hello, from the other side

A few weeks after college graduation ceremonies all over the country had commenced and concluded, Quinn found herself sitting at home, her fingers brushing over the fuzzy edges of a long ago expired train pass that had never been used.

The part of Quinn's heart that wondered about paths unwalked, it still beat in time to the dance they'd done all throughout high school - her and Rachel.

Because, somehow, it always came back to Rachel.

The past four years had been a blur. Quinn would be lying to herself if she said the lack of texts (or phone calls or emails or Facebook messages) from Rachel had been...disappointing at first. And then had just...been. It was what it was, in that incomprehensibly painful way that unrequited love never fails to be.

After a while, Quinn had even stopped attempting to watch Rachel's life from afar - their paths diverged so completely that, if Quinn's brain had been capable of providing her with the sweet relief of amnesia, she may have been able to forget about Rachel entirely, in time.

Quinn pressed the ticket to her chest and squeezed her eyes shut. What a silly thought. Naive, somehow, and painfully so. One does not simply forget Rachel Berry.

And so maybe, Quinn thought, brushing the back of her hand against cheeks that were dry anyway, it was time that she do a little growing up: she was going to call Rachel Berry, their past and unspoken embargo on communication be damned.

Dialing a number that was stuck in her brain from what felt like a different life, Quinn waited with baited breath for what would come next.

She closed her eyes and got lost in a memory: sometime a couple of years before; a late night; a dark place; a landline phone in the living room of some home where the party had finally died down; she had dialed Rachel's cell only to find herself struck dumb at the sound of the girl's voice on the other end; "Hello?" Rachel had asked, "Hello?"; eventually followed by a short, "Is anyone there?"; Quinn hadn't been sure how long they had sat in silence before she'd heard a softly whispered, "...Quinn?"

She had hung up quickly. But now, she had no need: the line had been disconnected.

It would take some work, Quinn knew, but she would reconnect with Rachel Berry.

If it was the last thing she did.

Quinn had found Rachel's current number (a New York City area code) along with her address (somewhere in Manhattan) easily enough. She had even called the number once - a land line, as it turned out, setup with an answering machine and everything. Rachel's voice had flooded Quinn's senses, all "Hello gorgeous, leave a message at the -" followed by a beep. Quinn hadn't been able to leave a message though; she'd waited a second or two and then pressed the button to end the call. And that had been that.

But now, Quinn was in New York. The bright lights and the way the city itself seemed alive were almost disorienting. She wondered why she'd never bothered to make the trip from New Haven - time catches you, carries you along. It had all been quite dizzying, really.

A foul, disheveled man suddenly appeared in front of Quinn, grunting and growling incomprehensibly. He made to reach out for her, seeking something Quinn was more than certain she could not provide - she turned and ran. She took one quick glance over her shoulder and managed to catch a glimpse of the man as he seemed to disappear back into the shadows.

Quinn shivered and wrapped her arms more carefully around herself. The yellow dress and white cardigan just weren't quite substantial enough for the city's chill, but they would have to do; Quinn wanted to look nice for the show.

She stood in the balcony, excited enough that sitting was barely even a considerable option. Quinn moved to the side though, made sure she wasn't in anyone's line of vision. And she watched the show Rachel was starring in. And she felt her soul rejoice.

As the final curtain fell and the lights in the theatre rose, as actor after actor came out for their bows and applause, Quinn waited with a profound stillness for Rachel's appearance. And she wasn't disappointed - Rachel, there, on the stage with the roof literally thundering with the intensity of the applause, was a magnificent creature to behold.

And Quinn could have sworn, for just a brief moment as Rachel's eyes scanned the crowd, that the star's eyes connected with Quinn's. It was a second, maybe two at the most, and Quinn could have written it off entirely - if it hadn't pierced her to her core, if she hadn't seen Rachel take the slightest of staggering steps before righting herself…

Quinn took it as a sign. Immediately after the final bows had taken place, she descended the stairs and began searching for access to other areas of the building.

She found them easily enough - hardly a soul did she come across, and no one seemed to mind her presence where she ought not to be.

The door was so obviously Rachel's that, when Quinn found it, she couldn't help but laugh softly beneath her breath - there wasn't just one huge gold star with Rachel's name on it (which there certainly was), there were also several dozen smaller stars all around it, nearly covering the entire surface of the door.

Quinn gingerly knocked. Silence greeted her from both sides of the door. She waited a minute, then pressed her face against the door again, knocking gently as she did so. Her eyes closed, and she breathed deeply before whispering, "Rachel…" against the door's edge.

Nothing. The timing was wrong, this was wrong, Quinn was wrong - the locked eyes had been nothing, nothing, nothing, and so she turned and ran.

A second later, the door slowly opened, and Rachel Berry's head peeked out into the hall. "Quinn?" she spoke, so softly that it was lost in the emptiness stretching out in either direction. The faintest sounds of pounding footsteps were just disappearing as Rachel closed the door once more.

Quinn didn't talk to anyone from high school anymore. Not Santana, not Brittany, not even Sam or Artie, Kurt or Mercedes. The only time Quinn had talked to anyone from Lima High over the past few years… Well, it had been at the Lima Train Depot.

She had been waiting for the train back to New Haven, was just sitting on the platform alone, waiting, and waiting, and waiting. The fog had rolled in, oddly thick and billowing, and Quinn had been grateful not to have to worry about flying. She'd looked up, checking the clock to see if the stubborn hands had budged at all, and that was when she'd seen him.

Finn had been wearing his army uniform, his duffel slung over one shoulder as he walked up the steps. Quinn had thought he looked dashing, really, and even though it had been at least two or three years since they'd seen each other, Quinn eagerly stood up as he approached.

The moment he'd seen her, Quinn had known - his eyes had lit up and that boyish grin owned his face completely. She couldn't help but smile as they met in the middle of the platform and embraced.

"Quinn," Finn had said, "What are you doing here?"

"Just waiting," she'd replied. Her hands had pressed against the front of her yellow dress, smoothing it in a gesture that was almost nervous in nature. She'd pulled her white cardigan closer around her shoulders to ward off the creeping chill from the fog.

"For how long?" he'd asked, looking around at the otherwise empty depot.

"A while now, I guess."

He'd nodded, the corners of his mouth lifting up in a sad smile of understanding. "You'll find your way, Quinn. You always do."

"I'm trying," she'd said, and she'd known then that it was true. "Where are you going?"

He'd reached into a hidden pocket somewhere and pulled out a ticket. "It doesn't say, just says that the train's arriving right about…" A whistle had blown in the distance. "Now, I think," he'd proclaimed with a smile.

For some reason, Quinn had felt her heart break right then - why was it that her train was taking so long to arrive? It felt profound, somehow important, and it pained her that she couldn't understand why.

They'd held hands as the big red steam engine pulled its enormous line of cars into the station. When it had managed to finally pull to a stop, one door in front of them opened and a conductor shouted, "All aboard!" and spun his arm in a pinwheel motion. He was blurry around the edges, insubstantial somehow; Quinn blamed the fog.

Finn's face, as he had turned to look Quinn in the eye one last time, was bright and kind and the most welcome sight Quinn thought she'd seen in maybe an eternity.

"You've gotta finish up here, Quinn. There are other places to see - at least, I think there are… A guy can hope, anyway." He'd chuckled, then sighed. "It's so good seeing you. I wish we'd seen more of each other - I wish all of us had."

Quinn had tilted her head curiously. "There's still time, isn't there? Reunions and things…" But even as she'd said it, she had felt doubt creeping in.

That sad smile was once again living on his face; Quinn suspected there was a hint of pity there, but she pushed that thought away with haste. "Take care of yourself, Quinn." He had cupped her cheek, stroked her skin with that big thumb of his. "Find what's most important, and then say goodbye."

She had waved her farewell to Finn, and the strange fog had engulfed the train, hiding his handsome form from view.

Sadness had poured off of her body in waves, somehow overwhelming in that moment - everything was too much, and her train still hadn't come…

All of this, of course - the stark lack of communication between that group of friends who had been so close, once upon a time - was why, years and years later, Quinn was so shocked to see Rachel Berry in the Lima Walmart parking lot.

This time, unlike in the Broadway theatre balcony, Quinn's doubt was nonexistent as to whether or not Rachel Berry's eyes connected with hers across the distance between them - it was obvious, manifesting like a claw that reached down inside of her, deep into her chest, and grabbed forcefully onto her, pulling her forward, a puppet on a string.

Quinn only took one step before a group of awe-inspired girls took the faster initiative, stepping forward to ask the famous Rachel Berry for a barrage of autographs and selfies.

Standing still, Quinn watched the entire scene unfold. Rachel was gracious as ever, but Quinn could tell she was shaken up - a part of Quinn guessed it served Rachel right, for ignoring all of her pleas for contact over the years… Of course Rachel should be thrown off kilter at the sight of Quinn! It was the least she could be.

And, honestly, Quinn instantly felt guilty for thinking such negative thoughts. A dark cloud engulfed her emotions, engulfed her, and she turned and fled the parking lot.

She missed the anxious look on Rachel's face as the woman finished with her fans and then took several steps toward the dark, unoccupied edge of the parking lot. Quinn didn't see as Rachel leaned despondently against one of the light poles, as she whispered Quinn's name into the darkness - as she cried, and cried, and cried, alone…

They met in the glee club's rehearsal room. It took years, but as Quinn stood across the piano from Rachel, she thought that Rachel still somehow didn't look a day over eighteen (maybe twenty or twenty-one, tops, even though Quinn knew by now that Rachel must be at least somewhere in her early thirties). Quinn, of course, felt like a child in comparison; she tried not to feel self-conscious in the yellow dress her mom had picked out for her, the white cardigan covering her bare shoulders...

Neither of them spoke for a while. Instead, each of them gazed at the other as if they were missing pieces in a puzzle that had been sitting unsolved on shelves in their memory - pieces newly discovered, or maybe just hidden in plain sight, all this time.

Surprisingly, Rachel was not the one to break the silence.

"I've been trying to reach you," Quinn said.

Rachel breathed deeply before leaning forward, her palms pressing into the piano. "I think…" she started, "I think I know that. Somehow, I do."

Quinn smiled. "It's taken me a really long time," she might have almost blushed, her eyes dipping down to look at Rachel's hands, "but I'm glad we're finally here."

Rachel's eyes welled with tears that Quinn couldn't comprehend. "I've missed you so," she said, the words coming on a wretched gasp from her chest. For a while, she seemed incapable of speaking at all. She just breathed one choked word: "Quinn."

All she wanted was to reach out and comfort the girl she had been chasing all these years, lean forward and wrap Rachel's hands up in her own - but as soon as she tried, as soon as their skin got just a little too close, it was like an invisible force was pushing them apart. They were the wrong magnetic poles, always had been - repelling each other when all they'd ever needed, probably, was to figure out how alike they were.

Even then, Quinn realized with a dawning clarity so sudden and powerful that she almost lost whatever phantom breath existed in her lungs, it wouldn't have mattered.

It had stopped mattering a long time ago. Quinn knew that now.

"I'm sorry, Rachel, I just need you to know how sorry I am."

"For what?" Rachel gasped, the edge of a sob breaking through.

Quinn felt whatever world this was around them shrinking, twisting, pulling. She looked down at her hands and saw fog, thick and swirling like that at the train depot, the fog that had carried Finn away, forever.

She knew time was of the essence, if time even existed here.

"When I was young, you were the girl in my dreams. When I met you, saw you truly, it frightened me, and I was horrible because of it. I think there was a part of me, afterwards, that was glad I never made it to the wedding, Rachel, and I'm so sorry for that."

"Quinn -"

"Rachel, please. Please hear me and know this one truth: I loved you every single day up until then, and I've loved you every day since, on this side of things. Right now, in this place, it's the only chance I was ever going to get, I think… And I need you to know."

"I'm listening, Quinn, and I do know, I think I always have."

"You were - are - my most important thing. And now I say goodbye."

"Quinn, wait -!"

"It's okay, Rachel, it's all okay now."

Rachel's sobs tore through Quinn, literally slicing her into pieces. She began to fall apart, to slowly shift and turn and become something other than herself.

"Quinn, please… This can't be all we have, it just can't be."

"Oh, Rachel," Quinn breathed, her form now taking on that of a thick, swirling mass of fog, "In another life, I think we had everything. And in this life, you always had all of me."

Now without a physical shape, Quinn's spirit pushed forward, brushing against Rachel in her entirety; as Rachel felt the ghostly form touch her, she could've sworn that a soft pair of phantom lips had ghosted against her cheek, had whispered "goodbye, my love" into her ear-

And then her alarm clock blared.

The tear tracks were still wet on Rachel Berry's cheeks as she curled into herself, weeping and sorrowful. For Rachel knew that the apparition, the girl who had been following her since childhood, was no more.

A few years later found Rachel Berry toiling through a press junket for yet another film that was expected to be a smash hit - this one a film encompassing all things eerie and supernatural. The interviews, the droning questions, they had all blurred together eventually. Until they hadn't.

"You've been very candid in past interviews about your belief in the supernatural. You've even said a time or two that you yourself are haunted. Would you care to speak a little more towards that?"

Rachel, ever the professional, replied kindly. She'd had enough time, now, that it no longer wrenched her soul apart to talk about this.

"Yes, well, all throughout my life, she's been there."

"She?"

"Yes," Rachel replied, choosing, as always, to leave Quinn's name out of things. "She was a girl I went to high school with, and it pains me to say that she was taken from the world far too soon."

"Do you still see her? Hear from her?"

Rachel shook her head. "No, not since the dream." The interviewer remained silent, waiting. "She came to me, told me things, told me everything important in this world. I think that was when her soul finally found peace. I haven't had contact from her since - no silent phone calls, no appearances at my shows or knocks at my dressing room doors, nothing. But I think that's for the best - I know that she deserved peace, after all that time."

The interviewer nodded slowly, trying not to appear as affected by Rachel's story as she clearly was. "So," she asked, "you were friends in high school - good friends, right?"

Rachel smiled softly, dropped her eyes to her lap for a moment, and then replied with the answer Quinn had given her oh so long ago, the only answer that felt right: "Kind of."