PROLOGUE:
"Why would you tell me you loved me and then go kill yourself? Why couldn't you have come to me instead? I could have saved you… I would have told you that I loved you back…"
There are pieces of the puzzle that she will never fit together, because they are jagged and sharp, and sometimes missing edges. Sometimes she takes everything and stores the information in her brain. Maybe one day she will take it all out and solve the problem, solve what happened the summer after graduation. But right now, her mind and thoughts are mostly static and she can't differentiate any of it, maybe she doesn't really want to.
It still hurts too much sometimes.
Some days she gets up past two pm when the sun is blaring hot and walks for hours, barefooted and along the hot tar that lines the roads. She doesn't care that her toes end up getting blisters. It all seems trivial doesn't it when the person who said they loved you is now buried six feet under ground. Sometimes that's where she walks; sometimes she will go and stare at the headstone of the girl that she so loved to hate. She writes her letters on the days that she stays there for hours. "Why would you tell me you loved me and then go kill yourself? Why couldn't you have come to me instead? I could have saved you… I would have told you that I loved you back…" The words are hard to write and she rips the paper with her pen. If she gets angry she will hit the tombstone with her hand until it turns black and blue because she is angry. She hates herself for letting this happen, she blames herself.
On those days where she goes home with her hand bleeding and bruised her mother yells at her. She knows that her mother is at a loss of what to do with her anymore. Sometimes her mother will phone Rachel to come take care of you when you've had one of your fits.
She doesn't tell Rachel where she goes but Rachel usually has some sort of idea. She's good at solving puzzles and Quinn wishes that Rachel could figure out why Santana would kill herself. The days that Rachel comes over are one of the only days where Quinn doesn't write a letter to Santana. Rachel doesn't know about the letters and it's better that way. Rachel doesn't even know that Santana had professed her love for the head Cheerleader. No one knows this little detail except for Quinn and she can't take knowing that catastrophic secret. Quinn already blames her self; she couldn't deal with it if everyone else blamed her too.
Will this ever stop hurting?
There are moments where she thinks that the pain in her chest has dulled but then she closes her eyes and thinks about the night before everything broke. She thinks about soft caramel tasting lips on her own. She dreams about the soft touch of silky fingers trailing against the small of her back.
These thoughts are what is going to kill her in the end, but she doesn't dare forget them. (But it's all she has left)- that and a small note Santana had left for her in Quinn's locker that day. (That Quinn can't bear to read ever again)- so it sits under her pillow, giving her nightmares every night. There are obviously photos from the past few years of them together as well, but she's locked those away in a drawer.
So Quinn thinks that in time, with all these things that she has kept a secret, she might be able to figure out the truth. Maybe she will be able to understand why Santana had decided to leave them all behind.