After stroking Santana's new hair one last time, Brittany crawled to the ledge. Quinn looked up at her with empty eyes and a smile. "I just have to wait for blood loss to get me. Then I can let go. I won't change if I die."
Like she hadn't heard her, Brittany thrust her hand down. "I'll pull you up! I'm a lesbian, I have great upper-body strength."
Quinn shook her head. "I want this. This is the plan."
"You're a hero. You can't die."
"You don't get it, do you? I'm not a hero! I'm an embarrassment! My boyfriend's in a coma and I'm in love with a girl! Can you imagine how that would look? This way, I can go out on a win. I die stopping this, I get a free pass. I'll be spotless. Perfect."
"People aren't supposed to be perfect. People are just supposed to be people."
Quinn put her head against the jagged cement she was hanging from. Couldn't Brittany see it was better this way? Better for everyone, especially Rachel, freed from having to love a wreck like her.
"You say you love a girl?" Brittany asked. "I know what it's like to love someone who won't love you back. If she's anything like me, she'd want to see you again. Let her."
She could try it. Give Rachel a chance. All she had to lose was her reputation. How she looked in the eyes of people like Santana. People like herself.
"She's like me," Brittany repeated.
She wanted to be how she looked to Rachel. Throwing her hand up to Brittany, she said "No. She's prettier."
Brittany grinned as she pulled. But despite her sexual orientation, they didn't make much progress until Santana took her other hand. She slapped Quinn's ass as they dragged her onto solid ground.
"I know you're a superhero, but maybe you should lay off the Hostess snack cakes."
"But the tender flaky crust," Brittany murmured, "the real cream filling…"
Quinn was too tired to keep up the stoic superhero act. She let their joy infect her, taking off her cape and tossing it to Santana. "Cover your shame."
Santana haphazardly wrapped herself up. "It's okay if you're tempted, doll."
Quinn stood. She took a deep breath, blew it out, and there was a trace of calm for her. It felt good. She wanted to see Rachel. "Cops will be here soon," she told the girls. "The Reptile took you both prisoner. I rescued you. It died."
Santana scowled a little. "Metaphor? Really?"
Quinn glanced at the machine. "And don't get any funny ideas. I'll be watching."
Santana smirked. "I'll be watchable."
Quinn considered tossing a glitter smoke bomb to cover her escape, but thought better of it. She threw her ribbon up and let it carry her to the ceiling.
Brittany looked over at Santana. "You look really awesome naked."
It was raining when Quinn reached the surface, like a shower over the whole city, washing things clean. She went to the hospital first. She went in through the window, but didn't get off the windowsill. She sat there and looked at Finn, really looked at him. The man she loved wasn't there. It was just a shell. The perfect partner for who she'd been, but not the person she wanted to be. Someone who could keep fighting, keep living, and not give up.
She'd never faced him with the costume on before. It felt like taking responsibility.
"I don't know if you're listening. I don't know whether it would be harder if you were or you weren't. But you deserve to hear this from me and now instead of later. Seeing you again... it was like a knife in me. It was like losing you all over again. And I can't... I can't keep feeling that. It's too painful. I'll never stop loving you, but..." She thrust herself to her feet and her wet shoes squeaked on the floor as she walked to him. It was such a funny sound in an empty room. "God, this would be so much easier if you would just wake up and we could forget I was ever saying this. But I can't keep doing this to myself. Torturing myself, it's not for you anymore, it's for me. So I don't have to admit certain things to myself. We had problems. We weren't perfect. But I do love. Did… So this is goodbye, Finn. It's goodbye."
She kissed his forehead. It felt cold.
Her story wasn't a happy one. A moment's callous disregard could ruin a life or wrench a family apart. Sometimes, the only thing in life that Quinn could hope for was that it'd keep going.
That was enough for her.
When Quinn came into her apartment, Rachel didn't care about the mud she tracked in or the dried blood that hadn't been washed off by the rain. She just smiled. "You look very approachable."
Quinn shrugged as she approached Rachel, the door swinging shut behind her. Even with her limp and the careful, injured way she held herself, there was something about her walk. It seemed lighter.
"It's just my battle damage," Quinn replied, before kissing her.
Rachel liked the way Quinn kissed. She herself always hesitated, worried people wouldn't see how awesome it was to be kissed by the Rachel Berry, but Quinn was a lot more confident. She owned Rachel's lips.
"So it occurs to me you might not be exactly 100% hetero," Rachel said, afterward.
Quinn nodded, deep in mock-thought. "I accept that."
Rachel babbled when she was really, really happy. She also babbled when she was relieved, and turned on, so you could imagine the lack of spaces in her sentences. "I am also not majority straight, my sexual orientation that is. So if you have any questions about strap-ons or cunnilingus or threesome etiquette, you could ask me. I'm really good at being gay."
"Yeah?" Quinn asked, voice low. Her hands on Rachel's hips. The door hadn't shut all the way. She closed it with her leg. Rachel couldn't help but notice how long it was. "How about a hands-on tutorial?"
"Love to," Rachel gasped, now a little out of breath. "I'm a very good tutor. I was in the Big Sister program in high school."
Quinn pushed Rachel down onto the couch and paused over her. "Wait, don't you have work?"
Rachel shook her head like she was trying to generate power. "Not exactly. There was a little incident and now our lead actor needs a new spleen. You wouldn't happen to be O-negative?"
Quinn shook her head slowly, smiling at the contrast to Rachel.
"Then we should definitely, definitely keep doing this."
Quinn relaxed down into Rachel's arms. Rachel, a little hampered by Quinn's weight, kissed her deeply a few times, but soon Quinn was just nestling her head under Rachel's chin, letting herself be held and stroked and caressed. Rachel enjoyed the work. It was like giving a massage. She'd have to mention to Quinn that she'd done a college course on massage for extra credit.
"I let him go," Quinn said suddenly.
There was no point asking who.
"I think that's best," Rachel said, her hands still.
"I can't even look at him anymore. But I don't want to, you know? It's like… like I'm getting over a cold. Does that make me a bad person?"
"It makes you a person who had a cold, I guess. I'll admit it, I'm usually the one who needs comforting. I once lost a part to Kelly Monaco and I cried for four hours. I put on Beaches just so I'd have an excuse."
"I'll watch Beaches with you anytime." Quinn shimmied over so she was between Rachel and the back of the coach, slipping onto her side behind the petite brunette. Before her arm could encircle Rachel again, the other woman rolled off the couch. "What?"
"Nothing. Five seconds." Rachel ran off. Four seconds later, she was back with a bottled water and a bowl of fruits, which she set on the coffee table in front of the couch. Then she rather efficiently took off Quinn's boots and socks, checking her for injuries at the same time, before kicking her own sandals toward the shoe collection by the door. Then she grabbed a quilt from behind the sofa and slipped against Quinn's front.
"Wow."
"I really don't want to move unless it's an emergency," Rachel said.
Quinn got a tight hold on Rachel. She didn't want to let go unless it was an emergency.
It was her story. She was still looking for her happy ending. She didn't know what it would look like, but she knew it was out there, somewhere. And she'd find it, some day. But just then…
There wasn't an emergency.
Every superhero movie has a scene after the credits.
"Kurt? Kurt?" Blaine tapped on the door to the cell. He knew he wasn't supposed to judge the patients, but even though he was just a lowly intern at the Dalton Institution for the Criminally Insane, he always got a weird vibe from Kurt Hummel. Sure, he was doing well enough in his therapy to have earned a measure of privacy and other privileges, but the singing… the way you could hear him belting out his song therapy halfway across the facility if the acoustics were just right…
Blaine threw open the door's viewing port. Kurt was sitting on the bed, his usually immaculate hospital gown (he'd insisted on it instead of a "tacky" jumpsuit) disarrayed. His back was to the door.
Blaine was dealing with his alternate personality, the one they'd tried to suppress for so long. "Prom Queen?"
Kurt turned slowly. Blaine gasped when he saw the make-up turning his face white, his eyes into black holes.
"The Prom Queen is dead. I'm the Swan Queen!"