TITLE: Free Falling From a Work in Progress
AUTHOR: Misty Flores
PART THREE
Well, after all that we've been through
Would you still call this love, baby?
'Cause love's the only proof
That the ugly could be beautiful.
-'The Ugly & The Beautiful', The Real Tuesday
"Do you remember when we were in high school?" Rachel was shaken and afraid, vulnerable in a way that Quinn hadn't ever seen. Pale, with watery eyes and a bottom lip rubbed raw from gnawing on it with her teeth, she looked small and fragile. "Sophomore year? And we thought Glee Club was gone, but then we found out we had another year?"
Quinn found herself actively listening, quietly overtaken with the memory.
"We had all become so close," Rachel breathed. Her eyes glistened, and she sniffled, blotting at the wetness of her tears with the crumpled Kleenex in her palm. "I really believed that we had become a family."
Back then, Quinn had believed it too. In her naive, broken state, Quinn had believed in puppies and rainbows and that she had reached patron sainthood, because she had been a pregnant statistic and come out of it with a beautiful newborn that immediately had been granted a mother that wasn't her.
The picture was frighteningly easy to conjure up, even after all this time: the twelve of them sitting in that choir room, Brittany and Santana with their pinkies linked, whispering into each other's ears, Rachel smiling bright with unshed tears and Quinn above her, with one hand wrapped in Mercedes' and the other in Kurt's, listening to Mr. Schue and Puck strum on their guitars and sing with honey smooth voices about a place over the rainbow where skies were blue and dreams came true.
God, they had been so young and stupid back then.
Now, a re-risen Santana was out there somewhere wanting to literally murder her. Brittany- slow, silly, Brittany- most likely had a government superweapon downloaded into her brain, and had no idea she was going to be kidnapped and taken because of it.
Rachel's apartment was littered with shattered glass and bullet holes, and Fulcrum agents stepped over Brittany and Rachel's things like they were meaningless, speaking in low voices, acting the part of the government agents Quinn claimed they were.
Quinn had her own part to play, and to this point, she had played it well, and even enjoyed doing it. It had been a thrill, to be who she had become and meet up again with these facets of her past, back when she had been her weakest, her most vulnerable.
Sitting here, in Rachel's impossibly pink bedroom, with Rachel's sweaty palms tangled so tightly in hers the knuckles had gone white, brought about a different emotion.
Quinn wouldn't call it guilt, but there was a sobering reality to this game.
"I just... I can't believe Santana... She had her faults, but I would never have imagined she would betray Brittany like that." Rachel's voice shook a little. "Willingly leave her. Let Brittany blame herself. She shot someone, Quinn. She nearly killed a government agent, just like it was nothing."
Quinn was good at what she did. She was better than Santana, and had proved it. Had proven that there were no qualms about using Santana's 'death' against her, turning Rachel with simple lies that manipulated the truth so easily.
Believe the lie. Use it. Transform it. Make it your own. Quinn had always been a master of that. Even in high school.
"I don't care if this baby comes out with a Mohawk," she remembered telling Puck once. "I'll go to the grave saying this baby is Finn's."
Her fingers twitched, brushing against Rachel's. Rachel mistook the movement for comfort, and wrapped her other hand around hers, drawing it into her lap.
Quinn glanced up sharply, met a gaze that was poignant with loss and despair, shared commiseration.
Suddenly uneasy, Quinn broke the stare, and instead caught the eye of Fuller. The other Fulcrum agent stared at her from the open doorway, with a pointed, impatient glare.
It was reminder of who she had become. One she desperately needed.
Exhaling raggedly, Quinn slid off the bed and knelt before Rachel.
"Rachel," she began, quietly and softly, lifting up a finger to gently wipe at Rachel's tears. "War changes people. Santana ...she's a victim of circumstance. She's not who she was before. The person you saw now, the one who would have killed me and you? She's a very dangerous person. And now she's after Brittany."
"But do you really think she'd hurt her?" Rachel's voice was ragged, stained with miserable disbelief. "Santana loved Brittany. She loved her. Even I knew that."
Quinn hesitated, as a moment from before flashed in her brain; the image of Santana's face the second Quinn mentioned Brittany. She looked like she had been slapped, stripped bare.
Yes, Santana loved Brittany. Even now, it was impossible to miss.
Quinn clenched Rachel's hands. The conflicted, sad smile pasted deliberately on her face was easy to produce. "Loved," she said, just the right tone of regretful and sad. "Past tense. She's not our Santana anymore, Rachel. She's been swallowed up by the rogue agency that turned her. And she'll do whatever she has to get the Intersect for herself. She'll use anyone, even someone she claimed was family."
Looking at their tangled hands, as Rachel's dark eyes stared at her with absolute trust, Quinn couldn't help but note the irony, in using those words against Santana.
Rachel's gaze hid nothing. Her naked emotion was open and raw, displayed for Quinn like a road map.
Quinn had lived in a world of liars and cheats and killers for what seemed like an eternity. How the hell had she forgotten people like this existed?
How the hell had she forgotten the fact that at some point, she had considered Rachel... Brittany... even Santana... to be some sort of family?
An ache, pulsing and deep, jabbed inside her like a splinter in her heart.
It threw her. Things like guilt and sympathy had no place in this line of work. Disassociation meant the difference between life and death.
But Quinn had already made the blunder, when she sent an email in angry resentment because she dared to feel loss when she heard about Santana's death. Because just Rachel's voice brought about every weakness Quinn hated in herself.
"We need to find Brittany before she does," she finally managed. "If you help us, we can keep her safe."
"She works at the Buy More in Burbank," Rachel whispered softly. "She has a shift there today."
It was what they needed. Rachel had filled her purpose, and Quinn had done her job.
The validation she felt wasn't nearly as thrilling as she wanted it to be.
She nodded soberly, rising to her feet. When Rachel stared up at her, she looked so lost and dramatically frightened, Quinn almost smiled. "We're going to find her," she promised. "We'll keep her safe." Hesitation caused another glance at the door. "Until we track down Santana," she continued, "You're not safe either. We're going to leave two agents here with you."
Dark eyes floated to the hallway, and Rachel's lips quivered, ready to argue.
"It's for the best," Quinn said, interrupting smoothly. "You can trust me, Rachel."
She pressed her palm gently into Rachel's cheek, a calculating move meant to simply comfort and reassure Rachel.
Rachel's shaken smile appeared. A hand reached up and covered her own, and Quinn found her stomach dropping when the other woman leaned into the touch, eyes fluttering entirely too sweetly.
"Thank you." Rachel's hand lingered. "Quinn."
The tingle was so unnerving Quinn could only nod mutely and fight not to snatch her hand away. Extricating herself as gently as she could, she offered one last reassuring smile and turned towards Fuller.
Her smile dropped the second she shut the door behind her.
Fuller looked simultaneously annoyed and amused. "Touching," he drawled sarcastically. "Having fun reconnecting, Fabray?"
Her eyes flashed dangerously. "Shut up," she snapped, and ignored the heated flush of her cheeks, the way her heart thumped oddly. "Brittany's at the Buy More."
He nodded, snapping his finger to the other agents. "Figured as much. What should we do with the drama queen in there?"
Still unnerved, Quinn didn't look at the closed door. "Leave Ramos and Sandy here to keep an eye on her." When Fuller smirked, her eyes narrowed in steely resolve. "I'm serious. They don't touch her. Keep them outside and make sure they know to leave her alone. She thinks they're here to protect her."
"We need the men to extract the Intersect. We should just take care of her now."
They had had similar conversations on more than a dozen separate occasions. Never before, had it sent such a chill through her.
"Are you serious?" Her angry hiss produced a surprised brow raise from Fuller. "She's a soap actress."
"We've done it for less serious offenses."
The joke wasn't funny. She didn't laugh. Instead, Quinn stared again at the closed door, and imagined Rachel behind it, terrified and waiting for Quinn to come back and save her like a damn hero.
Fuller thrust his arms in his pockets. "Look, I realize this is some sort of high school reunion, and you guys were some sort of lesbian scissor buddies-"
"We hated each other in high school," she snapped without thinking.
"-but she knows too much, Quinn."
Quinn crossed her arms, lips pursing. She refused to agree, even if she might have in any other situation. "She knows what I've told her."
"And that's still too much." At her stony face, Fuller frowned. "You know Andrews would agree with me."
The mention of their mutual superior, the thinly veiled threat to tell on her, only succeeded in pissing her off. "And according to Andrews, I'm still in charge," she reminded him, voice hard and firm.
Fuller's frown only deepened, but he said nothing.
"We keep her alive while she's still useful to us. We're after the Intersect, and we still don't have it yet. Until we do, the less muck we have to clean up, the better."
"Maybe you should have thought about that before you sent some nobody the Intersect and then pissed off the dead fiancé who just happens to be a government agent. I'm just saying," he added, when Quinn shot him a dark glare. "Let's go."
From the home theater section of the Burbank Buy More, Rihanna's 'Disturbia' began to pulse.
Almost immediately, Bob, his tie askew from the constant tugging, began to bob his head to the music, hips swaying, looking every inch the stereotype of the nerdy white guy who was trying way too hard.
"Come on, Brittany!" His smile at her bordered on lewd, hands raised in fists as he pumped to the beat. "Shake your groove thing."
Brittany wasn't in any mood to shake anything. Exhaustion had seeped into her muscles, and it made them ache in a way she only felt after a particularly brutal run, with none of the exhilaration and excitement that usually accompanied a dance routine, or a Cheerios set.
It made her feel ugly, even though she knew she wasn't.
"I don't dance," she reminded him, and going back to studying the fried motherboard of Rachel's computer, ignored the way he kept bobbing at her, mouthing the words to the song.
It was weird. Rachel always thought that Brittany had a choice, but in reality, Brittany had always thought of dance as a magical gift. The urge to move had always come from inside of her, and it seemed like this livable, breathable thing.
That same place had been occupied by Santana. She kind of thought of them as intertwined, and it had never seemed like such a big deal until the Tragedy, and that livable, breathable thing had been suffocated.
Brittany didn't know how to explain it, other than that it felt like there was this huge, unbearable weight tapped down on it, and she could no longer feel that same connection.
She could go through the motions, but for Brittany, who, Santana once said, could dance like it was a religious experience, faking it was almost like blasphemy.
And she wouldn't do it. Not for Rachel. Not for Bob, who looked like an idiot, staring at her with this hopeful, lewd expression that meant he wanted to get into her hot nerd-girl pants.
"Hey, are you sure you're okay?" Bob stopped his idiotic spastic movement, but his focus was still on her, now looking concerned.
The Advil hadn't helped with her headache, but at least it was fading.
The flashing... Brittany didn't know if that was fading or not. It could have been a fluke. Brittany wanted very badly for it to be a fluke.
It made her afraid to look at anything or anybody, because then her brain might make up all these crazy facts about everyone that she was sure couldn't be true.
"I hit my head last night," she said, and it wasn't really a lie. There was a bruise on the back of her head that Brittany was fairly certain came from her landing hard on Rachel's floor. "I think I did something to my roommate's computer."
Bob leaned over, and whistled slowly. "Dude, what happened?"
"I fried it."
Picking up a melted bit of plastic, he only arched a brow. "And by frying it, do you mean literally? Like, dipped it in a vat of hot oil? Cause this thing is straight up murdered."
Brittany wanted badly to push him away. Instead, she pressed her lips together and inhaled sharply through her nose, rubbing at her temples.
The desk phone rang between them, and dimly, Brittany heard Bob answer it with the required, "Nerd Herd, this is Bob. One moment please."
A moment later, he was pressing the plastic against her forearm. "Speak of the devil. It's your roommate." Brittany glanced up sharply, her heart thumping in actual relief. "She's gonna kick your ass when she finds out what you did to her baby."
Brittany couldn't care. She grabbed the phone. "Rachel?"
"Oh, thank GOD. Why aren't you answering your cell phone? I've been calling you all morning!"
It was Rachel. Dramatic, silly, prone-to-overreacting Rachel, and it was such a relief, Brittany wanted to hang up the phone and burst into tears at the same time.
"Brittany!"
"I have to turn off my cellphone at work," she finally said. "You know that. Are you still with Quinn?"
"Not anymore." It was stupid to be relieved. The things in her head were just... her brain being weird, and she was used to that. She was.
"Did she know what Fulcrum meant?"
There was a pause, before Rachel began again. "Brittany, you need to listen to me, okay?" Brittany frowned. "I don't have to time to explain everything, but there was an email that Quinn sent to me, and we think you opened it."
The inference was almost insulting. "You think I opened your email?" she asked, bewildered. "You're calling me to tell me that you're pissed?"
"No!"
"You're squeaking like you're pissed."
"Brittany!" Rachel sounded exasperated. "I mean, yes normally, that would be a horrible invasion of privacy, but-"
Brittany rolled her eyes. "I'm hanging up now. "
"Brittany, you're in terrible danger!"
It was just so random and earnest and came off exactly like that scene Rachel made her watch last week that she said was going to go on her Emmy Reel.
"Are you rehearsing one of your soap scenes again?" Brittany glanced at Bob, fingered the melted computer on her desk. "Cause I'm at work right now."
"No! Brittany." Rachel huffed, the rush of air coming off like a blast over the speaker. "There was a program in that email, and if you opened it, then it downloaded into your brain. And some very bad people think that's exactly what happened, and if that's the case, they're going to come after you!"
Brittany knew Rachel was speaking English. Her brain didn't. She itched inside of her skull, trying to make what Rachel was saying mean something that she could understand.
"I have a what in my brain?"
"It makes sense! Why my computer was fried. You on the floor, passed out! That's exactly what should have happened. And have you been seeing things? Images?"
Brittany frowned, shaking her head. The points Rachel was making ticked off at her, like a check list.
A man entered the Buy More, through the sliding doors. He looked completely unfamiliar, but the second Brittany laid eyes on him, she could feel the rush; the fluttering of her eyes.
An overwhelming cascade of information poured into her. Like a google search; hit after hit. Fulcrum. Known Alias David Fuller. Contract Killer. Last assignment in Prague-
"Brittany!"
She came out of it with a hard, spastic gasp. "Like movies?" she asked, weakened and twitchy at the same time. "Yeah." The man who had triggered all those flashes was still there, standing in the aisle like he was looking for something. He turned his head, and then he saw her. "I just had one. Rachel, there's a guy in here who has killed like, a gajillion people."
Bob, in the midst of playing Bejeweled, glanced up sharply. "What's that now?"
"He's looking at me." The man who her brain said was a thief and a killer lifted up his hand and mumbled something into his cuff. And then he began the long walk up the aisle, heading straight for the Nerd Herd desk. "He's coming."
"Brittany, I need you to listen to me." Rachel was trying to sound calm. It wasn't quite working. "Quinn is on her way. You can trust her. She's going to keep you safe. You need to go to the loading docks of the Buy More and just wait for her."
Brittany couldn't move. She felt frozen, a deer lost in the headlights of an oncoming car, dizzily watching as he just kept coming, one foot in front of the other, looking straight at her.
Someone bumped into him. His blazer swished. Beneath it, Brittany glimpsed a flash of what looked like the butt of an actual gun.
Her heart nearly exploded from the sudden fear. "Rachel, he has a gun."
Bob stared at her, wide-eyed. "Who has a gun?"
"Don't wait. Just go. Brittany!"
"Okay." Brittany swallowed, gaze seared on the man who just kept coming. "I'm going."
"Hang up the phone and GO. NOW."
She went. Even though her heartbeat was stuttering, and she was sweating, and the images that flashed in her head just kept reemerging and showing her dead crime scenes and close ups of David Fuller, Brittany placed the phone back on the receiver and mumbled to Bob that she had to go.
"Brittany. Brittany, wait-"
But she didn't wait. She ducked under the counter, and used the momentum to turn herself in the direction of the employee's area. Her Converse squeaked on the tile.
Her inner Santana was on red alert, like a little mini Doberman Pinscher, ears cocked and teeth bared.
Don't look back, Santana told her. Just keep going. Don't look back.
But Brittany had to look, because maybe he wasn't really chasing after her. Maybe this wasn't real. Maybe this was just another video like the ones that had been playing in her head.
Maybe Brittany really had gone crazy, and wasn't just adorably eccentric and confused, like she thought she was.
But as her head turned, she caught sight of him taking long strides after her, shoving aside a woman who had crossed into his path.
No, he was real. The fear was real. The dizziness was real, and Brittany understood things clearly enough to know that she did not want to let him catch up.
When she made it to the door that was stenciled with 'Employees Only', she was shaking so hard that she actually fumbled with the doorknob, jerking it frantically twice before she managed to push it open.
Stumbling in, Brittany found herself nearly bowling over a salesman with a stack of DVD players. "Hey! Brittany!"
She didn't stop to apologize, not when David Fuller and his gun followed her in.
Brittany began to sprint.
Ahead of her was the loading dock, bathed in sunlight, and once she got there, she would be safe.
Rachel promised it.
Loud footsteps pounded after her. "Brittany, you don't need to run!"
His assurance just made her run harder.
She burst onto the loading dock, stumbling to an erratic stop, when the pungent smell of trash made her eyes water.
The alley behind the Buy More was dirty and gross, used only for delivery and the occasional pot-smoking breaks.
"Brittany!"
Mouth dry with exertion, Brittany gulped, glancing about wildly until she saw a familiar blonde with dark sunglasses, and a blazer, stepping out of a car parked only a few feet away.
Quinn waved her hand, smiled reassuringly. "It's okay, Britt!"
Behind her, David Fuller was slowing, but Brittany was taking no chances.
Bracing herself, she jumped off the dock, landing with a crunch of glass bottle fragments and debris, stumbling on her way to meet Quinn.
She was almost there. A relieved smile began to spread on her face, when two men emerged from Quinn's car, rounding the car and coming toward her.
Her consciousness was overtaken, and she was again bombarded, this time with more information, files and pictures and videos of the men she now knew were Tom Jenkins and Marshall Haim. They all belonged to Fulcrum.
Fulcrum.
Brittany's relief faded with her smile. Ten feet away, Quinn removed her sunglasses.
There was no smile in her eyes.
As David Fuller hopped down behind her, as Tom and Marshall flanked her, trapped her, Brittany finally understood.
The realization made her nearly dizzy with sudden sadness. "You're the bad guy," she whispered. Quinn Fabray, her old Cheerios captain, her old friend, just looked at her. "Why would you do this?"
"I'm sorry, Brittany," Quinn said. "I really am."
It didn't mean anything. Not when she felt heavy hands clasp onto her shoulders, when the men began to push at her, shoving her towards Quinn.
Inside Brittany, there was a despair that she hadn't felt since that horrible moment when she had first come to terms with Santana's death.
It had happened when she was by herself, one night about a week after she got the call, and in her hands was Santana's Purple Heart, and a letter of appreciation, a form letter signed by the President.
"At least she died saving the world, just like she wanted," someone said at the funeral, an old ex-Cheerio who flew out with Puck.
Brittany, alone and stone-faced and not shedding one tear, had calmly turned in her chair, and cracked a fist across her face.
After the shouts, and the police report, Brittany locked herself in her room, ignoring Rachel and her pleas, and instead just looked at that Purple Heart, and that form letter.
Brittany wasn't smart, but she didn't think she was dumb either. There were a lot of things that she was unsure of, and a lot of the world didn't make a whole lot of sense to her. At times, it was frustrating, to feel like she knew so little.
But her whole life, there were things that she thought she knew absolutely. Like how to feel the perfect pop of a beat. How to roll her body in such a way it looked like art in motion.
And she had known, without any sense of doubt, that no matter what the circumstances, it would have always been her and Santana, for the rest of their lives.
Except she didn't know that anymore. In her hands, there was a purple heart and a letter and it told her that that wasn't true.
With a broken heart and an overwhelming feeling of loneliness, Brittany realized that she didn't know anything anymore.
She didn't know where to go. What to do.
And so she had stayed put. She didn't feel like dancing, so she stopped dancing.
Computers finally began to make sense to her. They became the one thing she knew.
Brittany hadn't felt, hadn't HOPED, so much since then, than in that moment when Quinn flashed a smile at her.
A smile that was deceitful. That lied.
Brittany didn't give her the satisfaction of crying, but she knew that if she got the chance, if she got close enough, she would thrust a fist in Quinn's pretty face, harder than she hit Puck's ex-Cheerio.
The thought of causing Quinn any sort of harm was dismissed immediately when the loud screeching of tires overtook her senses, so sudden and so loud it made her jump.
Coming straight at them, at a speed that shouldn't have been safe in an alley, was a red sports car. There was no time to react when it abruptly skidded, tires turning in the gravel, missing Brittany and David Fuller by just a foot, but slamming hard into Haim and Tom.
There was a sickening squelch, and then their bodies jerked into the air, popping off like rockets. Brittany watched them sail, unable to believe it was real, as they seemed to hang suspended in the air, before flopping to the ground.
Before she could understand it, a large hand grabbed hold of her collar, yanking hard and dragging her back.
"Grab her!" Brittany dimly heard Quinn say, but she couldn't process it. The standard issue Buy More Nerd Herd tie now dug into her esophagus like a hanging rope, and it made it impossible to breathe.
Her Converse flailed against the oil-slicked concrete, trying to find purchase. She clawed at the hands that held her, trying to fight against the brutal grip that suffocated her.
Her lungs began to burn. Though she could hear shouts, gunshots, she was aware of nothing but the devastating need to breathe, and her rising panic when there was no relief. Her vision began to blur. In that dizzy haze, she could barely make out Quinn's blonde hair, the pop-pop that sounded like she was in a war movie.
David shot his gun, close to her ear. It came off like a sonic boom, rattling her brain and making her eyes water.
Suddenly, she heard a sound that sounded like a wet, garbled grunt, and the grip was gone. David fell to the floor, and Brittany, with no strength to fight against the momentum crumpled hard against him.
She sucked in harsh, hacking breaths, expanding her lungs and wincing with every inhalation, throat bruised and sore. As David twitched and made gargling sounds behind, Brittany's fingers dug into the chipped bits of glass that littered the driveway. The blood mixed with the slick oil on the driveway, painting her hands and knees a gruesome mix of brown and red.
A warm hand settled suddenly on her back, rubbing hard between her shoulders, as an arm curved against her stomach, pulling her into a firm, familiar form.
"Brittany, breathe. Just breathe, okay?"
Dizzy from lack of oxygen, ears ringing from abuse, and dangerously closer to unconsciousness, Brittany couldn't question her instincts. "San?" she whispered.
The hands just held her tighter. Fingers that felt so very real skimmed against her cheek, tilting her head until her blurry vision saw the most beautiful image in the world.
Santana, with long dark hair, those smoky, unmistakable eyes, a trembling smile and a gash on her cheek, continued to fold Brittany against her, until Brittany was curled into her body, and Santana was holding her tight, protecting her against the world.
"This is heaven, isn't it?" Brittany wondered, eyes blinking up in bewildered amazement. "I've died and gone to heaven and you've turned into an angel. Or I've gone crazy. Like for real. "
She hoped like hell she had, because that would mean that the nightmare was over, and honestly, this kind of crazy wasn't so bad. Brittany had always had an inner Santana that was with her, but this Santana, the real Santana who kept touching her, holding her so tight, was so much better.
"If you've gone crazy, then so have I," Santana whispered in her Santana voice.
That dark despair, the one that had crawled inside of her and eclipsed every speck of hope Brittany carried, began to lift, and in it's place was a sudden relief and happiness that flared, blinding her to anything else.
In that, she found just enough strength to nestle into the crook of Santana's neck, press her lips against the rapid pulse she found there, and taste the salt of her skin, before her eyelids began to feel impossibly heavy, and the blackness of sleep threatened to take her over.
No, Brittany pleaded, struggling with herself. I want to stay here. This is the reality I want to be in. If I'm crazy, then that's okay.
Her body, abused and in shock, and in the habit of disobeying her since early this morning, did not do her the favor. Instead, her fingers twitched against the lapels of Santana's jacket, and she lost consciousness.
Quinn and Santana had gotten into their fair share of catfights.
There was the great lollipop incident in first grade, when Quinn had decided to assert her authority and demanded Santana hand over her sugary treat. Instead, Santana tackled her in the sandbox.
There was the brief hallway throwdown that occurred in high school, when Santana got a boob job and Quinn exploited that to knock her out of the Captain's spot in order to take it for herself.
There was the embarrassingly cliché 'get the hell off my man' slapfest that happened a few months later, when Santana, in a completely transparent move to get at Quinn's goat (that had completely worked), had shown a brief interest in Sam.
But up until this point, Santana had never actually tried to put a bullet inside of her.
To be fair, Quinn had never before tried to kidnap Brittany for the sake of the billion-dollar superweapon that was currently lurking in her brain, either.
It was almost surreal, Quinn admitted, as she grit her teeth and sucked in harsh breaths to stem the pain of the Fulcrum-employed doctor poking at her ribs.
"They're just a bit bruised," said the doctor, a middle-aged woman with a private practice in Beverly Hills. "But nothing's broken. The wound in your shoulder is a graze." She pulled the gloves off with a snap, and reached for another pair, eyeing Quinn over her wire-rimmed glasses. "You got lucky."
It was insulting. "I'm not an idiot," she snapped. "I wear a vest for a reason. Luck had nothing to do with it."
But it did. She knew it did. If Santana had aimed just a tiny bit higher, if Quinn had moved just a second later, Santana's bullets would have slammed into her throat, hitting major arteries and bleeding Quinn out in seconds.
Santana had meant to kill her.
Fuller was dead. Santana had executed him, blazing a bullet in his legs and then again through his cheek. Marshall and Tom had more than dozen broken bones each.
It must have been the shock and the blood loss that had Quinn honestly pissed off over it, disgruntled in a way that was almost embarrassing.
Their rivalry that had once been about boys and pom-poms had evolved into bullets and bloodshed, and now, all Quinn could think about was that once, they had called each other best friends.
The doctor tugged lightly at the rust-colored stained sleeve, making Quinn hiss as the fabric pulled from the clotted blood on her shoulder.
"Leave it," she snapped.
The doctor stared. Quinn arched a brow, daring her to contest.
"Fine," the doctor shrugged, "Die of infection. See if I care."
She turned away, dismissing her with a coldness that was standard of a Fulcrum-paid Asset, leaving Quinn to teeter off the patient bench and quietly gather her things.
Outside, Ramos waited, sprawled in the car with a haggard, annoyed expression on his face.
"We're fucked. Andrews is gonna have our asses," he announced, turning the key and starting the ignition. "And you look like shit. Couldn't you at least have cleaned yourself up in there?"
"Bite me," she twittered back, just as sweetly, wincing as her ribs creaked in protest. "We're not fucked."
"Oh, we're not?" Ramos turned the wheel and pulled off into traffic. "She knocked off Fuller, Travis, and now Marshall and Tom. She's taken the Intersect, and chances are she's already on the way to a NSA safehouse by now. Forget it, Andrews is gonna have yourass."
"She's not going to give Brittany to the government," Quinn said, pressing a palm against her wounded shoulder, and grimacing at the burn it produced.
"You're kidding me right? Miss La Femme Nikita—"
"Santana won't give Brittany to the NSA," Quinn repeated, firmly, readjusting her position in the leather passenger seat in an attempt to make it easier on her bruised chest. "She won't," she insisted, when Ramos glared at her in doubt. "Trust me. Santana knows exactly what will happen if she does. Brittany will be locked away in some lab, to be poked and pricked like a lab rat for the rest of her life."
For someone like Brittany, it was a fate worse than death. Quinn knew that. Like depriving a plant of sunlight, like caging a wild bird, it would wilt Brittany, and from Santana, it would be a betrayal that would completely break whatever was left of Brittany's spirit.
It was a natural consequence of a civilian being infused with something like the Intersect. Quinn understood that.
Had Santana not ambushed them in the alley, Quinn would have sentenced Brittany to that very fate.
It was an unforgivable offense, if one were ethical.
Quinn had decided a long time ago that ethics were for high school glee clubs, not real life. That philosophy would have been so much easier to maintain if half of those show choir members weren't actively involved in this now.
Quinn broke herself from her musing when she realized that Ramos had yet to respond. Instead, he was currently occupied with both driving and staring at her between stoplights, a scowl of disbelief playing on his lips.
It was unnerving. "Santana won't do that to Brittany," she said again.
"That's a fucking lot to bet on instinct, Fabray."
"You didn't grow up with them. Protecting Brittany is what Santana does. This is the girl she was going to marry. Would you do that to your mother? Your sister? Your wife?"
Ramos pursed his lips, absorbing that quietly.
"Santana's not going to give her up. Not again. She's going to take Brittany and run." Quinn nodded. It was a certainty. "And that means we have time."
"Time?" Ramos issued something that sounded like a laugh and a scoff, mottled together. "Time for what? To let her disappear into the bowels of the earth? She's fucking Molly Chambers, Quinn. "
The return of Santana's new moniker brought about a shudder of repulsion. "Goddamn, who chose that name? It's ridiculous."
Ramos let that one go. "All I'm saying is," he said pointedly, "the bitch knows how to disappear."
Quinn's smile was a grim one, as Ramos turned onto a street that was becoming rapidly familiar. "Aren't you glad we didn't kill Rachel, now?"
"What, you want to use her as collateral?"
The idea, however logical, was vaguely repulsive. The casual, cavalier way he said it made Quinn suddenly hate him.
Santana, McKinley's resident bitch and slut, had shot her and killed her men to save the life of the woman she loved. She was on the verge of turning her back on the country that she literally killed herself for in order to save Brittany from a lifetime as a lab bunny.
Meanwhile, Quinn had manipulated Rachel Berry into tricking Brittany into her own captivity, following the orders of a rogue terrorist cell for no other reason that she was told to.
Granted, she believed in their mission. She fully believed that a Fulcrum agent was a patriot, with only slightly different views. There were unpleasant actions involved that were necessary, and everyone made choices.
But it had been a long time since Quinn had considered the consequences of the innocents.
"No," she managed, and caught herself in the reflection of the passenger window. Her cheek was smudged with dirt. Blood was caked on her chin and forehead. "Nothing quite so dramatic. Once I show up at Rachel's door, bleeding and shot, Rachel's going to think the worst of Santana."
"And that helps us how?"
In pain and battling more emotion than she cared to admit, Quinn was not in the mood to spell out everything. "Just trust me, okay? All we need to get Brittany and Santana back is for Rachel to think the sun shines out of my ass."
Ramos pulled into the driveway that led into the apartment structure. His expression was hooded. "Fine. Go fuck the soap star into loving you. You're the one that's gonna have to answer to Andrews."
The glare she shot him was scathing. "Andrews trusts my methods."
Settling back, Ramos made no move to help her as she struggled out of the passenger seat. "I guess we'll see, won't we? You fucked up big time, Quinn, sending the Intersect to her." She slammed the door. "What do you think is gonna happen when you're done with her?" he continued pointedly, as she walked around, leaning out his open window. "What do you think Andrews is gonna say?"
Quinn walked away from him.
There was no point in answering. She knew exactly what Andrews would say. It had already been implicitly explained, in every look, every email, every command she had been given since she had been recruited.
Gaining control of the Intersect was the single most important objective for Fulcrum at the moment. Whoever controlled the Intersect, controlled the government, and that meant it was worth as many lives as it took.
"There is no evil," Andrews once told her. "There is no good. There are simply end results. When it comes to history, the end result always determines the motivation. We all make choices, but this is bigger than all of us, Quinn. No matter what."
Standing at Rachel's door, bullet-ridden and bruised, Quinn considered Santana, and the choices she made. The ones she was making even now.
When she knocked lightly on the door, when it opened and revealed Rachel Berry wearing only tiny sleep shorts and a camisole, Quinn studied the haunted expression, the way it flashed with relief and then furious concern as those dark eyes took in every speck of blood, the pain etched in Quinn's face. Soft hands caught hold of hers, pulling her inside the apartment with a non-stop babble that she hadn't grown out of.
Quinn's insides quivered with an emotion she didn't want to feel. They weren't Brittany and Santana, and Quinn understood the choices she had made.
Unlike Santana, she would actually abide by them, no matter what the consequences.