Ring.
Ring.
Ring.
The shrillness of the sound filled the too large darkness, hurting her ears. Shadows settled on her back, pressing, groping, grinning with mouthfuls of knives.
"Please pick up. Please pick up," Rachel muttered under her breath. Her hand gripped the phone like a claw, so tightly it shook. Everything hinged on this moment, on her hearing the familiar click of someone picking up the line at the other end, on hearing that voice, just one more time. It didn't even matter that she didn't know what she was going to say. Her breath hitched in her throat. She hoped. She panicked. She waited.
She was out of words, but she didn't need anything to be said. In that moment, even the sounds of soft breathing from the other end would have done - anything that connected her to a life outside the apartment, outside of herself and the thoughts dominated by him, the dead boy she'd be dragging around with her for the rest of her life. Three weeks since the funeral and she still found herself struck at moments by the immensity of the truth sucking the air from her lungs - he wouldn't be coming back. She was a twisted, blackened pillar in a desert of people who didn't know and didn't care that her whole world had been swept away in a single phone call, in two words. "Finn's dead" didn't mean anything in that matchstick city, except to Rachel, to Kurt and to Santana. "Finn's dead" was the flint that struck their flammable selves and turned their world to ashes. Rachel wondered when everything would stop smelling of phosphorous and smoke.
Blue and red lights flashed across the walls, heralded by the wailing sirens that filled the silences in the darkened apartment. And somewhere on the street, or in a building, maybe in an apartment just like this one, someone was dying; another match exploding in flame. For someone, those sirens would be the last thing they heard, just before the darkness overtook them. Just the way it had taken him. She couldn't bring herself to turn on the lights. In the sudden vastness of the world without his presence, the darkness felt small, even in the echoing space of her apartment; it meant being closer to him. It was a waking daydream and a walking nightmare, the kind that kept her up till 3am, hoping that the person she was calling would pick up.
Ring.
The seconds passed more slowly, lifetimes flashed in between heartbeats. Rachel bit her lip. It didn't matter that the apartment was abandoned, or that traffic had trickled to only one car every few minutes, or that the pile of black clothes on the floor were the exact clothes she didn't want to acknowledge. All that mattered was the call, the longing that built up in her chest until she thought she would drown in it.
"Please pick up."
The line clicked.
"Hello?" a sleepy voice came muffled against Rachel's ear. The voice that instantly quieted the roaring void in her heart and started knitting her back together.
"Quinn," she breathed.