No one knows me (not like you do): Chapter 11
Title: No one knows me (not like you do)
Author: tru-faith13
Rating: PG-13
Length: 5,100
Spoilers: Let’s just say the whole season though if there are any it’s just trivial stuff
Summary:Quinn loses her memory. Rachel's the only one that can help her get it back. I’m just going to start calling this AU because the more I write the more it turns into something like a story loosely based on a commercial for Glee I saw one time from a distance through a crowd of people and the TV was muted.
A/N1: Just fair warning guys, this is the next to last chapter.
A/N2: What the hell, they fired Dijon??? *sigh* Damn you, RM.
A/N3: I’m so sorry you guys. I won’t bore you with the details but basically the whole thing boils down to sometimes I’m still an idiot and I do incredibly stupid things. And then instead of stepping back and saying ‘There’s your problem idiot, you did something stupid earlier so you should probably just change that’ I decide to be stubborn and try to force the whole thing to work for a month. So basically I’m a tool. *shrug* My bad.
As you walk across the parking lot of Watertown Rooms in the direction of room number six, a bag of fast food in one hand and a six-pack of water bottles in the other, you find yourself humming the intro to ‘Ace of Spades’ for what’s at least the tenth time since you heard it in that gas station fifteen minutes ago.
“Dammit!” you mutter as you catch yourself. “Stupid song.” You unlock the door and walk in to find Rachel still asleep. She’s sprawled out on her stomach with her head facing away from you and her hair thrown almost wildly over the pillow. You’ve been together two years but you can count on one hand the number of times you’ve been together like this, carefree and truly alone. You feel a smile creep over your face as you take a second to just look at her, sheet pooled at the base of her spine and her left hand curled into a ball and tucked under her chin. You sigh as you fight against the urge to go to her. The two of you still have a lot to talk about and you know full well that crawling back into bed with a naked Rachel Berry will result in very little talking. You reluctantly turn away from her and sit the bag of food on the small table by the door along with two bottles of water. You cross the room to crouch in front of the mini-fridge beside the dresser and start pulling the other bottles out of their plastic packaging. As you jam the last one in the small shelf on the door you suddenly hear a soft giggling behind you and it triggers another grin.
“You’re terribly cute when you sing the guitar riffs, you know.” She giggles again and it takes you a second before you realize that yes, you had been mumbling the first verse of that goddamn song again and yes, you had been right in the middle of singing the riffs like a fourteen year old boy playing air guitar. You stand up and turn to face her with your grin still in place. She’s rolled over onto her back and pulled the sheet up to her neck. You’ve always found it amusing how someone who constantly wears such short skirts can be so shy when it comes to actual nudity.
“It’s stuck in my head,” you admit with a shrug.
“I figured,” she responds as she yawns and stretches. “What time is it?” You flip your wrist upside down to get a look at your watch.
“Just after twelve.”
“What? How did that happen?”
“You uh, kind of passed out a little bit,” you say with a smirk. She stares at you for just a second before scoffing and rolling her eyes.
“Shut up.” She launches the pillow not currently under her head at you and you laugh as you bring a hand up to swat it away. She stretches again and just barely winces. “God. Are my clothes still in one piece?” She sits up, dragging the sheet with her as she glances around the room for her discarded clothes. You laugh again as you pick the pillow up and toss it back onto the bed. She leans over the side of the bed to dig around in her emergency bag on the floor as you crumple up the plastic in your hand and cross the room to throw it away.
“Yes, they’re still in one piece,” you toss over your shoulder as you go, “I’m not a caveman.” As you make your way back to the table to start unpacking the food she finally yanks out a shirt and quickly pulls it over her head before she responds.
“Well you can’t blame me for asking, you open a twelve-pack of soft drinks like a Bengal Tiger.”
“Hey, those perforations are crap!” you argue as you spin to face her, your arm outstretched and finger pointing. “They are purely for show.” She just chuckles and starts rummaging through her bag again so you turn your attention back to the food. “So apparently this town is only like two square miles and neither of those squares is very vegan friendly,” you hear movement behind you as she gets out of the bed and starts walking toward you, “so I just got us salads.” While you don’t necessarily share Rachel’s vegan views - hamburgers and ribs and bacon have all been very good to you over the years so you see no reason to turn your back on them now - you always try not to eat anything too terribly ‘un-vegan’ in front of her.
“Oh, thank God. I’m starving,” she mumbles from over your right shoulder. Her left arm sneaks around your waist as her right one reaches around you to grab one of the salads. “Thank you.” She lifts up to give you a quick kiss on the cheek before moving to take a seat in one of the chairs.
“You’re welcome.” You pick up one of the water bottles and place it in front of her before going to your own seat across from her. Nearly the second you hit the chair her bare legs come up to rest in your lap and your left hand automatically drops down to trace over her ankle as you start mixing up your salad. She looks up and grins at you before attacking her salad like it’s the first food she’s seen in days and you smile and shake your head. You raise your fork up for your first bite but something stops you. You pull back a little and sniff. “Good Lord. How did I not notice that before?” You put the fork down and stretch behind you to fling the door open.
“What are you doing?” Rachel asks as you spin back around and finally take a bite.
“Airing the room out. It smells like crazy, sweaty sex in here.” She snorts and grins.
“Crazy, sweaty, awesome, sex,” she mumbles around a mouthful of lettuce and you laugh and roll your eyes.
“Dork,” you tease as you toss a crouton at her.
“Other dork.” The two of you eat in comfortable silence for a few minutes before something suddenly occurs to you.
“Oh!” you start, pointing your fork up in the air for good measure. “Speaking of getting caught singing an embarrassing song in front of people.”
“Were we still speaking of that?” she asks as she takes a drink of water.
“We are now.” She grins and nods.
“Carry on.”
“I cannot believe you let me sing the fucking Goo Goo Dolls in front of the entire Glee Club.” She immediately starts laughing and it causes you to fail miserably at keeping your own grin in check.
“I was wondering when that was going to come up. And what do you mean let? What was I supposed to do about it?”
“Uh, set the damn piano on fire if you have to,” you tell her as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world.
“You love that song. You used to listen to it all the time.”
“Yeah, when I was fifteen and lame.” She chuckles again and again the corner of your mouth twitches up into a little grin. “And even if I do maybe still kind of like it that doesn’t mean I want to sing it in front of everybody. I mean you listen to ‘Faith’ all the time but I don’t see you busting out your George Michaels impression in the middle of a Glee rehearsal any time soon.”
“This is true,” she admits with a nod.
“Such a waste,” you mutter to yourself as you take another bite of salad.
“What do you mean a waste?”
“Obviously if I was going to have some big dramatic solo about the two of us it should’ve been ‘Where I Stood’ by Missy Higgins,” you say simply without really thinking as you grab your water bottle. You see her immediately start to flip through the Rolodex of songs in her head and decide to change the subject before she finds the song and starts running through the lyrics. “And you know Santana is never going to let me live it down,” you tell her before taking a drink.
“Please, Santana sang ‘There Are Worse Things I Could Do’ at Noah’s party last year.” You have to physically fight not to do a sitcom spit take as the memory suddenly flashes into your mind. After the Glee Club lost at Regionals last year Puck had insisted that the only thing left to do was to go to his house, which was vacant for the weekend, and get blind drunk and most everyone had been inclined to agree with him. Toward the end of the night Santana, drunk off her ass and stumbling everywhere, had produced an instrumental karaoke style version of the Grease soundtrack seemingly out of nowhere and started belting the song out in the middle of Puck’s living room.
“Oh my God!” you yell as you throw your head back and laugh loudly. “Oh my God, I completely forgot about that!”
“How could you have possibly forgotten that?” Rachel asks in disbelief. “It is . . . . seared into my memory.” She gets a disturbed look on her face as she stares off into the distance and you laugh again.
“Well you were sober,” you point out as you think back to the night in question, “way more than I was at least.” You had joined Glee to be closer to Rachel, and to make sure Finn stayed the hell away from her, but at some point you’d actually gotten invested in all of it and when you’d lost at Regionals you found yourself surprisingly upset. And the fact that you couldn’t curl up and take comfort in the arms of your girlfriend like most other kids your age had only upset you more and you’d started drinking almost the second you stepped through Puck’s front door. What had upset you the most though was seeing Rachel. She looked absolutely heartbroken all night, though she did her best to hide it, and you couldn’t do anything about it except risk a sad smile at her every now and then from across the room. So you spent the night drinking and trying to forget, like so many other nights before and after that one.
“Ah, that’s right. You big lush.” You clear your throat and raise an eyebrow at her. “Sorry, skinny lush.”
“Thank you.” She rolls her eyes and grins. “Plus, you were wearing that dress from Kurt’s damn makeover. My mind was kind of focused on other things.”
“It is a really good dress,” she says with a smile.
“It’s a goddamn torture device is what it is.” You bring the water bottle to your lips to take another drink and a drop of condensation rolls down the side of it and drops onto Rachel’s foot. You see it happen but she doesn’t and when the cold water hits her skin she jerks, causing her heel to slam solidly into your stomach. “Ow, fuck me!” She immediately sits up straight, pulling her feet out of your lap and bringing a hand up to cover her mouth.
“Oh my God, I’m so sorry.” She mumbles from behind her hand and you glare at her when the last word dissolves into laughter.
“Yeah, your concern is very touching.” You groan as you bring a hand down to rub at the right side of your stomach. She didn’t even kick you that hard really but she must’ve hit a nerve or something because it sent little tingles of pain shooting across your stomach and down your thigh. “God, I think you hit my kidney or something.” She laughs again but quickly stifles it.
“Your kidneys are in the back, Quinn.”
“Yeah,” you scoff, “not anymore it isn’t. But my hipbone might be now,” you add with a pout as you groan again. “Sweet shit in a bucket.” She scrunches her forehead and shrugs.
“Why is it in a bucket? That seems highly unsanitary.”
“Really?” you ask and lift an eyebrow in her direction.
“What? It’s a valid question. That’s a very peculiar phrase.”
“You are the worst.” You pout again and she chuckles as she stands up and walks toward you.
“Okay, okay, I’m sorry.” She puts a hand on either side of your face and bends down to kiss you on top of the head. “I’ll fix it.” She moves past you and closes the door before coming back to kneel down beside you.
“Uh, Rach?” You glance down at her, wearing a tight black v-neck shirt, black boy shorts, and an innocent grin, and you hear a warning bell start to go off in your head. “What are you doing?”
“Kissing it better,” she replies simply before tugging your shirt up a few inches and leaning forward to softly press her lips to your hip. You take in a quick breath as your stomach muscles twitch and you feel her smile into your side. Her kisses become more insistent as she slowly makes her way across your stomach and brings her right hand up to grip at your knee.
“Rachel. Rach, stop,” you say weakly even as you lean back to give her better access. Her tongue just barely peeks out to run across your flesh as she slides her hand up your thigh and even through your jeans it’s like you can feel each individual ridge of her fingertips against your skin. You take another deep breath and steel your nerves. “Rachel, we need to talk.” Her hand moves just a little higher on your thigh as she straightens up to whisper in your ear.
“I don’t wanna talk,” she says in that voice that sends shivers down your spine. Everyone gets to hear Rachel Berry hit the high notes but you’re the only one who gets to hear her like this, voice low and scratchy like whiskey and gravel. Her tongue darts out to hit that spot just behind your ear before she slowly drags her teeth down the side of your neck with just enough pressure to drive you insane. You feel your entire body twitch as arousal shoots through you like lightening.
“That - that’s cheating,” you finally manage to stutter out and you can feel the laugh rumble through her chest as she kisses across your collarbone. “Rach, I’m - I’m serious,” you try again and she leans into you a little more, “we need to talk.”
“Uh-uh, don’t wanna,” she mumbles against your skin as she starts kissing back up your throat and her fingers start tracing slow circles on the inside of your thigh.
“Yeah, you never do.” She freezes against you, lips still against your neck and hand just laying on your thigh as you feel the air in the room shift. Admittedly it was kind of a low blow but it was all you could think of. She takes a deep breath and you feel it blow harshly across your skin.
“Fine.” She quickly pulls away from you and walks over to sit on the edge of the bed. During the hour long drive away from Lima this morning Rachel had asked when exactly you got your memories back and when you told her it had happened just a few minutes before everything went down the two of you started fighting. She was yelling that you had been stupid and impulsive and ruined everything on a whim and you argued that it was what you should’ve done from the beginning. Eventually you had stopped it by saying that you didn’t want to fight with her, not today, and the two of you had agreed to just be together today and leave the fights for another time. As you look at her now, back straight and jaw set, you know that agreement is about to be broken. Honestly, you’d like nothing more than to stay in this bubble the two of you have created where you’re blissfully happy and everything is fine. But everything isn’t fine and you’re running out of time to fix it. You turn sideways in your chair to face her and she just raises an eyebrow at you expectantly.
“Rachel . . .” you trail off not knowing where exactly to start.
“You’re the one that wanted to talk, Quinn. So talk. I’ll even give you a topic. What the fuck are we supposed to do now, huh? What’s ‘The Plan’ this time? Or did you even have time to come up with anything even resembling a plan during all your spontaneous life ruining?” Her voice is harsh now and even though you’d been expecting it you can’t help but feel the sting of it.
“It wasn’t spontaneous,” you say automatically as a weak defense as you stare down at your lap.
“Oh, really?” she says incredulously. “Those two minutes in the middle of the fucking choir room, talking to Matt no less, was plenty of time to think about everything and make a rational decision, was it?”
“I made the decision three months ago.” Your voice is strong but your head is still pointed toward the ground.
“Excuse me?” she says slowly. You look up at her and take a deep breath before you start.
“I made the decision a long time before today. And there is a plan. I turn eighteen in seven months -”
“Five and a half,” she corrects you distractedly as she stares off at some point behind you.
“What? Oh, right.” Even though you’ve had some time to reconcile your ‘amnesia life’ with your real one it still screws up your timelines sometimes. “So my parents will send me to some boarding school or de-gaying camp or something but in five and a half months I’ll be back and everything will be okay.”
“Just like that, huh?” she asks, still not looking at you.
“Look, Rachel it’ll all work out. I promise.”
“I can’t believe this.”
“What?” you ask cautiously, trying to catch her eye.
“I can’t believe you did this.” She shakes her head and finally makes eye contact for just a second before standing up off the bed to start pacing. “I can’t believe you just made this decision, this decision that completely changes our entire lives, without even talking to me about it or, God forbid, asking me if I was okay with it!”
“I tried to talk to you about it a hundred times, Rachel!” You throw your arms in the air as you quickly stand up to join the fight. “But every time I tried to bring it up you just shut me down!”
“Because there was nothing to talk about!”
“It was killing us, Rachel!” She sighs and brings a hand up to rub at her temple.
“Please Quinn, not this fight again. How many times do I have to tell you that I’m fine before you start to actually fucking believe me? Before you finally stop with this idea that poor little Rachel needs to be saved from the big bad world?” She takes a few steps toward you and lowers her voice just a little as some of the anger starts to leave her. “I was fine. I’ve always been fine as long as I had you. But now you’ve decided to leave for six months, which is kind of counterproductive, wouldn’t you say?” You sigh and shake your head.
“I love you, Rachel. But you can be so fucking conceited sometimes.”
“What?” she practically growls at you.
“Every time we’ve had this fight, whenever I say that it’s hurting us too much or that we won’t make it through this, you always say I’m fine or I’ll be okay or stop worrying about me.” She shrinks into herself a little and takes a step away from you. “You’ve always been so adamant that I didn’t need to do this for you, but did you ever think that maybe I needed you to do this for me? That maybe I’m not okay.” Your voice cracks on the last word and you turn to take a few steps away from her and back toward the door, giving yourself enough time to get your emotions back under control.
“Quinn, I . . .” You turn back around and hold a hand up to stop her.
“Just . . . . just let me say this okay?” She stares at you for a few seconds with sad eyes before she finally just nods. You take a moment to try to organize your thoughts so you can be sure to say everything the right way but there’s only one thing screaming back and forth in your head. “I don’t know who I am anymore.” You sigh and hang your head as you finally admit it. “Am I this sarcastic, cursing, cigarette smoking, jeans and converse girl or the bitchy, heartless, religious head cheerleader who doesn’t give a shit about anyone but herself? Or am I some mixture of the two? Or maybe none of the above? I don’t know.” You slowly turn your head to the side to look at her and feel the corner of your mouth pull up into a small grin. “All I know is you, Rachel. You’re all I see.” You take a deep breath as you lean your head back on the door behind you trying to straighten out your thoughts again. “There’s always been that part of you that’s terrified of losing me, Rach. That’s convinced that one day I’ll just walk away or move on, because for some reason you think you need this more than I ever could. And that gives me this sort of power over you that I don’t want and that one day, probably soon, you’ll come to resent.” You glance over at her and she looks like she desperately wants to speak but she says nothing. “And I saw it happening, I felt it. But I couldn’t . . .” You tilt your head back toward the ceiling and close your eyes. “We don’t talk in my family, about anything. Definitely not about emotions. So I never knew how to tell you. But I thought if I just said it enough, if I told you I loved you enough that eventually you’d start to understand. That you’d start to believe it.”
“I do believe it, Quinn,” she says softly. You push off of the wall and turn to face her.
“Maybe. But you don’t trust it.” She looks off to the side and tilts her head down and that’s all the confirmation you need. You walk over to sit on the edge of the bed and gesture for her to do the same. She comes to sit beside you, both of you staring straight ahead lost in your own thoughts, and you can’t help but notice that the inches between you suddenly feel like miles.
“It’s not that I don’t trust you,” she finally starts after nearly a minute with a quiet voice, “it’s just that . . . love is complicated. Maybe what we think is love isn’t really, but we’ve never really been with anyone else so how would we know. Or maybe the word love means something completely different to you than it does to me.” You slowly turn your head to look at her.
“It doesn’t.” She looks at you with a small grin before her eyes shift to the floor.
“We’re young, Quinn. Despite how quickly we grew up or how old we feel sometimes, we’re still so young. Even if you do love me, really love me, who’s to say that won’t change in the next few years? Maybe we’ll be completely different people five years down the road. Maybe we’ll fall out just as easily as we fell in.” You watch her as she talks with a steady voice and a look on her face like she’s just stating simple facts and it breaks your heart. You were an idiot for believing those three little words could ever be enough. And now, even after two years, she doesn’t have any idea how you really feel about her. Because you’ve never told her. Because you’ve never known how.
“I don’t think I could ever stop loving you, Rach, even if I tried my hardest. I mean I couldn’t even remember my own name, but somehow some part of me still remembered you.” She takes a deep breath and looks up at you.
“I hear the words but…” she shakes her head and sighs as she shifts her gaze to the wall in front of her. “I’ve always been the one people put up with, as long as I’m useful. Kids pretend to like me in class hoping I’ll help them with the class work or maybe let them cheat off my test. The Glee Club tolerates me because I’ll help them win competitions.” She breathes out a laugh and rolls her eyes. “And some days they can barely even manage to do that.” You know she needs to say all this, to get it all out and finally address her deepest fear. So you wait patiently for her to finish, concentrating on your own breathing to keep from interrupting her with meaningless reassurances. “Even my dads. I mean I know they love me, and they work hard to give me everything I could ever want. They buy me beautiful gifts and get me lessons or training for whatever I want with the best possible teachers around. But they’re always gone. Working late or off on cruises or vacations. They always love me from a distance.”
You close your eyes as the last piece finally clicks into place and you can truly see the last two years from Rachel’s perspective. You wanted to be with her, but only in secret, only if no one else ever knew. Only for a flash of time every now and then and only if it didn’t mess up your real life. How could you possibly expect her to think you were anything different when you’d treated her exactly the same as everyone else.
“And I know that you have real feelings for me and that we lived the way we did because we had to.” She turns to look at you, needing you to hear her. “I know that, I believe it.”
“But…” you whisper quietly. Her eyes shift away from yours and you can see her struggling to find the words as she shrugs.
“But… some part of me can’t help but wonder about after. What happens when we get out of here? When you can be this beautiful, perfect person all the time, for everyone to see. When you take the world by storm and people are throwing themselves at you. When the whole world’s laid out in front of you and you can go anywhere and do anything.”
“Nothing’s gonna change, Rachel. I will love you no matter where we go or what we do.” She looks back at you and her lips twitch up into a placating grin.
“Again, I hear the words but…” she takes a deep breath and her eyes slowly scan your face before she hangs her head. “But that little girl who’s always the last resort just can’t trust that you’d ever pick me with all of that in front of you. Seventeen years of experience has taught me that even the nicest people, people who actually kind of like me, don’t stick around long once something better shows up.”
You take a few moments to let everything she’s said soak in and try to gather your thoughts. You know that this is important, that what you say next could determine exactly how unbearable the next six months will be for the both of you. You try to put the words together in your head, looking for some way to tell her what you haven’t been able to show her all this time. Some way to make sure she can’t help but believe you.
“You’ve always said that when you think about us getting out of Ohio you always picture us in some shitty little New York apartment, barely scraping by, but terribly in love.” She smiles down at the floor and you grin a little yourself. “But I don’t see that, Rach.” You see her smile falter a little but your grin only gets wider. “When I think about you I see the two of us twenty-five years from now at our daughter’s high school graduation.” She slowly raises her head to look at you, the smile cautiously returning to her face and something almost like shock hiding in her eyes. “And we’re both videotaping it because you insisted on having a back-up copy just in case.” She laughs quietly and you smile at her. “And I see us in thirty-five years spoiling the hell out of beautiful grandkids with trips to Broadway and foods that are absolutely terrible for them. I see us buying our first house and arguing over where to send the kids to school or where to go for family vacations.” You twist yourself to the side, bringing your right leg up onto the bed so that you can face her.
“When I look at you I don’t see a few good years, Rachel. I see a life. I may not know who I am, but I know who I want. I always have. Since the first moment I saw you I just knew I had to be by your side.” You see the tears creeping up behind her eyes for just a second before she drops her head as she tries to get control of them. “So even though you’ve always felt like you need me more than I need you . . . even though I’ve always let you feel like that,” you take a breath and try to push your own tears back down, “it just isn’t true.” You see a tear fall and land in her lap and you feel your breath threatening to shake at the sight of it but you force it to level back out.
“And I’ve tried to fight it. I’ve tried not to want you with everything that I am. At first because my parents and their religion told me it was wrong, and then later because I knew you deserved so much better.” She squeezes her eyes shut forcing out two more tears and her hand darts out to grip tightly at your leg. You reach out and lay your hand over hers, your thumb slowly dragging across the back of her hand until her grip finally loosens. “But you . . . you’re like gravity, Rach. No matter how much I struggle or fight like hell to stay away, I always come back to you. You are the only thing that makes me feel . . . . . real.” You reach out with the hand not holding hers and tilt her face up to look at you. “That’s why I did what I did this morning. Because I can lose everyone else, my parents, my sister, my friends, the people at school, I can lose all of them. As long as I get to keep you.”
You bring your hand up to wipe a tear from her cheek and she leans into the touch. As you look at her you suddenly see every single insult and slushie, every time you cut her down in front of a group of people or treated her like something less than human and the next thing you know tears are running down your face and your breath becomes quick and unsteady as you feel yourself start to shake. Before the amnesia you’d spent every day terrified that it was the day you’d go too far, that you’d push her too much and finally lose the only good thing you’d ever had. “I had to do it, Rach. I tried to leave and protect you from me but I - I’m too selfish and . . . . But I can’t h-hurt you anymore, I won’t. It’s hollowing me out and I can’t lose you, Rachel. I just, I can’t -”
“Hey, hey.” She moves your leg behind her and pulls her knees underneath her, scooting closer between your legs until she’s only an inch in front of you. She brings a hand up to either side of your face and starts wiping at your tears like getting rid of the evidence will somehow help the pain. “It’s okay, just breathe.”
“I’m - I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. It wasn’t su-supposed to -” She shakes her head as another tear travels down her cheek before she leans in and brings her lips against yours. The kiss is slow and steady and almost chaste and you let yourself focus on it completely. You focus on the taste and feel of her lips, on her fingertips slowly dragging up and down on the back of your neck, and you feel your body start to calm down. After a few more seconds she pulls out of the kiss and leans her forehead against your own. She stays there for a moment, eyes closed and breathing slowly, before she finally speaks.
“Listen to me, okay?” She leans back enough to look into your eyes as she slowly starts running a hand through your hair. “You’re not going to lose me. There is nothing you could ever do to lose me. And I’m sorry that I couldn’t see what it was doing to you. That I,” her tears well up again but they don’t fall, just balancing on the edge waiting for her decision, “that I never looked close enough to see.” She tilts her head toward the ceiling and takes a deep breath and when she looks back at you a few seconds later the tears are almost gone again. “But everything is going to be okay now. Because all that stuff you were talking about before, the house and the kids and everything, I want that too.” She smiles at you and you feel relief and the beginnings of peace begin to wash over you as you smile back. “I always have. So we’re going to get through this, okay? Because Rachel Berry always gets what she wants.” She grins again and you laugh quietly as you bring your head down to rest on her shoulder and wrap your arms around her. “We’ll be okay,” she whispers as her hand starts gentle circles on your back. “It’s just six months. We can do this. I promise, Quinn. We’ll be fine.”
Epilogue
Author: tru-faith13
Rating: PG-13
Length: 5,100
Spoilers: Let’s just say the whole season though if there are any it’s just trivial stuff
Summary:Quinn loses her memory. Rachel's the only one that can help her get it back. I’m just going to start calling this AU because the more I write the more it turns into something like a story loosely based on a commercial for Glee I saw one time from a distance through a crowd of people and the TV was muted.
A/N1: Just fair warning guys, this is the next to last chapter.
A/N2: What the hell, they fired Dijon??? *sigh* Damn you, RM.
A/N3: I’m so sorry you guys. I won’t bore you with the details but basically the whole thing boils down to sometimes I’m still an idiot and I do incredibly stupid things. And then instead of stepping back and saying ‘There’s your problem idiot, you did something stupid earlier so you should probably just change that’ I decide to be stubborn and try to force the whole thing to work for a month. So basically I’m a tool. *shrug* My bad.
As you walk across the parking lot of Watertown Rooms in the direction of room number six, a bag of fast food in one hand and a six-pack of water bottles in the other, you find yourself humming the intro to ‘Ace of Spades’ for what’s at least the tenth time since you heard it in that gas station fifteen minutes ago.
“Dammit!” you mutter as you catch yourself. “Stupid song.” You unlock the door and walk in to find Rachel still asleep. She’s sprawled out on her stomach with her head facing away from you and her hair thrown almost wildly over the pillow. You’ve been together two years but you can count on one hand the number of times you’ve been together like this, carefree and truly alone. You feel a smile creep over your face as you take a second to just look at her, sheet pooled at the base of her spine and her left hand curled into a ball and tucked under her chin. You sigh as you fight against the urge to go to her. The two of you still have a lot to talk about and you know full well that crawling back into bed with a naked Rachel Berry will result in very little talking. You reluctantly turn away from her and sit the bag of food on the small table by the door along with two bottles of water. You cross the room to crouch in front of the mini-fridge beside the dresser and start pulling the other bottles out of their plastic packaging. As you jam the last one in the small shelf on the door you suddenly hear a soft giggling behind you and it triggers another grin.
“You’re terribly cute when you sing the guitar riffs, you know.” She giggles again and it takes you a second before you realize that yes, you had been mumbling the first verse of that goddamn song again and yes, you had been right in the middle of singing the riffs like a fourteen year old boy playing air guitar. You stand up and turn to face her with your grin still in place. She’s rolled over onto her back and pulled the sheet up to her neck. You’ve always found it amusing how someone who constantly wears such short skirts can be so shy when it comes to actual nudity.
“It’s stuck in my head,” you admit with a shrug.
“I figured,” she responds as she yawns and stretches. “What time is it?” You flip your wrist upside down to get a look at your watch.
“Just after twelve.”
“What? How did that happen?”
“You uh, kind of passed out a little bit,” you say with a smirk. She stares at you for just a second before scoffing and rolling her eyes.
“Shut up.” She launches the pillow not currently under her head at you and you laugh as you bring a hand up to swat it away. She stretches again and just barely winces. “God. Are my clothes still in one piece?” She sits up, dragging the sheet with her as she glances around the room for her discarded clothes. You laugh again as you pick the pillow up and toss it back onto the bed. She leans over the side of the bed to dig around in her emergency bag on the floor as you crumple up the plastic in your hand and cross the room to throw it away.
“Yes, they’re still in one piece,” you toss over your shoulder as you go, “I’m not a caveman.” As you make your way back to the table to start unpacking the food she finally yanks out a shirt and quickly pulls it over her head before she responds.
“Well you can’t blame me for asking, you open a twelve-pack of soft drinks like a Bengal Tiger.”
“Hey, those perforations are crap!” you argue as you spin to face her, your arm outstretched and finger pointing. “They are purely for show.” She just chuckles and starts rummaging through her bag again so you turn your attention back to the food. “So apparently this town is only like two square miles and neither of those squares is very vegan friendly,” you hear movement behind you as she gets out of the bed and starts walking toward you, “so I just got us salads.” While you don’t necessarily share Rachel’s vegan views - hamburgers and ribs and bacon have all been very good to you over the years so you see no reason to turn your back on them now - you always try not to eat anything too terribly ‘un-vegan’ in front of her.
“Oh, thank God. I’m starving,” she mumbles from over your right shoulder. Her left arm sneaks around your waist as her right one reaches around you to grab one of the salads. “Thank you.” She lifts up to give you a quick kiss on the cheek before moving to take a seat in one of the chairs.
“You’re welcome.” You pick up one of the water bottles and place it in front of her before going to your own seat across from her. Nearly the second you hit the chair her bare legs come up to rest in your lap and your left hand automatically drops down to trace over her ankle as you start mixing up your salad. She looks up and grins at you before attacking her salad like it’s the first food she’s seen in days and you smile and shake your head. You raise your fork up for your first bite but something stops you. You pull back a little and sniff. “Good Lord. How did I not notice that before?” You put the fork down and stretch behind you to fling the door open.
“What are you doing?” Rachel asks as you spin back around and finally take a bite.
“Airing the room out. It smells like crazy, sweaty sex in here.” She snorts and grins.
“Crazy, sweaty, awesome, sex,” she mumbles around a mouthful of lettuce and you laugh and roll your eyes.
“Dork,” you tease as you toss a crouton at her.
“Other dork.” The two of you eat in comfortable silence for a few minutes before something suddenly occurs to you.
“Oh!” you start, pointing your fork up in the air for good measure. “Speaking of getting caught singing an embarrassing song in front of people.”
“Were we still speaking of that?” she asks as she takes a drink of water.
“We are now.” She grins and nods.
“Carry on.”
“I cannot believe you let me sing the fucking Goo Goo Dolls in front of the entire Glee Club.” She immediately starts laughing and it causes you to fail miserably at keeping your own grin in check.
“I was wondering when that was going to come up. And what do you mean let? What was I supposed to do about it?”
“Uh, set the damn piano on fire if you have to,” you tell her as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world.
“You love that song. You used to listen to it all the time.”
“Yeah, when I was fifteen and lame.” She chuckles again and again the corner of your mouth twitches up into a little grin. “And even if I do maybe still kind of like it that doesn’t mean I want to sing it in front of everybody. I mean you listen to ‘Faith’ all the time but I don’t see you busting out your George Michaels impression in the middle of a Glee rehearsal any time soon.”
“This is true,” she admits with a nod.
“Such a waste,” you mutter to yourself as you take another bite of salad.
“What do you mean a waste?”
“Obviously if I was going to have some big dramatic solo about the two of us it should’ve been ‘Where I Stood’ by Missy Higgins,” you say simply without really thinking as you grab your water bottle. You see her immediately start to flip through the Rolodex of songs in her head and decide to change the subject before she finds the song and starts running through the lyrics. “And you know Santana is never going to let me live it down,” you tell her before taking a drink.
“Please, Santana sang ‘There Are Worse Things I Could Do’ at Noah’s party last year.” You have to physically fight not to do a sitcom spit take as the memory suddenly flashes into your mind. After the Glee Club lost at Regionals last year Puck had insisted that the only thing left to do was to go to his house, which was vacant for the weekend, and get blind drunk and most everyone had been inclined to agree with him. Toward the end of the night Santana, drunk off her ass and stumbling everywhere, had produced an instrumental karaoke style version of the Grease soundtrack seemingly out of nowhere and started belting the song out in the middle of Puck’s living room.
“Oh my God!” you yell as you throw your head back and laugh loudly. “Oh my God, I completely forgot about that!”
“How could you have possibly forgotten that?” Rachel asks in disbelief. “It is . . . . seared into my memory.” She gets a disturbed look on her face as she stares off into the distance and you laugh again.
“Well you were sober,” you point out as you think back to the night in question, “way more than I was at least.” You had joined Glee to be closer to Rachel, and to make sure Finn stayed the hell away from her, but at some point you’d actually gotten invested in all of it and when you’d lost at Regionals you found yourself surprisingly upset. And the fact that you couldn’t curl up and take comfort in the arms of your girlfriend like most other kids your age had only upset you more and you’d started drinking almost the second you stepped through Puck’s front door. What had upset you the most though was seeing Rachel. She looked absolutely heartbroken all night, though she did her best to hide it, and you couldn’t do anything about it except risk a sad smile at her every now and then from across the room. So you spent the night drinking and trying to forget, like so many other nights before and after that one.
“Ah, that’s right. You big lush.” You clear your throat and raise an eyebrow at her. “Sorry, skinny lush.”
“Thank you.” She rolls her eyes and grins. “Plus, you were wearing that dress from Kurt’s damn makeover. My mind was kind of focused on other things.”
“It is a really good dress,” she says with a smile.
“It’s a goddamn torture device is what it is.” You bring the water bottle to your lips to take another drink and a drop of condensation rolls down the side of it and drops onto Rachel’s foot. You see it happen but she doesn’t and when the cold water hits her skin she jerks, causing her heel to slam solidly into your stomach. “Ow, fuck me!” She immediately sits up straight, pulling her feet out of your lap and bringing a hand up to cover her mouth.
“Oh my God, I’m so sorry.” She mumbles from behind her hand and you glare at her when the last word dissolves into laughter.
“Yeah, your concern is very touching.” You groan as you bring a hand down to rub at the right side of your stomach. She didn’t even kick you that hard really but she must’ve hit a nerve or something because it sent little tingles of pain shooting across your stomach and down your thigh. “God, I think you hit my kidney or something.” She laughs again but quickly stifles it.
“Your kidneys are in the back, Quinn.”
“Yeah,” you scoff, “not anymore it isn’t. But my hipbone might be now,” you add with a pout as you groan again. “Sweet shit in a bucket.” She scrunches her forehead and shrugs.
“Why is it in a bucket? That seems highly unsanitary.”
“Really?” you ask and lift an eyebrow in her direction.
“What? It’s a valid question. That’s a very peculiar phrase.”
“You are the worst.” You pout again and she chuckles as she stands up and walks toward you.
“Okay, okay, I’m sorry.” She puts a hand on either side of your face and bends down to kiss you on top of the head. “I’ll fix it.” She moves past you and closes the door before coming back to kneel down beside you.
“Uh, Rach?” You glance down at her, wearing a tight black v-neck shirt, black boy shorts, and an innocent grin, and you hear a warning bell start to go off in your head. “What are you doing?”
“Kissing it better,” she replies simply before tugging your shirt up a few inches and leaning forward to softly press her lips to your hip. You take in a quick breath as your stomach muscles twitch and you feel her smile into your side. Her kisses become more insistent as she slowly makes her way across your stomach and brings her right hand up to grip at your knee.
“Rachel. Rach, stop,” you say weakly even as you lean back to give her better access. Her tongue just barely peeks out to run across your flesh as she slides her hand up your thigh and even through your jeans it’s like you can feel each individual ridge of her fingertips against your skin. You take another deep breath and steel your nerves. “Rachel, we need to talk.” Her hand moves just a little higher on your thigh as she straightens up to whisper in your ear.
“I don’t wanna talk,” she says in that voice that sends shivers down your spine. Everyone gets to hear Rachel Berry hit the high notes but you’re the only one who gets to hear her like this, voice low and scratchy like whiskey and gravel. Her tongue darts out to hit that spot just behind your ear before she slowly drags her teeth down the side of your neck with just enough pressure to drive you insane. You feel your entire body twitch as arousal shoots through you like lightening.
“That - that’s cheating,” you finally manage to stutter out and you can feel the laugh rumble through her chest as she kisses across your collarbone. “Rach, I’m - I’m serious,” you try again and she leans into you a little more, “we need to talk.”
“Uh-uh, don’t wanna,” she mumbles against your skin as she starts kissing back up your throat and her fingers start tracing slow circles on the inside of your thigh.
“Yeah, you never do.” She freezes against you, lips still against your neck and hand just laying on your thigh as you feel the air in the room shift. Admittedly it was kind of a low blow but it was all you could think of. She takes a deep breath and you feel it blow harshly across your skin.
“Fine.” She quickly pulls away from you and walks over to sit on the edge of the bed. During the hour long drive away from Lima this morning Rachel had asked when exactly you got your memories back and when you told her it had happened just a few minutes before everything went down the two of you started fighting. She was yelling that you had been stupid and impulsive and ruined everything on a whim and you argued that it was what you should’ve done from the beginning. Eventually you had stopped it by saying that you didn’t want to fight with her, not today, and the two of you had agreed to just be together today and leave the fights for another time. As you look at her now, back straight and jaw set, you know that agreement is about to be broken. Honestly, you’d like nothing more than to stay in this bubble the two of you have created where you’re blissfully happy and everything is fine. But everything isn’t fine and you’re running out of time to fix it. You turn sideways in your chair to face her and she just raises an eyebrow at you expectantly.
“Rachel . . .” you trail off not knowing where exactly to start.
“You’re the one that wanted to talk, Quinn. So talk. I’ll even give you a topic. What the fuck are we supposed to do now, huh? What’s ‘The Plan’ this time? Or did you even have time to come up with anything even resembling a plan during all your spontaneous life ruining?” Her voice is harsh now and even though you’d been expecting it you can’t help but feel the sting of it.
“It wasn’t spontaneous,” you say automatically as a weak defense as you stare down at your lap.
“Oh, really?” she says incredulously. “Those two minutes in the middle of the fucking choir room, talking to Matt no less, was plenty of time to think about everything and make a rational decision, was it?”
“I made the decision three months ago.” Your voice is strong but your head is still pointed toward the ground.
“Excuse me?” she says slowly. You look up at her and take a deep breath before you start.
“I made the decision a long time before today. And there is a plan. I turn eighteen in seven months -”
“Five and a half,” she corrects you distractedly as she stares off at some point behind you.
“What? Oh, right.” Even though you’ve had some time to reconcile your ‘amnesia life’ with your real one it still screws up your timelines sometimes. “So my parents will send me to some boarding school or de-gaying camp or something but in five and a half months I’ll be back and everything will be okay.”
“Just like that, huh?” she asks, still not looking at you.
“Look, Rachel it’ll all work out. I promise.”
“I can’t believe this.”
“What?” you ask cautiously, trying to catch her eye.
“I can’t believe you did this.” She shakes her head and finally makes eye contact for just a second before standing up off the bed to start pacing. “I can’t believe you just made this decision, this decision that completely changes our entire lives, without even talking to me about it or, God forbid, asking me if I was okay with it!”
“I tried to talk to you about it a hundred times, Rachel!” You throw your arms in the air as you quickly stand up to join the fight. “But every time I tried to bring it up you just shut me down!”
“Because there was nothing to talk about!”
“It was killing us, Rachel!” She sighs and brings a hand up to rub at her temple.
“Please Quinn, not this fight again. How many times do I have to tell you that I’m fine before you start to actually fucking believe me? Before you finally stop with this idea that poor little Rachel needs to be saved from the big bad world?” She takes a few steps toward you and lowers her voice just a little as some of the anger starts to leave her. “I was fine. I’ve always been fine as long as I had you. But now you’ve decided to leave for six months, which is kind of counterproductive, wouldn’t you say?” You sigh and shake your head.
“I love you, Rachel. But you can be so fucking conceited sometimes.”
“What?” she practically growls at you.
“Every time we’ve had this fight, whenever I say that it’s hurting us too much or that we won’t make it through this, you always say I’m fine or I’ll be okay or stop worrying about me.” She shrinks into herself a little and takes a step away from you. “You’ve always been so adamant that I didn’t need to do this for you, but did you ever think that maybe I needed you to do this for me? That maybe I’m not okay.” Your voice cracks on the last word and you turn to take a few steps away from her and back toward the door, giving yourself enough time to get your emotions back under control.
“Quinn, I . . .” You turn back around and hold a hand up to stop her.
“Just . . . . just let me say this okay?” She stares at you for a few seconds with sad eyes before she finally just nods. You take a moment to try to organize your thoughts so you can be sure to say everything the right way but there’s only one thing screaming back and forth in your head. “I don’t know who I am anymore.” You sigh and hang your head as you finally admit it. “Am I this sarcastic, cursing, cigarette smoking, jeans and converse girl or the bitchy, heartless, religious head cheerleader who doesn’t give a shit about anyone but herself? Or am I some mixture of the two? Or maybe none of the above? I don’t know.” You slowly turn your head to the side to look at her and feel the corner of your mouth pull up into a small grin. “All I know is you, Rachel. You’re all I see.” You take a deep breath as you lean your head back on the door behind you trying to straighten out your thoughts again. “There’s always been that part of you that’s terrified of losing me, Rach. That’s convinced that one day I’ll just walk away or move on, because for some reason you think you need this more than I ever could. And that gives me this sort of power over you that I don’t want and that one day, probably soon, you’ll come to resent.” You glance over at her and she looks like she desperately wants to speak but she says nothing. “And I saw it happening, I felt it. But I couldn’t . . .” You tilt your head back toward the ceiling and close your eyes. “We don’t talk in my family, about anything. Definitely not about emotions. So I never knew how to tell you. But I thought if I just said it enough, if I told you I loved you enough that eventually you’d start to understand. That you’d start to believe it.”
“I do believe it, Quinn,” she says softly. You push off of the wall and turn to face her.
“Maybe. But you don’t trust it.” She looks off to the side and tilts her head down and that’s all the confirmation you need. You walk over to sit on the edge of the bed and gesture for her to do the same. She comes to sit beside you, both of you staring straight ahead lost in your own thoughts, and you can’t help but notice that the inches between you suddenly feel like miles.
“It’s not that I don’t trust you,” she finally starts after nearly a minute with a quiet voice, “it’s just that . . . love is complicated. Maybe what we think is love isn’t really, but we’ve never really been with anyone else so how would we know. Or maybe the word love means something completely different to you than it does to me.” You slowly turn your head to look at her.
“It doesn’t.” She looks at you with a small grin before her eyes shift to the floor.
“We’re young, Quinn. Despite how quickly we grew up or how old we feel sometimes, we’re still so young. Even if you do love me, really love me, who’s to say that won’t change in the next few years? Maybe we’ll be completely different people five years down the road. Maybe we’ll fall out just as easily as we fell in.” You watch her as she talks with a steady voice and a look on her face like she’s just stating simple facts and it breaks your heart. You were an idiot for believing those three little words could ever be enough. And now, even after two years, she doesn’t have any idea how you really feel about her. Because you’ve never told her. Because you’ve never known how.
“I don’t think I could ever stop loving you, Rach, even if I tried my hardest. I mean I couldn’t even remember my own name, but somehow some part of me still remembered you.” She takes a deep breath and looks up at you.
“I hear the words but…” she shakes her head and sighs as she shifts her gaze to the wall in front of her. “I’ve always been the one people put up with, as long as I’m useful. Kids pretend to like me in class hoping I’ll help them with the class work or maybe let them cheat off my test. The Glee Club tolerates me because I’ll help them win competitions.” She breathes out a laugh and rolls her eyes. “And some days they can barely even manage to do that.” You know she needs to say all this, to get it all out and finally address her deepest fear. So you wait patiently for her to finish, concentrating on your own breathing to keep from interrupting her with meaningless reassurances. “Even my dads. I mean I know they love me, and they work hard to give me everything I could ever want. They buy me beautiful gifts and get me lessons or training for whatever I want with the best possible teachers around. But they’re always gone. Working late or off on cruises or vacations. They always love me from a distance.”
You close your eyes as the last piece finally clicks into place and you can truly see the last two years from Rachel’s perspective. You wanted to be with her, but only in secret, only if no one else ever knew. Only for a flash of time every now and then and only if it didn’t mess up your real life. How could you possibly expect her to think you were anything different when you’d treated her exactly the same as everyone else.
“And I know that you have real feelings for me and that we lived the way we did because we had to.” She turns to look at you, needing you to hear her. “I know that, I believe it.”
“But…” you whisper quietly. Her eyes shift away from yours and you can see her struggling to find the words as she shrugs.
“But… some part of me can’t help but wonder about after. What happens when we get out of here? When you can be this beautiful, perfect person all the time, for everyone to see. When you take the world by storm and people are throwing themselves at you. When the whole world’s laid out in front of you and you can go anywhere and do anything.”
“Nothing’s gonna change, Rachel. I will love you no matter where we go or what we do.” She looks back at you and her lips twitch up into a placating grin.
“Again, I hear the words but…” she takes a deep breath and her eyes slowly scan your face before she hangs her head. “But that little girl who’s always the last resort just can’t trust that you’d ever pick me with all of that in front of you. Seventeen years of experience has taught me that even the nicest people, people who actually kind of like me, don’t stick around long once something better shows up.”
You take a few moments to let everything she’s said soak in and try to gather your thoughts. You know that this is important, that what you say next could determine exactly how unbearable the next six months will be for the both of you. You try to put the words together in your head, looking for some way to tell her what you haven’t been able to show her all this time. Some way to make sure she can’t help but believe you.
“You’ve always said that when you think about us getting out of Ohio you always picture us in some shitty little New York apartment, barely scraping by, but terribly in love.” She smiles down at the floor and you grin a little yourself. “But I don’t see that, Rach.” You see her smile falter a little but your grin only gets wider. “When I think about you I see the two of us twenty-five years from now at our daughter’s high school graduation.” She slowly raises her head to look at you, the smile cautiously returning to her face and something almost like shock hiding in her eyes. “And we’re both videotaping it because you insisted on having a back-up copy just in case.” She laughs quietly and you smile at her. “And I see us in thirty-five years spoiling the hell out of beautiful grandkids with trips to Broadway and foods that are absolutely terrible for them. I see us buying our first house and arguing over where to send the kids to school or where to go for family vacations.” You twist yourself to the side, bringing your right leg up onto the bed so that you can face her.
“When I look at you I don’t see a few good years, Rachel. I see a life. I may not know who I am, but I know who I want. I always have. Since the first moment I saw you I just knew I had to be by your side.” You see the tears creeping up behind her eyes for just a second before she drops her head as she tries to get control of them. “So even though you’ve always felt like you need me more than I need you . . . even though I’ve always let you feel like that,” you take a breath and try to push your own tears back down, “it just isn’t true.” You see a tear fall and land in her lap and you feel your breath threatening to shake at the sight of it but you force it to level back out.
“And I’ve tried to fight it. I’ve tried not to want you with everything that I am. At first because my parents and their religion told me it was wrong, and then later because I knew you deserved so much better.” She squeezes her eyes shut forcing out two more tears and her hand darts out to grip tightly at your leg. You reach out and lay your hand over hers, your thumb slowly dragging across the back of her hand until her grip finally loosens. “But you . . . you’re like gravity, Rach. No matter how much I struggle or fight like hell to stay away, I always come back to you. You are the only thing that makes me feel . . . . . real.” You reach out with the hand not holding hers and tilt her face up to look at you. “That’s why I did what I did this morning. Because I can lose everyone else, my parents, my sister, my friends, the people at school, I can lose all of them. As long as I get to keep you.”
You bring your hand up to wipe a tear from her cheek and she leans into the touch. As you look at her you suddenly see every single insult and slushie, every time you cut her down in front of a group of people or treated her like something less than human and the next thing you know tears are running down your face and your breath becomes quick and unsteady as you feel yourself start to shake. Before the amnesia you’d spent every day terrified that it was the day you’d go too far, that you’d push her too much and finally lose the only good thing you’d ever had. “I had to do it, Rach. I tried to leave and protect you from me but I - I’m too selfish and . . . . But I can’t h-hurt you anymore, I won’t. It’s hollowing me out and I can’t lose you, Rachel. I just, I can’t -”
“Hey, hey.” She moves your leg behind her and pulls her knees underneath her, scooting closer between your legs until she’s only an inch in front of you. She brings a hand up to either side of your face and starts wiping at your tears like getting rid of the evidence will somehow help the pain. “It’s okay, just breathe.”
“I’m - I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. It wasn’t su-supposed to -” She shakes her head as another tear travels down her cheek before she leans in and brings her lips against yours. The kiss is slow and steady and almost chaste and you let yourself focus on it completely. You focus on the taste and feel of her lips, on her fingertips slowly dragging up and down on the back of your neck, and you feel your body start to calm down. After a few more seconds she pulls out of the kiss and leans her forehead against your own. She stays there for a moment, eyes closed and breathing slowly, before she finally speaks.
“Listen to me, okay?” She leans back enough to look into your eyes as she slowly starts running a hand through your hair. “You’re not going to lose me. There is nothing you could ever do to lose me. And I’m sorry that I couldn’t see what it was doing to you. That I,” her tears well up again but they don’t fall, just balancing on the edge waiting for her decision, “that I never looked close enough to see.” She tilts her head toward the ceiling and takes a deep breath and when she looks back at you a few seconds later the tears are almost gone again. “But everything is going to be okay now. Because all that stuff you were talking about before, the house and the kids and everything, I want that too.” She smiles at you and you feel relief and the beginnings of peace begin to wash over you as you smile back. “I always have. So we’re going to get through this, okay? Because Rachel Berry always gets what she wants.” She grins again and you laugh quietly as you bring your head down to rest on her shoulder and wrap your arms around her. “We’ll be okay,” she whispers as her hand starts gentle circles on your back. “It’s just six months. We can do this. I promise, Quinn. We’ll be fine.”
Epilogue