Again, this isn't a new chapter, this is a revised version of what was Chapter 2.
To rehash relevant opening comments again:
In the Glee pilot, Rachel claims to record and upload a video of herself every single day, to stay sharp. I don't know if this is one of those little jokes about how obsessive she is about her art, or if this was really supposed to be the case, but it seems wildly unrealistic - one a week is more than enough to keep anybody hopping who also goes to school. (And maintains a 3.86 GPA, keeps her boyfriend sexually satisfied, and whatever else she whined about having to do in Props.) So, I've scaled back her uploading schedule to once a week.
All rights belong to . . . Ryan Murphy and those Glee writers. May they be repaid in full for all the headaches their work has been giving me.
For the first time since coming home from the hospital, Rachel set up her iPhone on its selfie stick tripod. She turned it on, pressed the 'record' button, and took a breath Then, softly at first, she began to sing. "You shout it out, but I don't hear a word you say. I'm talking loud, not saying much. . ."
Some might see the choice of song as a wishful fantasy, a desire to make herself into a heroine for surviving the accident. Let them laugh! She had come through her first brush with death, and she was alive. What did their ignorant opinions matter?
Triumph filled her soul as she reached the second half of the chorus. "You shoot me down, but I won't fall, I am titani - oh!"
She ended abruptly with a gasp of shock. At the high E-flat (the literal high point of the chorus), she felt a sensation almost like a mild electric shock had rushed her body, and something open in the back of her throat that she couldn't describe. A shrill sound, like an unbelievably loud overtone, screeched over the note; the mirror on top of her dresser shattered.
Trembling, Rachel edged away from the broken mirror until her back hit the opposite wall.
What just happened? Did I do that? How did I do that?!
"Rachel?" called Hiram up the stairs. "Honey, is everything okay?"
Rachel jumped. "I'm fine, Dad!" she shouted hastily, and she snatched her phone off the tripod. She picked up a plastic bag from a recent shopping trip to begin cleaning up the shards of glass on her bedroom floor, trying to ignore the warm, slightly "buzzy" feeling in her limbs and the conviction that something was very, very different.
Sugar stared around her bedroom, wide-eyed and slack-jawed. She then looked beside her at the large "hole" in the air through which she'd just walked. There it was - the girls' bathroom at school, where she'd previously been her hands. She stepped cautiously back through the hole - leaving her bedroom and returning to the school bathroom.
"Seriously?" she said aloud. "I was totally kidding about wishing I could teleport!"
Tina was sure of it - the dreams were worse than the voices.
That first dream hadn't really been that noteworthy, and she might not have remembered it at all except for how vivid it was. She dreamed that she was walking out of History a few feet behind Sam, and that Sam happened to pass by Mercedes. He paused just behind her, and then stiffened and walked by more quickly. Mercedes glanced over her shoulder at him, bit her lip, and hurried in the other direction. And that was the whole dream - nothing more.
What was really odd was what happened the following day. She was walking out of History, and as it happened she was walking behind Sam. She the exact scene play out in front of her at school. It was a replica - you might say a frame-by-frame copy - of her dream, down to Sam's McKinley letterman jacket and the fashionable boots on Mercedes' feet.
Tina gaped at the pair, and then shook her head to clear it. Definitely weird.
The next time she had a vivid dream that she remembered with perfect clarity after waking up, she grabbed an empty notebook and hastily scribbled the dream down, making a note of the date. And a mere two days later, her dream once again played out in reality - this time, it was of a Cheerios practice routine, with Coach Sylvester berating the squad as she reportedly always did. Tina slipped into the back of the gym where the Cheerios practiced after her classes were over, and watched them until Coach Sylvester noticed her and barked at her to get out "before my Cheerios get infected by your obvious inability to decide whether you're an irrelevant Asian goth or irrelevant Asian punk."
She'd have thought the whole thing was déja vu, if she hadn't had a record of the dream.
Throughout the next week she continued to record the dreams that she remembered, and she watched many of them come true before her eyes - but not all of them. Those that didn't were particularly confusing - there was one that looked like a very young Blaine Anderson, being berated for his diction and "encouraged" to improve by an older boy who resembled him; and another that looked like Mr. Schuester arguing with his ex-wife Terri as if they were still married.
Meanwhile, the ever-present voices were growing ever 'louder' and more distracting. When she'd initially gone back to school, they'd been so numerous that they nearly deafened her (if 'deafening' was the right word). A suspicion began to grow in the back of her mind, one that frightened her far more than the idea that she might be going crazy. Her parents noticed and remarked that she wasn't sleeping well, their 'other' voices chattering with worry; she fended them off as best she could, feeling rather guilty but not seeing what else she could do.
And then, that first Thursday just after glee club (and Mr. Schuester's assignment on a proposal to Miss Pilsbury), she happened to make direct eye contact with Blaine. Instantly, all the voices in her own mind seemed to double, or echo, and underneath them all a single presence radiated fear and suspicion. And she knew - though she could not say how - that the fearful presence was Blaine's own feeling. All the voices she was hearing, he was hearing too. He was having vivid, precognitive dreams like hers too (though not identically so). And he was just as frightened of it all as she was.
They stood staring at each other for an instant, and then Blaine put down his head, slammed his locker shut, and almost ran past her. A 'voice' that seemed to be his trailed past her, screaming protests as he went.
Only then did Tina begin to be certain of what exactly it was she (and apparently Blaine) had: some kind of real, actual, honest-to-God clairvoyance.
Once she actually confronted herself with the word, it was easier to deal with. She was having dreams of the future, and maybe even the past. She was hearing other people's thoughts. And she wasn't the only one.
And she had watched enough movies and TV about fictional clairvoyants whose powers drove them mad to make her decide she'd be damned if she let herself (or Blaine) lose it like that.
So the next day when she had a moment, she grabbed Blaine by the arm and pushed him into an empty room, ignoring his protest of "Tina, what the hell?!"
"I know you can hear the voices too," she said without preamble, turning so that she was directly facing him.
Blaine went still, turning slightly pale, while the voice that she now knew was his own mental dialogue chattered incessantly (how the hell could you possibly know that - well, duh, obviously she's been hearing them - if I'm losing it, at least you are too - I have to tell Mom and Dad - who am I kidding, they'd totally flip -). "I've been trying to ignore it," he said aloud, unnecessarily.
"Yeah? How's that been working?" asked Tina.
(That's none of your business, you meddling hag, why don't you just -) "Honestly, I think I'm losing my mind!" huffed Blaine. "Isn't that the official crazy indicator or something, when you start hearing voices in your head?"
"Sure, but you don't really think that," said Tina, her hands going to her hips. "You know what's really going on. You know you've been hearing what other people are thinking. And you know you can see the future. And you know it's not going to just go away because you ignore it!" She took a breath to calm herself. "Blaine, I'm scared too," she added. "But I'm pretty sure any shot we had at being normal is over, and I don't think we can do anything about it."
Blaine looked at his shoes and shook his head, a wry resignation beginning to stem the tide of his anxious fear. "And I thought being gay made me a freak," he sighed. "Now I'm turning into non-paraplegic Professor X."
"With more hair gel," Tina couldn't help adding, and Blaine laughed a little. "Well, at least we get to be non-paraplegic Professor X's together."
Blaine's smile disappeared. "At least Professor X couldn't see the future," he said. "What're we supposed to do if we see something bad - I mean, really horrible - about to happen? Do we tell people about it?"
Tina bit her lip. "I think we're gonna have to get really good at keeping secrets."
Because Mr. Schuester was a teacher as well as a choir director, and thus had to do teacher-y things after his last class, the kids usually got to the choir room a little before he did. So that Thursday, once everyone was gathered, Mercedes rudely cut Rachel off right when she was beginning an "inspiring pep talk". "You guys, we gotta talk about something."
"Mercedes," protested Rachel in annoyance. "Regionals is coming up, and while Sectionals was an undeniable triumph -"
"We'll get to Regionals when Mr. Schuester gets here, Rachel," Quinn butted in. "And while we all know how much it killed you to have to sit on the sidelines at Sectionals, this actually affects you just as much as everybody else, so hold it."
Rachel stiffened and eyed Quinn oddly, then seemed to recover herself. "You know what? Fine," she said with an exaggerated air of being put upon, and sat back down by Finn.
"So what's up?" asked Finn, putting an appeasing arm around Rachel (smart fellow).
"Have any of you guys noticed weird stuff happening to you or around you since the accident?" asked Mercedes.
This produced rather interesting results. Most of the club went quiet, shifting in their seats and looking cautiously around while the God Squad watched them all like hawks. Even Santana hung her head and said nothing, which was troubling in itself.
"My hair catches fire," said the last voice that possibly anyone had expected to hear. "And Rory gets electric shocks coming out of his fingers sometimes."
"Maybe I wanted to tell 'em that," protested Rory, looking rather balefully at one Brittany Pierce.
"Shut up, leprechaun," said Santana purely on autopilot.
But for once, Rory shot back at her. "Got anything to share, Lopez?"
Santana gritted her teeth and wouldn't meet anyone's eyes. "No, I don't."
"Really?" Brittany looked confused. "Then the thing with the your water glass at Breadstix, that wasn't you? 'Cause you said you thought it was you."
Santana pursed her lips. "Brit, remember how we talked about how we weren't going to talk about that?"
Brittany looked even more confused. "But it seemed relevant."
"Okay Mercedes, point well taken," said Kurt hastily, looking around. "So some of us have been experiencing some side effects after the accident -"
"I think we all have, actually," said Blaine Anderson, who had been exchanging glances with Tina Cohen-Chang, of all people. For her part, Tina looked rather uneasy. Mike eyed them both rather questioningly, but said nothing.
"Is there anybody who hasn't had any weird side effects?" inquired Quinn, checking her fellow choir members' faces again.
"I haven't," said Rachel quickly, looking sideways at Finn, who looked uncomfortable.
Kurt's eyes blazed. "Yes you have, Rachel, and you know you have!" he said accusingly. "You're just afraid to acknowledge it because you're afraid you might endanger your dreams of becoming Barbra Streisand 2.0!"
"Whoa, what?" asked an astonished Sam, startled out of silence.
Finn made a sudden violent motion with the hand that was not caressing Rachel. "What, like the same exact thing hasn't been happening to you?" he demanded of his stepbrother.
"Yeah, but at least I'm not in denial about it!" huffed Kurt.
"Guys, what's going on?" asked a rather wary Mr. Schuester, who was just walking in.
The kids snapped to attention, all chorusing something to the effect of "Nothing, Mr. Schue, we're good here." And it was Blaine who had the presence of mind to add, "We haven't made any progress on a song choice for Miss Pilsbury yet."
And so Mr. Schuester's attention was suitably diverted.
For the moment.
More timing notes: I'm assuming that Sam had to have come to Will with the Great Proposal Idea sometime Monday the 16th or Tuesday the 17th, and somehow the New Directions and the synchronized swimming team got everything prepared in two or three days. So if you're interested, this little meeting of the New Directions takes place on the Thursday before the proposal, January 12th.
Also, there is one ND member whom I've left out so far in terms of power hints . . . can you tell me who it is?