Chapter Twenty-One
"As much innocence is found as lost."
As the scattered crowd of people slowly arriving at McKinley began to trickle from the parking lot into the school, Santana's older sister helped her clamber out of the passenger seat of their car. Setting her good leg on the ground, Santana wobbled slightly as she gained her balance on her crutches, looking around the busy parking lot nervously. She was not used to injury; that was Brittany's department. She'd been fine in the hospital, where the bulky cast didn't look out of place and nobody cast her a second glance, and she'd been fine at home, where her mother and sister were the only ones to see her. But here? Where she had established herself as fierce and unbreakable years ago? She was not used to weakness.
Glancing at her reflection on the car window, she fiddled anxiously with her dress and hair, realizing just how difficult the simple task became when standing on only one leg. "You okay?" her sister asked, a hand on her shoulder.
Santana drew a long breath, looking towards the school. "Yeah," she said. "Let's go." The two of them began to slowly make their way over to the handicap ramp (Santana had a lot of trouble with stairs). "Thanks, Mariana," she said as they walked.
"For what?" her sister asked.
"For coming with me."
Mariana smiled, draping an arm over her little sister's shoulders. "You needed someone to drive you anyway."
Santana almost smiled back, but she caught sight of another person heading for the handicap ramp. "Uh, Mariana?" she said. "Can you give me a sec?"
Mariana's gaze flickered over to where Artie's dad was wheeling him over the pavement. "Sure. I'll meet you inside, okay?"
"Yeah."
Mariana left, leaving Santana to limp over to Artie by herself. "Artie," she said, wobbling a little as she stood in front of him. "Can we talk?"
Mr. Abrams put on the wheelchair brakes and clapped a hand down on Artie's shoulder. "You okay with this, bud?"
Artie didn't respond, simply watched Santana, unblinking, as if he were trying to figure out what her angle was.
"I'm, uh…gonna let you two talk for a minute," Mr. Abrams finally said when he got no answer from his son. He gave Artie's shoulder a squeeze before walking inside.
So there they were. A paralyzed boy and a wounded cheerleader, neither of them able to speak. There was so much Santana wanted to say, so much she wanted to make up for. But Artie was watching her, completely silent, no trace of anger anywhere in his expression, and it shocked her into her own silence.
A sparrow chirped from up on the school roof, and a mourning dove moaned somewhere off in the trees lining the parking lot. A light breeze sighed through the branches, and dead leaves eddied around their feet. Artie waited, unmoving.
"I'm so sorry, Artie," she said at long last, so quiet that she wasn't sure Artie had heard her, and before she knew it, the words were pouring out of her, water through a broken dam. "I know…I know you're mad at me, and you hate me right now, and I don't blame you. I hate myself for what I did to you." Her voice wavered, her breath hitching in her throat. "I hate that I lied about Tina. I hate that I was protecting myself when you deserved to know the truth. I hate that you stopped talking—" Her words were choked off by a sudden sob as brand new tears left tracks down her cheeks. She covered her face with one hand and clenched her teeth until she could continue. "I hate that you stopped talking, and I hate that I made you. Artie, there's never been anything I've done that I wish I could take back more. And I'm so, so sorry that she's gone."
Santana stopped short when she saw that Artie was crying, too.
"I'm not mad at you," he said, almost inaudible. His voice, rough and gravelly from not being used, cracked.
"Why not?" Santana asked. She almost wanted him to be angry at her, to hate her.
"I was," he replied softly, sniffing. "I really was, but I – I didn't leave because I was angry. I wanted to yell at you and find out why you lied. But I left, 'cause—" He stopped and swallowed. "I left because I couldn't look at you without thinking of her, and I just…I just didn't want to think. About her, about any of it." His voice was growing tight, his sentences broken up by sobs. He gritted his teeth, closing his eyes for several moments as he tried to calm his breathing. "I just wanted… God, I don't know what I wanted."
"I'm so sorry, Artie," Santana said again.
"I know."
Santana sniffed, brushing the back of her hand against her nose and casting a glance at the school entrance. "We should go in," she said.
Artie nodded wordlessly, wiping off his reddened face before lifting the brake on his chair and pushing himself up the ramp. Santana followed, much more slowly, and found that he was waiting for her at the top.
"Thank you all for coming," Figgins's voice broke through the quiet murmurs of the people packed into the gymnasium. It had been decided that the gym hosted a larger number of people, and so the memorial had been set up there. Rachel sat with her dads off to the left of the makeshift stage, really just a risen platform on the floor in the center of the room with large framed photographs of the seven victims on stands at the stage edge. She wasn't really listening to Figgins's opening speech – he was never an eloquent speaker, anyway, and she doubted he could do justice to any of the deceased – and instead she was searching the sea of faces for her friends. She saw Puck sitting almost opposite her on the other side of the stage, next to his mother, his guitar case leaning against his legs. He didn't see her, as he was staring off into space, his eyes deadpanned and unfocused. She sighed and looked for the rest of the people she knew.
Finally, she spied Santana sitting on the bottom level of the risers, Artie sitting next to her in his chair. Quinn and Mercedes sat a little ways up, and Matt and Mike on the far side. Kurt sat alone. Rachel didn't find anyone else, but she knew they were there.
The memorial was a slow-moving affair. The people who stood up to speak were mostly faculty members, and they spoke for the most part about the other kids who died besides Finn and Tina. Rachel realized that Finn and Tina had never been memorable students; Finn's grades were unremarkable and Tina never spoke during classes. She wondered angrily if the teachers who were speaking even remembered that they had died.
At least an hour passed before Rachel saw Puck stand up and mount the stage as the speaker before him returned to their seat. She held her breath as Puck set his guitar on the ground by his feet and gripping the microphone in one hand. He seemed nervous, his eyes flicking from audience member to audience member, and she wondered what he was about to do. After a moment of hesitation, he spoke, his voice ringing clear throughout the auditorium.
"I learned a new phrase yesterday," he said. "Paradigm shift. It's when somethin' happens and it makes you rethink the way you look at the world. Like maybe the world wasn't what you thought it was. And I guess…what happened two weeks ago was a paradigm shift for everybody.
"It's no secret that I'm not the nicest person by any standards. Two months ago, I tried to give Finn Hudson the opportunity to play a sick joke on one of the guys who I'm now proud to call a friend. But Finn said he wouldn't, and he saved the guy from what I woulda done without even thinkin' if the roles had been switched. He told me…he told me that he didn't want to be nothin'," Puck took a breath to steady his voice, which had grown a little shaky, before speaking again with more confidence. "Finn had his low points, but so does everyone. And I am always gonna remember him like he was last September, when he was the first one to take a stand. He was a good guy. And now, he might be gone, but… I know that I'm a better person for it, at least. I guess that's my paradigm shift.
"As much as the deaths of our friends may keep us up at night, jumpin' at every noise and hopin' that we're gonna wake up tomorrow and everything'll be back to the way it was, I think we all need to take away somethin' good from this. Because we're the lucky ones. We got a second chance."
Rachel had watched the entire speech with a growing respect for him. Over the years in high school with him, she'd felt anger, hatred, frustration, indifference, confusion, pity, and even some semblance of love for Puck, but never respect. Maybe that was her paradigm shift. She swallowed the rock in her throat.
While a strange and almost eerie hush settled over the gym, Puck lifted his guitar from where it sat and hung it by the strap around his torso. He took a breath, calming his nerves, and began a slow, sad note sequence. Rachel frowned in confusion – it wasn't the song he'd practiced at the park. He opened his mouth and began to sing, the words falling as slowly and sadly as the melody behind them.
"Yesterday, I died; tomorrow's bleeding.
Fall into your sunlight.
The future's opened wide, beyond believing
To know why hope dies
Losing what was found in a world so hollow,
Suspended in a compromise.
And the silence of the sound soon to follow,
Somehow, sundown.
Quinn's eyes were threatening to spill over. Mercedes reached over and lightly squeezed her hand.
And finding answers
Is forgetting all of the questions we called home,
Passing the graves of the unknown.
As reason clouds my eyes, with splendor fading,
Illusions of the sunlight
And a reflection of a lie will keep me waiting
With love gone for so long.
And this day's ending
Is the proof of time killing all the faith I know,
Knowing that faith is all I hold.
Rachel felt a drop land on her hand and realized she was crying, but she didn't take her eyes off Puck or reach up to brush the tears away. Puck began to strum a more complicated sequence of chords now, singing with more force. Almost as if he were about to cry himself.
And I've lost who I am, and I can't understand
Why my heart is so broken and rejecting your love
Without love gone wrong, lifeless words carry on
But I know, all I know, is that the end's beginning
Who I am from the start, take me home to my heart
Let me go, and I will run; I will not be silent
All this time spent in vain, wasted years, wasted gain
All is lost, hope remains, and this war's not over
There's a light, there's a sun, taking all the shattered ones
To the place we belong, and his love will conquer
And I've lost who I am and I can't understand
Rachel was drawn into an embrace from her father as she cried and the song began to repeat itself.
Emma leaned onto Will's shoulder.
Quinn tightly held Mercedes' hand, her other arm wrapped around her stomach as if she were trying to protect her baby from all the sadness.
Yesterday, I died, tomorrow's bleeding.
Fall into your sunlight.
A/N: The song that Puck sings is the song the story is named after - Shattered by Trading Yesterday. Please leave a review.