Quinn

It had been two days now, and Quinn couldn't sleep. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw his face, and she swore she could feel him close to her, she could hear his voice. She could almost smell him, the familiar scent of aftershave and just the slightest undertone of sweat that she associated with being very close to him. Sometimes it all seemed so real to her that her eyes flew open and she sat up with a gasp, looking all around herself with her heart pounding, her eyes wide with equal parts dread, fear, and hope, but every time, there was nothing in the room. She had even gone so far as to get out of bed, searching beneath her bed and in the closet and in the bathroom adjoining her roommate's bedroom to hers, but of course, there had been no one there at all, and Quinn could not be sure if she was disappointed or relieved.

She knew it was ridiculous, to think that Finn would be there, somehow, and that of all the people he knew and loved, it would be her he would choose to haunt. There were multiple other people he was closer to, people who had been nicer to him and loved him more, people who would deserve more from him. People who had actually spoken to him for more than a few seconds since graduation. There was no reason to think that he was even capable of doing such a thing, let alone that he would choose to spend his time as the undead hanging around HER.

But maybe that wasn't true. If Quinn looked on the flip side of things- and she had spent a lot of time, in the past couple of days, analyzing every thought that came into her mind, twisting them inside out and upside down until she felt sick with uncertainty- maybe she was actually the one that he would want to haunt more than anyone. Because out of all of them, it was Quinn who had really done the most wrong by Finn, and it was Quinn who would have given him the biggest ax to grind.

It was true that Finn had not been the sort of guy to hold a grudge or hate anyone, let alone want to torment them for eternity. Quinn was pretty sure that the last she had known of him, they had been on good terms with each other, at a friendly understanding if not a deep friendship. But who knew what happened to a person after they died, what kind of forces or events might shape them into becoming something or someone else? Quinn believed in God, she believed in Heaven and Hell, but what could anyone really say about how all of that really worked?

And so she lay awake at night, her heart in her throat, eyes open wide even as hot tears pricked her lids, and tried with all her being to push Finn from her mind, even as she remained half certain he was still there after all.

It had been Santana who gave her the news of his death. Quinn had been a little surprised to see her number on her cell; ever since the first attempt of Mr. Shuester's wedding, the one she had actually been invited to attend, and the drunken triste with Santana in its aftermath, things had been a little odd between them. It wasn't awkward between them, really, so much as uncertain. They had never been the best at keeping up with each other on a regular basis before, and now it seemed that much easier to have an excuse to do so even less. Sure, when she or Santana texted or private messaged each other, they talked like they always had, with teasing and competiveness taking place throughout most of it, with less frequent moments of affection and nostalgia cropping up now and then. But their relationship, never easy to define even in high school, was subtly different now, and Quinn wasn't sure what to think about the difference or what to do with it, if anything at all.

She was pretty sure she didn't like girls, at least not in a permanent, Santana sort of way, but she supposed it was possible she could on a Brittany level, liking a girl who happened to crop up as an exclusive interest. The words "bisexual" and "pansexual" were ones Quinn shied away from, thinking privately to herself that they sounded like a type of amoeba more than a person, but she supposed she could live with "bi-curious." She was also pretty sure that she didn't like or love Santana as anything more than her best friend from high school, as admittedly attractive as she was and as fun as that night had been. But "pretty sure" didn't mean totally, one hundred percent certain, and Quinn suspected that this was the major reason behind any lingering strangeness between them. It definitely wasn't coming from Santana's side; the girl had, as Quinn might have expected, moved on as though nothing had changed, and for her, probably nothing had.

Still, things were different enough that a phone call from Santana was surprising and out of the ordinary, and when Quinn had picked up, she had already known something must be up even before she heard Santana speak.

Santana had wasted little time on the telephone in explaining details or dispensing comfort. Maybe she had no such information herself, and in hindsight Quinn could imagine that with her living with Rachel and Kurt, she had no energy to give out any further comfort than she might have already. Several flatly stated sentences, outlining the minimal facts, and then she was off, leaving Quinn realizing with the bombshell she could not even begin to comprehend how to respond to.

Quinn hadn't cried, and that, in retrospect, seemed wrong to her, very wrong. Shouldn't that be everyone's response to hearing about the death of a friend, of someone they had once thought themselves to be in love with, someone they had spent nearly every day with for years of their life? Didn't it show that they cared, didn't it show that they were a normal, loving person, if they reacted to death with tears?

But she hadn't. She had sank down on the couch of her living room and taken in slightly shuddering breaths, head lowered near her knees, and she had not cried. She had felt almost numb with her effort to understand, her attempts to simply process everything she had just been told.

The truth of it was that in her daily life at Yale, with her dalliance with her professor and her struggle to maintain her 4.0 average, her new part time job and her interactions with her new friends, Finn and most of the other Glee members were no longer part of her every day life or thoughts. She hadn't really thought about Finn since the wedding, and even then she had barely spent any time talking to him or thinking about him at all, with her thoughts much more focused on drinking and Santana. Honestly she was unsure what her feelings towards him had been since graduation, or even exactly what they had been their final year of high school, but she suspected there was more jealousy, for what happiness he had with Rachel, mingled with nostalgia and wistfulness for what could have been, than any strong level of love.

Of course she loved Finn, just as she loved everyone in Glee, in various levels of intensity and with varying degrees of confliction. But he had no longer been part of her life or even her thoughts. Even before his death he had mostly become a memory, and now, memory was all that was left at all.

She was sure that the other Glee members were all calling and texting each other nonstop, crying on each other's shoulders, reminiscing and trying to lean on each other through the immediate aftermath of the news. Her phone had buzzed so often in the past day or two that she had eventually had to turn it off, unable to bring herself to answer or look at the screen. She knew they all wanted to be sure she was okay, to be able to comfort her if she needed or to receive comfort from her. But Quinn didn't feel that she could do this, that she even had a right to be part of this, not when she barely felt anything at all.

She wasn't even sure if she should go to the funeral. What use would she be to anyone else if she stood there, head held high, eyes dry, she who had less cause or reason than anyone else to mourn? She who had used Finn, multiple times, for her own causes, she who had lied to him and cheated on him and tried to blame him for her own mistakes. She who had betrayed him, she who had never really loved him like he tried to love her. How could she stand there with the others and say that her grief for him was anywhere near the same, or as deserved?

Santana had said the funeral would be on a Saturday, and Quinn put off making her decision until the night before. But on day three of no sleep, of every small noise in the night making her gasp and jump and dread , she had broken down and reached for the phone.

Logic would tell her to call Santana, who had been her best friend once, if not now. Logic would tell her to call her mother or Will, Coach Beiste Emma, or another adult who might have more insight and wisdom than she herself did. Logic would tell her to call Kurt or Rachel and tell them how sorry she was, to let them cry and vent to her and to make up for the crappy friend she had been to them both.

But logic was not always strong within Quinn, and the first person that came to her mind to call was Puck.

His voice was slurred and almost unintelligible when he picked up the phone, nine rings later, and Quinn knew immediately that he was trashed. He chuckled into the receiver darkly, mumbling something about all the blondes finding their way back to him eventually, and Quinn had listened to him spew out his own drunken frustration and pain without saying anything back, listening as he ranted until she heard his voice break on a barely held back sob. And this was when her own eyes filled with tears that for the first time broke free, this was when she began to cry harder than she could remember crying in the past three years of her life. Paralysis and broken hearts, pregnancies and parental abandonment, loss of her child and changing of her life, and yet this was the moment that immediately stuck out to her as the most central cause of pain.

She had thought she felt nothing for Finn anymore, that even his death left her numb. She had been wrong.

"I'm n-not s-sorry for Beth," she gasped at last over the receiver, knowing that Puck, if no one else, would understand. "But…b-but Puck, I'm….I'm so…I'm so sorry for what we did."

She could hear the faint crackling of the receiver on Puck's end, his frequent heavy swallows and loud exhalations of breath, and as both remained silent, listening to the other person cry, it seemed to Quinn for the first time that Finn was truly gone.