowered every inhibition.
Seduction was a power play, and it was one that Quinn knew well. Every move was calculated: every touch that lingered, every smirk that turned upward, every gaze, held just a little too long, it all had a purpose. To entice and draw near, make a person reckless and fill them with so much desire it broke them away from their common sense, until they could think of nothing else but being fulfilled, satiated; wanted.
Quinn had always equated submission with weakness. Submitting to Puck had resulted in a pregnancy that had knocked her world askew. Half of her loyalty to Fulcrum came from her sheer lust for dominance and power, and Quinn knew that about herself.
God, it was fucking textbook, and instead of acknowledging that, instead of rolling out of Rachel's surprisingly luxurious sheets and heading for the hills, Quinn's body seemed weighted with the sleepy laziness of the after affects of an astounding orgasm, with a naked Rachel pinning her at her side, and swollen lips receiving deep, lingering kisses that smacked of intimacy and hunger.
Even after what transpired between them, Quinn couldn't stop kissing Rachel.
It made her stupid. She couldn't think. Every time she tried, Rachel's mouth would press against hers, and her mind would go fuzzy. She was sluggish and the taste of herself on Rachel's lips and tongue caused a shiver of arousal that felt primal.
Just the feel of her, settled against her, legs tangled and Rachel's foot rubbing against her calf, sent such a thrill within her, Quinn felt like that high school girl all over again, except instead of wanting to punish Rachel for daring to affect her in ways Quinn would not admit, Quinn wanted to worship instead.
In a very blasphemous way.
Rachel's mouth broke from hers, trailed hotly against her cheekbones, and lingered just under her ear, expelling hot breath that sent tingles through Quinn's body. Fingers playing idly with the dark curls that tumbled down Rachel's bare back, Quinn lost herself in the moment.
When the contact suddenly paused, Quinn's eyes opened. Rachel, with mussed hair and shining dark eyes, propped up with a palm against her head, studied her curiously.
"You're beautiful when you smile," she said, voice husky in a way Quinn had never heard before tonight. Color flushed on Rachel's face. "You probably hear that all the time."
She did. Never had she heard it quite so sincerely.
Quinn lifted her head and offered a reassuring and playful kiss that caused a smile to form on Rachel's lips.
"So I've always wanted to know something," she found herself saying, settling on her side, mirroring Rachel's position. Rachel's brow arched curiously. "Those sex scenes you guys have to film. Do you ever get turned on doing them?"
It was a silly question, but Quinn's oddly giddy state seemed to fuel the mood, and when Rachel laughed and turned her head to bury her expression in the pillow, the sweetness was affecting.
"Actually," Rachel said, a moment later, the blush fading as she recovered from her moment of embarrassment. "It's intensely uncomfortable. There's never less than twenty people in the room, the lights are always blindingly hot, and it's ridiculous trying to be sexy when you both have pants on underneath the sheets."
Quinn's mouth quirked at the thought. "Sexy," she drawled.
"And the guy my character is dating?" Rachel smiled in a conspiring way. "Flaming."
"Seriously?"
Rachel shrugged. "We make it work. We have quite a fanbase." A smug smile formed on Rachel's lips. "I'm very good at love scenes."
The confidence, the arrogance, that Quinn would once find eternally annoying had a decidedly different effect at the moment. Something inside her actually quivered.
"So it would seem," she admitted, and unable to help herself, she shifted forward, until Rachel's palm settled on her waist with an air that was almost possessive.
Quinn closed the space between them, mouth melting against Rachel's in a demanding kiss. She pushed now, leading Rachel onto her back and settling in against her.
A long moment later, Rachel pulled back, resting her head on the pillow, content to revel in the touches Quinn didn't know how to stop, spreading fingers against Rachel's cheeks, through the tousled locks that spread against Rachel's deep burgundy sheets.
"You just have to believe the lie." Quinn's smile faltered, but Rachel, keening into her palm, didn't notice. "You know?" Her smile was content, safe. "That's all acting is."
Quinn's mantra, bursting forth so casually from Rachel's lips, might as well have been a splash of cold water over Quinn's heated body.
"Right," she mumbled. It was enough to distract Rachel, bring her focus back to her. "I guess being a spy is kind of the same thing." She shrugged lightly, managed a smile, and didn't think about how beautiful Rachel suddenly seemed, underneath her questing fingers and sated body.
"What do you mean?"
Quinn pressed her lips together. Her index finger crested over the bridge of Rachel's nose; smoothed over Rachel's brow.
It would have been so easy, to believe in this lie. To block the world out and focus exclusively on their intimate embrace, the smell of sex, pretend that nothing existed outside of this bed.
"I mean it's kind of like being an actress." Quinn's hair, wild from Rachel's wandering hands, fell between them, tickling Rachel's cheek. Immediately, Rachel reached up and smoothed the bangs back, curving them over Quinn's ear.
Quinn noticed the bruise of a hickey on the side of Rachel's throat.
She had never given someone a hickey. Ever.
"You spend so much time being someone else; you kind of forget who you really are." Who you were. Who you once thought you wanted to be.
A rush of air, the sound of a soft exhalation, and the light scratch of Rachel combing fingers through Quinn's hair brought her back to the moment, to the sensation of a naked Rachel Berry underneath her, staring up at her with such tenderness it was both disconcerting and compelling to witness.
Rachel's eyes were curiously moist. "That sounds lonely."
Quinn's breath hitched. Soberly, with the mind of a disenchanted spy, Quinn finally understood her own bitterness, and why, at this moment, things felt so oddly different, why she was so willing to believe.
Quinn had been lonely her entire life.
She licked her lips, felt Rachel shift underneath her, thighs moving, bringing her in closer, until their naked bodies were plastered so tightly together Quinn could feel Rachel's heartbeat hammering against hers.
With a tenderness she could not mask, Quinn whispered, "I don't feel so lonely right now."
The smile Rachel bestowed on her, rich and full and somehow deep with meaning, caused a lurch inside Quinn, a flutter of sudden desire that left her helpless against her instinct, to lower her head and initiate another embrace.
It deepened quickly, with muted whimpers and heavy sighs.
Heart racing, blood pounding, Quinn didn't hear Rachel's phone ringing. Not until Rachel, arching under her questing mouth, said again, "My phone-"
"What?" she asked dumbly, head lifting as Rachel squirmed underneath her, shifting until she had her back to Quinn, reaching for her ringing mobile.
"It's Brittany."
Quinn, teeth dragging against the smooth expanse of Rachel's shoulder, immediately froze. The desire faded. Her fingers clenched against Rachel's bicep.
The world had gone on around them, and it was only now that Quinn noticed the daylight beginning to make itself noticeable, shining in through Rachel's windows.
Closing her eyes, she sucked in a heady, harsh breath, as Rachel answered.
Believe the lie.
Quinn kept her mouth shut. She looked around the room, noticed the tangled sheets, the discarded bedspread. Felt the dull ache of her bruised ribs and wounded shoulder.
Rachel, deep in her conversation with Brittany, shifted out of her arms, unaware of her nakedness, of the mark that had branded her with Quinn's enthusiasm.
"Brittany, please! If you're really leaving just tell me where you are. I can bring you some clothes. At least let me say good-bye. No, Brittany, you can trust me. I promise."
The corner of Quinn's mouth jerked, a phantom, reassuring smile that felt empty when she looked at Rachel's puffy, abused lips, her naked, trusting eyes.
For a crazy, insane moment, Quinn wanted to grab hold of Rachel, snatch the phone out of her hands, and drag her to the door, take her away from all of this.
For a crazy, insane moment, Quinn suddenly understood Santana.
But it passed. Not without effort. Not without a steady inhalation, tamping down the feelings that had surfaced, clogging her throat and bringing with them a sudden frustration that made her itch for something tangible that she could break.
God, Fuck Rachel. Seriously. Because Quinn was in her bed, knew the taste of her, the smell of her, and hadn't realized how starved she had been for someone to see her until Rachel called her lonely.
Quinn wasn't the same girl she was in high school. She was a killer. A liar, a cheater, and her fate was her own to make. She was a Fulcrum agent, and by some considerations a traitor. She was good at what she did, better than Santana, because she knew what was at stake.
The Intersect.
Brittany.
Quinn listened.
She pushed off the bed silently, and grabbed hold of her jeans, ignoring the pulsing complaint of her ribs.
****
When Santana awoke, she immediately became aware of two things.
One was Brittany, who had curled into her back, nose digging into her nape, fingers massaging lightly against a scabbing wound on her bicep.
The second was the rays of the sun peeking through her blinds, warming a spot on her leg.
"FUCK."
Santana's eyes were crusted over with caked on mascara. Her body was heavy, slow to move thanks to the deep sleep. When she jerked up, she nearly toppled Brittany over.
"What's wrong?"
Already, her heart had begun to pound as her mind screamed at her with the ramifications of her little siesta.
"You shouldn't have let me sleep." Santana stumbled to the dresser and grabbed hold of a fresh pair of pants. "It's late. It's really fucking late."
Brittany didn't move. Instead, she only sat on the bed, colored eyes following Santana's every move, as she jerked on the pants one leg at a time, weaved a leather belt through the loops, and grabbed her Beretta, checking the safety and the clip before shoving it in her jeans, flat against her spine.
"You looked so tired." Brittany's expression was an uncertain haze, legs crossing and hand rubbing at her forearm. "I didn't want to wake you up."
"Fuck, Brittany, really? We've got the entire fucking world coming after us and you think getting a fucking cat nap is what I need?" The snap, the anger, came out of her before she could help it. Brittany saw it, flinched at the emotion, and immediately, Santana winced, heart twisting in self-recrimination. "I'm sorry." She strode forward, forced herself to sit on the bed, ignore the sun, ignore the inner clock in her head that reminded her insistently that they were running out of time. "I'm sorry," she whispered. Brittany glanced up, and Santana leaned forward, brushed a tender kiss against Brittany's full lips, pressed a palm against a soft cheek. "I'm sorry."
On Brittany's face was a sad grimace. "It seems like all you've been doing since I saw you again is apologize."
Santana bit the inside of her cheek, forced herself not to automatically apologize for that. "Brittany, I promise, I will spend the rest of my life trying to make all this up to you. But if I'm going to have a chance in hell, we have to leave. Now." Brittany didn't move. It was maddening. "Brittany, please."
"I don't have any clothes."
"I have clothes."
Stubborn eyes locked onto her own. "They won't fit."
Gritting her teeth, Santana clenched the sheets between them in an effort to stave off her frustration. "So wear your Buy More uniform."
"It's dirty."
"Brittany!" A pulsing pain hit Santana sharply between the temples, a testament to both her stress and her irritation. Shutting her eyes, she took a moment for herself, inhaled deeply and then blindly reached for Brittany's hand.
It meant something, at least, that Brittany met her halfway. Santana's eyes opened, and she studied their fingers, tan and pale digits tangled in Brittany's lap.
"Brittany, babe, I know this sucks. I know it does. Believe me. It sucks that you can't say good-bye, and it sucks that this happened, but there is one upside."
Brittany's eyes gleamed with conflicted emotion. "What?" Fingers unconsciously rubbed against her intimately. Santana found herself momentarily distracted by the act.
For a moment, she was overcome.
With a choked smile, she squeezed. "We can have a life together," she whispered, voice cracking with certainty. "Brittany, we can get married."
Like they had planned, before Sue Sylvester and the Intersect and the god-damn world got in the way.
"We can find a place in Italy, or a little island near Greece..." The words, the dreams, came out breathless and full of wonder, because it was so tangible, so in reach. When Brittany stared at her, tightened her grip with hers, Santana offered a watery smile. "Tell me you still want that. Tell me you still want me."
It was a terrible moment, until Brittany leaned forward and captured her lips in a fervent, earnest kiss.
When they broke apart, it was only for air, as Brittany's forehead tilted against hers, as Santana heard fervently, "I've never wanted anything else."
She felt lips on her mouth, her cheek, before Brittany let her go, scooting toward the edge of the bed and gathering her discarded pants, shaking out the grime.
It was then that Santana noticed her own cell phone, half-hidden in a sheet on Brittany's side of the bed.
Her heart dropped. Willing herself not to say a word, Santana reached for the phone, and pressed a button, watching the LED screen light up.
The most recent call had been made a half an hour ago.
The number was Rachel Berry's.
Santana's hand began to tremble, a knot of emotion spiked hard into her throat. "Brittany," she breathed, eyes darting up. "Please tell me you didn't call Rachel while I was asleep."
It had been four years, but even in that time, Brittany had not learned to lie. The guilty turn of her mouth was more than enough confirmation.
Santana's fingers clenched hard around her phone, willing herself to try and stay calm. "Did you tell her where we are?"
Brittany shook her head, but her shoulders slumped, as if Brittany wasn't sure to be defiant or ashamed. "I didn't give her an exact address-"
"You didn't fucking HAVE TO," Santana snapped, the heat rising to her cheeks, panic fluttering in her chest. "If she kept you on the phone for more than a half a minute Fulcrum would have traced the call-"
Fuck. Fuck. FUCK.
Scrambling off the bed, Santana jerked on her shirt, shoved her feet into shoes.
"Santana, we can trust her-"
And that was it. Santana had enough. "God, Brittany!" she snapped, whirling, eyes moist with frustrated tears. "No, you can't! Don't you get it?! We can't trust ANYONE. Not Rachel. Not Quinn... God, I can't even trust you-" Furious, Santana was fucking furious. Furious enough to ignore the flash of hurt that swept across Brittany's face. "We have to go. Now."
The knock on the door was enough to make Santana nearly jump out of her own skin.
"Brittany? Santana?" Rachel Berry's voice floated in from the other side. "It's me! It's Rachel! Please, just let me in."
Santana worked the action on her gun and flicked off the safety as she trained the sights on the door.
"Santana-"
"Brittany, stay the hell away from the door," she snapped, circling the room to Brittany and drawing her in behind her.
"It's just Rachel-"
"Brittany-" In her frustration, in her effort to keep Brittany still, Santana lost her focus.
It was a terrible mistake.
The grenade that was lobbed in through the window hit the floor with a hard smack.
Santana only had a moment to process it, plow into Brittany like a linebacker, when the room exploded in an earsplitting bang and a flash so bright, it blinded her.
After it came the inevitable chaos-the door slammed open, the heavy steps of boots, and what felt like a dagger slamming into her back.
The last thing she heard before she lost consciousness was Brittany's scream.
****
What Rachel was doing was a clear betrayal of Brittany's trust.
Rachel understood it. She told herself that it was for the greater good, because Santana was a monster who was using Brittany, betraying her love for her in order to keep whatever it was that was in Brittany's head for herself.
She had the reassurance of Quinn, the evidence of her bruises, her scratches and bandaged shoulder, the way Quinn kissed her so tenderly and promised her she was doing the right thing, that Brittany would be safe.
None of that had prepared Rachel for the hysterical shriek of Brittany crying out Santana's name, the unconscious form of Santana, a dart in her back, being hauled off Brittany by two agents.
The look on Brittany's face, the way she fought against the men who grabbed her to get to Santana, it spoke of true terror.
Rachel jerked out of her stupor, running into the room that smelt like burnt smoke.
"Brittany!" she tried, reaching out for her friend, trying hard to calm her, even as her throat clogged and her heart spasmed in her chest. "Please, it's for the best!"
Brittany only stared at her, a miserable expression on her face. "Are you serious?" she whispered. "Oh God, Rachel-"
"Quinn's here!" Rachel tried, and then flinched as the men who had come with Quinn grabbed hold of Brittany, forcing her to her knees. "Leave her alone!"
Across the room, Quinn Fabray, outfitted in the same black garb of her companions, knelt against Santana. She had her cellphone against her ear.
"Quinn," Rachel tried, desperate now. "Tell them!"
Quinn only glanced up at her with an expression that seemed so distant and removed, she could have been a stranger.
"Rachel, are you stupid?!" Brittany's voice cracked, desperate and hysterical. "Quinn's the bad guy!"
"No," she insisted, shaking her head vehemently. "That's just what Santana told you-"
"Santana was PROTECTING ME," spat Brittany. Those men, those scary men, bound Brittany's wrists, dragging her to her feet. Brittany, her best friend, her roommate, looked almost swallowed up by those men in black, and yet there was nothing Rachel could do.
Across the loft, Quinn stood over the unconscious form of Santana with her back to her, and her phone to her ear.
"Brittany..."
"From Quinn and Fulcrum. They're a terrorist organization and they wanted the Intersect. What's inside of me. Santana came to save me."
It couldn't be true. It couldn't. Brittany was wrong. Brittany had to be wrong, because if she was right, then it meant...
She didn't want to think about what it meant. She stared beseechingly at Quinn, desperate for the other woman to defend herself, to reassure Brittany, tell her everything that she had told Rachel that made her believe.
But Quinn just stood there.
Rachel whirled, tried to do it herself. "Brittany," she began, but then agents began to move, jerking Brittany out of her embrace. "Brittany-"
"You said I could trust you." Brittany, always so expressive, wore her heartbreak like a painted expression. Dragged to her feet, she was shoved toward the door.
Left alone, Rachel could only stand in the midst of all this chaos, and attempt to make sense of it.
A flat square of plastic, most likely fallen from Santana's pocket, lay on the floor beside Rachel's foot.
Slowly, deliberately, Rachel leaned down and with great apprehension, brought the object in view.
On the badge, a picture of Santana smiled at her, almost politely. Directly underneath were block letters that called her 'Molly Chambers'. Above it? Blue letters that identified the person as NSA.
Struck mute, she searched for Quinn, desperate for answers; reasons that would have this make sense.
But when she found her, Quinn offered nothing but a closed, tense stare, without any attempt to explain or reassure. There wasn't even a hint of the woman who had embraced Rachel so tenderly earlier that morning, who had smiled a beautiful smile and looked almost a little bit broken when Rachel called her lonely.
God... Rachel had been so blind.
"Santana wasn't the bad guy," she realized, her world suddenly dropping out from under her as the truth became so apparent and real.
"Oh here it comes." Ramos, the man who had only hours ago joked with her and made her believe he was there to keep her safe, laughed harshly. "The big dramatic scene from the soap actress. Who's got popcorn?"
"Shut up!" Quinn's voice was sharp. The pain began to pulse as Rachel's eyes watered, gaze jerking to Brittany, who could only stare at her miserably, hands tied behind her back, straining between two agents who looked almost bored.
There was blood. Actual blood, on Rachel's hands. It was Santana and Brittany's, and she could almost feel it, thick and syrupy on her hands.
"Rachel."
Just hearing Quinn speak her name was staggering. Rachel shook her head violently, trembling in her emotion. "You used me," she whispered, horrified and devastated. "You used me to betray my best friend."
Quinn, with a gun in her hand and a blank expression, even though her mouth trembled and her breath grew heavy, could say nothing in her defense, because it was the truth.
Rachel had been seduced, her trust abused, and it had been easy for Quinn to do it. Less than a day since Quinn had walked into her life again and already she had shared Rachel's bed, seen the deepest part of her.
Rachel, thinking she was falling in love, had been a simple patsy.
"Don't feel bad, Berry," Ramos slapped a hard, heavy hand on her shoulder. Just his touch was enough to cause a shudder of revulsion. "You're not the first. You're not going to be the last, right Fabray?"
"How about you shut the hell up and do your fucking job for once?" Quinn, who was beautiful even now, barked her orders in the same tone she had used to order around her Cheerios. The urge to hate her was rampant and willing. "Take those two downstairs. Andrews is waiting downstairs."
"Even Chambers?" Santana, who still lay slumped on the floor, hogtied like an animal.
"Andrews found out she was in the program. She wants to turn her."
"Are you fucking serious?" Ramos spat.
"Yes." Quinn's eyes flashed with authority, her voice hard with intent. "Just do it."
"And what about her?" Ramos' hand, still on her shoulder, squeezed hard, and Rachel closed her eyes, betrayed by her own fear, sucking in a shuddering breath.
When she gathered the courage to open her eyes, Quinn was her only focus.
As their eyes met, Rachel was overtaken with a memory: of a smile spreading across kissable lips, a crystal laugh erupting as this woman, her lover, shifted against her naked body, and looked at her and made her feel like she saw no one else.
Rachel almost couldn't stand the pain. It suddenly didn't matter what would happen now.
Quinn had just killed her.
It was almost anti-climatic, when she heard Quinn say, "Andrews wants me to take care of her by myself."
"Rachel," Brittany cried, and Rachel only shifted her head and tried to smile stoically for her best friend.
"It'll be okay, Brittany," she lied, and the way her voice held was almost impressive.
She had sealed Brittany and Santana's fate; she would accept her own.
"What the hell are you waiting for? Get going! If the NSA shows up looking for their poster child, we're going to have a fucking blood bath."
With Quinn's gun on her, Rachel couldn't move. Instead, she could only watch, as Brittany was dragged away behind Santana. The men with the guns, who Quinn had sworn were there to save Brittany, vacated Santana's safehouse as quickly as they had blasted into it, closing the door behind them and leaving her with death itself.
Now, there was only her and this stranger, who had played her as easily as Jesse had when she was sixteen, toying with her heart for the sake of a win. She remembered her plea to Jesse when it had all started, how if this was a trap she was sure she would never recover. She remembered his laugh, the way he held her, his confident, kind brown eyes.
God, and here she was again, in this over-the-top Mexican standoff that felt like a ratings climax to one of her soap's sweeps arc. Rachel knew her place: the willing fool, who had cost Romeo and Juliet their happiness, when she had given them over to a mustache twirling villain who even wore the trademark, conflicted expression, like this was actually hard for her.
Just the gall of Quinn to even pretend to have a conscious now was infuriating.
"Everything you told me," Rachel began, wanting to laugh with the stupidity of it. "All that stuff about Santana being dangerous, about not being who she was... it was all lies. Shreds of truth twisted to make it more real." God... "Believe the lie," she whispered, recalling an intimate conversation in the aftermath of what she thought had been making love, and what she now knew was Quinn completing her seduction.
The gun that had been held so casually in her direction wavered suddenly. Quinn's fingers twitched, and suddenly Quinn looked restless, haunted. "It's not personal, Rachel," she blurted, like it made any sort of difference.
But it was. Rachel remembered what felt like a thousand instances from her young high school life, from pornographic images drawn on bathroom walls to cruel, cutting comments written on her MySpace profile, that told her every move Quinn had taken had been intensely personal.
"God, how do you do that?" Quinn didn't answer. "How do you LIE like that?" she asked, the anger rising within her, overwhelming her senses. "It's always been personal with you. Why, Quinn? What did I ever do to you to make you hate me so much?"
She genuinely wanted to know. She ached to know, because Rachel couldn't fathom it. She couldn't understand what she had done to Quinn that had been so horrible that it warranted doing what she had, destroying her life in the time it took to send one email.
Maybe she finally got to Quinn, because hazel eyes flashed, cheeks flushed, and that gun came down. "That's always been your problem, you know that?" Black boots stepped toward her. Quinn sucked in a harsh, heavy breath. "You always had to make it about you, no matter what. Like no one else mattered. What did you think, Rachel? That I'd find out you're prone to fucking girls and I would thank my lucky stars? That you were so fucking special that I would drop everything just to be with you? That I would fuck you and suddenly think that you'd be more important than a billion dollar superweapon that could change the world?"
In that moment, Quinn was ugly. Ugly in a way Rachel had never imagined she could be. The words stung, bit into her heart and made her eyes water, and Rachel felt so stupid. "Maybe not," she whispered, fighting the tears. "But I thought that maybe, somehow, you were still an actual person, who wouldn't destroy innocent people like Santana and Brittany to do it."
"God." Quinn kicked at the floor, skidding the Beretta that had been disarmed from Santana across the floor. "Look at that. That's a gun, Rachel. And Santana would have used it. On me. On you. On whoever got between her and Brittany. I don't know how it works in soap operas, but in real life, there isn't some big romantic hero that's going to come in and sweep you off your feet and save you because you're so fucking special."
"No." Rachel's response was snide. "There are only monsters that destroy innocent widows because they've been stupid enough to hold a grudge for 8 years. I feel sorry for you," she snapped, "You know that? You are lonely. And you're pathetic."
A hand snapped up, snatched her around the throat, fingers bruising into the skin. "I'm pathetic?" Quinn asked, breath huffing against Rachel's mouth. "Says the girl who gave it up in less than ten hours? Who wanted so badly to believe in her knight in shining armor she'd betray her own best friend? Wake up, Rachel. That perfect romance doesn't exist."
And then Quinn seemed to see her; the way she struggled against the grip, the way her face was rapidly turning red, because her eyes widened and her grip, so hard and unyielding, released suddenly. Rachel's knees threatened to give out, and she staggered, catching hold of herself against a chair. Her heart beat terribly fast, but her eyes were defiant, angry, because Quinn was wrong. "It did exist," she wheezed. "You killed it."
Quinn looked like a stranger, eyes blazing with a righteous fury, half-crazed and almost demented with her own anger. There was so much bitterness, so much anger, and Rachel found she didn't care why it was there.
Not anymore. Not when her own heart was ripped and bleeding, and she was minutes away from her own execution.
All because she had been stupid enough to believe Quinn had once been family.
"What, you think they had a fairy tale romance? Mr. and Mrs. Fucks-a-lot? Santana faked her death, remember?" Quinn's head shook. "She left Brittany, let her believe she was dead, and she wouldn't have even come back if it wasn't for me."
And Quinn was doing it again, twisting those words, believing her own lie. "So what?" Rachel shook her head in disbelief. "You want a thank you, now?"
That, at least, seemed to shut Quinn up. She absorbed that, with a clenched jaw and a flaring of her nostrils. "People are human," she said finally. "They're not good and they're not evil. Everyone makes choices. Santana's not an innocent. She knows this life. She chose this life, and knew the consequences."
And maybe in this world, with the guns and the spies and the constant lying, that made some sort of twisted sense to people like Santana and Quinn.
But this wasn't that life. "And what about Brittany?" Rachel asked softly. "What did she do to choose this?"
Quinn, with her odd sense of ethics, could say nothing to that. There was no witty comeback, no flash of righteous anger, only a muted grimace and a cloudiness in her eyes, a brief speck of humanity that recognized the sheer unfairness of what happened to someone like Brittany.
"Shit happens."
Shit happens. That was it. That was Quinn's summation, her justification for supplanting herself in Rachel's life, for inadvertently causing Brittany to become infected and ruining her and Santana's life.
Disbelief unfurled within her, and all Rachel could see now in place of that beautiful woman who had intoxicated her, was a coward.
"God," she breathed. "I can't believe I ever thought I could love you."
Maybe that was her choice, to say something like that out loud, so cutting and cruel and devastatingly honest, meant to wound whatever was left of Quinn's heart.
Maybe it worked, because Quinn's head jerked, eyes locked with hers intensely, searching wildly for some validation to what she had implied.
Like there was actual hope.
It was ridiculous. It was pathetic and ridiculous and Rachel gave her no such satisfaction.
"You should know something." The anger that seemed to infect Quinn so easily had disappeared, and in its place was some breathless, quivering expression, like Quinn had been affected. She looked like some beautifully devastating version of the Grim Reaper. "Last night." Just the thought of those insincere intimate moments was enough to make Rachel shudder. Quinn caught the movement; her eyes darkened. "This morning," she continued. "It was the most real I've been... since I can remember. That person you saw was me, Rachel."
The murderer with a heart. The twist of many a romantic arc. The bad guy who was reformed by the love of a good woman.
Just another lie, another manipulation, and Rachel had had enough. "What?" she snapped, crossing her arms and jutting her chin out in defiant anger. "Do you expect me to feel special about that?"
At the very least, Quinn looked like she had been struck. "No," she whispered. "I just thought you should know. I'm sorry, Rachel."
All Rachel could see beyond that apology was Quinn's gun rising.
Rachel wanted to be strong. She wanted to stand there, revel in the fury and anguish that overpowered everything else. It was so much easier to feel that than the guilt, or the irreparable misery of her broken heart.
****
This couldn't be happening.
Not now. Not after every promise that she and Santana had made to each other. Not after swearing that this time, there would be nothing but happy endings, a wedding in Greece or Italy or Argentina or whatever country they could escape to that wasn't here.
Four years, eight years, sixteen years; time had never seemed to matter before, not the way it had come to matter before. When they were young, before they knew better, Santana and Brittany had always stupidly thought they had forever, because they were the lucky ones.
They would be together for the rest of their lives.
Instead of that, Brittany was being pulled away from Santana one more time, watching in miserable hysteria as the love of her life was dragged into an SUV.
"Don't struggle." The man who held her, with jet black hair and dark eyes, tightened his grip around her arms. "Andrews won't give a shit if you come to her unconscious."
The way he pushed, with the flat of his palm, nearly gave her whiplash. Brittany fell forward into the back of a sedan, nearly planting face first into toned legs and a dark skirt.
She was stopped by a hard grip on her shoulders, setting her upright.
"Brittany S. Pierce." Managing to look both amused and bored, was an attractive woman in her early fifties, with dark cat eyes and a stern smile. "It's nice to finally meet you. My name is Laura Andrews."
And it happened. Even through the fear, through her complete panic, the flood of information surged through her, a cascade of images and videos and every classified file that the government had on this woman; this face.
The door slammed behind Brittany, locking her in with one of the most wanted women in America.
"Please," she whispered, unsure what she could even ask for. "Santana-"
"You don't have to worry about her," Laura Andrews said, as the car rumbled to life. "She may not be as important as you, but she's not without her usefulness." The agent settled primly in the back of her seat and offered a thin smirk. "You should get comfortable. We've got a long ride. And since, I'm guessing, you already know a lot about me," she said, with twinkling eyes, as if this was all somehow deeply funny. "Why don't we talk about you? Tell me, Brittany S. Pierce, how did a former dancer and a current Buy More employee become host of one of the most powerful weapons ever developed?"
With a heavy breath, Brittany opened her mouth, and then closed it. Her eyes moved beseechingly to the traffic that passed outside her windows.
"I don't know," she breathed. "I don't know anything."
****
Rachel Berry, less than five feet away, with scrunched palms, closed eyes, trembled from head to toe.
She was waiting for the gunshot that would end her life.
One bullet would end it. Painlessly. Quickly.
Quinn was never without conflict. She wasn't a monster. She just understood that ends justified the means, and in that respect, good and evil didn't matter. It wasn't supposed to matter.
Stuff like that only mattered when she was naïve, and stupid, and Quinn had lost a family, a baby, over it.
She had sworn to never be that person again, had trained her mind to obey her, ignore her emotions and impulses, and that meant she could pull the trigger, absorb the feeling of loss, and move on.
Back to the world that she knew. Back to the games of power and deceit.
But Quinn, who had never realized how lonely she was until she wasn't, found herself wavering, stuck in that same conflict that had taken over since the moment she picked up her phone and heard Rachel Berry on the other line.
Since then, she had discovered that Santana had both died and been resurrected. She discovered that Santana, who had always been just like her, wasn't like her at all, because for her, walking away from it wasn't even a question, not in the face of her loyalty and love for Brittany.
Since then, Quinn had discovered a truth that repeated over and over inside her mind, latching onto her soul and overpowering everything, telling her that somehow, Rachel had seen her, really seen her, and fallen in love with her.
And Quinn had fallen in love right back.
"What are you waiting for?" Rachel's eyes opened. Quinn blocked the moan that rose within her, swallowed it down and didn't speak. "Do it. Finish it."
'I'm trying', she thought miserably, because she knew she had to. These were orders. Rachel's fate had been sealed, as had her own. This wasn't high school. This was her reality, where a kill order meant a dead body, and no other option.
Rachel stared at her, and it just made it worse, because Quinn saw dark brown eyes, liquid in fear. Her chest tightened, heart pumping blood faster, and Quinn grew breathless, because Rachel was beautiful.
If she killed her, if she pulled the trigger and ended Rachel, she would be killing herself. That last link to that scared girl in high school, who, although she had been stupid and morally bankrupt and trying so hard to be a better person, had been part of a family.
A groan of frustration worked out of her throat, sounding mottled and furious.
"Are you enjoying this?" Rachel, trembling, dramatic Rachel, stepped forward, closer to her and her gun. "Are you trying to draw this out? Do it! Take care of me."
"Rachel," she breathed, gritting her teeth, feeling like the fucking Grinch as her heart exploded within her.
"I hope you love this. I hope this really was all worth it, Quinn. I hope-"
"Rachel, SHUT THE HELL UP," she snapped, and it was over. She couldn't. She literally couldn't. It was beyond her. She was powerless, felled by an annoying Jewish Soap Actress who had the social skills of a gnat. "I'm not going to kill you," she admitted.
That, at least, had managed to rob Rachel of her Emmy winning monologue. "What?" she squeaked, and looked so thrown, so unsure, that Quinn could only do what was instinctive.
Locking the safety in place, shoving her gun in her holster, Quinn stepped forward, hauled Rachel to her, and said again as her head lowered, "I'm not going to kill you."
She kissed her instead.
****
Part Six
AUTHOR: Misty Flores
Email: mistiec_flores@yahoo.com
GENRE: Glee, but borrows from some of the spy mythology from 'Chuck'
PAIRING: Santana/Brittany, Rachel/Quinn
RATING: M
WORD COUNT: ~ 56,000
SUMMARY: Eight years after being recruited into the NSA, Special Agent Santana Lopez, aka Molly Chambers, is given a new assignment: track down the stolen Government Intersect and protect it from harm.
SPOILERS: 3.04 'Duets' and beyond pretty much destroyed my head canon for this, but let's move on and pretend it didn't.
SPECIAL THANKS TO: zep1980 for the amazing beta job. I would have been lost without you!
CHAPTERS: Prologue | Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Part Five | Part Six | Part Seven |
NOTES: For the Glee Femslash Big Bang Challenge. Based on this prompt from the glee kink meme.
PART FIVE
You fooled me with your kisses
You cheated and you schemed
Heaven knows how you lied to me
You’re not the way you seemed
-‘(You’re the) Devil In Disguise’, Elvis Presley
****
In the dark evening hours, Quinn Fabray toed a very thin line that blurred both her reality and her persona.
She had come here tonight with every intention of seducing Rachel.
Mission accomplished. Sort of.
Had she been allowed more than one moment to even consider the reason it had happened, or how it had come to pass, she would have been terrified, because the truth was that she had allowed herself to be seduced.
By Rachel Berry.
Worse than that, she had allowed herself to have been made love to, and though her mind, trained to bleed every bit of emotion out of her in even these most intimate moments, fought hard to separate her from the act itself, Quinn had lost control.
Once again, she had been infected by Rachel Berry, drugged with lust and a deeper emotion that overpowered every inhibition.
Seduction was a power play, and it was one that Quinn knew well. Every move was calculated: every touch that lingered, every smirk that turned upward, every gaze, held just a little too long, it all had a purpose. To entice and draw near, make a person reckless and fill them with so much desire it broke them away from their common sense, until they could think of nothing else but being fulfilled, satiated; wanted.
Quinn had always equated submission with weakness. Submitting to Puck had resulted in a pregnancy that had knocked her world askew. Half of her loyalty to Fulcrum came from her sheer lust for dominance and power, and Quinn knew that about herself.
God, it was fucking textbook, and instead of acknowledging that, instead of rolling out of Rachel's surprisingly luxurious sheets and heading for the hills, Quinn's body seemed weighted with the sleepy laziness of the after affects of an astounding orgasm, with a naked Rachel pinning her at her side, and swollen lips receiving deep, lingering kisses that smacked of intimacy and hunger.
Even after what transpired between them, Quinn couldn't stop kissing Rachel.
It made her stupid. She couldn't think. Every time she tried, Rachel's mouth would press against hers, and her mind would go fuzzy. She was sluggish and the taste of herself on Rachel's lips and tongue caused a shiver of arousal that felt primal.
Just the feel of her, settled against her, legs tangled and Rachel's foot rubbing against her calf, sent such a thrill within her, Quinn felt like that high school girl all over again, except instead of wanting to punish Rachel for daring to affect her in ways Quinn would not admit, Quinn wanted to worship instead.
In a very blasphemous way.
Rachel's mouth broke from hers, trailed hotly against her cheekbones, and lingered just under her ear, expelling hot breath that sent tingles through Quinn's body. Fingers playing idly with the dark curls that tumbled down Rachel's bare back, Quinn lost herself in the moment.
When the contact suddenly paused, Quinn's eyes opened. Rachel, with mussed hair and shining dark eyes, propped up with a palm against her head, studied her curiously.
"You're beautiful when you smile," she said, voice husky in a way Quinn had never heard before tonight. Color flushed on Rachel's face. "You probably hear that all the time."
She did. Never had she heard it quite so sincerely.
Quinn lifted her head and offered a reassuring and playful kiss that caused a smile to form on Rachel's lips.
"So I've always wanted to know something," she found herself saying, settling on her side, mirroring Rachel's position. Rachel's brow arched curiously. "Those sex scenes you guys have to film. Do you ever get turned on doing them?"
It was a silly question, but Quinn's oddly giddy state seemed to fuel the mood, and when Rachel laughed and turned her head to bury her expression in the pillow, the sweetness was affecting.
"Actually," Rachel said, a moment later, the blush fading as she recovered from her moment of embarrassment. "It's intensely uncomfortable. There's never less than twenty people in the room, the lights are always blindingly hot, and it's ridiculous trying to be sexy when you both have pants on underneath the sheets."
Quinn's mouth quirked at the thought. "Sexy," she drawled.
"And the guy my character is dating?" Rachel smiled in a conspiring way. "Flaming."
"Seriously?"
Rachel shrugged. "We make it work. We have quite a fanbase." A smug smile formed on Rachel's lips. "I'm very good at love scenes."
The confidence, the arrogance, that Quinn would once find eternally annoying had a decidedly different effect at the moment. Something inside her actually quivered.
"So it would seem," she admitted, and unable to help herself, she shifted forward, until Rachel's palm settled on her waist with an air that was almost possessive.
Quinn closed the space between them, mouth melting against Rachel's in a demanding kiss. She pushed now, leading Rachel onto her back and settling in against her.
A long moment later, Rachel pulled back, resting her head on the pillow, content to revel in the touches Quinn didn't know how to stop, spreading fingers against Rachel's cheeks, through the tousled locks that spread against Rachel's deep burgundy sheets.
"You just have to believe the lie." Quinn's smile faltered, but Rachel, keening into her palm, didn't notice. "You know?" Her smile was content, safe. "That's all acting is."
Quinn's mantra, bursting forth so casually from Rachel's lips, might as well have been a splash of cold water over Quinn's heated body.
"Right," she mumbled. It was enough to distract Rachel, bring her focus back to her. "I guess being a spy is kind of the same thing." She shrugged lightly, managed a smile, and didn't think about how beautiful Rachel suddenly seemed, underneath her questing fingers and sated body.
"What do you mean?"
Quinn pressed her lips together. Her index finger crested over the bridge of Rachel's nose; smoothed over Rachel's brow.
It would have been so easy, to believe in this lie. To block the world out and focus exclusively on their intimate embrace, the smell of sex, pretend that nothing existed outside of this bed.
"I mean it's kind of like being an actress." Quinn's hair, wild from Rachel's wandering hands, fell between them, tickling Rachel's cheek. Immediately, Rachel reached up and smoothed the bangs back, curving them over Quinn's ear.
Quinn noticed the bruise of a hickey on the side of Rachel's throat.
She had never given someone a hickey. Ever.
"You spend so much time being someone else; you kind of forget who you really are." Who you were. Who you once thought you wanted to be.
A rush of air, the sound of a soft exhalation, and the light scratch of Rachel combing fingers through Quinn's hair brought her back to the moment, to the sensation of a naked Rachel Berry underneath her, staring up at her with such tenderness it was both disconcerting and compelling to witness.
Rachel's eyes were curiously moist. "That sounds lonely."
Quinn's breath hitched. Soberly, with the mind of a disenchanted spy, Quinn finally understood her own bitterness, and why, at this moment, things felt so oddly different, why she was so willing to believe.
Quinn had been lonely her entire life.
She licked her lips, felt Rachel shift underneath her, thighs moving, bringing her in closer, until their naked bodies were plastered so tightly together Quinn could feel Rachel's heartbeat hammering against hers.
With a tenderness she could not mask, Quinn whispered, "I don't feel so lonely right now."
The smile Rachel bestowed on her, rich and full and somehow deep with meaning, caused a lurch inside Quinn, a flutter of sudden desire that left her helpless against her instinct, to lower her head and initiate another embrace.
It deepened quickly, with muted whimpers and heavy sighs.
Heart racing, blood pounding, Quinn didn't hear Rachel's phone ringing. Not until Rachel, arching under her questing mouth, said again, "My phone-"
"What?" she asked dumbly, head lifting as Rachel squirmed underneath her, shifting until she had her back to Quinn, reaching for her ringing mobile.
"It's Brittany."
Quinn, teeth dragging against the smooth expanse of Rachel's shoulder, immediately froze. The desire faded. Her fingers clenched against Rachel's bicep.
The world had gone on around them, and it was only now that Quinn noticed the daylight beginning to make itself noticeable, shining in through Rachel's windows.
Closing her eyes, she sucked in a heady, harsh breath, as Rachel answered.
Believe the lie.
Quinn kept her mouth shut. She looked around the room, noticed the tangled sheets, the discarded bedspread. Felt the dull ache of her bruised ribs and wounded shoulder.
Rachel, deep in her conversation with Brittany, shifted out of her arms, unaware of her nakedness, of the mark that had branded her with Quinn's enthusiasm.
"Brittany, please! If you're really leaving just tell me where you are. I can bring you some clothes. At least let me say good-bye. No, Brittany, you can trust me. I promise."
The corner of Quinn's mouth jerked, a phantom, reassuring smile that felt empty when she looked at Rachel's puffy, abused lips, her naked, trusting eyes.
For a crazy, insane moment, Quinn wanted to grab hold of Rachel, snatch the phone out of her hands, and drag her to the door, take her away from all of this.
For a crazy, insane moment, Quinn suddenly understood Santana.
But it passed. Not without effort. Not without a steady inhalation, tamping down the feelings that had surfaced, clogging her throat and bringing with them a sudden frustration that made her itch for something tangible that she could break.
God, Fuck Rachel. Seriously. Because Quinn was in her bed, knew the taste of her, the smell of her, and hadn't realized how starved she had been for someone to see her until Rachel called her lonely.
Quinn wasn't the same girl she was in high school. She was a killer. A liar, a cheater, and her fate was her own to make. She was a Fulcrum agent, and by some considerations a traitor. She was good at what she did, better than Santana, because she knew what was at stake.
The Intersect.
Brittany.
Quinn listened.
She pushed off the bed silently, and grabbed hold of her jeans, ignoring the pulsing complaint of her ribs.
****
When Santana awoke, she immediately became aware of two things.
One was Brittany, who had curled into her back, nose digging into her nape, fingers massaging lightly against a scabbing wound on her bicep.
The second was the rays of the sun peeking through her blinds, warming a spot on her leg.
"FUCK."
Santana's eyes were crusted over with caked on mascara. Her body was heavy, slow to move thanks to the deep sleep. When she jerked up, she nearly toppled Brittany over.
"What's wrong?"
Already, her heart had begun to pound as her mind screamed at her with the ramifications of her little siesta.
"You shouldn't have let me sleep." Santana stumbled to the dresser and grabbed hold of a fresh pair of pants. "It's late. It's really fucking late."
Brittany didn't move. Instead, she only sat on the bed, colored eyes following Santana's every move, as she jerked on the pants one leg at a time, weaved a leather belt through the loops, and grabbed her Beretta, checking the safety and the clip before shoving it in her jeans, flat against her spine.
"You looked so tired." Brittany's expression was an uncertain haze, legs crossing and hand rubbing at her forearm. "I didn't want to wake you up."
"Fuck, Brittany, really? We've got the entire fucking world coming after us and you think getting a fucking cat nap is what I need?" The snap, the anger, came out of her before she could help it. Brittany saw it, flinched at the emotion, and immediately, Santana winced, heart twisting in self-recrimination. "I'm sorry." She strode forward, forced herself to sit on the bed, ignore the sun, ignore the inner clock in her head that reminded her insistently that they were running out of time. "I'm sorry," she whispered. Brittany glanced up, and Santana leaned forward, brushed a tender kiss against Brittany's full lips, pressed a palm against a soft cheek. "I'm sorry."
On Brittany's face was a sad grimace. "It seems like all you've been doing since I saw you again is apologize."
Santana bit the inside of her cheek, forced herself not to automatically apologize for that. "Brittany, I promise, I will spend the rest of my life trying to make all this up to you. But if I'm going to have a chance in hell, we have to leave. Now." Brittany didn't move. It was maddening. "Brittany, please."
"I don't have any clothes."
"I have clothes."
Stubborn eyes locked onto her own. "They won't fit."
Gritting her teeth, Santana clenched the sheets between them in an effort to stave off her frustration. "So wear your Buy More uniform."
"It's dirty."
"Brittany!" A pulsing pain hit Santana sharply between the temples, a testament to both her stress and her irritation. Shutting her eyes, she took a moment for herself, inhaled deeply and then blindly reached for Brittany's hand.
It meant something, at least, that Brittany met her halfway. Santana's eyes opened, and she studied their fingers, tan and pale digits tangled in Brittany's lap.
"Brittany, babe, I know this sucks. I know it does. Believe me. It sucks that you can't say good-bye, and it sucks that this happened, but there is one upside."
Brittany's eyes gleamed with conflicted emotion. "What?" Fingers unconsciously rubbed against her intimately. Santana found herself momentarily distracted by the act.
For a moment, she was overcome.
With a choked smile, she squeezed. "We can have a life together," she whispered, voice cracking with certainty. "Brittany, we can get married."
Like they had planned, before Sue Sylvester and the Intersect and the god-damn world got in the way.
"We can find a place in Italy, or a little island near Greece..." The words, the dreams, came out breathless and full of wonder, because it was so tangible, so in reach. When Brittany stared at her, tightened her grip with hers, Santana offered a watery smile. "Tell me you still want that. Tell me you still want me."
It was a terrible moment, until Brittany leaned forward and captured her lips in a fervent, earnest kiss.
When they broke apart, it was only for air, as Brittany's forehead tilted against hers, as Santana heard fervently, "I've never wanted anything else."
She felt lips on her mouth, her cheek, before Brittany let her go, scooting toward the edge of the bed and gathering her discarded pants, shaking out the grime.
It was then that Santana noticed her own cell phone, half-hidden in a sheet on Brittany's side of the bed.
Her heart dropped. Willing herself not to say a word, Santana reached for the phone, and pressed a button, watching the LED screen light up.
The most recent call had been made a half an hour ago.
The number was Rachel Berry's.
Santana's hand began to tremble, a knot of emotion spiked hard into her throat. "Brittany," she breathed, eyes darting up. "Please tell me you didn't call Rachel while I was asleep."
It had been four years, but even in that time, Brittany had not learned to lie. The guilty turn of her mouth was more than enough confirmation.
Santana's fingers clenched hard around her phone, willing herself to try and stay calm. "Did you tell her where we are?"
Brittany shook her head, but her shoulders slumped, as if Brittany wasn't sure to be defiant or ashamed. "I didn't give her an exact address-"
"You didn't fucking HAVE TO," Santana snapped, the heat rising to her cheeks, panic fluttering in her chest. "If she kept you on the phone for more than a half a minute Fulcrum would have traced the call-"
Fuck. Fuck. FUCK.
Scrambling off the bed, Santana jerked on her shirt, shoved her feet into shoes.
"Santana, we can trust her-"
And that was it. Santana had enough. "God, Brittany!" she snapped, whirling, eyes moist with frustrated tears. "No, you can't! Don't you get it?! We can't trust ANYONE. Not Rachel. Not Quinn... God, I can't even trust you-" Furious, Santana was fucking furious. Furious enough to ignore the flash of hurt that swept across Brittany's face. "We have to go. Now."
The knock on the door was enough to make Santana nearly jump out of her own skin.
"Brittany? Santana?" Rachel Berry's voice floated in from the other side. "It's me! It's Rachel! Please, just let me in."
Santana worked the action on her gun and flicked off the safety as she trained the sights on the door.
"Santana-"
"Brittany, stay the hell away from the door," she snapped, circling the room to Brittany and drawing her in behind her.
"It's just Rachel-"
"Brittany-" In her frustration, in her effort to keep Brittany still, Santana lost her focus.
It was a terrible mistake.
The grenade that was lobbed in through the window hit the floor with a hard smack.
Santana only had a moment to process it, plow into Brittany like a linebacker, when the room exploded in an earsplitting bang and a flash so bright, it blinded her.
After it came the inevitable chaos-the door slammed open, the heavy steps of boots, and what felt like a dagger slamming into her back.
The last thing she heard before she lost consciousness was Brittany's scream.
****
What Rachel was doing was a clear betrayal of Brittany's trust.
Rachel understood it. She told herself that it was for the greater good, because Santana was a monster who was using Brittany, betraying her love for her in order to keep whatever it was that was in Brittany's head for herself.
She had the reassurance of Quinn, the evidence of her bruises, her scratches and bandaged shoulder, the way Quinn kissed her so tenderly and promised her she was doing the right thing, that Brittany would be safe.
None of that had prepared Rachel for the hysterical shriek of Brittany crying out Santana's name, the unconscious form of Santana, a dart in her back, being hauled off Brittany by two agents.
The look on Brittany's face, the way she fought against the men who grabbed her to get to Santana, it spoke of true terror.
Rachel jerked out of her stupor, running into the room that smelt like burnt smoke.
"Brittany!" she tried, reaching out for her friend, trying hard to calm her, even as her throat clogged and her heart spasmed in her chest. "Please, it's for the best!"
Brittany only stared at her, a miserable expression on her face. "Are you serious?" she whispered. "Oh God, Rachel-"
"Quinn's here!" Rachel tried, and then flinched as the men who had come with Quinn grabbed hold of Brittany, forcing her to her knees. "Leave her alone!"
Across the room, Quinn Fabray, outfitted in the same black garb of her companions, knelt against Santana. She had her cellphone against her ear.
"Quinn," Rachel tried, desperate now. "Tell them!"
Quinn only glanced up at her with an expression that seemed so distant and removed, she could have been a stranger.
"Rachel, are you stupid?!" Brittany's voice cracked, desperate and hysterical. "Quinn's the bad guy!"
"No," she insisted, shaking her head vehemently. "That's just what Santana told you-"
"Santana was PROTECTING ME," spat Brittany. Those men, those scary men, bound Brittany's wrists, dragging her to her feet. Brittany, her best friend, her roommate, looked almost swallowed up by those men in black, and yet there was nothing Rachel could do.
Across the loft, Quinn stood over the unconscious form of Santana with her back to her, and her phone to her ear.
"Brittany..."
"From Quinn and Fulcrum. They're a terrorist organization and they wanted the Intersect. What's inside of me. Santana came to save me."
It couldn't be true. It couldn't. Brittany was wrong. Brittany had to be wrong, because if she was right, then it meant...
She didn't want to think about what it meant. She stared beseechingly at Quinn, desperate for the other woman to defend herself, to reassure Brittany, tell her everything that she had told Rachel that made her believe.
But Quinn just stood there.
Rachel whirled, tried to do it herself. "Brittany," she began, but then agents began to move, jerking Brittany out of her embrace. "Brittany-"
"You said I could trust you." Brittany, always so expressive, wore her heartbreak like a painted expression. Dragged to her feet, she was shoved toward the door.
Left alone, Rachel could only stand in the midst of all this chaos, and attempt to make sense of it.
A flat square of plastic, most likely fallen from Santana's pocket, lay on the floor beside Rachel's foot.
Slowly, deliberately, Rachel leaned down and with great apprehension, brought the object in view.
On the badge, a picture of Santana smiled at her, almost politely. Directly underneath were block letters that called her 'Molly Chambers'. Above it? Blue letters that identified the person as NSA.
Struck mute, she searched for Quinn, desperate for answers; reasons that would have this make sense.
But when she found her, Quinn offered nothing but a closed, tense stare, without any attempt to explain or reassure. There wasn't even a hint of the woman who had embraced Rachel so tenderly earlier that morning, who had smiled a beautiful smile and looked almost a little bit broken when Rachel called her lonely.
God... Rachel had been so blind.
"Santana wasn't the bad guy," she realized, her world suddenly dropping out from under her as the truth became so apparent and real.
"Oh here it comes." Ramos, the man who had only hours ago joked with her and made her believe he was there to keep her safe, laughed harshly. "The big dramatic scene from the soap actress. Who's got popcorn?"
"Shut up!" Quinn's voice was sharp. The pain began to pulse as Rachel's eyes watered, gaze jerking to Brittany, who could only stare at her miserably, hands tied behind her back, straining between two agents who looked almost bored.
There was blood. Actual blood, on Rachel's hands. It was Santana and Brittany's, and she could almost feel it, thick and syrupy on her hands.
"Rachel."
Just hearing Quinn speak her name was staggering. Rachel shook her head violently, trembling in her emotion. "You used me," she whispered, horrified and devastated. "You used me to betray my best friend."
Quinn, with a gun in her hand and a blank expression, even though her mouth trembled and her breath grew heavy, could say nothing in her defense, because it was the truth.
Rachel had been seduced, her trust abused, and it had been easy for Quinn to do it. Less than a day since Quinn had walked into her life again and already she had shared Rachel's bed, seen the deepest part of her.
Rachel, thinking she was falling in love, had been a simple patsy.
"Don't feel bad, Berry," Ramos slapped a hard, heavy hand on her shoulder. Just his touch was enough to cause a shudder of revulsion. "You're not the first. You're not going to be the last, right Fabray?"
"How about you shut the hell up and do your fucking job for once?" Quinn, who was beautiful even now, barked her orders in the same tone she had used to order around her Cheerios. The urge to hate her was rampant and willing. "Take those two downstairs. Andrews is waiting downstairs."
"Even Chambers?" Santana, who still lay slumped on the floor, hogtied like an animal.
"Andrews found out she was in the program. She wants to turn her."
"Are you fucking serious?" Ramos spat.
"Yes." Quinn's eyes flashed with authority, her voice hard with intent. "Just do it."
"And what about her?" Ramos' hand, still on her shoulder, squeezed hard, and Rachel closed her eyes, betrayed by her own fear, sucking in a shuddering breath.
When she gathered the courage to open her eyes, Quinn was her only focus.
As their eyes met, Rachel was overtaken with a memory: of a smile spreading across kissable lips, a crystal laugh erupting as this woman, her lover, shifted against her naked body, and looked at her and made her feel like she saw no one else.
Rachel almost couldn't stand the pain. It suddenly didn't matter what would happen now.
Quinn had just killed her.
It was almost anti-climatic, when she heard Quinn say, "Andrews wants me to take care of her by myself."
"Rachel," Brittany cried, and Rachel only shifted her head and tried to smile stoically for her best friend.
"It'll be okay, Brittany," she lied, and the way her voice held was almost impressive.
She had sealed Brittany and Santana's fate; she would accept her own.
"What the hell are you waiting for? Get going! If the NSA shows up looking for their poster child, we're going to have a fucking blood bath."
With Quinn's gun on her, Rachel couldn't move. Instead, she could only watch, as Brittany was dragged away behind Santana. The men with the guns, who Quinn had sworn were there to save Brittany, vacated Santana's safehouse as quickly as they had blasted into it, closing the door behind them and leaving her with death itself.
Now, there was only her and this stranger, who had played her as easily as Jesse had when she was sixteen, toying with her heart for the sake of a win. She remembered her plea to Jesse when it had all started, how if this was a trap she was sure she would never recover. She remembered his laugh, the way he held her, his confident, kind brown eyes.
God, and here she was again, in this over-the-top Mexican standoff that felt like a ratings climax to one of her soap's sweeps arc. Rachel knew her place: the willing fool, who had cost Romeo and Juliet their happiness, when she had given them over to a mustache twirling villain who even wore the trademark, conflicted expression, like this was actually hard for her.
Just the gall of Quinn to even pretend to have a conscious now was infuriating.
"Everything you told me," Rachel began, wanting to laugh with the stupidity of it. "All that stuff about Santana being dangerous, about not being who she was... it was all lies. Shreds of truth twisted to make it more real." God... "Believe the lie," she whispered, recalling an intimate conversation in the aftermath of what she thought had been making love, and what she now knew was Quinn completing her seduction.
The gun that had been held so casually in her direction wavered suddenly. Quinn's fingers twitched, and suddenly Quinn looked restless, haunted. "It's not personal, Rachel," she blurted, like it made any sort of difference.
But it was. Rachel remembered what felt like a thousand instances from her young high school life, from pornographic images drawn on bathroom walls to cruel, cutting comments written on her MySpace profile, that told her every move Quinn had taken had been intensely personal.
"God, how do you do that?" Quinn didn't answer. "How do you LIE like that?" she asked, the anger rising within her, overwhelming her senses. "It's always been personal with you. Why, Quinn? What did I ever do to you to make you hate me so much?"
She genuinely wanted to know. She ached to know, because Rachel couldn't fathom it. She couldn't understand what she had done to Quinn that had been so horrible that it warranted doing what she had, destroying her life in the time it took to send one email.
Maybe she finally got to Quinn, because hazel eyes flashed, cheeks flushed, and that gun came down. "That's always been your problem, you know that?" Black boots stepped toward her. Quinn sucked in a harsh, heavy breath. "You always had to make it about you, no matter what. Like no one else mattered. What did you think, Rachel? That I'd find out you're prone to fucking girls and I would thank my lucky stars? That you were so fucking special that I would drop everything just to be with you? That I would fuck you and suddenly think that you'd be more important than a billion dollar superweapon that could change the world?"
In that moment, Quinn was ugly. Ugly in a way Rachel had never imagined she could be. The words stung, bit into her heart and made her eyes water, and Rachel felt so stupid. "Maybe not," she whispered, fighting the tears. "But I thought that maybe, somehow, you were still an actual person, who wouldn't destroy innocent people like Santana and Brittany to do it."
"God." Quinn kicked at the floor, skidding the Beretta that had been disarmed from Santana across the floor. "Look at that. That's a gun, Rachel. And Santana would have used it. On me. On you. On whoever got between her and Brittany. I don't know how it works in soap operas, but in real life, there isn't some big romantic hero that's going to come in and sweep you off your feet and save you because you're so fucking special."
"No." Rachel's response was snide. "There are only monsters that destroy innocent widows because they've been stupid enough to hold a grudge for 8 years. I feel sorry for you," she snapped, "You know that? You are lonely. And you're pathetic."
A hand snapped up, snatched her around the throat, fingers bruising into the skin. "I'm pathetic?" Quinn asked, breath huffing against Rachel's mouth. "Says the girl who gave it up in less than ten hours? Who wanted so badly to believe in her knight in shining armor she'd betray her own best friend? Wake up, Rachel. That perfect romance doesn't exist."
And then Quinn seemed to see her; the way she struggled against the grip, the way her face was rapidly turning red, because her eyes widened and her grip, so hard and unyielding, released suddenly. Rachel's knees threatened to give out, and she staggered, catching hold of herself against a chair. Her heart beat terribly fast, but her eyes were defiant, angry, because Quinn was wrong. "It did exist," she wheezed. "You killed it."
Quinn looked like a stranger, eyes blazing with a righteous fury, half-crazed and almost demented with her own anger. There was so much bitterness, so much anger, and Rachel found she didn't care why it was there.
Not anymore. Not when her own heart was ripped and bleeding, and she was minutes away from her own execution.
All because she had been stupid enough to believe Quinn had once been family.
"What, you think they had a fairy tale romance? Mr. and Mrs. Fucks-a-lot? Santana faked her death, remember?" Quinn's head shook. "She left Brittany, let her believe she was dead, and she wouldn't have even come back if it wasn't for me."
And Quinn was doing it again, twisting those words, believing her own lie. "So what?" Rachel shook her head in disbelief. "You want a thank you, now?"
That, at least, seemed to shut Quinn up. She absorbed that, with a clenched jaw and a flaring of her nostrils. "People are human," she said finally. "They're not good and they're not evil. Everyone makes choices. Santana's not an innocent. She knows this life. She chose this life, and knew the consequences."
And maybe in this world, with the guns and the spies and the constant lying, that made some sort of twisted sense to people like Santana and Quinn.
But this wasn't that life. "And what about Brittany?" Rachel asked softly. "What did she do to choose this?"
Quinn, with her odd sense of ethics, could say nothing to that. There was no witty comeback, no flash of righteous anger, only a muted grimace and a cloudiness in her eyes, a brief speck of humanity that recognized the sheer unfairness of what happened to someone like Brittany.
"Shit happens."
Shit happens. That was it. That was Quinn's summation, her justification for supplanting herself in Rachel's life, for inadvertently causing Brittany to become infected and ruining her and Santana's life.
Disbelief unfurled within her, and all Rachel could see now in place of that beautiful woman who had intoxicated her, was a coward.
"God," she breathed. "I can't believe I ever thought I could love you."
Maybe that was her choice, to say something like that out loud, so cutting and cruel and devastatingly honest, meant to wound whatever was left of Quinn's heart.
Maybe it worked, because Quinn's head jerked, eyes locked with hers intensely, searching wildly for some validation to what she had implied.
Like there was actual hope.
It was ridiculous. It was pathetic and ridiculous and Rachel gave her no such satisfaction.
"You should know something." The anger that seemed to infect Quinn so easily had disappeared, and in its place was some breathless, quivering expression, like Quinn had been affected. She looked like some beautifully devastating version of the Grim Reaper. "Last night." Just the thought of those insincere intimate moments was enough to make Rachel shudder. Quinn caught the movement; her eyes darkened. "This morning," she continued. "It was the most real I've been... since I can remember. That person you saw was me, Rachel."
The murderer with a heart. The twist of many a romantic arc. The bad guy who was reformed by the love of a good woman.
Just another lie, another manipulation, and Rachel had had enough. "What?" she snapped, crossing her arms and jutting her chin out in defiant anger. "Do you expect me to feel special about that?"
At the very least, Quinn looked like she had been struck. "No," she whispered. "I just thought you should know. I'm sorry, Rachel."
All Rachel could see beyond that apology was Quinn's gun rising.
Rachel wanted to be strong. She wanted to stand there, revel in the fury and anguish that overpowered everything else. It was so much easier to feel that than the guilt, or the irreparable misery of her broken heart.
****
This couldn't be happening.
Not now. Not after every promise that she and Santana had made to each other. Not after swearing that this time, there would be nothing but happy endings, a wedding in Greece or Italy or Argentina or whatever country they could escape to that wasn't here.
Four years, eight years, sixteen years; time had never seemed to matter before, not the way it had come to matter before. When they were young, before they knew better, Santana and Brittany had always stupidly thought they had forever, because they were the lucky ones.
They would be together for the rest of their lives.
Instead of that, Brittany was being pulled away from Santana one more time, watching in miserable hysteria as the love of her life was dragged into an SUV.
"Don't struggle." The man who held her, with jet black hair and dark eyes, tightened his grip around her arms. "Andrews won't give a shit if you come to her unconscious."
The way he pushed, with the flat of his palm, nearly gave her whiplash. Brittany fell forward into the back of a sedan, nearly planting face first into toned legs and a dark skirt.
She was stopped by a hard grip on her shoulders, setting her upright.
"Brittany S. Pierce." Managing to look both amused and bored, was an attractive woman in her early fifties, with dark cat eyes and a stern smile. "It's nice to finally meet you. My name is Laura Andrews."
And it happened. Even through the fear, through her complete panic, the flood of information surged through her, a cascade of images and videos and every classified file that the government had on this woman; this face.
The door slammed behind Brittany, locking her in with one of the most wanted women in America.
"Please," she whispered, unsure what she could even ask for. "Santana-"
"You don't have to worry about her," Laura Andrews said, as the car rumbled to life. "She may not be as important as you, but she's not without her usefulness." The agent settled primly in the back of her seat and offered a thin smirk. "You should get comfortable. We've got a long ride. And since, I'm guessing, you already know a lot about me," she said, with twinkling eyes, as if this was all somehow deeply funny. "Why don't we talk about you? Tell me, Brittany S. Pierce, how did a former dancer and a current Buy More employee become host of one of the most powerful weapons ever developed?"
With a heavy breath, Brittany opened her mouth, and then closed it. Her eyes moved beseechingly to the traffic that passed outside her windows.
"I don't know," she breathed. "I don't know anything."
****
Rachel Berry, less than five feet away, with scrunched palms, closed eyes, trembled from head to toe.
She was waiting for the gunshot that would end her life.
One bullet would end it. Painlessly. Quickly.
Quinn was never without conflict. She wasn't a monster. She just understood that ends justified the means, and in that respect, good and evil didn't matter. It wasn't supposed to matter.
Stuff like that only mattered when she was naïve, and stupid, and Quinn had lost a family, a baby, over it.
She had sworn to never be that person again, had trained her mind to obey her, ignore her emotions and impulses, and that meant she could pull the trigger, absorb the feeling of loss, and move on.
Back to the world that she knew. Back to the games of power and deceit.
But Quinn, who had never realized how lonely she was until she wasn't, found herself wavering, stuck in that same conflict that had taken over since the moment she picked up her phone and heard Rachel Berry on the other line.
Since then, she had discovered that Santana had both died and been resurrected. She discovered that Santana, who had always been just like her, wasn't like her at all, because for her, walking away from it wasn't even a question, not in the face of her loyalty and love for Brittany.
Since then, Quinn had discovered a truth that repeated over and over inside her mind, latching onto her soul and overpowering everything, telling her that somehow, Rachel had seen her, really seen her, and fallen in love with her.
And Quinn had fallen in love right back.
"What are you waiting for?" Rachel's eyes opened. Quinn blocked the moan that rose within her, swallowed it down and didn't speak. "Do it. Finish it."
'I'm trying', she thought miserably, because she knew she had to. These were orders. Rachel's fate had been sealed, as had her own. This wasn't high school. This was her reality, where a kill order meant a dead body, and no other option.
Rachel stared at her, and it just made it worse, because Quinn saw dark brown eyes, liquid in fear. Her chest tightened, heart pumping blood faster, and Quinn grew breathless, because Rachel was beautiful.
If she killed her, if she pulled the trigger and ended Rachel, she would be killing herself. That last link to that scared girl in high school, who, although she had been stupid and morally bankrupt and trying so hard to be a better person, had been part of a family.
A groan of frustration worked out of her throat, sounding mottled and furious.
"Are you enjoying this?" Rachel, trembling, dramatic Rachel, stepped forward, closer to her and her gun. "Are you trying to draw this out? Do it! Take care of me."
"Rachel," she breathed, gritting her teeth, feeling like the fucking Grinch as her heart exploded within her.
"I hope you love this. I hope this really was all worth it, Quinn. I hope-"
"Rachel, SHUT THE HELL UP," she snapped, and it was over. She couldn't. She literally couldn't. It was beyond her. She was powerless, felled by an annoying Jewish Soap Actress who had the social skills of a gnat. "I'm not going to kill you," she admitted.
That, at least, had managed to rob Rachel of her Emmy winning monologue. "What?" she squeaked, and looked so thrown, so unsure, that Quinn could only do what was instinctive.
Locking the safety in place, shoving her gun in her holster, Quinn stepped forward, hauled Rachel to her, and said again as her head lowered, "I'm not going to kill you."
She kissed her instead.
****
Part Six