summary: The next day, when she wakes up from surgery, she imagines the spattering of filtered light from various Bible scenes built as stained glass windows staining her white dress, a kaleidoscope of flame.
an (1): annnnnd, here's a random, decently angsty drabble. this is basically just a smattering of all of the deleted scenes so far that almost made it into stuff i've written. all of this should fit in the art of boxes universe.
an (2): title from an exhibit at MoMA. quote from bon iver's 'calgary.'
(also, i don't know why this story keeps saying it won't be found. ffn, get your shit together.)
...
a list of imaginary places (and a voice to call them by)
.
(i was only trying to spell a loss)
.
Just before Lucy—Quinn—goes into the hospital for her nose job, the night before, she stands in front of the mirror and imagines an entire life, one where she's twenty-five and has written books as wonderful as Harry Potter or Alice in Wonderland, one where she and Frannie meet up at pretty restaurants and talk about how happy they are, and Frannie treats her like a friend.
She tries very hard to picture a wedding (walking down the aisle, Russell on her arm, Judy crying in the front row of some perfect, stuffy church) but she can never quite make it up the alter. There should be a groom there, someone with a dopey smile like Ryan Gosling, and she should love him. Want him. But she can never quite conjure up anyone to wait for her.
So instead that night she silently says goodbye to Lucy. She throws a party and a funeral at once, and she falls asleep waiting for a wedding that she can never quite force her brain to create.
The next day, when she wakes up from surgery, she imagines the spattering of filtered light from various Bible scenes built as stained glass windows staining her white dress, a kaleidoscope of flame.
.
The first night after Beth's born—or the second, really, but the first night Quinn's allowed out of the hospital, so it's a beginning (right?)—Santana tries to make fun of her until Quinn really can't stop crying.
Her skin feels too big; her body feels too large for the terrifying vapour of her soul, spreading everywhere, molecules soft and unsteady, colliding with her muscles. So she kisses Santana, with fear and anger and such pervading sadness that she wonders if it will ever rise from her bones and evaporate in sunlight she can never seem to achieve (because Santana is beautiful, and Quinn craves her body—the soft flesh of her legs—and that alone is enough to never allow clouds to break).
Santana kisses her back, and it only makes it harder to breathe.
.
She's not a virgin (obviously), but that summer before junior year, when Santana pulls the skirt from Quinn's body and Quinn only nods, it sends a jolt of terrible loss through Quinn.
And then Santana whispers Brittany and Quinn understands.
(But Rachel works its way from Quinn's lips, anyway, and Santana doesn't stop.)
.
"I'm not gay," she whispers to herself, sobbing, curled up in the shower.
This time it's an easy slip, just the wrong angle, a turn of her hand just a tiny bit, and then the soft skin of her stomach, just above her bellybutton, is charged red.
She doesn't even feel it, no matter how dark the water runs.
A week and a half later it's merely a little scar. She makes up lies about it in her head, alibis and backups, in case anyone ever sees it and asks.
No one does.
.
Rachel smiles at her from across their AP English classroom the first day after they come back from Nationals, meeting her after the bell rings.
"I like your hair," Rachel says.
Quinn shrugs.
"It looks nice. You could pull anything off, honestly, but you look—"
The inevitable flood ignites in her chest. "—Thanks, Rachel."
She walks away and wonders if anything is effective against gasoline that she once mistook for water, or if the tiny droplets of chemicals in her bones are going to stay there forever, until she burns up.
.
The second week of summer, Quinn is watching her seventh episode of Skins in one day, and then she literally can't breathe. Her head is swimming and she feels such frantic, manic energy that she can't sit still.
She wanders until she finds a party, and there's a girl there who smiles at her.
"I'm Abigail," she says.
There are scratches everywhere along Quinn's back the next morning, and a few hickeys, and she dyes her hair the same day.
She decides burning up faster might hurt less, and Abigail's fiery red hair is already invading her dreams.
.
It doesn't matter, really, because it seems that as soon as she goes back to school, Rachel's there and Quinn's racing heart is a failed escape of all of the animals in the forest as it goes up in smoke.
.
Quinn likes her therapist, a lot. Dr. Hastings is patient and smart and funny, and she doesn't push Quinn too hard.
"I want her," Quinn admits, and it feels huge and important and so simple at the same time. "Is that so wrong?"
Dr. Hastings very, very seriously looks at Quinn and says, "There is nothing wrong with that."
.
When she pictures a wedding now, she can easily place Rachel at the alter.
The only problem is that Finn is there too.
.
After the accident, one afternoon a few days after she gets to go home, Quinn stares at her legs through blurry eyes. Tears drip onto the insides of her glasses and then her arms are a flurry of movement, and she can only feel her fists striking something.
Her brain knows that they're her legs, and she's screaming at herself to just feel them, screaming so hard and wishing and praying and it's all her fault.
Judy hears her and rushes in, grasps Quinn's wrists even as Quinn weakly struggles against her.
Until she can't anymore, and then she sobs and Judy holds her and runs her fingers through her hair.
The fire lesses, just a little, even though it scorches and aches no matter what, and she breathes even though her chest is agonizing.
Still, she feels a little better after that.
.
"I'm trying to reconcile two things."
Santana nods and continues to paint Brittany's toenails. Brittany smiles at Quinn.
"Because, like, I'm not just my body; neither are you, or anyone, for that matter. But, if my body had been too damaged to repair, I would've been gone, all of me." She snaps her fingers. "Just like that."
Santana caps the nailpolish and glares, and Brittany's brows knit together.
"Don't you think there's part of us that's enduring, though? Things we write or make or say, those things last longer than a physical life. Right?"
Santana looks like she's about to throw up, and Brittany puts a steady hand along her forearm. "I would've remembered you forever, if that's what you mean," she says.
Santana sniffles and wipes a few tears and stands and says, "I'm going to get booze."
Brittany tickles the bottom of Quinn's foot where it's dangling off the end of Santana's bed, and Quinn feels it.
They laugh like everything's fine, like everything's right, and Quinn gives up on metaphysical, existential reconciliation for now—later, she'll come to the conclusion that Tennyson was right, and that she is part of every person she has ever met, and so on and so forth, and that therefore, she inhabits a special, unique sort of forever (and she will, in fact, write an entire thesis on this for her Bachelor's degree four years later)—but for now, she's eighteen and young and beautiful and fleeting and oh so fragile, so she spends the evening getting drunk with her best friends.
.
Rachel celebrates with Finn after they win Nationals, but she comes back to the hotel room early, around eight, which surprises Quinn.
Quinn is the only one there, and she's exhausted and achy and pretty much unable to move, and everyone else has gone to the pool, but Quinn's had enough of exhausted and achy swimming these past few months at physical therapy to last her a lifetime.
Rachel smiles when she sees Quinn, and then plops down next to her on the bed.
"You were amazing," Rachel says. "You are amazing."
"So are you," Quinn says.
Rachel shakes her head and Quinn nods, and they laugh a little.
"I can't move," Quinn says. "I won't be able to move for the next few days probably."
Rachel frowns and crawls back so that she's lying down next to Quinn.
"So when you get into NYADA, you better buy me a two hour massage the first time I come to visit you in New York."
Rachel laughs, and she nods, then rests her head against Quinn's shoulder. "Deal."
.
Santana laughs so loudly that it wakes Quinn up one morning when they're twenty. Quinn groans from the couch in Santana's apartment and mumbles, "What's so funny?"
Santana points to Quinn's ribs and Quinn shoves on her glasses before she glances down and sees black lettering beneath her scar.
"When I woke up this morning I couldn't remember if you'd actually gotten it last night, or if I was imagining it, but—"
"—Shit," Quinn says, licking her finger and trying to rub off the letters. "Shit."
"Tattoos are permanent, Quinn," Brittany says, walking from the kitchen in one of Santana's t-shirts and handing Quinn a cup of coffee. "I don't think your spit will get it off. Maybe if it was magic spit or something, but I don't—"
"Rachel's going to kill me."
Santana shrugs. "It's really actually pretty cool. Very you and all."
Which is sort of true; it's small and neat and says I am a part of all that I have met, which is from Tennyson's "Ulysses."
"Rachel hates tattoos," Quinn says. "Also, why don't I have any clothes on?"
Brittany says, "You don't, do you?"
Santana tosses her a t-shirt and a pair of boxers. "Get dressed now. Your girlfriend is coming over in—" she checks her phone— "two minutes, according to Rachel Berry time."
Quinn groans again and tugs on her clothes, takes a few asprin that Brittany hands her with a sympathetic smile.
Rachel is indeed on time, and Santana and Brittany go to "get groceries" while she and Rachel have a "talk."
"I got a tattoo last night," Quinn says.
"What?"
Quinn takes her shirt off and reveals the letters to Rachel, who then smiles.
"I love it," she says.
"Really?"
Rachel nods. "I normally don't like tattoos, and I don't really like that you went without asking me, and with Santana and Brittany on a night when I had rehearsals and couldn't accompany you, but it's cool. In the future, I think it's best we discuss all body modifications beforehand with each other, but—"
Quinn kisses her and Rachel squeaks but is soon pushing Quinn up against Santana's kitchen table.
"Fuck!" Santana shouts a few minutes later, and Quinn opens her eyes long enough to see Santana slap a hand over her eyes before racing out of the apartment again, tugging a gaping Brittany with her.
Rachel's laugh reverberates all the way through Quinn when they hear Santana say, "You owe me a new kitchen table," through the front door.
.
After they get together in college, they fight sometimes, as any couple is prone to do. All but once they're little squabbles; their junior year, Quinn is stressed and feeling self-deprecating and self-effacing, and all of a sudden, she's saying hurtful things to Rachel.
Which leaves them both stunned, standing there breathless; Rachel's crying and Quinn's sure that, suddenly, her bones have morphed to ash.
She tries to apologise immediately but then Rachel's out the door.
They don't talk for a few days, but then Quinn takes the train down to New York.
She knocks on Rachel's door for a solid twenty minutes before sitting down outside, her head in her hands and sobs ripping through her frame.
"I'm so sorry," Quinn says. "I didn't mean any of those things—you know that, Rach. Please, just, I—I love you. I've loved you for so long."
And then Quinn feels a small, familiar, warm hand on her shoulder, and she looks up, and Rachel's standing above her, looking concerned and maybe slightly amused. The door is still closed; it never opened.
"I had rehearsal," she says.
"Oh."
And then Rachel sits down next to Quinn and laughs just a little.
Quinn starts laughing, too, and Rachel kisses her.
.
The night before Quinn has to have another surgery during grad school, she and Rachel make love for hours.
"What if you had died?" Rachel whispers.
(Quinn remembers Tennyson and tugs Rachel's hand to trace her tattoo, even in the dark, even though they can't see it—they know it's there.)
"I didn't," she says. "I won't."
.
She gets home from a physical therapy session (which was only a precaution, because everything went fine) to find Rachel sitting in the middle of their bed, sobbing.
"I still feel like it's my fault," Rachel says.
Quinn's heart lurches, and she starts trembling, like her cells are literally coming apart at Rachel's admission. She scrambles onto the bed and slips her left arm out of the sling, then gently puts her shaking fingers underneath Rachel's chin.
Then Quinn kisses Rachel. It's different than ever before, a skittering hurricane of all of the vapour of her soul that she can muster; Rachel has to feel it.
"It never was," Quinn says.
(Ghosts are sometimes the only solid proof she has; they live in scars, everywhere.)
.
When Beth is nine, during one of her visits to Quinn and Rachel's during the summer, they go to the pool at the club nearby.
Beth looks at Quinn sturdily as she takes off her t-shirt.
"Mom says you were in a car accident."
Quinn nods. "That was a long time ago."
Beth shrugs. "Scars are cool, anyway," she says before she cannonballs into the pool, splashing a wide-eyed, crying, grinning Rachel.
.
She doesn't have to imagine anything about her wedding anymore; the reception features jars of fireflies.
...
references. yes, alfred, lord tennyson's "ulysses." because all hipster lit nerds adore that line. especially me. and quinn.