She sits, she stands.
She walks - she paces. Up and down, up and down, her wedding shoes clicking on the linoleum floor of the hospital. She paces, back and forth, because her legs need to move. They need to walk for all the times she hadn't walked - "I'm not going to stand around and watch you ruin your life by marrying Finn Hudson." Was all Quinn said. She didn't immediately leave the room. She lingered there, a long, drawn-out moment that felt like a year between them. And then she turned to leave, and Rachel's feet ached to follow her, to chase her down and catch her and beg her to say more but she hadn't she'd just stood still. - and all the times she had walked when she should have stayed, should have done something - leaving for the wedding just seemed wrong without Quinn with them, and had she willed herself to think clearly, not get caught up in the promise of marital bliss, she would have stopped - stock still - and waited for Quinn Fabray.
Fingers: clench, unclench.
They needed movement and purpose. They were like Rachel - rebelling against stagnation, a constant force unless acted upon. Newton's first law - Quinn Fabray was her external force. Rising star Rachel Berry, that's how she'd imagined people in the school thought of her, if they weren't too embarrassed to admit to it. And people might not like it, but they didn't protest like Quinn had at the start - man hands, Ru Paul, treasure trail, and that had been the force to move and shape her, even if Rachel couldn't admit it aloud - her knuckles were white and then they released, but her fingers were still tense, still shook, with times she should have reached out and grabbed hold and said something - Quinn, pink hair and cigarette between lips that now spoke words that would make a sailor cringe, and Rachel had felt the same, hands moving, clench, unclench, and she just wanted to hug her but she hadn't.
"In, out." She tells herself. "In, out."
Her voice doesn't work like it used to. It's shaking, unable to hold anything more than absolute fear and sorrow and the grief is smothered, held down. Her voice is shaking with all those times she could have spoke - "You can't change your past. But you can let go and start your future." Their eyes met, and Rachel had found her mouth opening, a response prepared - one that she can't think of right now, or ever, one that she won't admit to herself, because letting go of Quinn Fabray was never on her mind, but starting her future - yes, certainly. - and the one moment she wished she'd been quiet, just so that she could hear, so that she could appreciate - Duets were supposed to involve two people, but Rachel wanted to go back to all the insecurities of that day and just her Quinn sing because there was this hurt, and sitting there Rachel wasn't the only one to feel unpretty.
"Rachel Berry." The nurse says, reading off her clipboard with a smile that sat on the appropriate side of the sympathetic-joyous line. For a hospital, at least.
Rachel stops. Her hands are limp by her side, feet glued in place, and her voice fails her. She can't respond. All of her answers can be read in her body: the way her eyes widen, just a little too hopeful, like this is the final thread, and if it's not good news now then never again; the way her mouth hangs open, caught on all the things she wants to say "yes?" and "is she okay?" and most of all "please, please let me see her I need to see her."; the way one foot is in front of the other, frozen in shock but ready to spring into the room if the permissions come.
There's something about right now that Rachel wants to hold on to. Right now is the precipice, the knife edge. After right now, things are either good or bad. She is rescued or she is doomed. Ignorance is bliss, and given just how far Rachel has to fall, maybe she wants to keep that. Maybe standing forever in this limbo of right now isn't so bad, because in right now Quinn is alive. Schrodinger's Cat - Schrodinger's Quinn. Right now she can believe that Quinn is alive because there is nothing, nothing (not the car wreck or the police hovering around or how long she spent getting operated on or that pale hand speckled with blood Rachel had seen) proving conclusively that Quinn is dead, nothing Rachel can believe. And until that door opens, she is alive - alive and dead, in a state beyond.
Rachel is dynamic. She can't slow, she can't stop, she can't wait in right now forever. "Yes?" She asks, her throat closing up and tears clouding her eyes because she has said goodbye to right now and all that waits before her is some words on a clipboard from a nurse who has seen too much death to be truly sympathetic.
"Miss Fabray is stable. She woke up long enough to ask after you, but she's unconscious again. Would you like to see her?"
That's the most ridiculous thing anyone has ever asked Rachel. She tries not to shove past the nurse but it's hard when her heart is feeling so light, her body so alive. All the mistakes of the past - the things she should have and should not have done, the moments where things could've changed... they didn't matter now. Because they'd all come together and lead to right now, and Rachel had had the strength to go beyond that.
She'd stepped into a future where her wedding dress wasn't necessary because here was Quinn Fabray. She was breathing and she was alive, and Rachel was not making any more mistakes. She couldn't live her life stuck in Lima with Finn because she feared nothing better waited for her. Lima was her right now, but Broadway was her future.
It came to her in that moment, just past right now, just past the 'now leaving Lima, Ohio - we hope to see you again' in her mind. Quinn was her future. There was no more time to leave that unsaid.
Life was too short for regrets.
"I love you, Quinn."
Life was too short to stand still.