Say So
You had a simple, one-dimensional relationship.
From the very start of it all, you hated her. You found her annoying. She wouldn't shut up whenever you decided to give her the time of day, and she was loud and obnoxious, and it really didn't help her case that she was also self-absorbed. She reminded you of a Chihuahua except that she seemed a little less nervous and perhaps a little nicer, but only a little because everyone knew she was way too honest. Even then she'd lacked tact.
Back then, you would always think that her only redeeming quality, if she had any at all, was her voice. When she sang, she would set the world on fire. She would freeze it. Everything would cease out of respect for her, out of admiration, out of awe. The world would stop spinning, stationary upon its axis as though someone, as though she, had put a spell on it. She was such a little girl, so petite, but her voice was so big it could encompass a whole room and quiet it in a matter of seconds. As much as you hated to admit it, she had a beautiful, absolutely gorgeous voice, and though you weren't so bad yourself, she was in a completely different category, far above yours.
As much as you hated to admit it, your favorite part of the day back then had been when they would take your class and lead you to the auditorium. They would have you all sing to practice for several different school activities. And you remembered feeling that those days were the best because Rachel would always stand out, her voice a beacon among the rest. And it wasn't just because she loved the spotlight- it was because she loved singing. She loved it dearly, desperately, passionately, and everyone, even you (or perhaps especially you), could tell. It seemed to be the most important thing to her. It seemed to be what she lived and breathed for.
Later on you would come to realize that, though that was true, it was also that singing was her outlet.
As the years passed, she became more brazen. She would try to talk to you, even though she was very conscious of upper elementary school norms. She tried to initiate a friendship with you even though you had always made it clear you didn't want anything to do with her. She tried, over and over and over, but you hated her so you rejected her advances, over and over and over, until she finally learned.
After that, she didn't bother you anymore. She wouldn't even look at you in class. Whenever you locked gazes, she would quickly look away and return to her schoolwork, or to her book, or to her music sheets, or to whatever she decided would amuse her on that particular day. She'd pretend she didn't care you didn't want her as a friend. She'd pretend she didn't care that she didn't have any friends, period. Some days, when she was less apt at pretending, you would see her eyes glisten with something that made you feel things that were strangely similar to pity.
But they couldn't have been. You hated her.
You always had, and always would, and that was just the way things worked between you. Because you and Rachel were from different, distant spheres. She had freaks of nature for parents (or so your Daddy always told you) while you had a normal mother and father. You had a lot of money while she was less fortunate. You were Christian while she was Jewish. You were blonde, popular, and pretty while she was a brunette, a loser, and happened to dress strangely. Your spheres would never touch. You'd been certain of it.
So you said you hated her, and you ignored the prickling inside you that told you something different. And time passed that way until you reached middle school and found that she had stopped pretending.
She didn't look at you anymore. She didn't seem as hurt by your rejection. In fact, she hardly seemed to notice you at all. Instead of looking longingly in your direction like she always used to, she would look past you and at a boy. She would stare straight past you with her shining eyes and, with her forefinger, would trace invisible hearts across the pages of her notebook. She would trace hearts, and she wouldn't look at you, and it made you angry.
Your name was Quinn Fabray. You weren't someone people just- people just pushed aside and ignored. The fact that she did bothered you more than anything else she'd ever done. It bothered you more than her inability to shut up and listen, it bothered you more than the fact that she had a horrible sense of fashion, and it bothered you more than the fact that she was selfish and self-absorbed. She couldn't just treat you like you didn't exist. She couldn't just start treating you like you were of no importance.
She couldn't just start treating you like you treated her.
It made you furious. Your hatred for her grew exponentially, multiplied in its intensity. When she would sit at the front of the classroom, you would sit a few seats behind just so you could glare at her without being conspicuous. Sometimes you would grip your pencil so tightly it felt as though it would crack and fall apart right in your hands. Your best friend eventually noticed, and because she noticed, Brittany noticed, and if Brittany noticed, everyone would ultimately know about it in the end.
And it was this way, and only this way, that the real bullying began.
Once your classmates found out you really didn't like her, they began to tease her. They were cruel; they called her names, and shoved her into lockers, and mocked her whenever she opened her mouth to speak. They laughed at her whenever she made a small mistake, or whenever she tripped, which was never actually her fault, considering the fact that she'd always had perfect balance. You knew this because you'd spent enough time around her, enough time hating her, to notice those small things, so you knew for sure that other people would stick out their feet and make her trip on purpose.
She would never accuse them, however. She would never rat them out to the teachers. Instead, she would always choose to keep her head up, to hold her head high, to seem proud. She was always true to herself and that part of her would never change. Not even when you joined in the teasing.
During freshman year, you tried out for a spot on the Cheerios. Much to your genuine surprise, you managed to impress Sue Sylvester, alleged Demon Queen, enough for her to name you Captain on the spot. You remember beaming in pride, and when you showed up the next day with a slushie in your hand, your body clad in a red uniform, you weren't even thinking of Rachel Berry. You weren't. But then someone stumbled into you, and she was standing right next to you, and it spilled all over her.
And from then on, it became tradition. Everyone thought you'd done it on purpose, including Rachel. It cemented your position as ruthless Head Cheerio and Sue Sylvester's favorite, so you simply went along with it. Besides, you hated Rachel, so what did it matter to you if you'd ruined her clothing, or if you'd humiliated her in a hallway full of students? What did it matter to you that she'd looked at you with real hurt in her eyes?
You didn't need to feel bad. You didn't need to apologize. You didn't even want to. You never once thought about doing so. You hated her, after all, so what did it matter that you'd used her? You could even say it was her own fault, for thinking she could ever possibly ignore you.
No one could ignore you. You were Quinn Fabray. You were Captain of the Cheerios. Eventually, you were also president of the Celibacy club. Eventually, you were also Finn Hudson's girlfriend. You were a star. She was a loser. You were McKinley's poster child. She was its pariah. You couldn't stand her, but she couldn't just ignore you, either.
Your spheres would never touch. You were always so convinced of it.
And then they did.
For several months, you became invisible, and the things you'd once thought you were you lost sight of.
For several months, you tried to reinvent yourself with glee club as your only solace. Your best friend became your enemy, your enemy remained your enemy, your boyfriend became your ex, and the boy you made a mistake with became the mistake. Mercedes became your friend. Kurt became your confidant, despite all of the things (lies) your father ever told you. You understood Artie's pain during the times Tina and Mike danced together onstage. You regretted many things.
For several months, you were bitter. For several months, you hated a lot of things.
For several months, you hated your baby. Then you had her. Then you loved her. Then you gave her away, and honestly, that should have been the first sign.
For several months, you hated yourself in addition to Rachel.
So that constant, your only constant, then became your credo whenever you looked at yourself in the mirror and whenever you saw her in the hallways: "I hate you."
When you returned to your life and saw them together, they made you sick.
You found that the thought of them together was even worse than the thought of her alone. You found you couldn't stand to be in the same room with them, with their glances and intertwined fingers, for longer than what it took for glee club to finish meeting. You were friendly with Finn again and you were already relatively civil to Rachel, but seeing them together in confined spaces drove you crazy. It nauseated you. It made you want to upchuck anything and everything you'd eaten in the span of that day.
And that was every day because you saw them every day, and if things had continued that way you would have died from malnutrition. (You weren't really throwing up but something in your brain purged every time, and that was just as bad.)
Every time you saw them kiss something would possess you. You would be harsher at practice, you would drive the other Cheerios harder, faster, faster, harder until Santana would walk up to you and tell you to get your head out of your ass and stop being such a bitch. Your day would usually end with her socking you on the shoulder or slapping you across the face so hard you would sometimes think she'd dislocated your jaw. You would fight back and give her a couple of good punches in return, and it was your best friend turned enemy, but mainly your best friend, so it hurt you when you fought, but only slightly.
It was Santana, so you hurt each other but only slightly, possibly because it was nothing compared to the utter disgust you felt at the sight of Finn with Rachel.
And it was disgust, and disgust led to an even deeper, more heavily ingrained hatred for both yourself and her, and even though you smiled and pretended to be okay and perfectly happy about it, even though you knew you had no right to have an opinion as to Finn's love life, you were so angry on the inside. You were furious. Seeing them together made you curl your fingers into claws, made you clench your hands into fists, made you bite at your pillow at night like you were some kind of ill-behaved child throwing a tantrum.
The sight of them made you feel completely out of control, like you were spiraling towards something unpleasant, but that was only natural since you already felt like a monster. There was a hideous, jealous beast inside you, and hideous feelings only lead to hideous, unsightly ends.
But you felt that was only fitting.
Because you hated yourself so much, for so many different reasons, and the only thing (person) you hated more was Rachel.
So one day in glee club, when you simply couldn't stand them anymore, you stood up, walked up to them, and waited for them to notice you. When they did they fell quiet, even though Finn smiled at you in that uncertain, stupid way of his, and asked you,
"What's up, Quinn?"
And when he said that, when Rachel looked at you in that suddenly confident way of hers, like she was better than you, like she knew you better than you knew yourself, you smiled.
"Nothing." you said, your voice oddly flat.
In response, her head tilted with something that looked a lot like concern, and that just really ticked you off.
So you thought, I wish you'd die.
And then you left without another word.
Several days later, you found yourself in the auditorium with the rest of your class. The funny part was that you had no idea how you got there. The part that wasn't funny was why you were there in the first place.
At first, when they made the announcement, you thought you'd misheard. You thought you'd misheard, like those people who purposefully misinterpreted music and then uploaded videos on Youtube. What were they called? Misheard Lyrics? You thought you'd misheard.
But then Principal Figgins repeated it.
"Rachel Berry passed away last night."
You heard the words 'car' and 'accident'. You heard the words 'star' and 'bright'.
You heard the name 'Rachel'.
You heard a euphemism for 'death'.
And you genuinely believed you caused it.
As you stared at her unusually pale face, there was a certain darkness within you- a prickling, of sorts.
It was subdued. It moved slowly, starting at your toes. It crept firmly, squeezing you, but it was not painful. It was a blanket that did not leave you feeling warm, or cold, but left you feeling nothing. You thought it was your hatred.
You believed it was your credo.
Your hand twitched at your side, and you heard someone say your name but the truth was that you only had eyes for her. You'd only ever had eyes for her. How else would you have been able to notice all those things? All of those…little things…
Like her smile…like the way she'd always watched you…like the nuances of her voice…like her favorite song, her favorite color, her preferred sweater, the way she'd nibble on the edge of her pen while she was working in the library during her study hall.
As you looked at her face, as you traced the length of her eyelashes with your eyes, you felt…uncomfortable.
You hated her, and your eyes were dry, but your hand was twitching at your side. Your mouth felt like sandpaper. Your throat was constricted. There was a blackness inside you that enveloped you like fog and left you feeling blind and lost, wandering in circles.
You felt…uncomfortable.
Your hatred…
"Manhands…" you said lightly, and it's possible someone called you a heartless bitch but you were so foggy inside your head that it sounded muffled, and thus ignorable. "RuPaul…"
Her hands were so small. She'd always been so small, at the same time blessed with such a big voice. And she'd been so…pretty. You reached out with an oddly trembling hand; you reached out to touch the skin of her face, to feel the coldness of it for yourself, to confirm what everyone had been telling you.
But then someone spun you around, was in your face faster than lightning, faster than you could blink. It was Finn, his eyes red and swollen from crying, and he was angrier than you'd ever seen him. He gripped your shoulders so tightly it should have been painful. It should have been painful, but it was just a light pressure, so you sighed.
You were so uncomfortable. Your chest was tight with something you believed was your loathing.
"Why are you saying those things?" he asked you, anguished, "Why can't you just be nice to her and respect her for once in your life?"
You took him by his wrists and tugged his hands off you, and you really thought you were being gentle but from the way he flinched, it became quite apparent to you that you'd clearly, subconsciously, visibly, begun to dig your nails sharply into his coarse skin. But your voice came out like a sigh, like you were giving up, like you'd surrendered to that darkness.
"Because she's dead, Finn." you breathed out softly, gently, as though you were speaking with a child, "What I do doesn't matter anymore."
And then, as you looked into his strangely betrayed gaze, your words caught up to you.
You prickled.
You weren't sure why, but your skin was raw. You felt raw, too raw, too present, too involved in the moment. It felt too real when it simply couldn't be. The oppressive atmosphere crashed down on you in waves; it made you feel what you'd only felt once before, when you'd given up Beth.
That excruciating pain.
A whimper left your throat but you were unaware of it. Instead, your grip only intensified. You didn't notice but you were making him bleed. You made him bleed.
And you choked out, "Oh, God."
"Quinn?" The words were muffled.
Your credo.
Your hatred.
Everything you had ever based yourself upon. Your firmest beliefs.
They crumbled.
"Oh, God."
And then you felt it. You felt your darkness leave you as it became powerless against the tide of reality.
And you felt it.
That bizarre pain that stole across your heart as you looked back at her unmoving form.
A sob drifted up your throat, passively floated out of your mouth, unbidden.
Your knees buckled.
When you woke up, the area around your eyes was wet. You couldn't breathe and had to roll onto your side, had to swing your legs over the edge of the bed for your feet to touch the floor. You had to quietly drag yourself to the bathroom, gasping for air that left your throat dry and raspy because your nose was clogged and you desperately needed to blow it. You didn't understand why your chest was so impossibly constricted, why you hurt so badly, and you were usually the type to remember your dreams but that night was different.
You couldn't remember.
You only knew that it had affected you, that something within you had changed and that you needed to figure out what it was before it was too late. The shock and pain of it left your heart pounding in your chest, beating too rapidly for you to fall back asleep. It continued that way for hours, so you stayed there with your arms wrapped around your knees, with your cheek pressed against the tile of your bathroom wall. Your eyes drooped but relief never came.
Your heart wouldn't let you go. You didn't cry, not once, but it felt painful not to. You didn't cry because you were a Fabray, and Fabrays were stronger than that.
And then you remembered, hours into the night, mere minutes before the first trickle of sunlight.
So you remained there like a lost little ghost girl, wrapped in your own arms while waiting for the sun to rise. You stayed there with hatred you realized was never really hatred at all, and you thought about Rachel. You thought about being nice to her and it hurt, it really hurt to see the monster go, but your anger had finally left you.
Your anger had finally left you and that was essentially a good thing, except that now you were defenseless against the sadness that came with knowing, with acknowledging, your one truth.
That single, awful truth.
Rachel Berry would never, ever love you. She couldn't. Not after everything you'd ever done to her.
That day, when you showed up at school with dark circles underneath your eyes and a haunted expression on your face, she began to stare at you again.
She stared at you again like she used to back in elementary school. You could feel her watching you all throughout the classes you shared with her, and it wasn't exactly welcome. You weren't comfortable with your feelings for her, but you didn't hate them. They weren't welcome but you couldn't hate them. You couldn't even hate yourself, anymore.
You were just so tired. You were just so…exhausted.
But she continued to stare, for days that turned into weeks, until you were sure something was going on with her because she hadn't done anything like it in more than four years. She would stare in glee as well, when she thought no one was looking, and you didn't like that it made something in your chest flutter crazily, madly. You felt like a schoolgirl with a crush and you didn't like it. It made you feel silly and terribly foolish, very much like every other girl on the planet. It made you feel undignified.
Because butterflies- butterflies were so beneath you. Butterflies were so far, far beneath you, just like Rachel used to be beneath you, or just like you'd always been beneath her too, far below the tiny girl with the big, beautiful voice.
You suddenly thought that maybe that balanced you out. That you were above her and she was above you in a different way, and maybe that made you equals. And then you thought yourself stupid because you'd always been equals regardless of circumstances, and you both erred in your own ways because you were both human and therefore flawed, and maybe that meant you could be forgiven after all.
So you talked to her. You gathered up the remains of whatever courage you'd had in the first place, and you talked to her.
You said, "Hi, Rachel."
She looked at you like she felt awestruck. She looked at you like she was seeing you for the first time.
And she replied, "Hello, Quinn."
And she smiled at you, and your stomach fluttered so you couldn't help but smile back, and even though you didn't know it, she thought you were pretty, that time. She thought you were beautiful even though there were circles under your eyes and you seemed sad and tired.
You couldn't help but smile back, and you also couldn't help but think that this- this felt so much better than hatred.
You couldn't help but think that love felt so much easier.
On another occasion, she sat by you during lunch. She said hello, and you uttered a quiet, pleasant greeting back, and you traded smiles, and that was that.
"Quinn."
"Yes?" you hummed mildly, glancing up from your work to find her standing tentatively in front of your corner of the library.
She seemed nervous. You struggled with your smile, because you still weren't used to smiling at her without her smiling at you first, but you managed it and she eased up.
"I was wondering…if I could ask you for a ride home today. Finn can't take me, and I-"
"Okay."
She was startled. "I- What?"
Your mouth formed something akin to a grimace because even though you liked her liked her, you could still find her a little…annoying.
"I said okay. I'll take you."
She gaped. "Are you sure?"
You sighed.
"Yes, Rachel." you replied, sounding slightly impatient, "I'll take you home."
She blushed. You blinked as your words caught up to you. A very mild flush crept up your skin. You were sorely embarrassed.
"I didn't mean that the way it sounded."
Something flickered in her eyes as she laughed nervously in response. You swallowed dryly, your heart taking sudden, rapid strides in your chest, and that was the first time you ever noticed how much you really liked her.
She was so pretty. She'd always been so pretty. Something in your chest cracked as you wondered how you could have ever thought that what you felt was hatred.
And maybe you were slipping, because when you returned from your thoughts, she was still there, except that now she was concerned and you could see it clearly in the way her hand lifted tentatively, in the way she reached out shakily to touch the top of yours.
And it was so light a touch. Her fingers barely grazed you.
"Are you okay?"
But still, it echoed in your chest, made it constrict as you smiled up at her.
"I'm fine."
After that, it became easier to like her. She made it easier.
Obviously, she wasn't aware of your infatuation, but she managed to make it better. She talked to you, and gave you the time of day, and even though you weren't exactly friends, you were getting there.
Or at least, you were getting somewhere.
And then one day when you showed up at glee, you found that she'd prepared a song.
That, in itself, wasn't a very big surprise. It was Rachel, after all. It was rare the day when she didn't have a song planned, and that day she'd given no indication that anything would be any different. The only thing was that she didn't enter with Finn, like she usually did. The only thing was that, after she was done with her presentation, she didn't move to sit by him, and instead sat by you.
But first, she sang the song, and during the first verse, she looked anywhere but you. It made your heart ache as you watched her.
"You say that you're broken…
I just wanna fix you.
Tell me what to do,
Baby, I will listen."
And then she met your gaze with something like determination, with something that looked a lot like hope, in her own.
"Days that go unwritten,
All the things you're missing.
Tell me what to do and
maybe I can fix it."
You swallowed dryly, suddenly feeling like you were the only people in the room, and it was disconcerting because you never thought she'd ever look at you that way. Like she cared.
"Say so, you want to,
Say so, you want to,
Hollow, you want to,
Happy as one…"
You never thought she'd ever look at you like you were special. Like you meant something, to her.
"Still I believe you,
I just wanna save you.
Tell me what to do,
maybe I will listen.
Run, run if you want to
and you'll find what you're after.
Tell me what to do,
I'll find all the answers."
You wanted to cry. As she looked at you so earnestly, as her eyes shone with that emotion written so clearly on her face, you wanted to cry.
"Say so, you want to,
Say so, you want to,
Hollow, you want to,
Happy as one…"
As she trailed off, the room erupted in applause. But instead of basking in the praise, she simply walked forward, seeming subdued now that she was not performing, and sat down in the chair beside yours.
She turned to you with her pretty, honest eyes, and she took your hand in hers.
You smiled because your heart was breaking.
"I'm so sorry." you told her, quietly, honestly, and she shook her head in response.
She shook her head, looking almost bashful, and beamed at you.
"It's okay." she whispered earnestly, "I forgive you."
And it was only then, when she reached out with a shaking hand to touch your face, when she reached out to gently brush something away, that you realized you were crying.
And maybe that was a step forward.
A/N: Last time I posted anything, someone told me to write an A/N. So. Yeah. Hi. -insert smiley face here-
All I can say is that this came upon me after the premier. It just happened. Also, it was not originally Faberry. It just turned out that way.
So, hello, to all of you whom I do not know. Thanks for reading. Hopefully, you shall give me feedback. xD
Later, guys. I'll keep posting.
PS: Song used was "Say So", by Uh Huh Her.