Hey all! I'm sorry for the slightly longer wait this time but school started back up for me and we all know what that means.
Anyway, this chapter is a little bit different as there is no POV involved, which I have never written before so I apologize in advance for any mistakes.
As always, thank you everybody for the incredible responses! See you next time.
Chapter 51 – The World Spins Madly On
Coach Sue Sylvester, by her very nature, is not a trusting person.
It might have something to do with the childhood abandonment issues, or maybe the disappointments that have plagued her life since her earliest possible memory, but whatever it was, Sue Sylvester did not trust.
Often, she would take the energy bred from her insecurities and cultivate it into a compulsive mania. Usually, it was her Cheerios schedule that kept her occupied, but more recently, she has found her time and energy focused on the well-being of two girls whom she didn't even know seven months ago.
When Rachel asked if she and her sister could go out for the night, Sue had agreed to let it happen, but in her head, even as she was telling Rachel yes, she knew it couldn't be so simple. Sue Sylvester took her responsibilities very seriously. Watching over the Corcoran girls for the weekend was no exception. The girls were accustomed to experiencing setbacks. Sue was determined not to let that happen. Not under her watch.
She followed them periodically throughout the night, always from a safe distance so they would never even know that she was there. She had watched from the faculty parking lot as they walked into the high school gym for the basketball game, flanked by Brittany and Quinn and what looked like half of Lima. She watched the quartet go to a diner for a bite to eat afterwards. Then, just when Sue was beginning to think that maybe the girls would be doing exactly what Rachel had told her they would be doing, she watched them walk into the West Lima home of one Gus Ringweiler; captain of the hockey team and stereotypical prototype of a spoiled rich kid in a small town.
She had stared at that house in an angry haze for what felt like hours, watching as what had to have been one hundred students filtered in and out. It was still early, but the teens were already stumbling drunk. The benefit of that was that nobody seemed to notice the notorious cheerleading coach sitting in her dark car, watching from a couple feet down the road, not even Rachel and Santana.
The coach was seething, silently daring Santana and Rachel to be the next drunken teenagers that she saw. They were already in the biggest trouble of their lives, they had no idea what Sue was going to do to them if they were drinking on top of that. In fact, not even Sue knew what she was going to do to them. She was feeling too angry and too betrayed to even think.
When the time finally did come that Rachel stormed out of the house, the flow of traffic into and out of the party had already begun to slow.
Rachel was by herself outside and she looked angry. In fact, she looked so angry that Sue couldn't even tell if she had been drinking or if she was just so pissed off that it had left her bewildered.
Quinn followed Rachel out of the house but the blonde had closed the door behind her and nobody else made any attempt to follow, not even Santana. The coach has noticed an increasing fissure wedging itself in between the two sisters now that they were living under her roof. Her first suspicion is that the reason for the look of anger on Rachel's face must be Santana.
While there was a loyal tenacity that existed between the two sisters - Sue hasn't seen one so strong since her and Jean - Sue knows that every once in a while, this can rub along a fault line in such a way that will crack any foundation, no matter how thick. Sue knows better than anybody that even a single flaw can collapse an entire house.
Sue had watched Quinn try to talk Rachel down from her anger until the two girls turned towards the direction of the Corcoran house, looking for a safe haven. Sue had anticipated following, but Santana was still inside of that house somewhere and she still hasn't quite figured out exactly how she was going to punish the girls yet. She didn't want to ruin the surprise before it was ready so ultimately, she had stayed put.
With her anger peaking, she contemplates roughly three hundred different punishments worthy of her guest's transgressions.
She considers calling the girls' mother, but bites against that idea quickly. Shelby was already uncertain about this arrangement. She hardly needed this kind of a distraction when she was already so busy with work. Next, Sue thinks about calling the police department. She could kill two birds with one stone by breaking up this party and having Santana escorted home by the Lima Police Department all at the same time. Sue is firm in her belief that there is not a single life lesson that cannot be taught by being placed in the backseat of a police car in handcuffs. Still, that would likely mean a tsunami of paperwork on her part, and Sue just did not have the time nor the patience to deal with that right now.
Contemplating the girls' punishment works her into a hunger. In the end, she decides to give them a couple of more minutes of freedom while she works out the details and takes a break. She has gathered all of the evidence that she needs to try, convict, and sentence Santana and Rachel, she was certain that they would be just where she left them upon her return.
It is almost an hour later that the coach is pulling up to the Corcoran house to check on Rachel and Quinn. As anticipated, every single light in the house is on.
With a magnificent stroke of luck, Sue recognizes Brittany's car parked outside and knows that her and Santana must have drifted over to join the rest of the pack in her absence. Good. Now she wouldn't have to yell at them all individually. That would have taken up way too much of her energy; energy which the girls simply did not deserve right now. Instead, she would yell at all four of them at once, and she would do so with the force of fury and hell fire. That should teach them to think that they could sneak around behind Sue Sylvester's back.
The Explorer's lights are still blaring into the foggy haze of the otherwise abandoned street. The second that Sue steps out of her car, she can hear the muffled thumping of a bass from inside of Brittany's car as the eccentric Cheerio blares her radio for the world to hear. When Sue approaches the car, she finds Brittany sitting by herself in the driver's seat, clearly waiting for the other occupants inside of the house.
The blonde's hair is whipping back and forth violently. Her lips are moving, but no sound is coming out as the clueless blonde continues to dance and lip sync to a song that the cheerleading coach couldn't be bothered with knowing the name of.
When it becomes obvious that Brittany isn't going to notice her coach glaring at her on her own, Sue knocks on her side window three times sharply, watching satisfied as the blonde jumps about a foot in the air in response, clearly startled.
She lowers her radio and peers out of her window. When she sees the familiar, angry face of her cheerleading coach glaring back down at her, her eyes turn down fearfully like an abused puppy and her cheeks flush bright pink; embarrassed for being caught dancing, embarrassed for being caught trying to get one by Sue Sylvester.
"H-hey Coach…" Brittany starts with an air of innocence as she rolls down her window.
"Don't bother," Sue tells her, pointing an accusing finger at the blonde to silence her before any more excuses could slip out of her lips.
"How did you know that we were here?" she asks, defeated. She has known Coach Sylvester long enough to know that when she says don't bother, she means it.
"Those Corcoran girls have been giving me trouble since the day that I met them," Coach Sylvester tells the blonde girl, clicking her tongue. It is the truth, but what she can't tell Brittany is that their stubborn will and mischievous personalities were part of the reason that she felt so connected to them in the first place. It is something that she idolized about them except for in moments like this, when it frustrated the hell out of her. "When Rachel asked me to go out tonight, she did so with an air and a look about her that reminded me of someone. Do you want to know who that someone was, Brittany?"
"W-who?" Brittany asks, confused with the direction that this conversation was going.
"Every single sneaky, lying high school student that has ever crossed my path," Sue says pointedly, watching as Brittany swallows again. "Do you know how many sneaky, lying high school students I have crossed paths with in my time, Brittany?"
"A lot?" Brittany asks in a meek sort of voice.
"Smart girl," Sue nods, but Brittany knows that it was not meant to be a compliment. "I know every trick in the book, Brittany. I have been working this job for a long time and as much as I loathe and despise teenagers, I have to say that there is one good thing about them: you can read them like a book. I have been following you girls all night and even that was not a sufficient amount of time to come up with a suitable punishment so after a pit stop at my favorite smoothie bar where I further contemplated your demises, I decided that I have let you have your fun for the night, now it's time for me to have mine. Now, where are they?"
Brittany hesitates. She looks nervous about giving up their information so quickly, but the way that her eyes dart periodically towards the house gives them away without Brittany even realizing what she is doing.
"They're inside," she finally sighs, ashamed. "Rachel and Santana needed to talk. I… I was giving them their space."
Coach Sylvester narrows her eyes at the blonde. She wants to make it very clear that if Brittany thought that giving away Santana and Rachel would give her any amnesty towards her punishment, she thought wrong.
"You would do terribly in prison, Brittany," the coach informs the younger blonde, watching her eyes screw up as she tries to figure out exactly what this means. Luckily, she will have plenty of time to interpret it now that she is bound to be spending the rest of her high school career grounded. "Now, you wait right here while I go get them. You girls have no idea how much trouble you're in. You are all going to be doing wall squats until your legs fall off."
"Cheerleading season is over, Coach…" Brittany points out. Coach Sylvester narrows her eyes further if only to avoid laughing in the blonde's face.
"Did I say anything about cheerleading?" she asks and catches a fleeting glance of Brittany paling before she starts up the front path towards the house.
Sue makes it up to the landing, standing on the platform just in front of the door. She takes a moment, flattening her sweat suit against her slim figure, fixing her hair into a perfect coif. She wants to look as intimidating as possible when she faces Rachel and Santana. She wants them to fear her just by looking at her.
She opens the glass screen door and props it against her hip as she reaches for the doorknob. It gives way slightly underneath her palm and she curses those kids under her breath because they had not even thought to lock the door behind them even though they knew how on edge everybody was about their safety.
She is about to shoulder her way into the house and give those girls one hell of a fright when she hears it; a dull thud like a person hitting the wooden floor on the other side of the door. Then, two raised voices emit loudly; a sound of protest, a sound of fear. Sue is innately familiar with Santana and Quinn enough to recognize that it is them without even having to look.
Her initial instinct is to burst inside of the house and stop whatever the hell is going on in there. She had watched Rachel leave that party in a flurry of anger. Brittany had told her that Santana wanted to talk to Rachel alone. Was it possible that the two girls were fighting with Quinn acting as an unwitting mediator?
Briefly, Sue wonders if Rachel is even capable, but then remembers the impressive bursts of anger that she herself had seen come out of that tiny fifteen-year-old. She thinks about the time that Rachel had stunned her stupid, calling her out in front of the entire school which was not only unheard of, but downright suicidal. The more she thinks about it, the more that she realizes that yes, it is very possible that the two girls were fighting just on the other side of this door.
She thinks about walking inside of that house and ending whatever is going on between the two sisters once and for all, but something gives her pause and makes her think better of an ambush.
Maybe it was the distress in the voices. Maybe it was the way that she is struggling to picture Rachel and Santana grappling on the floor of their house. Whatever it was, she pauses and removes her hand from the doorknob. Seconds later, she hears a man's voice filter through the door and her stomach drops; her gut processing what is really going on inside of that house before even her brain can.
The anger that she had previously been experiencing towards the girls – as strong as it had been – ebbs away in an instant. The cheerleading coach is rarely stunned into uncertainty but for a moment, not even she knows what to do next.
She backs away slowly from the door, moving very quietly, careful that the screen does not slam behind her. She takes the steps on her tip toes, her eyes never leaving the front door as she pads onto the lawn and into the bushes towards the dining room window.
She is well aware that she looks crazy, and more than a little suspicious as she crawls through the azaleas that are only just starting to bud as the air turns warmer. If who is inside of that house with those girls is who she thinks it is however, she realizes that a suspicious neighbor calling the police might be a best-case scenario.
She makes her way to the large window that looks into the dining room, grateful that she was wearing a dark navy track suit tonight. She had made the decision purposefully to be inconspicuous while she was spying on the girls. At the time, she had no idea how in handy it would actually come.
She stays low against the window's ledge, risking only fleeting glances so that she can get an idea of what is going on inside of the Corcoran home.
For a moment, she can't see anything. The angle of the girls' position in the foyer is too sharp for the placement of the window but then, she shifts at the exact same moment that Santana takes a step backwards and the girl comes into her view.
Santana does not seem to notice that Sue is staring at her through the window. In fact, she does not seem to notice anything outside of what she is currently looking at. She is staring intensely towards the direction of the front door. Her body is frozen, terrified of making any sudden movement. She looks like she is standing in front of a hungry lion, trying to convince it not to pounce. Sue suspects that in a way, that is exactly what Santana is doing right now.
The girl's stance is strong. Despite the terror in her eyes, there is a braveness in her posture that makes Sue strangely proud. Her attachment to the young girl had begun because Santana had reminded her so much of herself when she was that age. There was a bite hidden inside of those eyes. She saw it in Santana, and she saw it even in Rachel, although most would consider her to be the more docile of the two sisters.
Not many kids their age would be able to face their current predicament with such grace. Sue can only hope that this will prove enough until she can find a safe way to interfere.
The coach is focusing so hard on Santana that she completely forgets that Quinn is inside of the house as well. The young blonde is sitting just a couple of feet in front of her on the dining room floor. In fact, she notices her former cheerleading coach before Sue notices her. The only reason that Sue looks at all is because she can feel somebody else's eyes on her.
The teenager looks terrified, which is a rare look for Quinn Fabray. Sue finds that it doesn't particular suit her and has a difficult time keeping eye contact as her piercing, blue eyes settle firmly into scared hazel. But she does, and through it, she makes a silent promise to get all three of them out of this.
The coach raises a finger to her lips, asking Quinn for silence. Quinn responds to the command with a quick nod. That is something that Sue always liked about Quinn; she understood directions and was usually good to follow through on them. That had been a big part of the reason that Sue had made her captain of the varsity cheerleading squad despite the fact that she was younger than almost all of her peers.
The sound of a scuffle coming from Santana's direction snaps Sue's attention off of her former superstar. When she looks back towards the foyer, she finds that this time, Santana is not alone in Sue's range of vision.
Sue had met Andrew Richardson only once before; she had been standing on the front lawn of the Corcoran's old home in Lima Heights and he had confronted her. She had only met him once, but she knew enough about him that she wished she would never have to cross paths with him again, especially with the added factor of three teenaged girls and – Sue's heart pinches shut when she sees it in Andrew's hand– a gun standing between them.
He doesn't seem to notice the woman standing in the window, neither does Santana. Instead, the both of them are focused intensely as Andrew reaches down and heaves something up off of the floor; something that turns out to be the youngest Corcoran, whom Sue has been nervously wondering about since she first peered through this window.
There is a look of pain in the youngest Corcoran's face and Sue can see the physical blemishes on her skin that tells her why.
Rachel looks defeated. It is an expression that Sue has come to associate with Rachel whenever Andrew is in the picture. As the months passed, she had gotten better at hiding it, but it was still there; maybe not in her expression, but in her eyes, in the way that she lashed out and rebelled and silently begged to be a different person from time to time.
The glimpse of the young girl being held by the collar of her shirt tight into Andrew's chest snaps Sue back to attention. She needs to do something. Quickly. The hardest part would be doing something without startling Andrew into doing something stupid.
Sue pauses, re-thinking that sentiment; stupider.
The first thing that she does is retreat back to where Brittany is still sitting inside of her car. She had left her own cell inside of her vehicle and the police needed to be called as soon as possible. She sneaks back out from underneath the bushes, walking on the balls of her feet, trying to remain silent, willing herself not to so much as cast a shadow.
She had told Brittany to stay put until she got back, and when Sue rounds back to the car, she is glad to find that Brittany had listened. Sometimes, that girl liked to operate on her own program, Sue knew, but she must have really known how much trouble she was in this time because it looked to Sue like hadn't so much as blinked since she left.
When she rounds her way to Brittany's window, she pounds on the glass with a clenched fist, much more vigorously than how she'd intended thanks to the adrenaline currently coursing through her veins. For the second time tonight, Sue startles Brittany so hard, the younger girl nearly jumps out of her skin. When the blonde finally settles down long enough to recognize Sue hovering over her, she looks confused not only about why her coach had returned so soon, but also why she had come back without her three fellow delinquents in tow.
"What's going on, Coach?" Brittany asks, rolling down her window again. When she sees the worried expression in Coach Sylvester's eyes, her entire forehead furrows nervously.
"Brittany, I need you to call 911," the coach responds. Her voice is quiet and calm, but this plus the lack of an explanation only seems to confuse Brittany even more. Sue watches as the girl's eyes narrow with a perfect combination of uncertainty and fear.
"What?" she asks, her pitch rising slightly. She sounds like she can't tell whether the coach is playing a joke on her or not. Is this supposed to be part of her punishment?
She has a look on her face that Sue would describe as rational jet lag. Brittany's eyes are telling Sue that in her heart of hearts, the young dancer knows that this is not a joke while meanwhile, her brain keeps acting defensively to try to convince her otherwise. It is incredible, what the mind will do to try to avoid the conflict of trauma.
Brittany watches as Coach Sylvester takes a deep, heavy breath and she prepares for what she is going to hear next, bracing herself against the steering wheel hard.
"Brittany, Andrew is inside of that house with Rachel, Santana, and Quinn," Sue says. Her voice is remarkably straight. It would be counter-productive to have it otherwise. Sue does not need Brittany overanalyzing the content of her tone when she had just been assigned the most crucial task to get them out of this situation alive.
"What? I mean, how. I mean, is everybody alright?" Brittany stammers blindly. She is still not getting it. Her blue eyes are turned up, horrified, waiting for a relief that Sue knows she has no room to give. She looks like she doesn't know what to say. She looks like she doesn't even know what to think. Unfortunately, Sue needs for her to be able to think, and to think for herself. She does not have time to hold onto Brittany's hand and coach her through the calling of emergency services. That is something that Brittany will have to do on her own.
"Everybody is alright for now," Sue nods quickly. "But I need you to call 911 now. Do you understand?"
The blonde's bottom lip is stuck out in an expression of her horror. It is trembling slightly. She looks paralyzed by her fear and although Sue knows that time is currently not on her side, she also knows that she has to make sure that Brittany can complete her assigned task. They would all be dead in the water if she wasn't.
"Brittany, this is important," Sue reiterates, staring hard into the blonde's eyes. She understands that the girl is frightened. Any eighteen-year old kid would be frightened in this situation. Hell, she is frightened and she is grown. Sue understands that it is not fair that she should have to ask the girl to be so strong, but the universe didn't seem to care about fair when it comes to Brittany or any of these girls for that matter. "I need to hear it. I need to hear you tell me that you can call for help. Please, we need the police here. We cannot help them without the police here."
The mention of Santana, Rachel, and Quinn sets something inside of the blonde's eyes and they drift from terrified to determined.
"I can do it," she promises. It gives Sue peace of mind enough that she starts to move away from Brittany's car, backing up slowly.
"Good girl," she praises, continuing to back up towards the house. "Call 911. Keep them on the phone. Tell them everything that you know. They'll be here soon, Brittany. I'm going to go around the back to see if I can get in through there and sneak up on him."
Once she is certain that the blonde has received her direction, she darts from the car and rushes towards the house. She takes the path leading around to the back of the home, staying close to the house the entire time, practically blending with the siding in an effort to go unseen.
The closer that she gets, the slower she moves. She tiptoes past the trash cans and ducks underneath the windows, just in case. She wants to be as silent as the dawn, refusing to be stopped until she gets to those girls.
She did not really have a plan, but figured that if she could get into the house somewhere through the back, she would be able to sneak up on Andrew undetected and subdue him before he even knew that she was there. Sue Sylvester was known for embellishing the scope of her talents to a lot of people, but her black belt in Tai Kwon Do was one of the few actual talents that she could boast truthfully. The coach was certain that if it came down to it, in a hand-to-hand match against Andrew, she would win. If only that gun wasn't in the picture…
She is just climbing over the chain-link fence separating the front and back yards when a sharp, loud crack explodes through the otherwise quiet night.
The sound startles Sue frozen. Straddling the top of the fence, Sue's foot slips when it falls slack on nothing but air and she finds herself tumbling the four feet or so onto the concrete path in the backyard, landing on her back with a thud that momentarily steals her breath.
She groans quietly. Luckily, the sound of the shot is still ringing inside of the night air and her voice wisps away like a wind.
For a moment, she wonders if it is possible that she had just made the noise up, mostly because she refuses that there is any way that Andrew had actually fired his gun. The crack is still ringing inside of her ears. She can't even hear the sounds of the night anymore, but as the world slowly returns into focus, she hears the neighborhood dogs barking and even a car alarm sounding close by and she knows that what she thought she had heard was real all along.
Sue does not entertain the idea that a neighbor would call 911 for a second. Despite all of the commotion, gunshots simply did not happen in this area of Lima. They did not happen in any area of Lima at all.
Sure, a person might look up for a moment from their television, or from their evening book to ponder what all the noise was, but in the end, it would be written off as a firework or as a backfiring car. Afterwards, they would return to what they were doing without anymore question.
An unwritten rule of the suburbs is that people generally keep out of interfering directly with another's life. The topic is of no interest to anybody else until it shows up in the latest gossip circles and even those conversations never go I should have done something but instead, steer in the direction of thank God it wasn't me.
Sue stands up slowly, brushing the gravel from her palms. She inspects the meaty portion of her hands for a moment, taking in the bruised imprints of the tiny rocks in her skin, the slight trace of blood from scraping her palms on the pavement.
She moves on quickly, hyper-aware of the idea that the gunshot had just cut into her already limited timeline as she rounds into the backyard.
Sue's initial instinct is to enter through the glass sliding door that separates the kitchen from the backyard. It is on the opposite side of the house from where Andrew is currently holding the girls. The lock would be difficult to maneuver, but if she was careful, she would be able to do it without him hearing. If things got really out of control, she could resort to throwing a piece of the patio furniture straight through the glass.
Sue moves quickly, but carefully. Her situation is desperate – the sound of the gunshot had proved that much – but she still did not know the circumstances that had led to the shot and what is happening in its aftermath.
The best-case scenario is that the girls had gotten the gun away from Andrew and one of them had used it in self-defense. She knew that Quinn was well-versed in the art of firearms and is suspicious that Santana at the very least is as well. The more likely scenario is that Andrew had finally snapped. The best that Sue could hope for in that situation is that he had missed. The worst is that he had hurt one of the girls or worse. But there had only been one shot. Two of those girls were still inside, their lives depending on how efficiently and how quietly Sue could open this lock. The last thing that Sue needed right now was to startle him into more panic-firing.
She jimmies the sliding lock carefully, trying to pull it off of its track. It will not budge without more force, but Sue hardly dares to move any harder for fear of the sound that that would create. Grateful that she had forgone her most recent haircut, she pulls two bobby pins from her growing hair and sets to work.
Another one of Sue's prized talents that she had actually been truthful about was her uncanny ability to pick a lock.
A lock is usually no match for Sue Sylvester, but she has never tried to pick one under such precarious circumstances before. Her hands are trembling so hard that it takes much longer than she had hoped for and by the time she hears the lock click open, she is well aware of just how much time has passed.
She slides the door open carefully, opening it just enough for her to slip inside.
For all of the effort she had spent on staying quiet, the alarm starts to blare the second that the door opens. She shrinks away from the sound, darting towards the kitchen island where she grabs a steak knife for protection and ducks behind it for cover, waiting for Andrew to come investigate the noise.
"W-who's there?"
Instead of Andrew, she is greeted by a soft, terrified voice, one that she recognizes as Quinn's coming from the dining room.
"Quinn, is he still here?" Sue foregoes formal greetings. She gets straight to the point, screaming over the continuously droning alarm that is rapidly starting to give her a headache.
"N-no," Quinn sobs, but there is something in her tone that tells Sue that the story is not so simple as Andrew just up and leaving.
"I heard a gunshot," the coach pushes. She clutches the knife a little bit harder, just in case Andrew decides to make a reappearance and advances towards Quinn. "Is anybody hurt?"
The coach skids to a halt at the junction between the kitchen and the dining room, where she can see the entirety of the front of the house. Here, she answers her own question before Quinn can even think to.
The blonde is on her knees just a couple of feet in front of the front door. It takes Sue a moment to process that Quinn is hovering over something, someone but quickly, she recognizes that it is Santana on the ground and that she is laying in a pool of blood that seems like much more blood than what one, skinny high school student can hold inside of her.
Santana does not react to Sue's sudden presence. In fact, she doesn't seem to be moving at all. She is as pale as a ghost with sweat dripping down her face. Her lips are starting to turn a pale shade of blue and the coach has to do a double-take just to make sure that she is still breathing.
For a moment, Sue's heart drops for fear that she is already too late, but as her pupils constrict and focus through her distress, she recognizes that the girl's chest is moving. It is moving slowly, but it is moving.
Santana's eyes are wide open. Occasionally, she even blinks a couple of times. Still, Sue does not have to stare long to tell that Santana is not there.
"He left through the front door, Coach," Quinn sobs, breaking through Sue's evaluation of Santana. "He shot Santana and then he left. He took Rachel with him. I… I don't know what to do, Coach. I need help."
The desperation in her star pupil's voice has Sue nervous. Quinn Fabray is a rock. The closest that Sue has ever come to seeing her frightened was when she had to tell the world that she was pregnant but even still, that wasn't fear for herself as much as it was for her child.
When tears actually start to fall from Quinn's face, Sue sprints into action. She drops the knife to the floor with a clatter, rushing towards the blonde and one of her closest friends. She isn't sure what she can do to help either one of them now, but figures that her presence might be all that Quinn needs at the moment.
"How did this happen?" Sue asks Quinn. She needs to keep the girl talking. If she lets Quinn sit idly, she was bound to breakdown. Her entire body is already trembling with the pent-up emotions. If she focuses on it, she will break and Sue cannot let Quinn break.
The older woman jabs her fingers into Santana's neck. She finds the pulse that she is looking for almost immediately, but is acutely aware of how long she has to wait in between beats to feel the thud against her fingertips.
She is starting to get used to the sound of the alarm. With time, its blaring has turned into nothing more than white noise and in the freedom from its binds, Sue notices for the first time that Santana is babbling. Her lips are moving slowly, the whisper coming out in the form of a far-away language all her own; the language of whatever world she is currently stuck inside of.
Underneath her fingers, Sue is still counting the thready beats of Santana's pulse, using them like a stopwatch that marks every moment that passes as they wait for the ambulance to arrive.
"Andrew was trying to get Rachel out of the house," Quinn cries, leaning back slightly on her legs, grateful for the reprieve that Sue is offering her. "Santana wouldn't let him go. He tried to shoot her but Rachel… she kicked out his leg and his finger slipped. He shot her in the thigh instead. She's bleeding pretty badly, Coach. She keeps going in and out of consciousness. She was talking to me but she went all weird about two minutes ago and she hasn't said anything real since. I don't know how much longer that she'll last."
"The ambulance is on its way, Quinn," Sue assures the blonde, pulling her fingers off of Santana's neck as her eyes flicker up to the cut just above her right eyebrow, the blood clotted in uneven bumps and grooves like a 3D topography map. "What happened to you? Are you hurt?"
"I…" Quinn starts to lie, but before she can even really get started, her face contorts into a brutal expression of pain. For a moment, Sue cannot tell what this is all about. Had she hurt her head worse than the superficial cut suggested? Was she hurt somewhere that Sue couldn't even see?
The answer to her question is answered when Quinn girts her teeth and clutches her stomach, bending forward until she is folded as completely in half as her pregnant stomach will allow.
"You're in labor…" the coach breathes through clenched teeth as her heart drops into her gut. What else could the universe possibly do to prove that it had a vendetta against these girls?
Quinn's eyes look up to meet her former cheerleading coach's. For a moment, Sue mistakes the look as an added fear but after looking a little bit harder, she sees what is really inside of Quinn's eyes; an apology.
Even as the captain of her Cheerios, Quinn hated to be trouble. Whenever the squad did something that warranted punishment, as captain, Quinn apologized and took it. The environment that she had been raised under made it so that Quinn was quick to jump to guilt and accept any type of punishment just so long as it meant that things were handled quietly and without fuss. She hated the type of attention that she had absolutely no control over. She wanted to be seen because of something she meant to do.
Quinn Fabray's biggest weakness was her fear of being burdensome to others. Sue had known this about the blonde since the moment she met her. Her fierce independence was admirable, but made it so that the second that she had to rely on anybody else, she was clueless. She doesn't know what to do next and like Brittany before her, Sue needs for Quinn to know what to do next.
Sue reaches out. Quinn's palms are pressed flat against the hardwood, bracing herself for the next contraction. Sue hovers her hands above Quinn's for a moment, and finally rests her palms against the top of Quinn's hands, squeezing slightly.
"It's going to be okay, Quinn," Sue tells the blonde. Quinn has always been one of the closest students that Sue has ever had, but she has never been so delicately personal with the blonde before. Now, she wonders why and for a moment, she can't help but to feel a sense of responsibility towards the tragedy that has plagued the young girl's life.
Quinn's eyes drop as she looks up at Sue. She looks like she wants to burst into tears, like Sue's words had just given her some sort of permission.
"It's too early, Coach," Quinn sobs.
"Help is on the way, Quinn," Sue reminds her for what seems like the millionth time. She knows that it is a weak source of comfort, but it is the best that she can do for either Quinn or Santana at the moment.
"You have to go get Rachel," the blonde cries out, more tears spilling down her cheeks as yet another contraction sweeps over her. The way that Quinn sees it, if she is going to lose Santana and if she is going to lose her baby tonight, she at least needs a victory somewhere.
Sue shakes her head slightly. She knows that if Andrew truly had dragged Rachel out of this house and taken her somewhere, then Quinn is right; Sue does have to find the girl. She has to find her before Andrew does something to her that Sue will not be able to save her from.
Still, leaving Quinn in such a precarious position right now gives her pause. Quinn had been a victim of a trauma tonight too, and the trauma was still ongoing for all of them. They weren't out of the woods yet.
"Rachel…" the girl's name sparks something inside of Santana, who comes suddenly to life at the sound of her sister's name.
Her voice is barely there. Sue can barely hear it as the alarm continues to blare over their heads, but Rachel is an issue that Santana is passionate about. She was going to let her voice be heard. Plus, it is the most comprehensible thing that Sue has heard the girl say since she had walked into the house, so she will take it.
"I'm going to get Rachel, Santana," Sue assures the girl, addressing her as though she were talking to a child. Her eyes do not leave Quinn's the entire time that she is talking, gauging her reaction.
Sue knows that Quinn can handle this. She had kept Santana alive this far; she only needs to do it for a little while longer. Now, Sue only has to convince Quinn of this.
As they maintain eye contact, Sue watches as Quinn's expression maintains a horrified glimmer that makes Sue's stomach bubble. The blonde girl lets out a whimper like a wounded puppy. Her hands, rust-colored from Santana's dried blood are shaking.
"You're sure that help is coming?" she asks with a swallowed whisper. "God, what's taking so long? What if they're not coming?"
Sue knows that she has to act fast. She rips her hands off of Quinn's and moves one of them to grab onto the girl's chin, forcing her eyes to face hers. Determined blue meets frightened hazel and Sue holds the eye contact for a long moment before speaking.
"Do you hear that alarm going off right now, Quinn?" Sue asks. Her voice is fast, but articulate. She has to make certain that Quinn is digesting every single word. "That alarm is signaling to every single police officer, ambulance, and firefighter in Lima. They will be here. They will be here soon. Even if that alarm signals to no one, Brittany is on the phone with emergency services right now. She is outside in her car. I had her call them."
"Brittany is outside?" Quinn asks, her voice going suddenly high. The fright in her eyes does not diminish by Sue's words. In fact, it only seems to increase. When Sue nods her head slightly, it only deepens. "Coach, Andrew took Rachel outside that way. What if he sees her? He'll kill her, Coach. You didn't see him. He looked crazy."
Sue's eyes snap to look out of the large dining room window. She had left the blonde sitting in her car under the impression that she would be safer there but selfishly, Sue hadn't even considered the fact that Brittany was still outside until now that Quinn had said something.
The car is still sitting on the curb, and judging by the taillights, it is also still on. It is too far away for Sue to see through to the inside, though.
Sue darts to her feet, rushing to the front door. She needs to check to see if Brittany is okay. She needs to find Rachel before it's too late. She needs to make sure that the ambulance gets to Santana and Quinn alright.
Suddenly, she wishes that she could be everywhere at once.
"Go…" Quinn seems to notice Sue's hesitation. This time, her voice is straight and Sue knows that she had done her job to remind Quinn of how tough that she is. What she has already done for Santana proves that she has a handle on things. Now, all they can do is wait. "Coach, please, go get Rachel. This will all be for nothing if you can't save her."
Now, it seems to be Quinn trying to comfort Sue. The coach is not entirely sure when the role reversal had occurred, but it seems to work.
"I will meet you at the hospital," Sue assures the blonde, scrambling to her feet. "You stay here with Santana. Try to keep her talking. The police are on their way. They will be here any minute."
Quinn nods her head. It is the last thing that Sue sees before rushing to the door. The last thing that she hears before darting out of that house is Quinn. Her voice is still shaking, but it is loud as she bends in close to Santana and speaks to her:
"If you die on me, Santana, I am going to bring you back from the dead and kill you myself."
The familiarity of that tough-as-nails Quinn Fabray persona leaves Sue satisfied. She rips the door open and stands inside of the doorway for a moment. When she looks at the car, she can see that Brittany is still sitting in the driver's seat. The sigh of relief doesn't have time to so much as escape her throat before she realizes that there are two more people in the back of that car with Brittany; Andrew and Rachel. Then, without warning, the navy blue Ford Explorer peels away from the sidewalk and down the street.
Sue's eyes constrict, dialing in on the car. She does not even have time to process what she had just seen before her legs are taking her.
Her hands are shaking as she fumbles to pull her own keys out of her pocket. Despite the rigorous exercise regiments that she puts her Cheerios through, Sue finds herself quickly out of breath as she performs a full sprint to her own vehicle.
By the time Sue gets inside of her car, she just makes out Brittany's tail lights as she stops at a stop sign a couple of blocks ahead and makes a left.
Determined to keep up, Sue presses her foot hard against the gas. She blows down the street, tearing through stop signs, grateful that this part of Lima is quiet at this time of night.
Sue pauses only once, before she makes the same left that Brittany just had, stopping just long enough to peer through her rearview mirror back towards the Corcoran house where she sees the first signs of flashing lights as they start to make their way towards the home.
Brittany is having a hard time keeping her cell phone against her ear; that is how hard her hands are shaking.
It has been nearly five minutes since Sue Sylvester had told her to dial 911 before running off in the direction of the Corcoran's back yard according to the call time ticking down in the center of her iPhone. It has been nearly five minutes, and Brittany has not heard a word since.
Instead, the emergency dispatcher was forced to work around the vague information that Brittany did have to give: somehow, Andrew was inside of the Corcoran's home. So was Santana, Rachel, and Quinn. That was all that Brittany knew. After that, the only thing that she had to give the dispatcher was information as it pertained to her; where was she? What kind of car was she in? What was her license plate number?
The information felt irrelevant and Brittany hated feeling so worthless, especially when some of her greatest friends were stuck inside of that house going through who knows what.
While she had made the promise to Santana some time ago that she would help her through this nightmare of an experience no matter what somehow, Brittany never once considered that no matter what would leave her in the thick of the chaos.
While there are some people in this world – her girlfriend for example – who has every reason to anticipate tragedy at every turn and has a game plan in play for each possible scenario, Brittany is alone and she is empty-handed. She is running on autopilot at this point. She had done what Sue had told her to do and called 911 and now, she is doing everything that the dispatcher is telling her to do: lock her doors, shut the lights, and sit very still, out of sight until the police arrive.
It has been nearly six minutes since Sue Sylvester had told her to dial 911 when she hears a pounding on her car window.
She thought that she should have gotten used to this at this point with people banging on her window all night, but it startles her just as much this time as it had when Coach Sylvester had done it the first two times.
The cell phone slips from her already frail grasp, wedging itself tight inside of the dead zone between the car door and her seat. When she looks down, she sees the glow of the screen for just a second before it fades into blackness. Brittany sighs, thinking that she had lost the operator entirely and then, she looks up out the window and forgets all about her cell phone and who had been on the other end of it.
The first thing that her eyes process is Rachel standing on the other side of her window. The young girl is wearing an empty look inside of her face and Brittany notices that she refuses to look inside of the car at all. Instead, she keeps her eyes carefully trained down to her feet.
Confusion and worry immediately flood inside of Brittany's gut. How did Rachel get away from Andrew? Where was Santana and Quinn? Were they hurt? Were they worse?
Brittany is seconds away from unlocking the door to let Rachel inside to ask for herself when she notices that there has been a second person standing behind Rachel the entire time.
His presence seems so obvious to her now that she has seen him that Brittany isn't even sure how she missed him in the first place. He is so much taller than Rachel with such an intimidating aura behind him. Brittany hesitates, torn between wanting to let Rachel in and wanting to keep Andrew out. She wishes that she could think of a way to do both, but no matter how hard she spins things she can't find one.
"Open this door," the man says. His voice is low like he is hoping to intimidate Brittany into compliance, but behind that, Brittany senses another emotion inside of his voice, an emotion that Brittany is certain he hadn't intended on having her hear; fear. Something happened. There is no other explanation. Something had happened that did not line up with Andrew's perfectly concocted plan and now, he was resorting to kidnapping Rachel and carjacking her in a last-ditch effort to escape. To him, finding a teenage girl sitting inside of a perfectly working vehicle just outside of the home he had just broken into was probably a miracle. To Brittany, it was a nightmare.
Brittany stammers up at Andrew for a moment. Her mouth opens and closes several times, yet she can't seem to find the right words, nor the energy to comply with his request.
She hears Andrew grunt in frustration as precious seconds click by. He is clearly in a hurry and while Brittany wants to think that he wouldn't cause a scene to get into her car for fear of attracting neighbors, something tells her that he isn't above doing just that if he really needs to.
She watches Andrew reach over Rachel's shoulder as he taps on the glass to hurry her. The sound is sharp and strangely metallic and it takes Brittany a moment to realize that he is not tapping on her window with his fingers, but with the barrel of a gun.
"If you do not open this door right now," he warns her calmly, punctuated. "I will shoot it out. And I will shoot you with it."
Brittany swallows. He wouldn't do that, would he? The dispatcher had told her that she would be safe just so long as she shut the car off, locked the doors, and stayed low. Now, she was being threatened with a gun. This hardly felt safe.
Her hands are shaking so hard that it takes her a couple of seconds to find the automatic lock on the side panel of the car door. When she finally does and the locks do snap open, all together with the precision of an army, the noise is so loud that for a moment, Brittany is afraid that Andrew actually had fired the gun.
She squeezes her eyes shut, waiting for the inevitable death blow of a bullet to her head, but it never comes. With her heart pounding wildly inside of her chest, she risks opening her eyes, one at a time. She watches Andrew rip open the back door. It floods her vehicle with the sounds of the night, which Brittany really wishes she could give herself up to in this moment.
"Get in. Hurry up, get in." Brittany hears Andrew giving Rachel the rushed instruction and turns warily over her shoulder just in time to watch him jab the gun into the younger girl's lower back, using it to usher her into the backseat of Brittany's SUV like a riding crop.
Brittany notices that Rachel's knees are shaking. The thin girl's knobby joints are barely cooperating with her. She moves slowly, and Andrew is quick to frustration. Urging her forward more quickly, he takes Rachel by the shoulder and shoves her the rest of the way into the car so violently that she slides across the length of the back bench and slams hard into the door on the opposite side of the car.
"Don't touch her!" Brittany protests, her voice bigger than how she feels but Andrew takes no notice as he follows Rachel into the backseat and slams the door behind him.
The world moves in slow motion for a long time. Brittany knows that it is rude to stare, but her eyes are attracted to Rachel like a magnet, evaluating the girl, staring her up and down as she situates herself into the car. She even puts her seatbelt on for Christ's sake.
She gets her first good look at the girl, taking it all in. The stray light from the street lamps and porch lights silhouette her face with a dull orange glow that highlights the dirty tear tracks on her cheeks perfectly. Her right eye is swollen, almost completely shut, but even with only one eye, Brittany thinks that there is no mistaking the terror. She has never seen a fear like that in anybody's face before. The reality of it was stunning. It didn't look as if Rachel was even seeing her, seeing anything. In places like Lima, people have annoyances – the kids didn't take out the trash, the husband is cheating with the secretary, the money for the mortgage this month isn't there – but Rachel, Rachel is carrying in her face, a terror that makes Brittany cringe.
She is so focused on the young brunette's face that it takes her a moment to realize that Rachel is also covered in blood. Somehow, this startles Brittany less. This is a physical problem, one that can be seen, one that can be fixed. She is terrified of the idea that that look on Rachel's face is there to stay.
She is just about to ask Rachel where she is hurt when she feels the cool barrel of the gun press into the back of her neck from the space in between the headrest and the seat.
Brittany freezes so quickly that her muscles spasm. She releases a small, terrified noise before she can stop herself.
"Don't speak, don't breathe, just drive."
It has been so long since she had heard that voice, she had forgotten how deep of a place it could reach inside of her. She is not looking at him, but can feel the way that he hovers around the seat to intimidate her. His mouth is so close to her face that she can feel his hot breath against the side of her cheek.
Brittany stammers for a moment. She is shaking so hard that she wonders whether or not she would be able to drive even if she wanted to. But then, she realizes that if she cannot find a way to make herself useful here, chances are that Andrew would just kill her and take her car anyway. She can't keep Rachel alive if she gets killed, so she takes a deep breath, utters a silent prayer to herself to keep it together, and turns to look out of the windshield.
"W-where are we going?" Brittany asks, surprised that she is even able to form words.
"I'll give you the instructions," Andrew tells her. "You just drive."
"I… I don't know if I can drive yet. I think that I might need a minute." Brittany is not intentionally trying to stall. The thought crosses her mind, but despite her pep-talk to herself, she can't seem to stop her hands from trembling and Andrew knows the last thing that they need is for her to be swerving up and down the block looking like a drunk driver where she would almost definitely be pulled over by the police. Surely Andrew would understand this. Surely, he wouldn't punish her for something that is out of her control… Right?
"It's Brittany, right?" Andrew asks the blonde. Brittany stares at him through the rearview mirror, mouth agape one, because she still can't believe that this is happening to her and two, because she had not been expecting him to know her name at all. Sure, they had met a handful of times before, but he never seemed to give her any notice.
Swallowing, Brittany nods her head with two short bobs. Andrew laughs at the muted response.
"Yeah, I know who you are, Brittany," he taunts. "I've been following my girl Rachel here around for some time. I've spent a lot of time sitting outside of this house, waiting. You and Santana have really been attached at the hip lately, haven't you? What kind of girlfriend would bring the person that she loves willingly into the mess that she calls her life? I have to say, that is pretty typical of Santana. Selfish."
"You don't know what you're talking about," Brittany challenges with a bite. She doesn't know where the sudden sense of boldness has come from, but she is determined to defend her girlfriend, especially when Santana is not here to defend herself.
This seems to humor Andrew even more than Brittany's shock that he had known her name. He rears back and actually laughs so hard that the windows rattle.
"Wow, you have been spending too much time with Santana. She's rubbing off on you Brittany. And, for the record, that is not a compliment." Brittany continues to watch him through her mirror. She watches as the laugh disappears from his face, mutating into something much more ghastly, much more sinister. "I'd just go back to men if I were you. You'd be better off. Rachel and I, for example, the two of us are about to have a fantastic night together. Seriously Brit, you don't know what you're missing."
He turns and nudges the smaller girl slightly with his elbow like he had just told the world's funniest joke to one of his drinking buddies. The blonde turns over her shoulder, looking at Rachel. The younger girl's terror has now morphed to add a new emotion; embarrassment. Brittany grits her teeth hard at the idea that Andrew can lure these kinds of emotions out of Rachel without even touching her and Brittany realizes now that her face is not bruised so much as it is irreparably broken. In just a couple of minutes, Andrew had turned her from a tenacious firecracker, demanding independence from her older sister to a trembling ball curled up in the furthest corner of her backseat. The transformation breaks Brittany's heart.
"Rachel…" she tries to reach out to the girl. She is not really sure what she is expecting Rachel to tell her with Andrew sitting right here. She is not entirely sure what she is expecting to tell Rachel, either. She is pretty certain that she just wanted some sort of a confirmation that Rachel is still in there at all.
"Don't worry about her, she has been waiting for this just as long as I have," Andrew intercepts any possible answer that Rachel could have given although it is becoming more and more obvious to Brittany that she has no intention of speaking at all. "She is going to have fun tonight. Trust me."
Rachel finally turns her head to lock eyes with Brittany. They settle, determined although the scope of her fear remains in the background. Her face is pale and she is covered in blood and she looks as if she had just seen a ghost. Her lips purse in a way that tells Brittany she appreciates the way that she is trying to defend her, but in the end, she only shakes her head.
"Just drive," Rachel finally whispers with a voice that Brittany hardly recognizes.
"You better listen to her, Brittany," Andrew taunts. He is clicking his tongue at her, rushing her. Never once does Brittany forget the fact that he is still holding her at gunpoint. "Do you think that it's just Rachel that I have been following all this time?"
Brittany's eyes turn from Rachel. She turns to look out the windshield so that Andrew does not notice how her eyes widen with fear and her breath speeds up inside of her chest. Brittany knew that she would be able to make peace with whatever Andrew had planned for her tonight just as long as she went down with a fight. The idea that her actions might also have consequences for her family makes her heart lurch uncertainly against her ribcage.
"Y-you're lying," Brittany accuses, but the way that her words skip on the way out tells Andrew that she knows he isn't.
"1374 Oak Avenue, isn't it?" the man asks the rhetorical question in sing-song and Brittany's grip on the steering wheel clenches even harder. "Cute house, Brittany. You know, I lived in a house with a plum tree in the front once too. Of course, that was years ago. Your house is a bit bigger than my old one, anyway. A little too big for just you and your parents, no? Is daddy rich, Brittany?"
Brittany swallows. Now, Andrew is just playing with her. She remembers reading somewhere once that in order to survive in a situation like this, your best bet is to be a good talker. Sharing personal information made a person less likely to kill you. It created an attachment. Luckily, Brittany is an excellent talker.
"Mom is rich," Brittany stutters and she feels Andrew smile greedily behind her, like he had baited her successfully. "She sells insurance."
"Good for her," Andrew sneers, but he is getting bored with talk. Brittany listens as he cocks his thumb against the hammer of the pistol. The sound echoes against the otherwise silence. "I'm sure she didn't raise a stupid girl, Brittany. If you do everything that I say, then you will make it out of here just fine. If not, you're going to be losing more people who you love tonight."
Brittany's hands grip the steering wheel hard. What did he mean by that? She turns back to Rachel, searching for answers. The girl is doused head-to-toe in blood, but for the first time, Brittany realizes that Rachel doesn't seem injured in a way that would warrant so much blood.
She never considered until now that the blood might have come from somebody else. Who was it? Sue? Quinn? Santana? All three of them? It seems like much more blood than what one person could stand to lose. Brittany is begging Rachel silently for answers, but Rachel refuses to meet her eyes, concentrating instead on keeping her lower lip from trembling. It is all the answer that she needs.
"Don't worry about Santana, Brittany, she's not your problem anymore," Andrew tells her. His entire demeanor has changed. He is no longer toying with her for the sake of the game. His voice has grown malevolent and sinister and Brittany knows that her time to stall is up. She doesn't even have time to mourn for her girlfriend, or to imagine what is happening to her right now. For all intents and purposes, Brittany realizes that this might be for the best.
"Such a pretty girl, it was a shame that all of that had to be wasted on her abysmal personality," Andrew continues like he is delivering some sort of delusional, backwards eulogy. "The only thing that those Corcoran women are good for is nagging and complaining. Except for Rachel here, of course. Rachel, well she's special."
Andrew reaches over and wraps an arm around Rachel, pulling her in close to his side. Rachel tenses at the touch. Her face makes a grotesque expression like she had just fell into a puddle of sewage, but the fear is paralyzing and she doesn't once make the move to pull away.
A heavy determination settles inside of Brittany's chest like a brick. Santana might be gone, but in that, Brittany senses an inherited obligation to protect Rachel.
"Now, we've wasted enough time already," Andrew tells Brittany, pushing Rachel away. "Let's make sure that we get you back home to mommy and daddy in one piece tonight, shall we?"
Sensing no other option, Brittany flips the key to her Explorer inside of the ignition. The old car roars to life underneath her hands, which are still shaking. She begs them to cooperate. She is going to need to be steady to make it through the night.
The radio had already been off from when Brittany had been on the phone with the emergency dispatcher, blanketing the car in silence with the exception of the hum of the engine. The blonde thinks fleetingly back to her cell phone, still wedged somewhere underneath her chair and hopes to God that she hadn't lost the connection when she dropped her phone. Hopefully, the woman who she had been talking to has picked up on everything. Hopefully, she knew that the man she was calling about was now in the car with her, that he was trying to get away with Rachel, and that he might have just shot and killed her girlfriend…
Brittany closes her eyes and swallows. She did not want to think about that part right now. She could mourn the loss of Santana later. For now, she would be doing her a disservice for losing herself inside of her grief to the point that she wouldn't be able to save the sister that she cared so much about.
When Brittany pulls away from the curb, her foot is still trembling and she presses just a little bit too sharply against the gas pedal. The car lurches with a stunning force. She feels as the inertia pulls Andrew's body forward into the back of her chair with a thud.
"Where the hell did you learn how to drive?" he asks her with a grunt.
"I'm sorry," Brittany apologizes feebly. She takes a couple of deep breaths, begging herself to keep it together. Her hands are clutching the steering wheel tight in the 9:00 and 3:00 positions that she had been taught in driver's ed. Although Brittany had a preference for driving one-handed, or even with her knees at times, tonight, she finds comfort in the grip as she relaxes long enough to smooth out the drive.
"Don't be sorry, just pull yourself together," Andrew sneers. "Drive the speed limit. Nothing slower, nothing faster. Stay calm and get me to where I need to be and you will be just fine. Trust me. Turn left here."
He adds his first direction to the back of his speech as Brittany rolls to a halt at a stop sign about three blocks up the street from the Corcoran home. Brittany flicks her blinker on, following the rules of the road to the T per Andrew's instruction. She looks left and then right, taking her time because time is the only weapon that she has on her side right now.
She makes the left turn onto another residential block. If she made the first left off of this block, she would be back in front of the house currently hosting the biggest house party of the year.
It felt like decades ago since she had left that house with Santana in tow, and as miserable of a party as that that had ended up being, it was a hell lot better than this. Suddenly, she wishes that they had never left. Any of them.
As she passes the block, Brittany finds herself glancing down it, taking in the rows of cars still lined up and down the curb, wishing that hers could be one of them.
She straightens herself back up after they pass. When she looks through her rearview mirror again, she notices that another car is also making the same left that she just had. Brittany is driving so slowly and that car so quickly, that it catches up to her fast. The car rides her tail for a moment, probably upset with her for refusing to push past the speed limit, but eventually backs off. In her head, Brittany is trying desperately to think of a way that she might be able to signal to that car. She wishes that there was such a thing as high beams for taillights, but there wasn't. The only other thing that she could think of was to signal using her brake lights and surely, Andrew would notice if she was pumping her brakes.
"Make this right coming up," Andrew points over Brittany's shoulder and the girl puts her blinker on again, slowly turning her car onto West Lima's main street.
Almost all of the store fronts and restaurants were closed and shuttered up for the night. Tonight, the street is dark and there doesn't seem to be a soul around. Just last week, when all of the college students had been home for spring break, you were guaranteed to see at least a couple of groups making late night trips, but they had all gone back to school since and tonight, Brittany sees no one.
Behind her, the same car that had been following her before also makes a right and continues its path behind her. She knows that a car following her onto Lima's main drag is not all that unusual, but she feels her heart flutter hopefully inside of her chest anyway.
"Make a left," Andrew instructs, snapping Brittany back into attention as she is instructed to turn off of Main Street just as quickly as she had pulled onto it. Brittany complies willingly, of course, but the second that she turns onto this quiet street, she suddenly realizes exactly where Andrew is leading her to.
About three miles down the road was Lima's main bus terminal. The buses out of Lima didn't travel very far – Brittany was quite certain Andrew wouldn't be able to go further than Cincinnati – but still, if Andrew could get Rachel out of Lima, she was certain that he could get her anywhere.
She feels her nerves billow once more as she starts to realize that she has to think of something to do quickly. She couldn't just willingly drive Andrew to the bus station and let him take Rachel onto a bus to who knows where without putting up a fight. Even if they did find Rachel alive eventually, who knew what shape they would get her back in.
The blonde starts to take deep breaths, trying to ease the panic. Her foot lifts slightly off of the gas pedal, slowing the car down. The only thing that she can think to do is to buy herself a little more time and rely on the fact that the police are following them. She wishes that she could think of a way to reach down and find her phone without Andrew noticing. She wishes she could see whether or not she was still on the line with 911.
Behind her, Brittany watches the car that has been following her since she had pulled away from the Corcoran house make the same left that she just did and immediately, she knows that she is being followed on purpose. At least, she really hopes that she is.
The old station wagon pulls up almost right to Brittany's bumper. Andrew is so busy giving directions and basking in the glory of his successful kidnapping plot that he doesn't even seem to notice. Brittany looks into the rearview mirror hard. Her eyes take a moment to adjust to the distance and the lighting, but when they finally do, she recognizes the face behind the steering wheel immediately: Coach Sylvester.
She tries to keep herself from letting out a sound of relief. Brittany knows that she is not out of the woods yet, and she doesn't want to make any indication to Andrew that a fight is still brewing right behind him. Still, she can't help but keep her eyes darting back and forth into the rearview, making sure that Sue isn't a hallucination, making sure that she is still back there.
"What are you looking at?"
Too late, Brittany realizes that she had kept her eyes on Sue for just a little too long. She hadn't even noticed that her car had started to drift into the other lane until Andrew says something. Her heart skips a beat as she pulls the car straight once more, letting it slide back into her lane with a squeal.
"Nothing," she says quickly; too quickly. Her voice alone makes it obvious that she had been distracted by something. Brittany watches Andrew glare at her through the mirror for a moment suspiciously before turning to look to look out the back window.
He stares out the window for a long time, or at least, it feels like a long time to Brittany.
"Is that that fucking cheerleading coach?" he roars with a booming contempt that sounds like the fiercest clap of thunder. Even Rachel – who has been suspiciously quiet this entire time – seems interested and Brittany sees a light enter into her eyes for the first time since Brittany had seen Andrew shove her into her car.
Brittany swallows as she hears Andrew's breath start to speed up, even from the front seat. She can sense his panic, and now that he knows that Sue Sylvester is not only following them, but that Brittany had known about it without saying anything, she isn't sure what will happen.
"Lose her!" Andrew shrieks at Brittany, who understands that she can still do nothing but follow his instruction.
She puts her foot down harder against the gas, speeding her old Explorer up as it tears down the empty, country road towards the bus station.
She knows that she needs to do something fast. She is not willing to be an unwitting accomplice to a car chase with Sue Sylvester. To her left is the city country club, which has long since shut down for the evening. To her right, the club's vast golf course surrounded by homemade dunes and sand traps and patches of dense forest.
From the backseat, Brittany barely registers that Andrew has rolled down his window. When she looks at him, she finds that he is on his knees against the back seat. His head is sticking out the window like a dog, staring hard at Sue. For a moment, Brittany wonders what he is doing, and then she hears the pop of several gunshots in rapid succession as Andrew fires randomly at the car.
Brittany shrieks at the surprising loudness of the noise. Her frightened eyes tear back to her mirrors where she watches Sue's car swerve out of the range of the shots and slow down to back away from the Explorer. Brittany can hear the squealing of tires and smells the burning of rubber as it rises off the pavement.
Brittany's sense of urgency grows tenfold. A thought bursts suddenly into her head as she glances towards the dark golf course once more. She knows that it is crazy, but Andrew has stopped shooting just long enough to insert a new magazine. He is distracted by the task and Brittany knows that she has maybe seconds to act.
Before she can think to second guess herself, Brittany jerks the steering wheel as hard as she can to the right. The SUV careens over the curb, plunging down the shallow hill towards the open field.
The wind from the open back window is careening in, blocking her senses. She briefly hears the yelps of surprise coming from the back seat, but she hardly pays them any attention. Instead, she clutches onto the steering wheel and tries desperately to keep control of the car as it lurches and skids around the bumps and grooves of the golf course.
Her teeth are chattering with the movement of the car. Brittany feels like she is on a tiny sail boat in the middle of the ocean during a hurricane.
Her entire body is lurching up and down as Brittany looks ahead and spots a patch of trees in front of them that her car is headed straight towards.
The girl closes her eyes and braces herself for the impact. Uttering a silent prayer for protection, she presses her foot harder against the gas, propelling the SUV at full speed until it comes to an abrupt halt directly against the tree.
The front of her car smashes inward around the thick trunk. Brittany's airbag detonates instantly, slamming into her face with a force like the world's hardest bitch slap. A white dust covers the air, skewing Brittany's sense of perception as the car starts to tilt.
She cannot see, but she can feel the weight of gravity as the car tips onto the driver's side. Her seatbelt locks, holding her body tight against the seat. She lifts her arms up to her face, trying to protect it from the glass shattering all around her as her car makes one full rotation before landing so hard back in its original upright position that Brittany's teeth slam down against her tongue and she tastes blood.
There is a profound silence that greets her in the immediate aftermath of the accident. That is the first thing that Brittany thinks about as the daze of what just happened starts to fade into the realization that this hadn't been an accident at all. The second thing that she thinks about is that her parents are going to kill her for ruining the car.
For a split second, the entire world is quiet and Brittany listens to nothing but her own heartbeat and the sounds of the night.
Her airbag is still inflated, pressed hard against her cheek. Slowly, it starts to collapse inward like a tire that has been poked by a nail. Slack and empty, the white, powdery dust from the airbag starts to settle in time with Brittany's heart beat as she comes to terms with the consequences of what she had just done.
She hadn't intended the accident on being so bad. She was just trying to throw Andrew off long enough to be able to get Rachel away from him. What if in trying to save Rachel's life, Brittany had only gotten her hurt even more?
A dripping sound infiltrates Brittany's senses and the blonde manages to trace the noise through her shattered windshield and coming from somewhere underneath her front hood. Oil, gasoline, antifreeze, Brittany can't be sure exactly what is responsible for the noise, but she is acutely aware of it and the fact that she can hear something so small when there is also supposed to be two other people inside of this car with her. While she could care less about how hurt Andrew is, her worry starts to intensify for Rachel.
Brittany sits up slowly, pushing the deflated airbag out of her face. She feels a wetness coming down over her closed left eye and when she tries to open it, she is greeted with an immediate stinging sensation and has to snap it closed. She lifts her fingers up and presses down just beneath her left eyebrow. When she withdraws her fingers and looks at them, she notices that her hand is peppered with the white powder from the air bag and her own blood.
Her entire body is terribly sore, but her injuries do not seem severe. She coughs slightly on the talcum powder that has built up inside of her throat and turns over her shoulder towards the backseat. Her eyes find Rachel immediately and her heart lurches with relief when the girl blinks back at her.
Rachel's window is shattered all around her. Her car is too old to have come equipped with side airbags, so Rachel's body had remained exposed to the glass, which is peppered everywhere; in Rachel's hair, on her shoulders, in her lap… A couple of the shards appear to have nicked her up and down her face, her neck, and her exposed arms, but her seatbelt is still strapped tight around her chest and while she is clearly terrified, she looks okay otherwise.
"Are you okay?" Brittany asks Rachel, looking for confirmation. The girl nods her head quickly.
At the front of the car, whatever Brittany had heard dripping earlier catches on something and the two girls watch as a small flame erupts from underneath the car's crushed-in hood.
Brittany's eyes widen at her increased sense of urgency. She rushes to peel off her seatbelt, watching through the corner of her eye as Rachel follows her lead.
"Come on, we have to get out of here," Brittany urges. Her door is slightly jammed from having crushed her car like an accordion against a tree, but it gives after a couple of hard shoves with her shoulder. She stumbles out of the car onto what she realizes is a putting green. She had crashed her car right on the spot where the richest of Allen County were hoping to be making par in a couple of hours.
Stumbling on shaky feet, Brittany somehow manages to rush around her car to Rachel's door and help the girl out of the back. Rachel falls into her arms. She groans in pain on what Brittany assumes is a busted ankle, but manages to find her feet with Brittany's help and hops across the green at what she assumes is a safe distance should the car decide to blow.
In the distance, Brittany can see Sue's car parked on the curb. The blonde woman had vacated her vehicle and was now running at a full sprint towards them. Brittany hadn't realized how far down the hill she had driven until she notices that the woman looks like nothing more than a blonde spec on the horizon. The distance between them was at least three or four football fields.
Brittany lets Rachel wrap her arm across her shoulders as she attempts to help the girl limp towards Sue. Rachel tries to keep up, but every time she puts too much pressure on her ankle, it collapses underneath her and the two of them are already operating on weakened legs from the shock of the accident. It is not very long before they both go crashing to the ground.
"Is it broken?" Brittany asks, rolling over onto her back. They had only gotten about twenty feet from the burning vehicle and Brittany is far from comfortable with the distance as she watches her car and all of its combustible components continue to smolder.
"I don't think so," Rachel shakes her head, but when she tries to pull herself back up to her feet, she immediately grimaces and falls back down. "It got caught under the front seat when we rolled. I think I just twisted it, but I can't walk on it."
"Do you think that you can get on my back?" Brittany suggests. The girl was far from heavy and Brittany was an experienced dancer and gymnast. She knew that she could carry Rachel easily to safety. She hoped that Sue had a phone. If not, the best that they would be able to hope for is that the police would be able to find them by following the smoke.
She waits for Rachel to answer her, but an answer never comes.
"Rachel?" she asks the young girl, nudging her slightly. Still, Rachel doesn't respond. Concerned, Brittany looks down towards the brunette. She is staring at a spot to their immediate right. Her body has gone rigid with fear.
Brittany follows Rachel's eyes and immediately finds what the girl is staring at. A couple of feet in front of them, near the spot where the car had initially rolled, is Andrew.
He is slumped into the grass, unmoving. Brittany remembers that not only had he not been wearing a seatbelt, he had also been leaning through an open window trying to shoot at Sue. He must have been thrown from the car.
The gun that he had been clutching in his hands like a lifeline is scattered inches from his unmoving fingers. Despite the fact that he was the reason that they were all in this mess in the first place, in the chaos of trying to get Rachel to safety, Brittany had honestly forgotten all about Andrew.
She wonders whether or not he is dead and has half a mind to check but is fully aware of the fact that she doesn't have the time as the black smoke from her burning car continues to roll over all of them.
"Is he dead?" Rachel asks meekly, seemingly reading Brittany's mind. Her voice is almost hopeful about the idea, but Brittany can also tell that Rachel feels bad about this fact. Leave it up to a person like Rachel to worry about the man who had terrorized her for months. Andrew has only been terrorizing Brittany for a couple of minutes and when Brittany had not heard a word from him after the accident, she had been more than willing to assume that he was dead and move her and Rachel along without another care towards the matter.
"I don't know, Rach," Brittany says, tugging on the girl's shoulder slightly, trying to nudge her onwards. "But I do know that we have to get out of here."
She pulls Rachel up to her feet. The girl puts all of her weight down on her uninjured ankle, but still grimaces as Brittany presents Rachel her back in order to give her the opportunity to jump on. Coach Sylvester is gaining on them rapidly. Brittany knows that she will only have to carry Rachel a hundred yards or so before she gets to the woman, who will help her carry Rachel the rest of the way to the street.
Rachel obliges to Brittany's direction. She jumps up on the blonde's back, wrapping her arms around her shoulders and using her knees to fasten herself into Brittany's sides. Her useless ankle dangles in front of her and Brittany wraps her arms under Rachel's knees for support before taking off towards her coach.
She walks close to Andrew, trying to see if she will be able to tell whether or not he is still breathing on the way past. She can't tell, but chooses not to sit and linger to make sure. She really doesn't care.
Her feet don't stop or even slow down as she steps over the man's body, but before she can get a credible distance between them, she feels a hand dart up and wrap around her shin. The grip is not tight, but it takes her by surprise and with a small screech, Brittany topples to the ground, taking Rachel with her.
Rachel lands on top of her hard, causing Brittany to grunt in pain. Rachel is far from heavy, but the force of her full weight on top of her after such a serious car accident is enough to take her breath away.
Brittany pulls herself up to her hands and knees slowly, just in time to watch Andrew get unsteadily to his feet. She had made the foolish mistake of thinking – and maybe a part of her had even been hoping – that Andrew was dead. In her ignorance, she had forgotten to consider his very serious threat.
He looks very seriously injured, but as long as he holds onto his obsessive desire to get Rachel away with him and as long as he is holding that gun in his hands, he is a dominant threat.
There is blood pouring out of a gaping wound in the side of his head. His blonde hair is matted with it and it stains the side of his face, his neck, his shirt, everywhere. His right arm is folded uselessly into his side and the way that he cradles it in combination with the bizarre way that it is angled at the elbow, Brittany can tell that it is broken badly. Still, the man seems determined to get away and he seems determined to take Rachel with him. If Brittany wasn't so horrified by his persistence, she would be amazed by it.
Through the pain, he struggles to get a good handle on his gun with his left hand. Brittany swallows and looks over his shoulder where Coach Sylvester is still running, coming up closer and closer and she knows that there are only two options here; either her coach makes it in time and saves them all, or Andrew doesn't hesitate to kill them all. Ironically, the thought of being killed worries her much less than it had a couple of minutes ago, like through this experience, her nerves have turned to steel. Besides, Coach Sylvester had followed them this far; Brittany trusted her to see this through to the bitter end. She places all of her trust in the woman, but still hopes that she hurries.
Andrew is so focused on the two girls standing in front of him, and on managing them despite his injuries that he doesn't notice the blonde woman coming up behind him until it is too late. By the time he senses her presence, Coach Sylvester has already pounced.
She leaps through the air with the grace of an apex predator attacking its next meal and lands violently on top of Andrew's back. The injured man tenses and releases a crushing groan of agony as she aggravates his injuries further and throws him to the ground. The gun falls from his grip and skids several feet away from his hands.
The two adults wrestle on the ground momentarily. Directly behind them, Brittany's car has become nothing but a skeleton of burning metal. Smoke is billowing into the air as high as a skyscraper and Brittany watches in awe. She feels like she is in a movie. She has to be in a movie. Or a dream. There is no other explanation for how this night had developed the way that it had.
Andrew proves to be an easy subject to subdue given his current state. Coach Sylvester ignores the blaze behind her and the plumes of smoke wafting overhead and traps Andrew to the ground with her knees and her hands. In the distance, Brittany can start to hear the muffled sounds of sirens. They are still far away, but it sounds like an entire fleet is on its way towards them and Brittany is almost glad for the fire so that they would be able to find them easily.
"It's over," Sue tells the man, holding him tight into place with her body. Andrew is already wounded and Brittany knows from experience that the cheerleading coach also doubles as an excellent grappler. Between that and the incoming sirens, roaring closer and closer, Brittany is relieved to believe that it really is over.
Still, Andrew does not seem to want to give up. He coughs slightly, spitting up a clot of blood and a couple of teeth with it. He turns to look at Sue and his face is illuminated by the fire. The orange glow of the flames combined with the way that the blood accumulates inside of his mouth and gets caught on his lips and in between his teeth make him look like even more of a monster.
"It's not. Now let go of me." He is insistent. He is thrusting as hard as he can underneath Coach Sylvester, trying to knock her off of him. The blonde woman tightens her grip on him and straightens his body back into her control, but he is exhibiting a surprising amount of strength for the magnitude by which he is injured and Brittany wishes that the convoy creating those buzzing sirens would move faster.
"You don't like being held down like this, do you?" The coach snarls at the man, showing no signs of letting up. "I'm sure you didn't think about what it felt like when you were doing it to Rachel, did you? You didn't care how she felt. You didn't care how she still feels."
"Rachel wanted it," he spits again and a plume of blood floods down his chin. "She was practically begging for it."
This time, Coach Sylvester doesn't hold back. She rears a fist backwards and brings it down as hard as she can square against the bridge of Andrew's nose, which immediately erupts with even more blood.
Brittany cringes, not at the sight of the violence, but at Andrew's comments towards Rachel. Brittany had been so absorbed in the scene before her, that she had almost forgotten that Rachel was right next to her. She turns towards the girl, to see if Andrew's comments had reached her, but when she looks, she is greeted only with the empty space where Rachel was.
She finds the girl hobbling on her injured ankle, making her way slowly towards Andrew and Coach Sylvester. It is obvious that she is injured, but Rachel seems determined to see this journey to the end.
The cheerleading coach's back is to Rachel. She is so busy with Andrew that she doesn't even notice the girl approaching her. For a moment, Brittany wonders if Rachel is trying to lay a couple of good punches into Andrew herself, just as Sue had done, but then, she watches the girl bend over and pick up the gun, which had flown about ten feet behind Coach Sylvester and Brittany realizes that Rachel's intentions are currently running much deeper.
"Rachel, no!" Brittany shouts before anybody else even realizes what she is doing. She scrambles to her feet, rushing towards the group just as Rachel draws the gun, takes a step closer to Andrew, and points it straight at his head.
