summary: Finn asks, "How's Quinn?" Rachel's head spins. Lovely, she wants to say. Lovely and broken and perfect and really, really alive. Faberry oneshot, post On My Way, Rachel's POV, happy ending.
an (1): bonjour, lovelies! i hope life is wonderful and beautiful and worthy of all the poetry in the world, and if it isn't maybe this'll help :). anyway, this fic is from rachel's pov, because you guys seemed to like that :). it's probably the happiest and most faberry one yet (every time i write them, i ship them more! haha), so i hope you guys enjoy. message, review, whatever, i love them all! i hope your fridays are magical. xxx
an (2): recommended listening: "17" by youth lagoon.
when the light appears
.
according to Greek Mythology, humans were originally created with four arms, four legs, and a head with two faces. fearing their power, Zeus split them into two separate beings, condemning them to spend their lives in search of the other halves.
—plato's the symposium
...
one. may your eyelids never flutter into the empty distance
.
It's Puck's phone that rings, loudly and emphatically, just as Rachel has her hand on her forehead, fighting back tears as Finn tries to rush her out of the lobby and into the room where they're to be married. Puck looks to Santana sort of frantically and she doesn't shake her head so he answers it, even though Rachel glares.
And then Rachel sees his face fall, and his hand come to cover his mouth, and tears fill his eyes, although they don't fall. He nods and nods and nods for what seems like forever.
He brokenly says things about Quinn and a truck and running a stop sign, and it's in that moment that Rachel knows she will never be marrying Finn Hudson.
.
The only sound in the entire waiting room is sniffling. Punctuated every few seconds, it seems like it's mostly Brittany, although Santana's crying too.
Rachel can't cry, and she can't hold Finn's hand, and she can't breathe.
She had been texting Quinn. She had known Quinn was driving.
A doctor comes in a little while later, exhausted, in scrubs. He tells them that Quinn is alive but maybe not for long, that she's in surgery, that it's still touch-and-go at this point.
That they haven't been able to get a nervous response from below her broken L2 vertebrae.
It's when Artie's face falls that Rachel takes the ring off.
.
People go home for the night because Quinn has hours more of surgery.
Finn leaves and Rachel stays. This is really all she needs to know.
.
All Rachel sees when she closes her eyes is silky blond hair matted with blood, a flash of metal, the frantic, demanding blare of a horn, the skidding of wheels. She smells the burning of tires.
She wonders if Quinn had been conscious for any time after the accident, how scary and painful that must have been.
She wonders if Quinn thought of her.
Rachel doesn't sleep a second.
.
The doctor comes at 4:27 in the morning, his shoulders slumped. There's drops of dark blood on the toe of the baby blue slipper over his trainer, which makes Rachel feel so nauseous she tries to find a trashcan just in case.
All that Rachel knows is that if they couldn't fix Quinn, Rachel won't be happy again. Ever.
She's also aware of the feeling of Brittany's leg against hers, the frantic pounding of her heart.
"Quinn did well," the doctor says. Rachel breathes for the first time in her entire life.
.
It feels like someone's taken a sledgehammer to Rachel's chest when she sees walks through the door of Quinn's hospital room. It hurts—physically, tangibly hurts—when she takes in the shiny staples against Quinn's smooth, thin thigh, the stitches pulling together the soft skin of her cheek. There are tubes everywhere, the worst running from under her hospital gown from somewhere by her chest, and these trickle light red blood into a little container hooked onto the rail of the bed. Quinn has a black eye and a breathing tube taped into her mouth. There's an IV pumping fluids and morphine into a vein just above her collarbone, taped down with gauze.
Rachel feels split in half because Quinn has been too.
Rachel pulls her arms tight across her chest, and Quinn's mom sits down at the side of the bed on a hard plastic chair, and she takes Quinn's hand gently, her hospital bracelet shining in the sunlight of the day beginning—just like always, and like never—again. Today, Rachel knows the beeping of Quinn's heart rate monitor is the most beautiful sound in the entire world.
...
two. so long lives this, and this gives life to thee
.
Quinn's breathing over the ventilator by two in the afternoon, which the doctors tell them is almost a miracle. They're keeping her heavily sedated, because she'd be in—and this is the phrase they use—too much pain, which terrifies Rachel.
Mr. Schue comes around three, with Brittany and Santana, who had left earlier in the morning to change and eat.
Brittany hands Rachel a Cherrios duffel bag. Rachel remembers she's still in her wedding dress. It's probably a total coincidence, but as soon as Rachel changes into grey sweatpants and a white Cheerios t-shirt, when she comes out of the bathroom, the doctors have just taken the breathing tube out of Quinn's throat.
Her mouth is pale but her lips are full, and Rachel takes her hand. Quinn's breaths never falter once.
.
Rachel convinces her dads to let her stay one more night. This is the last night they're keeping Quinn so sedated, and it's scary to think about: Quinn's beautiful mind and Quinn's beautiful eyes being squelched by a deluge of medication.
Rachel never asks what too much pain might mean, whether it would just make Quinn pass out or whether Quinn would scream. Or whether it might make Quinn die, which Rachel doesn't find that hard to believe anymore at all.
.
At 6:32 the next morning, they start changing Quinn's medications. Rachel holds on to her hand and vows to be brave. To never let go, no matter how hard Quinn squeezes.
.
Something hits Rachel's head lightly. It doesn't hurt. Rachel opens her eyes and sees a hospital blanket, and then she remembers.
She shoots up from where she'd fallen asleep that morning, apparently, her head resting against Quinn's stomach.
Quinn looks dazed and exhausted, but her eyes are open.
"Rachel," she says, rasping.
"Hey," Rachel says, scooting towards Quinn's head and running her fingers through her soft hair.
"I hit you in the head," Quinn says.
Rachel tries not to laugh, and then Quinn looks really confused, but she smiles the tiniest smile that absolutely breaks Rachel's heart.
.
Quinn wakes up again around lunchtime, tears leaking out of her eyes, rolling down her temples and into her hair.
"What are they doing to me?" she groans, clenching her jaw.
Rachel takes her hand and squeezes, once, gently. Quinn returns it with all of the strength she has, her knuckles turning white.
Rachel wipes her tears silently and then starts to sing "Tender" by Blur, because she knows it's Quinn's favorite.
It takes a few repetitions, but eventually Quinn stops crying and then she falls asleep.
Only after Rachel's sure that Quinn's going to stay sleeping for a little while does she go to the bathroom and sob.
She's never felt this much pain before, but she also recognises that it really is what makes her alive.
The same goes for Quinn.
...
three. i am a part of all that i have met
.
"Have you talked to Finn?" Hiram asks when Rachel gets home.
"Quinn woke up," she says.
.
He literally throws pebbles at her window. Rachel thinks she's imagining them at first, because she's just lying on her bed, sprawled out, because she's never been so tired but she can't sleep because Quinn's bruises have taken up residence on the inside of her eyelids.
But the little clicks against the glass of her window keep happening, so Rachel finally gets up and stumbles to her window. She finally showered earlier and her hair is braided loosely. Finn is outside, a dopey smile on his face. Rachel opens the window—for some reason, she can't bear to bring herself to go downstairs to talk to him—and stage-whispers, "Finn, what are you doing?"
"You haven't returned any of my calls."
This is true, and this is because the second Rachel picked up her phone after she found out, unlocked the screen, Quinn Fabray lit up and Rachel's string of panicked texts blinked green and menacing.
"Sorry," she says. She doesn't offer an explanation.
"Can I—can I come up?"
"I was just going to sleep actually."
"Oh," Finn says. "Okay."
"Yeah, okay."
Finn clears his throat. "How's Quinn?"
Rachel's head spins. Lovely, she wants to say. Lovely and broken and perfect and really, really alive. But instead she says, "She doesn't know about her legs yet, but she woke up today."
Finn nods and doesn't say anything back. Rachel wonders if he's always been like this.
.
Rachel is, technically, supposed to go to school, because it's Monday and they're not on break or anything, but the thought of sitting in class and seeing Quinn's empty seat next to her is beyond what she wants to think about, let alone having to talk to Finn.
"Can I just miss today? Quinn—" she starts, and then thinks Quinn what?
But Leroy just nods and kisses her on the forehead.
.
When Rachel gets to the hospital, there's someone whom she's never met sitting in the chair by Quinn's bed, slumped over so that her head is resting next to Quinn's on the pillow. Her hair is short, but it's the same blond as Quinn's, and they have the same cheekbones and mouths.
She's singing something softly in what may or may not be French, and Quinn is trying not to cry, but she also seems happy.
Rachel's heart lurches and drops beneath her feet when Quinn looks towards her.
"Rach," she whispers. "Hi."
"Hi," Rachel says, although she doesn't move.
"This is Frannie," Quinn says, "my sister."
Frannie sits up with a small smile. A few strands of her hair stick up and Quinn smooths them down with extreme focus. "Nice to meet you," Frannie says.
"You too," Rachel says, then finally goes to sit by them. "How are you today?"
Quinn's face falls and she swallows, rubs her nose even though little oxygen tubes are stuck into it. "They told me. About—about my spinal cord."
Rachel closes her eyes and wills herself not to cry. "I'm so sorry."
Quinn shakes her head. "Not your fault."
Rachel takes Quinn's hand, and Frannie watches them, her eyes widening ever so slightly, when Rachel says, "I'll help you get better."
"Promise?" Quinn whispers.
"Promise."
Quinn nods.
"And I'll always think you're beautiful."
If Quinn blushes, Frannie doesn't say anything.
.
Artie and Mercedes and Puck come later that day, after school, and Quinn gives them small, careful hugs.
They all decide to watch Sabrina, Quinn's favourite Audrey Hepburn film, and no one says anything when she quietly asks Rachel to lay down next to her, and no one says anything when Rachel does so without skipping a beat.
Quinn falls asleep twenty minutes after the movie starts, but they all watch the entire thing anyway. It's just right.
...
four. their shadows, with the magic hand of chance
.
Rachel has to go to school eventually, after all. When Finn sees her in the hallway, she just feels tired. Exhausted.
Quinn had had a rough night last night, Frannie had texted her, which makes both of them sad and worried.
Finn tries to hold her hand.
She tugs it away. It's cold.
.
In Glee—which Quinn threatened to do something harmful to Rachel if she skipped—the empty seat in front of her is that much more lonely.
Rachel starts crying before they even start the song.
.
Carol and Burt are visiting when Rachel gets there. Frannie is asleep on a little cot, so they're quiet, but Quinn seems to be doing a little better.
They greet Rachel with smiles, all of them, and it causes something in her to shift irrevocably, some lights to switch off while others turn on.
"I can't marry him," she whispers, "I can't."
Frannie wakes up and Carol and Burt nod seriously, but not angrily. Quinn smiles.
.
"Dad?" Rachel asks later that night. "How did you know you were in love? Like the kind of love people sing about and write poetry about?" When she says this she thinks of Quinn, and that may be all the answer she needs.
Hiram smiles, turns off the kettle on the stove and pours hot water into Rachel's tea mug. "I wanted to spend my entire life thinking about what your father's hand felt like in mine."
Rachel blinks. She's remembered the substance of Quinn's hands—warm, soft, small, with one callous on her middle right finger, just by her nail, from writing so much—all day.
.
Frannie calls her early Friday morning. "She's freaking out," she tells Rachel, her voice shaking. "I knew it was going to happen sometime, because this is like way to much for anyone to handle in a sane, calm way, but this—I don't know her like—you should come."
Rachel doesn't hesitate for a second, although she doesn't speed to the hospital. When she gets there, Quinn is sobbing, gasping a little, hiccuping, sitting up in bed as much as she can. Frannie's scrunched onto the side, rubbing Quinn's back, tucking strands of Quinn's hair behind her ear.
"Why did this happen to me?" Quinn weeps.
It's an answer that Rachel cannot give—will never be able to give—but she goes calmly to Quinn's bedside and sits opposite Frannie, wraps her arms around Quinn's shaking shoulders.
"I love you," she tells Quinn. "I love you, I love you, I love you."
Quinn sniffles and looks at Rachel, and her brows knit together, and her bloodshot eyes are huge in her face, and Rachel nods.
Quinn says, reverent, "I love you, too."
...
five. i stop somewhere waiting for you
.
Rachel tries to explain their assignment in AP English 12 to Quinn one afternoon.
"I just don't understand why we're doing Wuthering Heights without doing feminist theory. Or at least dialectics," she huffs. "And she really didn't address modernity in The Old Man and the Sea?"
"I have no idea what you're talking about," Rachel admits.
Quinn laughs brightly. "I can teach you," she offers.
"Won't that be boring?"
Quinn arches an eyebrow. "Oh, I can make it a lot more interesting than you'd believe."
Rachel's entire face flushes with embarrassment and something entirely different from that, too—pleasure.
.
"Finn," Rachel says, standing in the living room of his house. He makes her feel guilty—for dreaming bigger, for being smarter, for loving more complexly—but she forges on. "I'm sorry," she says.
His face falls. "But—I thought—"
"I want you to be really happy someday, Finn," she says. "And I need to think the same thing for myself."
Rachel doesn't even really cry.
.
Quinn gets to go home, and Rachel goes to her house that evening. Quinn's already in bed, in her room, watching a movie on her laptop.
She smiles when Rachel comes in, says, in a British accent, "I'm going to read what I want, and I'm going to listen to what I want, and I'm going to look at paintings and watch French films, and I'm going to talk to people who know lots about lots."
Rachel grins. "What are you talking about?"
Quinn's eyes widen. "It's An Education," she says, like she's talking about The Bible or something else sacred. "You haven't seen it?"
Rachel shakes her head no.
"Well, Rachel," she says, "you need to get in her now." She lifts the comforter. "We can start it over. I'll probably fall asleep, but you can finish it, and you'll understand the end, so I won't have to explain it like I did to Santana and Brittany—they didn't really like it, which is ridiculous—and it's Carrie Mulligan, who is—"
Rachel cuts her off with a gentle, tentative kiss. Quinn's hand comes behind Rachel's head and tangles in her hair, her lips open with a little moan. Rachel backs up just a tiny bit, whispers, "You don't ever shut up, do you?"
Quinn smiles so perfectly then that Rachel's heart almost bursts. "I've apparently learned rambling from the best."
"I broke up with Finn," she says.
Quinn instantly grows serious. "Are you okay?"
Rachel searches Quinn's face for any signs of doubt. When they're not there, she says, "Yeah," and she means it.
.
"I've waited for you forever," Rachel whispers into the dark, in the middle of the night, when she thinks Quinn's surely asleep.
But Quinn whispers, "Me too."
.
Quinn calls Rachel on a Saturday morning.
"What's up?"
Quinn's breathless I can feel my legs nearly makes Rachel drop the phone.
...
six. alive;we're alive,dear:it's(kiss me now)spring!
.
Quinn starts learning to walk again, which she finds much more frustrating than Rachel does—to Rachel, her progress is remarkable, and her drive is even more amazing. Quinn sweeps her hair back in a headband and never cries and bites her lip and works so hard she starts sweating every time.
The first day she takes a step on her own, Rachel and Mercedes and Kurt and Blaine are there, and there's a moment of absolute silence when it happens, everyone's eyes wide, as to make sure it's real. That they don't miss it.
Quinn looks to them with a shocked, blissful smile, and then everyone is hugging and kissing and Quinn just laughs, vibrant again.
.
In Quinn's valedictorian speech, she thanks Glee club and she specifically thanks Rachel.
It's the most beautiful thing Rachel has ever heard.
.
Quinn surprises Rachel by taking her on an official date, on the last day official day of spring. She comes to Rachel's door and declares that this is the beginning of their actual relationship as a couple, and Quinn looks so adorable and lovely in a perfect green sundress and oxfords, her hair straight and falling just below her jaw, that Rachel can't even think about saying no. Quinn doesn't drive anywhere—Rachel thinks she probably won't ever drive again, at least not for a long time—but they walk slowly around Rachel's neighborhood—when Quinn falters, Rachel holds her waist tightly with a smile—to a park.
Quinn's set up a little blanket with a picnic, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches cut with cookie cutters into tiny little suns and moons, and there's a basket of strawberries. There are chocolate chip cookies—homemade, Quinn says proudly—and lemonade.
"I made sure all of it's vegan, too," Quinn says, then sits and pops a strawberry into her mouth.
"Quinn—" Rachel breathes.
Quinn looks up at her, and her face falls when she sees Rachel's expression. "I know it's kind of lame and everything, but I just thought that—"
Rachel scrambles down next to Quinn and shakes her head. "It's perfect."
Quinn smiles a little. "Really?"
"Absolutely."
"Did you know that E.E. Cumming's favourite season was spring?" she says.
"Nope."
She hands Rachel a little plate. "Well it was. And his words are the most beautiful things ever, I think."
"I did know that," Rachel says with a teasing smirk.
Quinn rolls her eyes. "And you know what else?" she says, putting her plate down and leaning towards Rachel, her arm resting solidly on the blanket between them.
"What?" Rachel whispers.
Quinn kisses her once, softly and gently and sweetly, a kiss of childhood and first-loves. She tastes like strawberries and tomorrow. She murmurs, "They make me think of you."
.
Rachel lays back against the blanket, her head next to Quinn's, as the stars emerge overhead.
"Quinn?"
"Hmmm?"
"When you were—I was so scared and you were—you almost died."
"I'm sorry."
Rachel shakes her head, pressing her ear to Quinn's chest. "But you didn't."
"No, I didn't."
Rachel kisses to the warm skin just above the top of Quinn's dress. "You have a beautiful heartbeat."
Quinn squeezes her hand. "Thanks."
.
Rachel doesn't have any nightmares about the accident that night. Curled up with Quinn, limbs intersecting and melding, the pads of her fingers playing gently against the smooth, large scars that run along Quinn's body, Rachel sleeps all the way through the night.
...
seven. but one man loved the pilgrim Soul in you
.
For the next months, Rachel lives in Quinn's smiles and laughter, in squinting into the sun and seeing Quinn bite her lip before she says something nerdy, in how blond her hair gets from spending time outside, in how she gets a few freckles on her back, in how her skin grows golden, in how she always manages to smell like sandalwood and oranges.
They talk about their dreams and their future.
For once, Rachel doesn't think they seem silly. Quinn makes them feel real.
.
Quinn writes Rachel a letter—a love letter—the day before she goes to Yale.
"You can't open it until morning," she commands. "Tonight we're together, okay?"
Of course Rachel agrees.
.
"I'll see you soon," Quinn whispers into Rachel's ear before she goes through security at the airport. "We'll only be two hours apart and everything."
Rachel nods and kisses Quinn one last time, wiping away a few tears that manage to sneak down Quinn's cheeks. "I love you."
"I love you, too."
"Don't meet any smart Yale girls that know poetry and make you fall in love with them."
Quinn laughs, then, as if she thinks this is the most ridiculous thing in the world. "Don't you know I have a thing for musicians?"
.
My dear Rachel,
Today we got to do something I've wanted to do for my entire life: Say goodbye to your one great love at an airport. I know that sounds strange, and maybe it is, but there's something magical in it, don't you think? Because no matter where I go or who I meet or what magnificent things I read, I will remember your lips on mine, your fingers weaving through the spaces of my hands, the curve of your spine as you hug me. I will think of your smile constantly, and your laugh, and your hair. I will scream Allen Ginsberg and whisper Emily Dickinson to you in the middle of the night when I cannot sleep because I miss your arms around my chest. People will ask me if I believe in poetry and I will tell them yes, because I have seen it, and I have smelled it, and I have touched it, and I have heard it, and I have tasted it. I will tell them it looks like penny loafers and that is smells like Chanel No. 5 and that it feels like smooth skin and your lips and walking again and that it sounds like Barbra Streisand only more remarkable and that it tastes like summer and strawberries and the idea of going to Paris. I will tell them that poetry is love, and when I say this I will think of you.
And then we will see each other again, and I will search for you in the crowd of people waiting to meet the strangers they still know, and then I will see you waving, for you will have seen me first. I will walk towards you—walk—and then I will know you again, and I will learn your alleys and boulevards and cobblestone rues over and over each time, and your lips will breathe airy light into the night that is my chest, and I will be whole once more.
I will do this forever, again and again.
Yours,
Quinn xx
.
(Years and years later, when their children—a daughter and then a son—ask Rachel when she knew that she'd spend her life with Quinn, she will show them this.)
references (in real life I'm also in love with a beautiful boy, so tonight they're all poetry):
title. "When the Light Appears" by Allen Ginsberg.
one. "Don't Go Far Off" by Pablo Neruda.
two. "Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day (Sonnet 18)" by William Shakespeare.
three. "Ulysses" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
four. "When I Have Fears" by John Keats.
five. "Leaves of Grass" by Walt Whitman.
six. "when faces called flowers float out of the ground" by E.E. Cummings.
seven. "When You are Old" by William B. Yeats.