Chapter 3

There's a lot of people though the sky is gray and the weather is cold. It rains quite hard, the atmosphere is unreal and the city seems angry in the eyes of the girl staring at the priest with her expression completely zoned-out.

Well, she isn't surprised.

Everyone's angry at her for different reasons; her mom, her sister, her family and of her old friends.

When she graduated high school, she escaped Lima and never looked back, leaving a painful past behind. Sometimes she went back, during college, but when schedules got tougher, her visits got rarer and rarer until they were reduced to none.

But the town constantly reminded her of painful memories. That is the place where she had left her heart, where her heart had been touched, cuddled and then trod. So many things happened in that town that she felt the need to let go to a new future, a new life, the chance to a new happy ending, or at least she thought she had the right to do so.

She looks at the casket lowering to the ground, while the weight she had in her chest until that moment becomes even heavier, making the situation seem completely unreal to her. She can't believe it yet. It all happened so fast.

A few days ago she was in New York, in her apartment, she came back from work and she was dressing up to go out on a dinner. And that's when she got the call.

"Mom needs you, please, come back, I can't do this alone."

The next day she had took the first available flight to Lima, she had warned her best friend that she took a permit for a few days and she was going to go to her the next day.

And there she is; cold, wet and made empty from every possible emotion.

"We shall say our last goodbye to Russel Fabray, husband, father and a devoted man."

Her mom's loud sob makes a shiver run through her back and she sees her sister holding her in her arms. When the casket is laid on the bottom, it gets immediately covered by soil and she doesn't look away not even for a moment.

The Fabray Family greets several people wearing black and blue and Quinn realizes that she barely knows half of them. She wants everything to be over as soon as possible so that she can be alone, so that she can talk to her dad. Eventually, she manages to convince Frennie and Judy to go home, while the rest of the people leave the cemetery gradually.

Silence falls all of a sudden and she sighs in relief, passing slowly a hand over the cold marble and closing her eyes.

"Hi daddy," she whispers, lowering with her knees on the wet ground. "It's been so long since we've talked, isn't it?" She asks with a tired smile. "I'm so sorry I haven't done this before, but you know what they say? You understand how much people matter right when you lose them." She adds with her voice broken, moving her fingertips along the letters that mark his name. "I'm sorry that I've disappointed you; I don't regret my choices because they made me the person I am today." Her fingers trace the surname. "But no matter what happens, I'm still your little girl and I'll always be." She says while a few tears start streaming down her face, coming down to wet her lips.

She stays like this for so long she can't even tell how much has gone by, staring at the picture of her dad and looking at big golden letters that trace their surname, wondering why she's felt so uncomfortable with it for so long. She curses herself in her head for being so far for so long, having missed the last months of his life, regretting she didn't help him, didn't heal him, didn't take care of him. She'd just been a selfish bitch and now she feels like crap about it.

She doesn't even bother about the soft rain coming down. She puts her hand on her face and lets all her masks fall down, the ones she had worn for years. Her body shakes violently and sobs cut the silence of the peaceful place.

She startles with fear when she feels arms wrapping around her in a sweet comfortable hug. At first, her body stiffens, since she's not used to the contact. It's been years since she's last allowed someone to hold her like this. When she sees dark wavy hair on her shoulder, she relaxes for a moment, recognizing the smell she had sensed for so many nights.

Quinn lets go and just cries then, a painful plea she'd been hiding for long at the bottom of her heart and her soul, too smugly strong and proud; she hadn't cried like this since the day the love of her life got married, and not even when the doctors predicted tumor to her dad.

Crying …

And letting the pain, the sadness and the happiness even come out violently in all of their alarming strength is a privilege she hasn't allowed to herself in a long time, by destroying herself so that she had just stop feeling.

Her life all seems like a big script she needs to play and even if she doesn't feel comfortable in her character's clothes – she isn't even half the girl she used to be anymore - her personality has no shames nor praises, so it's easy to suit in.

But one hug was enough to make all her bricks made of sand and dust fall to pieces.

"Quinn …" She says sweetly, holding her tightly in her arms.

In a moment, this simple touch gets to her soul, like only She had been allowed to do ever. Quinn lets her cuddle, even if maybe this is the last time, and it's surely more than she would have even imagined. With her, she can feel again and she shouldn't allow herself to do so, because when the hug will be over, wearing her mask again is going to be a lot tougher.

They stay like this for an hour almost, enjoying the silence of their breaths, unable to find the strength to look at each other; and Quinn doesn't speak out loud to her dad anymore, but Rachel knows she isn't annoying her. In these long minutes, tight in each other's arms, they came back together, no matter what happened and the people that walked into their lives, Quinn and Rachel are going back to the only afternoon they spent together.

Without talking or looking at each other.

Their souls are so close that they stroke at each other with love. They allow it to happen, stopping time and ignoring everything that was in the past and what's going to come in the future. In silent harmony, they stand up, stepping close to the gate of the cemetery, every step taken hesitantly while their aching souls make them stumble here and there for the upcoming painful separation.

The hand of destiny that they had created themselves seems to be mocking them.

When they get to the threshold though, they can't manage to walk on, not even when the rain starts falling down, first in small drops then more intensely, wetting their clothes, making their make-up melt on their faces; but the rain won't wash away the blood dripping into Quinn's veins.

"Quinn. You need to be strong now." Rachel says, trying to sound convinced, though the voice barely comes out of her mouth.

Quinn chokes a sad smile. "Thank you," She murmurs eventually. "Thank you for being here."

"I wouldn't have let you alone." Rachel confesses with a tiny grin.

"Thank you again." Quinn says and she leans to move closer and hug her.

They hold each other, Rachel's face hidden into the crook of Quinn's neck, like they're two pieces of the same puzzle that have searched for each other for years and never managed to find one another.

The touch makes the water stop on the trees, and the streams of rain along the gate stop sliding to the sidewalk, the wind seems to be waiting, blocking the hems of their coats in the air. The cars speed silently, lacking their engine, like they were magically interrupted.

"I'm always here for you." Rachel murmurs then, pulling back from the hug she had craved for so long.

Quinn stares at her for a moment and then she leans a hand, wrapping a strand of dark her around her fingers and then fixing it behind Rachel's ear, stopping to stroke her cheek with her thumb just for a moment.

"Thank you, my angel." She says with a weak smile and then pulls her closer to press a kiss on her forehead.

The rain starts falling again and it seems like it is more violent; leaves, heavy with water, make drop fall on the ground, the noise from the traffic filling their ears again as they take their separate, painful and dark roads, in different directions, just like seven years ago.

/

During the next days, Quinn is quite busy in Lima and that's actually positive. She takes care of her house, and especially, her mom, then the documents about her dad's passing and everything she needs to take care of before she goes back to New York.

She says her mom to consider going to New York with her, to sell their place and buy a new one in the Big Apple, so that she can be close to her whenever she needs her; but she knows how much Judy is tied to Lima, where she lived with her husband and little girls.

Because of all the buzzing of these days, staying in Lima becomes a lot harder than usual for Quinn. All the stuff she has to do keeps her busy for hours, but the more she spends walking around the town, the higher the risk of coming across Rachel and her husband is.

Everytime she came back for the weekend and the holidays, she had always spent the more time she could with her mom, staying at home, the only place where she felt safe from the past. When she had to meet her former schoolmates, she always did into bars and pubs that are out of town, just to be sure. It didn't always work; in fact, her lonely holidays didn't help her thinking about something different. When she was at home alone, it was even worse, since her room and everything inside it, even after years, reminded her of them and that famous day.

Her room, her bed, her shower stall and the kitchen even. She felt like a tiger in a cage.

That's the reason why she can't wait to escape to New York, the only safe place from her regret, the one that hurts her whenever she's in Lima.

And yet, she's planned things to do during the hours she knew She won't be around – Kurt told her everything about Rachel's schedules. The eventuality of meeting her means to make a dangerous alarm ring loudly in the middle of the night. It shakes her from the warm heat of the memory and the sense of guilt, scaring her when it shows her how miserable her life is now and throwing in her face all that she could have had.

With Rachel.

Seeing her only means remembering she's lost her forever. If maybe she were faster, braver, she could have had her, held her, and loved her. But she doesn't have anything instead, just a blurred memory of an afternoon, her kisses, her touches, that is slowly disappearing along the road of memoirs.

/

Rachel looks out of the big window of her office, moving the light blue curtain, like she's been called from a voice carried by the wind. She passes her fingertips on her eyes, drinking her coffee quickly. She grabs the folders she had left on the counter, fixes the skirt of the suit she is wearing and then walks into her office again, closing the door loudly behind her back.

"If the new fabrics won't be delivered in time, Kurt is going to freak out."

She sits quickly in front of the computer and checks a few times the order they made last month, but there's nothing wrong with it, she realizes as she checks.

"This is just crazy," She sighs bored as she slowly gives up to her fate.

She has to call Kurt, who's on a business trip, and tell him that the materials are late and he'll probably have to take them out personally.

There's no other option. How are they going to pack the clothes for that wedding if they don't go and take the materials?

She catches herself staring at her own face reflected into the screen of her computer. She sees a woman who's completely sunk into her job, which she likes and she doesn't want to get freed of, for any reason; especially since it keeps her from taking care of other stuff.

This week has been so full of events that Rachel had been tempted to go back to her old habits. The bottle is there where she left it, in the bathroom, in the locker she uses for med; it wouldn't take much to just grab it and swallow some pills down to fill better, but she fought it.

Things had gone better during the last few years, even though the pain is still hidden inside the depth of her soul; at least she managed to come up from the precipice she had fallen from. Her marriage with Finn is still working; the love she felt for Finn in high school was now just a dim shadow, but she stills care about him. He's a good guy and he had been close to her during her emotional breakdown, trying to help her in every possible way.

Rachel is well aware that this isn't the life she's dreamt of. In Lima, there aren't the lights of a stage, there aren't any crowds screaming her name, nor people to stop her along the street so that she can sign an autograph. There aren't any posters in town, but at least she has her closest friends still.

Other than Finn and her, from the Glee club, Mercedes and Sam have stuck around. They had got married after a few years of living together, and they work amazingly.

Artie is now a super smart software programmer, so he comes back in town rarely, but he bought a house in Lima and he spends his summer holidays there with his wife.

Tina and Mike come back to Lima quite often, but they work for a company that travels a lot to Europe, so they spend months abroad.

Brittany and Santana have been living happily in New York for years and from what she hears, Santana owns a lawyer's office, which is quite famous and important, and she has a partner in business. Rachel doesn't know the name, but she doesn't care that much.

Her relationship with Santana became even worse after she confessed knowing what happened between her best friend and her. With Brittany it's better. It's not like they're that close, but sometimes they have long pleasant chats about the old times.

Rachel asked her many times about her and Brittany told her some things when Santana wasn't around, things that brought Rachel closer and closer to the edge of depression.

And then there's Quinn … her eternal damnation, the oblivious cause of her emotional and physical wounds.

After her marriage and graduation, Quinn had literally run to New York and Rachel didn't get any news about her. When she comes back for the holidays or some weekends, she never meets her, though Mercedes talks about her a lot, especially after the four of them go out together.

While she emotionally whipped herself with guilty, swallowing down antidepressants and sinking into the trap of her marriage, Quinn suffered in silence, fucking every girl who looked slightly attractive to her and forgetting about them completely a few days later. Quinn had gone to a lot after she moved in the Big Apple; but Rachel had been the executioner to her victim, the only difference between them being that Quinn never hurt anybody, not even the girls she slept with for one night only.

She grew up from high school, she had learnt not to play with people's feelings, she made everything clear the moment she met them, claiming she only wanted good sex, no complications.

Good sex, at least that's what she hopes, but the truth is that Quinn was a lovely, insatiable lover in bed … Rachel prefers to believe so anyway, she just gave good sex to other girls and not that kind of sex that she doesn't even manage to describe properly.

Brittany told her that she had met this girl, Katherine, who wasn't as good as other girls Quinn had, like Madison, a sexy high school teacher who was a little older than her, or the shiny Cassie, a wonderfully classy girl. Katherine came out of a nasty break-up and Quinn never stopped feeling hurt for her, so things got together spontaneously.

This girl managed to trap Quinn into her cage with her purrs and her innocent looks, but Quinn luckily knew herself. She always knows at every moment what she feels and what she pretends to be feeling, without even confusing the two things. She started dating that girl because she reminded her of Rachel somehow.

The Rachel that was and the one she still loves even now.

The buzzing of the phone makes her startle from her thoughts and she passes a hand over her face to recover, before she's picking up.

"Hummel Design, this is Rachel Berry, how can I help you?"

"Rach, it's me." A happy voice says through the phone.

It's Kurt, the only real friend she still has, the loving step-brother of her husband that leant a hand towards her and saved, literally, from the darkness she'd sunk into.

She still remembers the day when - even though he wasn't that big - Kurt destroyed the door of her bathroom and forced her to puke out all the pills she had swallowed down. He took her to the hospital and he held her hand until Finn got there with her dads. He was crying like a baby and swearing that he wouldn't have let Rachel do shit like that ever again.

When she went back home, feeling even more hurt than before, Kurt called her a selfish bitch that was ready to give up on the most important thing in her life because she was too much of a coward to face her pain. Rachel couldn't take it anymore then. She started crying and confessed her friend all the pain she felt in her heart and then he just supported, comforted and helped her.

He offered her a job as partner of his business, since he traveled a lot and he needed someone who took care of his office in Lima; a person he trusted. And that's how Kurt saved her life.

"What a surprise!" She exclaims, still tapping her fingers on the keyboard. "You've just anticipated me, I was right about to call you."

"Did something happen?" He asks, worried. "You only call me when you want to or something bad is happening."

"That's not true!" Rachel giggles, letting herself sink in the comfortable chair of the office. "But actually, I wanted to tell you that the materials you ordered haven't arrived yet."

"I saw that coming." Kurt answers a little nervously. "I'll take care of it as soon as I'll get there. Seb and I are coming back." He says.

"Already? How come so soon?"

There's a long moment of silence and Rachel wonders if she has been cut off. She leans to the phone and sees that everything is actually okay on the small screen.

"I heard about Russel Fabray," He says then, and Rachel's heart beats faster at the surname. "I heard from Mercedes that Quinn's still in town and I wanted to offer my sympathies."

The revelation cuts Rachel's breathing. "Is-is she here?" She stutters lowly.

Their encounter at the cemetery had been so intense, so important, so meaningful, that Rachel wishes she had said something smarter than what came out of her mouth.

"Yeah," Kurt answers calmly, "Did you see her?"

"Yes, I did. At the funeral. You should have seen her, Kurt. She was wrecked …" She murmurs painfully.

"I see that. They didn't have the best of relationships, but hey, it was still her father."

"She made me so anxious, she looked like me when I-"

"Okay, I got it!" Kurt cuts her, since he's not going to talk about the accident. "I've got to go, Rach, they called our flight." He explains. "We're having dinner out tonight."

"But Finn-" He doesn't give her the chance to finish the sentence.

"I've already called him and he's fine with it. You won't stop me from seeing my niece!" He says, laughing. "Give her a kiss from me, would you? And tell her uncle Kurt and uncle Bas bought her a lot of awesome presents!"

"Oh my god, you really need to stop spoiling her, you know that right?" She scolds him. "You're not the one who gets to live with her for the rest of the time."

"Yeah, whatever. I'm going now, before Sebs leaves me here!"

"See you later, honey!"

"See you later, Rach."

When Kurt disconnects, Rachel lets go against the armchair, closing her eyes. She needs to regain control over herself. It's in days like this that emotions take over her body, that Rachel needs to forget and to do it in the easiest way possible. With a loud sigh that fills the walls of her office, Rachel stands up and looks at the clock on the wall. The day is still long, she has to check on delivers, reply to emails, call the costumers and get Quinn Fabray out of her head.

/

Quinn holds the girl beside her in her arms, trying to enjoy the night. Katherine came from New York only for her, to support her; her love, her heat …

"Fucking Santana." It's what Quinn thinks instead, forcing a tiny smile over her lips.

Santana played a bad trick on her. She knows that when Quinn goes to Lima she has to keep control over her actions and emotions. When she gets in town, the only thing she can think of is her, the years they spent together in school, the passion they shared during that afternoon, her lips, her moans … and she has to hold from going to search for her and repeat the experience.

"Huh?" She asks confused when she realizes Katherine was talking to her. "I'm sorry." She clears her throat. "I was lost for a moment, could you repeat?" She asks, with a weak smile.

"She was asking if you wanted to drink something." Santana answers. "I think you need a break."

"Oh." Quinn says. "Yeah, I guess that's a good idea. I totally need a moment."

"Okay, then I'll go and pay, so we can get out of this fucking place." Santana replies, standing up.

"I'm coming with you." Quinn answers immediately.

She gets freed of the hug and she smiles at her date, kissing her head softly before she's following Santana towards the counter. Katherine follows her with her gaze before she goes back to the sweet in her plate.

"Something's wrong?" Brittany asks, looking worried as she notices the sad expression over the girl's face.

"I'm losing her, Britt." She confesses softly. "I feel like she's slipping away."

"Why?" Brittany asks while an awkward sensation makes her stomach clench.

Brittany knows too well what she's talking about. She felt like that from the moment Quinn told them she arrived in Lima. Russel was a popular man in their community and Santana had freaked out all the time about how Rachel was going to be at the funeral and bring Quinn to the edge of a breakdown.

"Quinn was never too affectionate with me, especially with having to show her feelings." Katherine explains. "And now I feel like something inside her broke and it's not about the funeral."

Brittany smiles sadly, feeling guilty at what the girl is feeling, like it could be somehow her fault. She had always begged Quinn to tell her the truth, to be just honest and not to play with her heart, but Quinn always claimed she knew what she was doing.

"I'm sure she's just hurt from all this." She says to reassure her, taking her hand on the table. "Quinn is a very introvert person, it's ha-hard for her to express what she feels."

Katherine nods just slightly, playing with the fork in her plate and making the hold on Brittany's heart tighten even more. She sighs at the complicated situation. Her worried face turns into fear when she sees the last person she was expecting to see now walking in the place.

"C'mon uncle Bas! Stop, you'll make me fall!" A little girl shrieked while she was sitting on the shoulders of a man Brittany didn't recognize.

She looks terribly like Rachel. She's got long brown hair, a tiny body, and she appears to be taller than kids of her age. Also, she's got wonderful green eyes.

"Oh no." Brittany murmurs, unable to keep it, and Katherine turns to follow her gaze.

Behind the man, Rachel and Kurt appear immediately, chatting happily and followed by Finn, who looks like he's grown up a lot. Brittany brings her hands to her mouth and without even thinking twice, she stands up to reach for the other two girls before something happens.

"Britt, what's going on?" Katherine asks, worried at her suddenly weird attitude.

Brittany doesn't manage to answer because Santana and Quinn come in from the other room, talking about something that doesn't seem that good. Brittany is panicking completely; she has no idea what to do. She only knows that this is all going to explode in the worst way possible.

Quinn turns for a moment to look away from her friend.

Rachel turns to check on how many people there are in the place.

Green and chocolate.

Blonde and brown.

"Rachel …"

"Quinn …"

/

A/N: As promised, here is the next chapter translated.

A big thank to my friend Edy who works so hard on translating, allowing me to share this story - which I'm really proud of – with the International fandom, and not only the Italian one. This chapter very tough for me to write, especially when Quinn talks to her dad, but I hope you still appreciate it despite the sadness!

See you at the next chapter! :)