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griefofdawn) wrote2012-02-14 06:49 pm
An Unknowing Broken Heart
Pairing/Character: Quinn/Rachel - sort of.
When/Where: AU. 10+ years post high school
Author's Note: First attempt at angst. 1 part and possibly an epilogue.
Warnings: Mention of character deaths.
Rating: T/PG-13 for Angst.
Word Count: 3,540 ( 1 of 1+ )
Summary: Quinn was twenty eight when her world ended. But she wouldn't find out until she was thirty.
When Quinn received the invitation to the Gleek barbecue during her tenth high school reunion, it was already two months to late. Only Mr. Schuester would think a postcard was a speedy form of communication in the post-Facebook age, she thought, finding it while digging through months worth of junk mail during a brief visit to her city loft.
It was especially annoying because anyone who really wanted to contact her could use email or a multitude of other ways through the social web or even just call her. She might have spent the last six months out in the middle of the Mongolian desert as staff photographer for an archeological dig, but she wasn't exactly incommunicado.
If her mother or sister could find a way to contact her, no matter where her nomadic life took her, so could anyone else who really wanted to talk with her.
Thinking nothing more of it, not having had any real contact with any of the Gleeks in almost a decade, except during a few holidays in Lima during freshman year in college, before her mother moved to Cleveland to live with Frannie, Frannie's husband, and a potential grandchild, she repacked her bags and headed off on another assignment, this time to the mountains of Peru.
Quinn never really questioned her own sexuality when she was growing up. Even after her own failure to be the Good Christian Girl her parents expected, or after exposure to Kurt, Santana, and Brittany, she never doubted she would one day marry some man like her father, have good little children, a dog, and a regulation white picket fence. It was what Good Christian Girls did, even disgraced ones like herself.
The first seeds of doubt were planted by Rachel Berry, of all people, at one of Puck's post-graduation parties. A decade later she still couldn't remember how it happened, how she ended up making out with the pint-sized annoyance until an angry Finn separated them. Rachel never confronted her about it, before leaving for New York and her future, so Quinn assumed she was too drunk to remember. She then spent her four years in college chasing the unexpected feelings she'd gotten from that brief encounter with Rachel, but no-one else ever came close to igniting that fuse.
She never formally came out. Never sat her mother, or her sister, down and said "I'm gay." Never advertised by wearing t-shirts, attending Pride rallies, or by joining any organizations. There was no discussion. She just was and acted like she always had been. End of story. Her meltdown after her first lesbian experience, with a girl she met at a sorority party her roommate dragged her to, was private. Keeping her emotions hidden? It was the Fabray way.
Relationships were not something she felt comfortable with, after the disaster that was high school. She wasn't sure what she was looking for but she never seemed to find it. Her longest post college relationship started with a meeting in a bar in Montreal, and ended in rainy Vancouver after a month exploring the Trans-Canada Highway together. The photos of the trip posted to her online portfolio became the seeds of her first book and she gained one of her first real friends.
Her father had never been a mean man, but he'd always been extremely strict in a Christian way. She'd been Daddy's Little Girl for most of her childhood, so it almost killed her when he threw her out of the house after Finn's revelation about her pregnancy. Their relationship never recovered.
Her mother might not have stopped him, but it was his shunning that hurt the most. Even after Beth was born, and her mother had taken her back in, it was her father's forgiveness, as flawed as he'd revealed himself to be, that she wanted the most, but never got.
Quinn's mother paid for college. Though she often suspected the majority of her tuition came from her father, she'd never confronted her mother about it. And he never asked for anything in return, though later she would occasionally send him photographs of her travels. He never responded, but at least he never sent them back.
She was in London for a meeting when he had his first stroke. She dropped everything and flew to Lima. That was the last time she saw him alive, a frail looking, grey haired old man, lying in a hospital bed, refusing to look at her. A second stroke took him hours later, while she was checking into her hotel room.
Quinn stayed in Lima only long enough for his funeral, and the reading of his will. He didn't leave her anything, not even a mention. Not that she expected him to. But she cried when he left Beth, the granddaughter he'd never met, the daughter she was forbidden to see before her eighteenth birthday, a trust fund to pay for college.
When she was thirty, her sister convinced her to travel to Cleveland for their mother's sixtieth birthday. Flying in, she rented an SUV for a week, planning to return it in Cincinnati, and fly on to her next assignment from there, with a brief stop in Lima on the way.
The birthday party and visit to Cleveland went as well as she expected it to. Her mother tried to convince her to move to Cleveland, marry, and produce grandchildren, as she always did. Her sister and brother-in-law were a little more subtle, arranging for her to spend several days with her nieces and nephew, in the vain hope, she assumed, that this would jump start her biological clock and convince her of the benefits of settling down and having a family.
After an emotionally exhausting week, Quinn packed up her things and headed to Lima.
Quinn had been to the main Lima cemetery only once before, the day of her father's funeral. But she'd been to numerous ancient grave sites over the years and they all seemed to have the same quiet, peaceful feeling. Not like the quiet bustle of a library, but the solemn quiet of an abandoned church. She hadn't been in a church in over a decade, but she felt closer to whatever higher power guarded them whenever she entered a cemetery, no matter how old.
Quinn sat down carefully on the freshly mown grass in front of the modest headstone. She suspected her father had picked it out himself. It was the kind of thing he would have done. She'd never really understood him. How he could throw her out and then cheat on her mother. When she was a teenager, she'd thought being a Fabray was all about appearances. Helping her sister go through his few possessions in the small, neat apartment he kept near his office after his death, she suspected she had it all wrong. There'd been faint evidence of a different Russell Fabray, not the artificial one she grew up with.
From her mother's reaction to his death, she suspected her parents had loved each other to the end, but too many things had gone wrong to ever be fixed. Neither of them remarried while they both lived.
She wondered who put the small bouquet of wild flowers on his grave, and the small stones. Leaning forward, she carefully traced his name carved in the stone, hoping for some kind of revelation.
"Hi," a quiet voice said, interrupting her thoughts.
Turning her head, Quinn found she'd been joined by an almost familiar looking teen, her brown hair glistening in the sun.
"Hello," she said softly, not wanting to interrupt the peaceful atmosphere.
"Why are you sitting on Grandpa Russell?" the girl asked.
"Grandpa Russell?" Quinn asked, trying not to look surprised.
"I never met him," the girl said shyly, "but Momma said he's one of my grandpas."
"Where's your Momma?" Quinn asked.
"She's over there," the girl said, pointing across the cemetery. "She's talking to my sister."
Looking in the direction she was pointing, Quinn saw a familiar woman standing in front of a headstone. "What's your sister's name?" she asked, something inside her dreading the answer.
"Rachel," the girl said. "She was an awesome singer."
"Yes, yes she was," Quinn said in a very low voice. Feeling faint, she reached out and grabbed her father's tombstone to keep herself from collapsing at the shock.
"Are you okay?" the girl asked. Quinn didn't want to give her the name she suspected she had, because it would make things too real, too possible, too soon. Quinn shook her head.
This feeling, as a whole, wasn't something she was very familiar with. Yes, there was some of the ache that she'd felt when her father died, and some of the feeling when she'd given up the girl now yelling for her mother, an ache in the back of her throat. But this feeling, at the thought that Rachel Berry was a permanent resident of this cemetery, was like someone ripping her heart out and taking all the air out of the room at the same time.
And it didn't make sense, she told herself, gripping the cold stone hard enough to draw blood, to feel anything this intense for someone she'd hated, tortured, and ever so briefly desired. Prying one hand loose with the other, she sat back on her heels.
"Quinn?"
Quinn started. She hadn't heard Shelby Corcoran's voice in almost a decade. Turning her head, she saw a solemnly dressed woman with a sprinkling of grey hair, like a matronly Rachel Berry, the girl holding her hand. "Yes?" Quinn said, her voice sounding rough in her own ears.
"You're crying," the girl said.
"I am?" Quinn said in surprise, raising her hand to feel her wet cheeks.
"What brings you to Lima?" Shelby asked stiffly.
Taking a deep breath, Quinn carefully stood up, brushing bits of grass off of her jeans. "I was passing through and I thought I would stop and see my father," she said, nodding at his grave.
"I see," Shelby said. "Rachel left something for you," she said softly.
"When," Quinn asked, her voice breaking.
"Not here," Shelby said. "You can follow us to the house." Turning, she gave her daughter a slight tug to get her moving.
Quinn was surprised to follow them into the driveway of the house Rachel grew up in.
Sliding out of her rental, Quinn looked to the front door, staying next to her car. She'd always avoided Rachel's fathers when she did have a reason to go to her house.
"Are Rachel's fathers home?" she asked nervously.
"She bought them a house in Arizona when she won her first starring role in a movie," Shelby said, unlocking the door. "They haven't been back since her funeral. Beth and I spend summers in Lima so she can get to know her father."
Quinn cringed at her comment. Like the rest of the Gleeks, she hadn't seen or heard from Puck in almost a decade. It had hurt too much that he was allowed the relationship with their daughter that her own stupidity and immaturity had cost her.
Quinn followed Shelby and Beth into the house. It hadn't changed much from her dim memories, though it now felt somewhat like a museum, with the pictures of Rachel scattered around the room.
"Have a seat," Shelby said, "I'll be right back."
"You're my sister's friend Quinn, aren't you?" Beth asked.
"Maybe?" Quinn said softly.
"She liked to look at your pictures," Beth said. Running over to a shelf, she returned with a large book. "See?" She held it up so Quinn could see the back with her picture in a corner on the back. It was Quinn's third book, pictures she'd taken of people in cities she'd visited. She'd submitted the idea to her publisher on a whim. It hadn't won any awards or made her rich, but it had done well for a coffee table book.
"They made her happy," Beth said, leafing through the book in search of something. "This was her favorite," she said, pointing at one of a marquee on Broadway with two girls hugging underneath.
"She left you this," Shelby said, returning to the room and handing a media disc to her.
"You've looked at it?" Quinn asked, gingerly taking it.
"Her friend Kurt helped her make it," Shelby said, sitting in a chair across from her. "They're the only ones who know what she said."
"What happened to her?" Quinn asked, clutching the disc and forcing herself to breath easily.
"She started having migraines while filming her last movie," Shelby said. "It became so bad she couldn't finish it."
Quinn frowned. She'd known Rachel had been making movies, but she'd never had any desire to torture herself by seeing them, and hadn't noticed when she'd stopped. It was an odd feeling to discover she'd missed any media about Rachel and her movies over the past few years. It was almost like she'd spent the last few years of her travels in a Rachel-free bubble.
"They found a tumor," Shelby said.
"And they removed it?" Quinn asked.
"No," Shelby said. "It was too deep. Removing it would have killed her. They tried chemotherapy but it didn't work."
"She died anyway," Quinn said, gritting her teeth in an attempt to keep the tears at bay, huddled on the couch.
"At least she had a chance to say goodbye," Shelby said.
"When?" Quinn asked.
"Two weeks after the Glee reunion at Mckinley. She was really hoping you'd be there," Shelby said, her voice sounding remote and disapproving to Quinn's ears.
"No one told me!" Quinn protested. "No one told me she was sick."
"Mr. Schuester said he tried to contact you," Shelby said.
"He sent me a postcard while I was out of town," Quinn said. "I didn't know," she said again, her voice rising, "I didn't know." Shelby nodded but Quinn could tell she didn't believe her.
"It's alright," Beth said, looking up from the book. "You can come with us next time we go see her."
"Thanks," Quinn mumbled, trying to smile. "I have to go. I have a plane to catch," she said, shakily getting to her feet.
Shelby nodded, her face pale. Getting up, she escorted Quinn to the door. Before she stepped outside, Beth gave her a quick hug.
Quinn barely remembered leaving Lima, or dropping her rental off at the airport in Cincinnati. The journey through security, waiting at the gate and boarding her plane followed in a numb blur. Once she was buckled in, she took out the disc and stared at it. She couldn't imagine what Rachel would have to say to her. Or if she really wanted to hear it.
When the plane landed, Quinn carefully placed the disc in a safe place in her luggage and tried to forget she even had it. The next few weeks would require all of her attention to do her job. She couldn't afford to allow her attention to wander.
Quinn finished looking at the photos before sending a selection of the best off to the editor of the magazine that had commissioned them.
She stared at the media disc on her desk. It stared back at her for a long time.
Rachel's face looked pale under the rainbow colored hat, but otherwise she looked the way Quinn always imagined her looking.
"Hello Quinn," she said. "I hope you are well. If you are watching this, I'm obviously no longer able to say the same myself." she grimaced. "Kurt? What's the point of this," she said peevishly, waving a hand at the camera. "If Quinn ever gets this, it'll be too late anyway."
"This was your idea," a male voice Quinn assumed was Kurt, said. "You wanted closure. And doesn't she deserve to know?"
"Yes, but I'm going to be dead," Rachel muttered.
"Rachel! You promised to be positive here!" Kurt said, still off screen.
"I'm trying," she said. "Let's start over."
"Go ahead," Kurt said, "I'll edit it out later."
Rachel nodded.
"Hello Quinn," she said again. "I hope you are doing well. Your last book was really well done. I'm really proud of everything you've accomplished.
I'm sorry to tell you like this, but you didn't come to the Glee reunion. I told Mr. Schuester that you were constantly traveling and sending just a postcard to let you know about it was a bad idea. But when did he ever listen to me," she muttered. "Did you know, he showed up, with his bunch of Glee kids, at one of my shows last year, expecting me to get him tickets with less than an hour's notice?"
Quinn laughed at her disgruntled expression. Some things never changed.
"Rachel!" Kurt yelled.
"Right. Positive." She shook her head. "But this isn't about Mr. Schuester and his perpetual attempts to ruin my life. I need you to listen. This is about me, and you."
Quinn paused the disc at that point, not sure she was ready for whatever she had to say. Going into her kitchen, she grabbed a glass and the bottle of scotch she kept for serious occasions. Returning to her office, she poured herself a small portion. Glancing at Rachel frozen on the screen, she tossed it down, emptying the glass. Filling it again, Quinn then pressed play.
"Or mostly just about me," Rachel said. "I think I'm entitled."
"Do you remember that party at Puck's?" Rachel asked. "I do." She smiled, like she'd just won the lottery. "I wasn't sure what I really wanted from you, until then, other than some kind of friendship. I thought it was just one of my things that drive people crazy. And it was my fault you couldn't give me what I wanted. That party changed everything. But I couldn't tell you."
"You told me," Kurt interjected.
"You weren't Quinn," Rachel told him. "Kurt thinks the world revolves around him and his gay drama," she said, in a whisper.
"I heard that!"
"You were supposed to," she said, looking off to the side. She turned back to the camera. "I have two fathers," she said. "You would think this would come easy to me. But it didn't. Instead, I lost my one chance at true happiness."
"Rachel!" Kurt said, clearly frustrated.
"Sorry," she said, again. "That's not your problem to solve, Quinn. I've followed your career. And you. No boyfriends or even girlfriends? I don't want you to be alone." She sighed. "Kurt?"
"Yes?"
"Is it selfish that I hope she hasn't had a relationship because of me?"
"No, that just makes you human. The spying on her, on the other hand, doesn't seem healthy," he said.
"I didn't do that personally," she said. "I paid good money for that information. She cut herself off from all of us. Someone had to make sure she was okay"
"Rachel, you need to focus," Kurt said firmly.
"Sorry. You can edit that out?" she asked.
"Of course," he said. "Continue!"
"Yes, Mr. Director," she said with a giggle. "Quinn? I need you to do something for me. I need you to move on, to live your life. I don't know what's holding you back. If it's me, I'm truly flattered but I don't want to hold you back.
You're a beautiful, talented person. There's someone out there for you. Someone who will make you happy. No matter how much I want that person to be me, it doesn't look like it will happen, and I'm sorry."
Quinn listened for several hours as Rachel rambled on about things she'd done, things she had wanted to do, sang her favorite songs, and poured her heart out.
Quinn sat there through it all, wondering if what she was feeling would kill her. Wondering if that's what a breaking heart felt like.
Eventually Rachel stopped talking, and the screen went blank for several long minutes.
"Hi Quinn," said an older looking Kurt, his close cropped hair glistening. "You'll have to forgive her crankiness. She wasn't having a good day when we originally filmed that." He paused to rub his eyes. "Rachel Berry could be a handful, but she was our handful. She refused to let us contact you when they discovered how ill she really was. She always knew where you were, but she insisted that if it was meant to be, you would find her when you were ready." He sighed. "I won't say she was wrong but it's purely academic now. She held out as long as she could."
"I didn't know," Quinn whispered to herself, for what must have been the hundredth time since she stared watching. She'd had a month to accept the idea that she'd never see Rachel again, but she was no closer to understanding her own feelings for the woman. And this, essentially a love letter from the grave, Rachel trying to pack a lifetime of hopes and dreams into several hours, hadn't helped.
"Give me a call when you've finished watching this," Kurt said. "I don't know how you feel about her but we have some things to talk about."
End Notes: This was originally meant to be a lot shorter. And a lot more internal dialog. And not end with a semi-cliffhanger. But this is what I ended up with. And I'm not sure when there will be another part.