it was the same thing over and over again, day in and day out. she didn't blink as she watched the snowflakes sprinkle down from the sky and land gently on her windowsill, collecting in the pile of snow that hadn't yet melted from yesterday. truthfully, she somewhat doubted that she even remembered how to blink. it seemed like she didn't remember how to do much of anything anymore.

with her hands folded and nestled up under her cheek, she laid in bed with her head permanently glued to the pillow, and let the blanket fibers tickle her nose when they rustled with her breathing. she heard the mailman's truck slow to a stop just outside the window, and she knew that he would soon be there. she didn't remember how to tell time, at least not the way she used to. for the last week, she learned to tell time by relying on certainties.

like how every day except sunday, the mailman would stop on their street and shortly after, kurt would knock three times and ask her if she wanted something to eat. and then a few hours or minutes - she couldn't tell which, everything ran together anymore - after the mail came, the school bus would chug down their street and she knew that kurt would watch the drag race show in the living room, and she'd have something to listen to. in and out of sleep, in and out of consciousness, that was what her life was.

like clockwork, kurt knocked and told her he made soup. she didn't answer, and he didn't come in and that was the end of that. no forceful conversations, no blatant intrusion. just him living his life outside that door and her living what was left of hers.

nobody knew what to say to her, and she wasn't interested in hearing it anyway. she'd heard a thousand "i'm sorrys" and maybe a million takes on "she's in a better place", but all those meaningless condolences did nothing but make rachel want to scream. she wanted to climb on top of the highest surface in all of lima and tell everybody to stop trying to make it better because it was never going to get any better. it was always going to be this bad, it was never going to be the way it should be, and the way it should have been was with her.

they didn't know quinn like she did. they may have thought so, but they didn't know her. not in the way that mattered. they didn't know how her eyes twinkled when she was really excited about something and how her lip twitched if she was uncomfortable. they didn't know the sound of her laugh at 2am, or the way her hair curled up when she just got out of the shower.

rachel rolled onto her side, smashing her face deep into the purple and white body pillow to her left. she inhaled. long, deep, uninterrupted. her scent was fading, just a little bit. but if she did it - if she really inhaled deep enough - she could still catch the little remnants of coconut shampoo and aloe lotion. the scent of quinn.

it was crazy, she thought. crazy the way that somebody could be gone so quickly. it was just last week that she was there, in bed next to her, laughing at nothing but everything and then the next day, she was gone. like she was a pair of car keys or television remote. there one second, gone the next. and the only thing she had to prove that she was ever there was the old pillow that she slept on.

her voice was fading too, and she didn't know that it would happen that quickly. she figured she still had a few months before that started to happen, but she was wrong. it was happening all at once, happening so fast, like being swept up in a wave of the ocean with nothing left to grab onto...

...except for when she would muster up the strength at some point during the day and grab her phone.

she pulled her face out of the tear-soaked pillow and felt around on the mattress beside her for the smooth, silicone-covered rectangle. when she found her phone, she cleared the tears from her vision and unlocked it. and it was muscle memory by then, something she could do with her eyes closed. because it was something she'd been doing since she got that call last week.

she tapped on quinn's name and laid the phone against her ear as it rung. in her head, she kept count.

one...two...three...four...five...six...seven...eight. eight rings was what it took for it to go to voicemail and after eight rings, she would be able to hear the sound of the deep, raspy voice that she would give anything to hear once again.

hey, it's quinn. leave me a message. the words bounced around in her head like a soccerball, she memorized them the second day she resorted to doing this.

the phone rang longer this time, but she was too dazed to notice. it was on the tenth ring when it finally stopped, and it stopped the way her heart did when she heard rustling on the other end.

"...quinn?" she croaked, surprised at the sound of her own voice. she didn't know she could talk anymore. that ability seemed to have gone away as soon as she walked down the hallway of the hospital and saw quinn's mother collapsed, crying on the floor.

"hello?" she heard it. deep, raspy, her favorite sound.

she sat up in bed, hand glued to the phone, heart racing. "quinn?"

"rachel?"

"quinn!"

"rachel!"

she opened her mouth to say more, but the words just wouldn't fall out and she needed them to. she needed them to, she needed to talk to her, she needed to know if she was okay. she needed her more than she ever thought she needed anyone, needed her to be okay, needed her to tell her that this was all some big elaborate hoax or a disgusting mistake. but why couldn't she talk?

"rachel..." quinn's voice faded as rachel felt her body being jolted from side to side.

"rachel," kurt said softly, shaking her awake. "wake up... you're having another one of your nightmares."