summary: 'Because Quinn takes her breath. Quinn takes her gaze. Quinn takes her hand, and Rachel doesn't want to let go.' weekly canon fixing. 3x19 spoilers.

an (1): santana fucking lopez. also faberry happened. and i hate finn. with a startling passion that is only fueled by my insane lack of sleep at the moment. three cheers for finals! lol. anyway, enjoy! let me know what you think :)

an (2): recommended listening: "let's forget (all the things that we say)" by julia stone.

whisper war

.

she stared at her reflection in the glossed shop window as if to make sure, moment by moment, that she continued to exist. the silence between us was so profound i thought part of it must be my fault.

—sylvia plath, the bell jar

...

one. 'it takes two to make an accident'

.

It's almost like they're bound to end up like this. Quinn is damaged—broken, sometimes (more than a little) crazy, humbled, healing—and sometimes it hits Rachel in the chest when she sees her in her wheelchair. It's one of the most painful experiences Rachel has the moment she realizes that Quinn can't dance at her Senior Prom—it feels like the first few days after the accident, when Quinn had looked so hurt, when she'd been on a ventilator—but then Quinn smiles at Rachel.

Tonight Quinn looks beautiful.

So it's almost like when Rachel says, "When I look back on my high school career the one thing, the one accomplishment that i'm going to be so proud of is that I found a way to be your friend," it's just fate. It's just finally telling the truth.

Because Rachel means it. She means it maybe more than she's ever meant anything in her entire life.

And then, minutes later, when she's crowned prom queen—prom queen—and when she's dancing with Finn and Quinn stands up, Rachel can't look away.

Quinn takes everything from her. It's probably the thing Rachel is most sure of in her entire life. Not concretely, not in a way that she can really make sense of, but she knows.

Because Quinn takes her breath. Quinn takes her gaze. Quinn takes her hand, and Rachel doesn't want to let go.

...

two. he was too irritated to measure the terrific consequences

.

Finn gets angry one night a few days before Nationals, because of—Rachel's not entirely sure—possibly his math homework.

Then Rachel makes an offhanded comment about how Mike or Quinn could help him, and he looses it. Like, flips and kicks his chair and screams at her.

They're at her house alone and he scares her.

She tells him calmly to leave, and he does, calming and apologizing profusely the whole time. She doesn't accept his apology and she shuts the door behind him immediately before calling Kurt, sobbing when he picks up.

"I'll be there soon," he promises, and he is, complete with a (bootlegged) copy of Sound of Music, which they watch together twice.

And then Kurt says, "Rachel, you can't be in a relationship if he does things like this. It isn't safe and it isn't healthy."

She swallows. Strangely, she thinks of Russell Fabray, even though she never met him once.

Her dreams are haunted, and when she looks tired the next day at school, Quinn doesn't ask what's wrong. Instead she just hugs Rachel and says, "It's going to be okay."

Rachel knows that Quinn really has no clue as to why Rachel's sad, and scared, and more than a little angry, but Rachel also knows that it doesn't matter.

Because when Quinn keeps strong around around Rachel, holding her tenderly and tightly, Rachel trusts that Quinn is telling the truth.

Because today Quinn isn't in her wheelchair—instead she's using a walker—and today Quinn is smiling.

Later Rachel finds folded piece of paper in her locker, a little business card tucked into the crease. The card says: Alexandra Stevenson, PhD, Lima Family Counseling scripted in neat little black letters, a phone number underneath.

On the piece of paper, what is undoubtedly Quinn's handwriting reads: I have no idea if you need to talk to someone, or whatever. Dr. Stevenson is amazing. The words She's started to help me so much are scribbled out, but Rachel can read them anyway.

They matter more than she can even think to express, even through song.

It's probably the first time in her life silence feels filling.

...

three. the man falling isn't permitted to feel or hear himself hit bottom. he just keeps falling and falling

.

Rachel can't get Quinn dancing at Nationals out of her head. It's beautiful, and it works to both spurn and quell the host of the hurricanes in her chest.

That night, in the hotel, Brittany and Santana are off in another room, and Mercedes and Tina are celebrating still with some of the guys, and Rachel still really isn't talking to Finn after their breakup, so she goes back to her room.

Quinn is asleep, propped up on top of the comforter in bed, a Moleskin notebook flayed out across her chest. She's wearing glasses and a t-shirt and silk pajama pants with little ducks on them, and Rachel smiles because she's always loved the rare moments when she sees Quinn as Quinn.

Rachel takes Quinn's glasses off gently and then takes the notebook and moves to close it, but then she sees Quinn's scribbled, still-neat handwriting, and she can't resist.

girl:why do we have skin?

—when all i want to do is touch your cells

claw my way through your veins, slide slick around your arteries

i want to feel your muscles(your joints and the sweethereandthere of your fingerprints)

i press harder to stand in the arena of your spine

i need to wander around the spaces between your ribs, the beats between your knuckles

learn the flutter of your eyelids

the marrow of your bones fills my lungs(i exist again)

There are little doodles around the edge—a rabbit and four flowers, an outline of city buildings—like Quinn doesn't think what she's written is special.

But it's at that moment that maybe Rachel finally understands, because reading Quinn's words—reading them, because they were ones that never in Rachel's entire life did she ever imagine Quinn Fabray crafting—the hurricane of her chest intensifies.

But the eye of the storm is over her heart, which is silent for the first time in her entire life.

So she puts down the notebook and untucks the comforter, bringing it gently over Quinn's bent and graceful legs before she goes to the other side of the bed and climbs under.

Quinn mumbles a little when Rachel snuggles into her side, but she doesn't wake up, and she doesn't shrink away.

They wake up that same way in the morning, and Quinn only smiles shyly.

She doesn't move to let go, and Rachel only holds on tighter.

...

four. rummaging in our souls, we often dig up something that ought to have lain there unnoticed

.

"Hey," Quinn says quietly, walking onto the stage of the empty auditorium. Rachel's not surprised in the slightest that Quinn's found her.

"I got in," Rachel whispers.

"To NYADA?" Quinn sounds excited.

Rachel nods. She's been crying, but Quinn's uncharacteristic squeal makes Rachel grin.

"I would say 'I told you so,' but I'm just so happy for you!"

Quinn hugs Rachel then—without pretense, without hesitation—and Rachel returns it.

"I love you," Rachel murmurs into Quinn's shoulder, which stiffens.

Quinn immediately backs up from the embrace, and swallows, her eyes big and intense. "Rachel—"

Rachel takes Quinn's hands. "Remember at Prom when Santana said to stop making out with me?"

Quinn grimaces, then looks down, her cheeks flushing.

Rachel takes a gentle finger and puts it beneath Quinn's chin, raising it so Quinn's eyes lift from the floor and meet Rachel's again. "I've thought about it."

Rachel watches Quinn's pupils explode. "You—you have?"

Rachel laughs quietly. "A little more than just a bit, actually."

Quinn's mouth lilts into the prettiest smile that Rachel's ever seen, and then Quinn whispers, "Santana and I rigged prom. I won."

Rachel can't breathe.

Quinn says, "I love you, too."

Their kiss is the first time Rachel has ever known that poetry exists without music in the background.

Or maybe it's just that she really knows Quinn, and they're kind of the same thing.

...

five. you must allow me to tell you how ardently i admire and love you

.

It's almost like they were bound to end up like this, with Quinn tucked safely into Rachel's side, in Rachel's childhood bed in her childhood room, the night after graduation.

Rachel's skin is pressed into the seemingly endless expanse of Quinn's. Quinn smells like oranges and sandalwood—something Rachel will always associate with September, the first time she ever smelled it years ago—and Quinn's eyes are drooping closed.

"I told Finn to get you the gardenia corsage," Rachel says.

Quinn's still, then she just burrows further into Rachel's side. Rachel brings her fingers and traces the scars along Quinn's ribs gently.

"Gardenias mean secret love."

Quinn bites her bottom lip.

"Metaphors are important, you know," Rachel says.

Quinn smiles, then, lacing their fingers together and then propping herself up on one elbow. "If I speak to you in prose it is only because I am afraid to speak in poetry."

"What?"

"That's the first thing I ever wrote about you."

Quinn takes everything. Quinn takes Rachel's heart. Rachel whispers, "Quinn—"

Quinn shakes her head, kissing Rachel gently. "Everything else I've written since then has been about you too."

references. (since people have been asking, they're from some of my favourite classic novels).

.

title. "whisper war" by crystal castles.

quote. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath.

one. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

two. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton.

three. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

four. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy.

five. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.