I have so many ideas for perspective that I thought I'd use it as a recurring theme instead of just using it once for two people. The next chapter won't be 'perspective', but I'll fit another one in soon. And another one soon after that.
And a little background: this chapter's mostly in the POV of Diane Fabray, Quinn's daughter. In my head, Quinn kept her baby, lived with Rachel and her dads, and though Puck is still the father, Quinn married another man (I've named him Mark) further down the line. (Evidently I don't think any of the high school relationships can last!)
perspective (diane fabray)
Her aunt Rachel is the strongest person she knows. She has the brightest smile, the biggest heart, and at the same time, the fiercest will.
As far as Diane knows, Rachel was the only one who managed to hold the entire glee club together when she and her mother had been younger. She's still the only one who manages to keep them together, even though she lives in New York. When her aunt promises something, she will do anything she can to make it happen. She's intelligent, and she's brave, and even when things get tough, she never sheds a tear.
"She doesn't like to cry," her mother explains when she asks, sighing. "She decided back in high school that it would never help her get anywhere." She looks sad and embarrassed about this, but Diane keeps herself from asking about it.
How Rachel doesn't cry is something she'll never understand. Everyone she knows turns to her. Sometimes she'll come home from school during one of Rachel's stays and see her sitting on the couch with her mother, nodding patiently. Once she went to her dad's place and saw him on the phone, his eyes red, saying, "Bye, Berry," as soon as he noticed her entering. The Berries, who are, according to her mother, her surrogate grandparents, have the highest total outgoing call time on their cellphones that she has ever seen.
Not crying isn't healthy. Diane may only be a kid but she knows this. No one that Rachel knows seems to be able to bring her guard down for long enough.
Love is difficult, she learns from her aunt. Her mother found Mark when she was three, and they got married in the year she turned seven. Mark loves her mother, and he loves her, and the fact that he accepts all of Quinn, that is, both of them, makes her believe that love for anyone is truly possible.
For as long as she could remember, though, Rachel came back whenever she could during semester breaks (while at college) and then during major holidays and random long weekends, looking tired but determined. She always came back alone, and when her mother asked her about her love life during dinner, she always waved it away.
She asks Rachel about it one morning as they make her mother pancakes for breakfast. Rachel is, as always, honest to her (and this is why she's her favourite of all her mom's friends). "I was dating someone until last month," she tells her, flicking her wrist at Diane's fingers as she sticks them in the pancake batter.
"Didn't he like you? Didn't you like him? Did he cheat on you?" she asks, her jaw dropping.
Rachel smiles at this, amused. "Nothing like that," she says, and Diana can practically hear her aunt filing away something in her head to ask her mother about the kind of television she's been watching. "He didn't like that I sang so much."
Diane suddenly understands. Singing is all that Rachel lives for, singing and performing - it's in every part of her being, in the musical tone of her voice even when she's speaking normally, or when she waves her arms around when she's trying to prove a point. Singing is part of the Rachel package. She thinks about this as she stirs the batter seriously.
"Do you think you'll find someone who understands that part of you?" Diana asks curiously. Mark understands even Mom's littlest things, but Aunt Rachel is totally different, beyond anything she's ever known, so it's hard to know if anyone will get her.
"Hopefully," Rachel says, her smile getting fainter.
Diane tiptoes, tugging her down so she can kiss her aunt on the cheek. She knows she'll find someone. She just hopes it happens soon.
She and her mother go to New York City that following January to watch her aunt in the All and Sundry production. The show is a lot of fun, even though her mother plugs her ears a couple of times (she doesn't know why she cares, her father told her every swear word she needed to know by the time she was six). Her favourite thing about the story is the romance of Rachel's character, because of the way they look at each other and the way their voices sound together. She's impressed by how amazing her aunt is.
Rachel's strength is why Diane is a little cautious about Jesse when she first meets him backstage. He's not manly enough. He dances. He's too thin. How he can be there for someone like Rachel is hard to imagine.
The only reasons she accepts him are because he can sing (and singing is Rachel), and because of something else that she notices backstage, one time: Neither of them are paying attention to each other as they talk to people beside them, but Diane notices that Rachel's hand is being held tightly in his. His thumb rubs against the curve of her wrist.
And then Rachel and Jesse look at each other, very quickly, at the same time, and Diane wants to swoon. She's barely a teen, but she understands heat. Whatever they had on-stage, they have a thousand times over here, when no one else is watching them. And she could never not want that for her aunt.
On Christmas Eve she's having dinner with her mother, Mark, and her father, when her mother gets a call. She pales. Mark asks her what's wrong and she says, "Leroy."
Rachel is the first one they see as they rush to the hospital. Her father is leaning against her, looking worried and exhausted. Her mother is hyperventilating already. "Where is he? How is he? What happened?"
Rachel says, calmly, "Dad was in an accident. He's been stabilised but they're not telling us anything else yet."
Her mother's face crumples and Rachel reaches for her. Diane's heart sinks. The Berries have been, for all intents and purposes, part of her and her mother's family, especially since Rachel and her mother are pretty much sisters. She can't imagine being without any of them, least of all her granddad, with his big laughs and warm hugs.
She wonders how Rachel must feel and watches her as she rubs her mother's back quietly. She looks sad, but doesn't cry. Not even when they are told Leroy Berry is in a coma.
Her Uncle Finn is the sweetest man she knows, but when he sits next to Rachel, even he doesn't get through to her. Her mother comes by to show her support, but she ends up being the one crying instead. Mr Berry (the other one) has taken to walking around with tissues into which he can sob. Rachel's grandmother is a generally cheery old woman, but she has a permanently gaunt look on her face. Rachel is there for all of them.
On the day after Christmas, Diane gives up on the adults and sits next to Rachel. She looks exhausted and her eyes are bloodshot; her hair is a mess, and she hasn't changed her clothes in a day - this is the least composed she's ever seen her look, and she's too quiet, too sad, too not-Rachel. Diane takes one of her hands in both of hers. Rachel smiles at her faintly and gives them a gentle squeeze.
They've only been sitting like this for twenty minutes when someone strides into the room, walking straight to the two of them.
Jesse kneels down in front of Rachel, places his hands on her knees, and whispers, "Hey."
Her reaction to him is not at all dramatic, not at all as showy as Diane is used to. She only slides down from her seat, joining him on the ground, and leans against him. His arms wrap around her tightly. It takes Diane a few minutes to realise that her aunt's body is shaking, and then she realises she's finally starting to cry.
She would leave to give them privacy, but Rachel never lets go of her hand.
"She should've called me earlier," he mutters, rubbing her back as she's falling asleep. "I'm only forty-five minutes away."
"I think she wanted you to be with your family, sir," Diane tells him quietly.
Jesse glances up at her, surprised. "How has she been?" he asks her.
Diane flushes slightly, pleased that she's the one he's asking when her mother is only one room down. "She's been here for everyone else. She didn't even cry on Uncle Finn." She leans in, explaining seriously, "Everyone gives in to Uncle Finn."
Jesse nods, distracted, then gazes at the woman in his arms tenderly. "Your aunt Rachel," he tells her softly, "is the strongest person I've ever met."
Diane agrees solemnly. "She's like Spiderman," she explains. He's her and her father's favourite comicbook superhero - sure, Superman kicks villain butt, but he's an alien. Spiderman is a real person, and he's there for everyone, and he lets them cry on him. And Rachel is Diane's hero.
Jesse smiles at her briefly and they both watch Rachel sleep, tear tracks drying on her face.
Jesse lets Rachel cry, Diane realises. "Thank you."
"Hmmm?" he asks, confused.
"For letting her not be Spiderman for a while," she says, looking away from his face so he doesn't see her embarrassment.
"Are you calling me Mary Jane?" he asks, and she snaps her head up to look at him. He's grinning at her. She beams at him and shrugs. They sit there quietly for a little longer.
"She lets you call her Rachel, doesn't she?" he asks, looking back at her. Diane nods. "Then call me Jesse."
Diane makes a show out of responding to this, then finally says, "Sure." She smiles at him wickedly, smiling exactly as she knows her mother smiles when she's planning something. "After you two get married."
She starts calling him Jesse within the next two years.
It's during that year that Rachel's father gets a heart attack. Diane Fabray is standing right beside Jesse, right behind Rachel, as they receive the news.