Every time I close my eyes
It's like a dark paradise.
Nothing compares to you
I'm scared that you
Won't be waiting on the other side
The sun is relentless. It just does not seem to understand.
That giant star that she once was, the heat and shine that it once radiated, is a stark contrast to the fallen star standing on wilting grass.
Her black dress is absorbing the heat, and it's stifling. She resists the urge to stamp her foot, to complain about the heat, to whine.
At least she can feel that heat.
With that thought, Rachel's tears begin once again. She is brought back to reality, to the harsh reality of her surroundings.
A sea of black fabric and blank stares litters the lawn. A priest is reading a few verses from a worn Bible.
Judy Fabray is weeping uncontrollably.
Something in Rachel shifts, and she moves forward without a second thought. Her arms are wrapped around the woman in a flash, and she squeezes with whatever little strength she has left.
Judy squeezes back.
Rachel stands alone before the carved marble, fingers tracing over the letters.
Lucy Quinn Fabray
A sob wracks her body, and she kneels before she loses her nerve.
She places a single gardenia, wrapped in a green ribbon, on the freshly turned soil.
With one last graze of her fingers over the swirled colors of the marble, she makes her decision.
"I'm on my way to you."
Her fathers are out, somewhere across town.
She drove herself home, despite the concern in her daddy's voice and his insistence that it wasn't safe.
She needed time alone, she had told him, and that look in her eye worried him, but it convinced him all the same.
She had driven slowly, her windows rolled down to let in the stiff hot air, the ocassional breeze a relief from the stifling heat.
A bath would be nice. A bath, and some music, and a few hours on her bed staring at her phone and the text messages Quinn had sent her those few days ago.
On my way.
Rachel pulled into the garage, quickly pressing the garage door remote, the door closing slowly as her playlist switched to another song.
She couldn't bring herself to move.
The words wafted through the speakers, and the frail girl leaned her forehead against the steering wheel as another sob shook her.
Quinn is gone. All she has to remember her by are a few text messages and an aching feeling in her chest.
It is all so surreal. A few days ago, she was frantically texting the girl before her wedding.
The message before that fateful one had sparked something within her once again.
I can't do this. I'm still coming, but I can't let it happen.
Rachel should have been outraged that Quinn refused to support the wedding. She should have been hurt that Quinn had changed her mind once again.
She had only felt a flicker of hope, however, and when her phone vibrated with that final message, she postponed things that much longer in spite of Finn's protests. That text message had filled her with something like longing and hope, though she ignored the implications.
When she got the phone call, all she felt was pain, a tangible pain in her chest that settled and suffocated her with every passing moment of every passing day.
Crying her eyes out in her car and coming to terms with what that text message meant- and what it meant when she had called off the engagement-should dissipate the crushing feeling in her chest.
Instead, the pressure is increasing, and an eerie nausuea is settling over her.
Something at the edge of her mind is telling her that something is wrong, that this is more than just her emotional pain and mourning.
Rachel is overwhelmed with grief and loss, however, and she merely relents when her grip on the steering wheel loosens.
She blinks hazily and swallows thickly, wondering why the music seems so far away.
It is not until she hears her daddy's frightened voice that she realizes that she had been sitting in that car for far too long.
Something washes over her and she hears an "Oh, Rachel" and she wonders fleetingly if this is how she meant to fulfill her promise, before everything goes black.
And all you can hear is the sound of your own heart
And all you can feel is your lungs flood and the blood course
But oh I can see five hundred years dead set ahead of me
Five hundred behind
A thousand years in perfect symmetry
Is this what she had meant?
I'm on my way to you.