Summary: Just another post-Glease one-shot. Rachel, in that same old McKinley bathroom, crying. Headcanon, because I couldn't resist, and because I missed Quinn in Season 4, and 408 didn't do it for me.
CAN'T EVER GO HOME (It's True)
The tiles look the same. She thinks this is a strange thing to realize, when she's crying again (over Finn, again) but there it is. Last time, racing back to Lima steeped in heartbreak and indignation, she hadn't noticed the small things. How she had navigated her hometown, chasing the memories of her highschool-love effortlessly. How each discovery of He's Not Here (b)led into the next, until she found Finn on a stage; their stage. And they had played out their parts. As they always did.
The mirrors reflect her tearstained face a million times over. In the overhead lights she looks miserable. In the empty bathroom she feels miserable. She had played her role, accepted their break-up, had prepared herself to move on. She had! But then Kurt and Grease and Cassandra July and all the stupid insecurities she apparently hadn't left behind in highschool. And how ironic! Because here she was again: Rachel Berry crying in the girls' bathroom.
She thinks of all the ways her life is different (better) now. She is in New York. She has her best gay by her side. She has Brody. He doesn't answer his own phone.
Cassie's voice grates. Her self-satisfied smirk (she can practically hear it through the phone) makes her sick. How many times will the pretty (prettiest girl she's ever met) blondes (bitchy/popular/superior) in her life slap her? Is this a case of The More Things Change? But it's not the same. Is it?
Sure, she'd shown a more than marginal interest, since that very first day. And the negligibly cruel nickname(s) coupled with a piercing stare. Confronted with her past, and her struggle to not let it affect her, Cassie had even shown a recognisable-as-human side.
Oh God, will she forever be haunted by her now?
The rest of summer, after her week in New York, had seemed bland. Rachel had assumed that was the fault of the bright lights in her memory, calling her to her destiny. But when she thinks back now, here in this place that was mostly theirs, she knows it was more than that. Quinn Fabray had become incontrovertible in the four years of their acquaintance. Her absence now is keenly felt.
And so, she feels that she this is no longer home. Not McKinley, with its echoes of FinnandRachel; even as he still roams these halls. Certainly not Lima, even as it still holds her childhood-home and her fathers and the memories of her growing up.
She struggles to accept it. Because the thought is absurd, mostly. And if it's true, if she feels it in her heart (which she does, so strongly) when did it begin?
Exactly when did 'Quinn Fabtay' become synonymous with 'home' for her?