"Say something, Noah."
He looked down at the pen he was holding, the weight heavy in his hand. The papers were there in front of him, waiting for the signature that had been coming for months. She looked so tiny sitting across from the massive table from him. She was trying to smile bravely, and he saw a flash of the girl she had been at sixteen when he used to throw slushies in her face rather than angry words.
"I would have followed you anywhere," he replied softly before flipping to the last page without reading any of the words. He knew that they all added up to one thing – this was the end of their marriage. It wasn't her fault anymore than it was his. These things just happened sometimes. "Say something, Rach? It feels like I'm giving up on you."
Maybe they were giving up, she reasoned in her head. It just felt like it was time. Before they had kids, before they got too much older, before their friends had to choose sides more than they already had. She had Kurt and Blaine, Mike and Mercedes with her in New York. He had Sam, Brittany and Santana, Finn and strangely, Tina, with him in LA. Only Quinn had stayed truly neutral.
She felt so small in the enormity of all this. Sometimes it felt like they had fought too hard to hold onto it; other times, it felt like they hadn't fought hard enough. "It was over my head, Noah, over our heads really," she told him as she took the papers back from him. They only needed her signature and then their divorce would be final. It would be so much easier if she didn't still love him, if she could hate him. "I don't know how we got here. I know nothing at all."
He had stumbled and fallen so many times in his life, but none of them had ever felt like this. Even when they had given up Beth, it hadn't felt as permanent as ending his marriage did. "We're still growing up," he replied comfortingly. It was the truth. "I'm still learning to love, just starting to crawl toward knowing how to love really."
Rachel smiled genuinely and shook her head. "You know how to love, Noah," she promised. "After everything, that's the one thing I never doubted. I know you love me."
"I do, probably always will," he chuckled humorlessly. Her dark eyes bore into his intensely. The silence went on too long until he had to plead to her. "Say something."
"I'm sorry that I couldn't get to you," she apologized in the same quiet voice as before. "You said earlier you would have follow me anywhere. I would have followed you anywhere too. I think that's part of the problem. We were never walking beside each other, together on the same path at the same time."
He reached across the table and tangled his fingers in hers. "If I thought that was all it would take, you know I'd swallow my pride, baby," he pledged. "But it's not that easy and...and I'm saying goodbye to you right now and it feels awful."
She came around the table and wrapped her arms around him. He held her tightly for several minutes until a lawyer knocked lightly on the door. Rachel peered at the older man over her husband's shoulder. He smiled uncomfortably at them as he collected the papers, pausing briefly to check for both the signatures. Puck never acknowledged the man, only clung tighter to his wife (ex-wife, now, she supposed).
"Say something, Noah."
He pulled back and smiled at her sadly. "I've given up on you."
Author's Note: Inspired by/quotes from "Say Something" by Great Big World.