Dreamless
For those of you who who cry easily and are not an angst whore like me, this is very... angsty :D I wrote it in a few hours, not totally sure where I was going. I don't really like it, but you can be the judge of that.
The world stops. Tilts on its axis. Gravity sinks around her, dragging her down backwards into the bed. She feels nothing except fear. The hands clasped around hers are weightless, holding her up. Puck is on the other side of the room, face frozen.
For a second, she thinks she sees a light. The room is blurry except for a golden glow, and a little girl with dark brown hair and green eyes, smiling down at her. She is laughing, laughing, laughing.
The laughter slowly fades away, along with the girl. The room is unbelievably dark and cold. She can't remember where she is. Where is the baby?
The world begins turning again. She watches the stars move across the sky, multiplying until there is nothing left for her to see except vibrant silver.
And she then realizes how utterly silent the room is. No noise. You could hear a pin drop…
This is wrong.
Then, it explodes. She hears no pulse and lung complications before the stars detonate into a sea of black, pulling her down into the waters of unconsciousness.
…
She wakes up to an empty room, her abdomen pulsing, stitched back together only a short time ago with needle and thread. They cut her open and took out her stuffing and sowed her up again, like a doll. If only they could've sown her eyes shut, as well, giving the hazel sea glass a rest.
The doctor comes in, regretful and broken down. She hears him say words like emergency and decreased oxygen flow and respiratory failure. Nothing is making sense, but he's saying her baby Beth is gone…
God reached down and tore her away.
Something mangled and hissing escapees her lips. She might be crying but she can't feel it. She can't feel anything, can't think anything, except for the fact that this can't be happening. It's all a dream and she'll wake up and her baby will be right there in her arms…
She can't see. Someone's pinning her arms down. She's going into hysterics. She feels herself thrashing, broken sobs escaping from her mouth. You need to calm down or you'll rip open the stitches.
Anger. Noises coming from her, so low, like wounded animal. She keeps trying to jerk her arms around to get free from the hands holding her.
Lights spinning, a crashing noise out in the hall, someone screaming. Vaguely, she thinks it sounds like Puck.
The white walls and her form beneath the sheets are blurring in front of her eyes. She can't see anything except for swirls of color and splashes of pink.
Suddenly, a numbness fills her body. Her eyelids are heavy. She is pulled underwater again, towards sleep filled with baby blankets and an ocean full of green glass eyes she doesn't want to see. If only there was a place to escape...
…
Quinn…
Quinn, can you hear me?
She wakes up slowly, groggy, dried tears staining her cheeks. Her mother is there. She doesn't want to see anyone or talk to anyone. Maybe not ever again.
She doesn't want to get up. The sedative they fed through her IV hasn't fully worn off. She lays there zombie-esque as her mother holds her hand. The sun is setting.
Eventually, she leaves. She lays in the darkness, looking up at the ceiling. Someone walks through the door and sits next to her bed.
She doesn't look at him, doesn't think she can because Beth looked just like him, staring up at the cracked tiles. Moonlight is spilling across the floor and onto her bed. She lifts her hand slowly, glowing silver in the light.
This is the way it was supposed to be.
But what was it supposed to be anyway? She didn't want her. She was going to give her away.
At least now no one can have her. Ever. Including herself…
She feels her throat growing tight again, choking up for someone who wasn't really meant to be.
He leans over and grabs her hand, pressing it up against his cheek. She can feel his tears dripping between her fingers.
"I'm sorry, Quinn. I'm so, so sorry."
She doesn't say anything. They simply cry together, tears intermingling. When a nurse comes in for her nightly rounds, she finds Puck curled up beside her in bed, tears staining his shirt and her blankets, hands linked.
In the morning, she will push him away. Right now may be the last time she will ever hold him close (not the last time she wants to, but the last time she will). Savor the moment.
…
At home, she tears down all of her pictures of the Cheerios and magazine models, leaving her walls a stark white. Eventually, she will pin up her obituary and there it will stay, her floor covered with a collage of has been.
She takes the teddy bear she bought for her and rips it to pieces. The stuffing falls like snow on her carpet.
She crawls into bed and swallows an overdose of sleeping pills, thinking maybe it will do the trick. It only traps her inside her nightmares.
…
They bury her four days after she is born.
There is no wake. It's far too morbid.
At the funeral she sits in a front row pew with her eyes closed, refusing to let anyone touch her. She taps her foot quietly, willing her ears to stop focusing on what the preacher is saying. Everyone is crying. She simply crumples an unused tissue in her hands, leaving torn pieces scattered behind as she stands up to leave.
At the burial site, she stands again with eyes closed, wearing her best black dress. There is a baby blanket draped over the coffin. The tiny, almost nonexistent coffin. The wind blows fiercely, whipping her hair into her face.
She squeezes her eyes tighter, hands clasped in front of her.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust…
Someone places a hand on her shoulder. Everyone is shuffling away. They're starting to fill in the hole.
She waits and watches while they bury her, the hand soon disappearing with the rest. Soon there is nothing left but a patch of dirt and her small tombstone stretched before her. The men ask if she needs any help but she says no, no thank you I'm fine.
She slowly sits down in front of the grave, hands pressed into the dirt. Her brain stops functioning. She doesn't know how long she sits there. It doesn't feel like time is passing. There is no time. There is nothing.
What is she supposed to do now? This ruined her life. It ruined and saved her simultaneously. What does she do now that it's all just… gone?
Eventually, underneath the soft twinkle of stars, Puck comes to drag her away.
"It's time to go, Quinn."
She stares at the tombstone, the epitaph. Bethany Rose Fabray.
Lord, we give you our littlest angel
June 8, 2010
She didn't give the Lord anything. In fact, she wants her back.
"Quinn?"
She'll never get anything back. She'll never be complete again.
He carries her to the car. She doesn't speak the whole way home.
…
Everywhere she looks, she sees her. Even looking at her own body, she sees her. It's unfair and downright cruel.
She gets drunk for the first time in her life, but it doesn't work because it just makes her think even more about her.
So she swallows sleeping pills, staying curled underneath sheets on the verge of consciousness. It's better than being awake or alive or breathing-
But the world keeps turning. Girls break hearts. Boys crash cars. Other babies are born, other children are buried.
She lays quiet and still, swimming through a dark ocean, wondering if this is how it feels not to care if you live or die. She stops passing in assignments, or going to school. Puck jokes that he's the one who's supposed to be a failure, not her.
She doesn't answer. She stopped responding to people a while ago.
Eventually, perhaps the world will stop turning. Perhaps she will be allowed to take it all back. Call the bluff. Perhaps, if she tries hard enough, she can drown away the pain.
She falls asleep to morning glories and wakes up to owls cooing outside her window. She counts the stars until she goes cross-eyed, reads her obituary until she has it memorized, cleans her room and destroys it again.
Once the sun gets up, she swallows pills dry. One two three four.
And she sleeps, finally dreamless.