This chapter was going to be much longer originally, but the chances of me getting anything written in the next couple of weeks are slim and I decided to cut it up like this so that I could get something up. I know that the poem at the beginning isn't what I shared on tumblr, but well, splitting things up the way I did made this poem more appropriate haha.
I haven't really gotten the chance to reply to everything I need to reply, too, so my apologies on that one. I am eternally grateful for all the alerts and reviews I've gotten from this. They're very motivating. As always, I hope you enjoy it and let me know what you think.
Chapter Seven
One need not be a chamber to be haunted,
One need not be a house;
The brain has corridors surpassing
Material place.
Emily Dickinson
Rachel started hearing voices around the start of third period. She couldn't exactly pinpoint the moment they started, but she knew that when her class started and everyone settled down, there shouldn't have been people still speaking. When she looked around, wondering why the class was still talking and the teacher was making no effort to quiet it, Rachel saw that no one was saying anything. When she really focused on the sounds, she realized that they were definitely coming from inside her head.
It was a soft murmur, one she couldn't even properly decipher. It was low barely-there and it reminded her of falling rocks, boulders slipping down the edges and curves of her cerebrum. It was distracting to say the least and unnerved her, as she could now add auditory hallucinations to her growing list of troubling mental symptoms.
She felt someone nudge her and looked over to see Quinn eyeing her curiously. Rachel knew she looked horrible - she hadn't slept at all - and while she did her best to cover up the signs of sleeplessness on her face, she couldn't stop the blank stares or the general look of mental exhaustion that came through in everything she did. She really was just exhausted.
And hearing voices, apparently.
"Are you okay?" Quinn whispered.
Rachel nodded at her automatically. The voices were a dull roar now, echoing through the caverns of her mind until she wasn't sure which thoughts were hers and which weren't.
"Are you sure?" Quinn asked, frowning at her.
Rachel nodded again. It was all she knew to do anymore.
As the day went on, the voices didn't cease. Rachel tried in vain to make out what they were saying, but her attempts were futile. Not only were they impossible to understand, but she was also incredibly tired. It was all she could to make it to her classes, remember to breathe and blink and walk. Rachel was accustomed to going about her day with little sleep - she had a strict regimen to maintain - but this was entirely different. She wasn't used to this, this perpetually confusing state of seeing things and hearing things and running from things.
Rachel couldn't run from the voices, though, not when they were following her so adamantly. It might have been summer and she might have had a bee buzzing incessantly around her head; at the present, however, it was fall and the buzzing was loud enough to cover up most everything else happening around her.
She didn't think she could stand the noise in her head along with the loudness of the cafeteria, so Rachel took refuge in the choir room. She fell back against the door, pressing the heels of her hands to her eyes.
"You'll never."
Rachel's eyes shot open. It was a hiss in her memory, but it was loud and she had understood it perfectly. "I think that I can safely assume at this point that I'm crazy. That's it. Years of taunting and bullying have stolen my sanity."
A flash of red caught her eye, something near the piano. Stepping towards it slowly, Rachel spied two feet sticking out from under it. They had on white sneakers and mismatched socks.
"Brittany?" she called out, because no one else was getting away with such blatant uniform violations.
There was a moment of silence. "Yeah?" came the quiet response.
Rachel crouched down when she reached the piano. Brittany was sitting underneath it, her legs splayed out in front of her. Her arms hung limply at her sides and her hair was a mess. But she finally had her uniform on the right way and both of her shoes matched.
"Brittany, are you alright?" she asked. "Have you been to class today?"
Brittany shook her head, staring at Rachel blankly. "Is it time for glee yet?"
"No, it's only lunchtime," Rachel said. "Have you eaten?"
Brittany shrugged at her, bumping her arm against one of the piano's legs. "I thought I would just wait here until glee started."
"Under the piano?"
The cheerleader pulled her legs up underneath her, crossing them. "Yeah. Why not? Glee is the best part of the day," she said. "Do you want to wait with me?"
Rachel's eyebrows furrowed, but the silence afforded her a moment of clarity - she was no longer hearing things in her head. There was only her and Brittany and the quiet of the choir room. It was enough to convince her in her exhaustion that she should stay where she was.
She sat down hesitantly, sliding under the piano and settling in the empty space beside Brittany. The blonde smiled at her and Rachel picked at some of the dust trying to cling to her tights. She resolved then to start wearing pants all the time, especially since it seemed that she was always going to find herself on the ground.
"I like the view from under here," Brittany said absently.
Rachel glanced at her and then followed her gaze out over the music room. Everything looked bigger and more imposing from their position, the chairs and equipment seeming to tower over them from across the open space at the front of the room. But everything somehow felt smaller, too, sitting there cramped under the piano with something pressing against her on all sides. It reminded her of being a child, when the world is large, taller than she was and very intimidating from only a couple of feet off the ground. The world had felt bigger then, and she had never felt smaller.
"I like it because it makes me think of being a kid," Brittany said, interrupting her thoughts.
Rachel smiled. "I was actually just thinking that myself, Brittany."
"Really?" She nodded and watched a small smile bloom on Brittany's face. "That's awesome, because like, sometimes I say things and people laugh at me for being stupid."
Rachel grimaced, unable to say anything, mostly because she knew that she was one of the people who often doubted Brittany's intelligence. "I think maybe you just have a different way of looking at the world sometimes," she said kindly.
"That's what Santana always used to say," Brittany told her, biting her lip and looking at the tiled floor beneath them.
"Well," Rachel said, "I'm quite sure that she wouldn't want you to sit under this piano all day. She would want you to keep living - going to class and cheerleading practice."
Brittany's smile broadened and the sight was a relief to Rachel. It was the happiest she had seen the other girl in a long while. "Nah, she'd probably come sit under here with me if I asked," Brittany said. "She'd complain for a while but eventually she would just shut up and do it."
Rachel laughed. It was hard to imagine Santana acting with anyone else the way she acted with Brittany, but it was sweet to imagine. "You two were very close," she remarked.
Brittany nodded. "She's my best friend."
Rachel noted that Brittany's tenses were still changing and it made her wish that she could tell the other girl the truth - that Santana was alive (sort of.) If anyone would believe her, it would be Brittany Pierce. But would it be too much? she wondered. Santana had said that no one else could see her, and that included her blonde best friend. It might not be wise to dangle such possibilities in front of the heartbroken Cheerio, not when Rachel had no way to prove Santana's existence.
Brittany toyed with the hem of her skirt, playing with the strips of fabric that fell across her thighs. "She actually really liked you, y'know," Brittany smiled. "She like, didn't want to like you, but she totally did."
"Oh?" Rachel asked in surprise. She hadn't been expecting such a shift in their conversation. "I always got the impression that Santana hated me."
Brittany shifted, uncrossing her legs and pulling her knees up to her chest. She wrapped her arms around her legs. "She just hated liking you."
"Why on earth would she hate liking someone?" Rachel asked, starting up a mental list of things she wanted to talk discuss if and when she saw Santana again.
A faint throbbing suddenly started up at the base of her skull, fighting its way across her head. Rachel could feel her heartbeat pounding in her ears. It was suddenly hard for her to pay attention. The throbbing grew stronger.
Next to her, Brittany dropped her chin on to her knees. "She didn't think you would like her back," she said with a frown. "Santana was always scared that no one would want her."
Rachel would have been slightly surprised by Brittany's statement if she hadn't spent so much time around Santana during the last couple of years. It was fairly obvious to anyone that paid attention that Santana was insecure and that she often took it out on the people around her. It was easy for Rachel to recognize her fear and her pain, mostly because she held on to her own so closely sometimes. She understood Santana's fear.
Rachel thought of Shelby, of always wondering what it would be like to have a mother. She thought of eventually having a mother, one who went to great lengths to reconnect with her only to toss her aside at the last possible moment. Her heart ached, but the throbbing in her head quieted. It was a mixed blessing.
"I told her to call you," Brittany muttered. "I told her to tell you how she felt."
"I-" she paused. Rachel had only spoken of that night once - to the police - and she had been hysterical for most of it. She took a deep breathe and then swallowed thickly. "Santana did call me," she finally said.
Brittany turned her head, her cheek resting on the back of the hand on her knee. She didn't say anything, waiting for Rachel to decide whether or not she was going to continue. Brittany knew of this, they all did; they knew that Rachel had gotten a call and ended up in the alley where Santana was. Rachel, of course, knew that everyone had found out what had happened, but she had never been the one to tell them.
"She asked me to meet her," Rachel continued. "She didn't say why, but she sounded upset. When I got to the park bench where she asked me to go, she wasn't there." Rachel had to stop as tears stung the backs of her eyelids. She closed her eyes, willing the tears to go away and to take the pain in her head and heart with them.
"I thought she had decided to play a trick on me, to humiliate me somehow. And then I heard a scream. By the time I -" she stopped again. It was too fresh, that night. It was lying there right beneath the surface, taunting her with images of blood and death. It was too fresh and too raw and her eyes ached and there were voices in her head again, reaching through to her conscious through the din.
And this time, she knew them.
There's a loud little girl with a fondness for cute animal sweaters and plaid skirts that she paired with tights or knee-high socks. She's calling out after her best friend, who wears simple jeans and tops and is the only person she knows who is as loud as she is. Her best friend is yelling at the other kids in Spanish and daring anyone to mistreat either of them.
They wear matching headbands that the girl in plaid picks out and they weave flowers into their hair because the other girl thinks it's pretty. They sit on top of the jungle gym together because the girl with the animal sweaters is small for her age and it's the only time she's up higher than anyone; the girl in jeans just likes being able to tower over everyone and assert her power. They make up games together and pretend like they're both princesses who rule the peasants. They have sleepovers where they eat too much junk food and stay up late, giggling under the blankets on the bed of whoever's house they're staying at this time. They walk around holding hands like it's the most natural thing in the world. And to them, it is.
The girl in tights gets hair clips from her dads for her birthday and they're her favorite gift. During recess, a boy makes fun of her, taunting her clothes and her new clips. Her best friend isn't outside with her, having been held up to get a firm talking-to from their teacher. She pouts and it just makes him angrier. He pushes her and she falls back into the mud, crying.
She hears her best friend – her best friend, Santana – yelling at the boy as she runs over, knocking him down and cursing at him. She pulls Rachel up out of the mud and brushes her hair out of her face, telling her that everything is okay now. And Rachel just cries some more because her clothes are ruined and her new hair clips have fallen out.
The other girl takes her inside and helps her get cleaned up, whispering to her sweetly in both English and Spanish. Afterwards, Santana hugs her, wraps her arms around her tightly and tells her that she'll always be there to take care of her. When they go back outside, she gives Rachel the headband she's wearing and they weave Santana a replacement one out of flowers.
After school, the friends go to the park. They run through the trees together, laughing. Santana has on sneakers and is able to navigate the brush better than she can. "Come back!" Rachel yells. "Come get me!" she receives in answer, the other girl's voice tinted by the hint of an accent that comes from rarely speaking English at home. "You can't," another voice says, hissing in her ear as she stumbles and falls.
"Rachel?" she heard, feeling a hand take hers. "It's okay. You don't have to keep going."
It was Brittany, sitting with her underneath the piano in the choir room, holding her hand. Rachel shook her head, trying to find her bearings again.
The door to the room opened and feet shuffled in front of them. "Brittany? Rachel?" someone called out.
Rachel exhaled heavily. Her brain was still buzzing and she felt slightly faint. She wanted to cry again. How had she forgotten?
"We're under here," Brittany said, nudging Rachel over. There was little room but Rachel slid anyway, trying to come back into herself.
Quinn's face came into focus as she bent over to stare at Brittany and Rachel, huddled together and holding hands. "You're supposed to sit at pianos, not under them," she smirked, raising an eyebrow at them.
Brittany grabbed Quinn's arm, tugging at it until she almost fell. "Come sit with us," Brittany pleaded. "Please?"
Rachel, meanwhile, massaged her temple with her free hand. She was sure that she could feel ever single red blood cell circulating through her veins and arteries and every synapse firing at once. The sound of children playing bounced around the inside of her skull. The voices, the sounds she had been hearing, were clearer now: they were kids playing on playgrounds at school and at the park.
When Rachel looked over, Quinn had already settled down on Brittany's other side. "We shouldn't stay for long," she said. "I have a test in my next class."
"Brittany, when did Santana move to Lima?" Rachel asked, cutting off Quinn, who looked like she was about to say something else.
Both Quinn and Brittany looked at her curiously. "She's always lived in Lima. She was born here," she said, her brows furrowing. "Why?"
"I was just wondering," she responded quickly, turning away from their curious gazes.
Nothing was making sense anymore. Rachel's family had moved to Lima from Cleveland when she was ten, when everyone she knew now was just starting middle school. She very clearly remembered being made fun of by everyone, including Santana, for not just being the new girl with poor fashion sense, but also for having two dads.
But it was so clear in her head: holding hands with Santana while they ran across the playground to claim the jungle gym, making up stories with her when they lay in bed together. People made fun of her for the clothes she wore and for not having a mom and Santana stood up for her and told her that she wished she had one dad who was great as Rachel's two were; Santana had trouble with her English homework sometimes, or would feel self-conscious about the way she spoke, and Rachel helped her with her work and told her that she thought Santana spoke just fine.
It was so clear to her and she wondered where these memories had been buried.
"Are you really sure you're okay?" Quinn asked.
Rachel just can't stop giggling. They're sitting under a tree together, the same tree they always sit under, and Santana is eating an orange. She picks out the seeds and throws them at Rachel, making a game of how many she can hit the girl with and where. Rachel huffs but then Santana grins at her, showing off her dimples, and it's impossible for her to stay mad.
It's early and the leaves are just starting to change. They trade jackets so that each girl will always have something that belongs to the other one, and Santana puts her own knit hat on Rachel's head and tells her to keep it. A leaf flutters to the ground between them and Santana crushes it between her fingers.
Rachel is singing as she leans against Santana. She's not singing to practice or prepare for anything; she's just singing to sing and because Santana is the only person who would never tell her to be quiet. After a few minutes, Santana asks if Rachel will teach her the song that she won't stop singing.
Rachel is about halfway through trying to explain to Santana the proper breathing techniques that her vocal instructor makes her use when Santana leans over and kisses her. She puckers her lips and then presses them against Rachel's like it's supposed to mean something, and to Rachel, it does. Santana tastes like oranges and like the universe and Rachel sees gold stars behind her eyelids.
They giggle at each other when they pull apart, looking away from each other shyly. Rachel fixes Santana's hat that's sitting atop her own head and steals the rest of the orange Santana is holding. They spend the rest of the afternoon under their tree singing songs together.
"Rachel!" Quinn yelled.
"What?" she said, trying to push down the rush of memories suddenly set ablaze across her consciousness. She was breathing heavily, she realized, and gripping Brittany's hand tightly. She let go of Brittany's hand, dropping it and adjusting her skirt. Her head was still buzzing and the sound of children playing had morphed into just the sound of her and Santana playing. "I'm fine."
"Really?" Quinn wondered, clearly exasperated. "You're really going to keep sitting there telling me that you're okay?"
Rachel nodded firmly, brushing her hair behind her ear. "Yes, Quinn. You may not believe it, but I can assure you that there is absolutely nothing wrong with me."
Quinn shook her head, glancing down at Brittany's hands; the tall blonde was picking her fingernails and frowning. "Brittany?" Quinn asked, waiting until Brittany turned to look at her to reach out and take her hands, pulling them apart to stop her from picking her nails off. "What did you do last night?"
Brittany's frown deepened. "What do you mean? I was with you, Quinn."
Quinn smiled at her. "Yeah, but I think you should tell Rachel what you did last night."
Brittany nodded, shrugging her shoulders. "Okay," she said. "Well, I was at home," she told Rachel, "and then Quinn called. So I went over to her house and we hung out. We spent all night watching Disney movies and cheesy romantic comedies."
"That sounds lovely, Brittany," Rachel said. "But I fail to see how this is relevant to me."
"What were you doing when I called you, Brittany?" Quinn asked, purposefully not responding to Rachel.
"I was looking at pictures," Brittany answered. "My mom made me put all my pictures of Santana and me into a box because it hurt too much to see them on my walls everyday. But I decided to look at them yesterday when I got home from school."
"And what would you have done if I hadn't called?" Quinn prompted.
"I probably would have just sat there on the floor crying and looking at pictures all night," Brittany said. She pulled Quinn into a hug suddenly. "Thanks for helping me take my mind off things, Q," she smiled, swaying for a moment with Quinn in her arms.
"Again, this is all very sweet, but I don't see what this has to do with me," Rachel interrupted, trying to resist the urge to bury her head in her hands and press on her temples until she stopped hearing things.
"What I'm trying to get at here," Quinn said, rolling her eyes a little bit at the brunette, "is that sometimes we need help. Sometimes, we can't do it on our own. We think we can, but then we end up spending hours crying while we look at old pictures. If there's one thing that being pregnant taught me," Quinn told her firmly, "it's that there's nothing wrong with accepting help from people offering it."
Rachel sighed, sliding out from underneath the piano quickly and rising to her feet. She swept the dust off of her skirt and looked down at Quinn and Brittany still holding each other. "I don't need your help," she said.
Quinn stood up, too, pulling Brittany out with her. "No?" she asked, skeptically.
"Absolutely not," Rachel affirmed. "Like I said, I'm fine."
"Then sing a song," Quinn smirked. "Sing during glee club today. And not just whatever Schue throws at us for Sectionals, but your own song, of your own choosing."
Rachel scoffed, crossing her arms. "When and where I choose to sing is really none of your business. You can't dictate the expression of my emotions, Quinn."
"Still haven't found that song, then, huh?"
Rachel stopped then, dropping her arms to her sides and closing her eyes. She could still hear them in her mind, a young her and a young Santana, laughing and playing games together. "You can't help me, Quinn," she said, and it was the truth. Quinn and Brittany, as well-intentioned as they were, could do nothing for current-day Rachel and Santana.
"We could if you let us," she heard Brittany say.
"You can't," she said aloud, turning away and inhaling deeply. "You can't," she heard in her head, in a voice that wasn't hers. She left Quinn and Brittany then, walking out of the choir room with those same two words bouncing off the inner walls of her skull, mixing with the sounds of a nine-year-old Rachel and an eight-year-old Santana trying to bake cookies on a warm Sunday afternoon.
And then the words shift inside her mind and are replaced by the sounds of a ten-year-old Rachel losing her best friend.
Rachel is ten, just a few months older than Santana, and they're walking through their neighborhood together, holding hands. Santana is telling her all about her new baby brother, about his pretty brown eyes and his cute little smile, the way his nose scrunches and he plays with his food. Rachel swings their hands between them, humming. It's late, past their bedtimes, but they've snuck out in order see each other. It's summer and with Santana helping to take care of her brother, they haven't been able to spend all their waking moments together.
It's dark and Santana's holding a flashlight. The streetlights are on, but the presence of their own light makes them feel better. They make a right turn, heading towards the park.
The light above them darkens suddenly, cutting off, and it makes Rachel jump. She holds Santana's hand tighter and moves a little closer to her. Santana could have teased her for being scared, but she doesn't - she just squeezes Rachel's hand and smiles at her.
When they reach their tree, they stop. There's a man sitting there, right in their spot. His legs are crossed at the ankles and he's twiddling his thumbs. He rises slowly, his head bowed and his face hidden by the hat he wears.
Rachel tugs on Santana's hand, trying to pull on her. She knows that this is a bad idea, standing here in front of this stranger; she knows that sneaking out of the house is a bad idea, too, and the stranger does nothing to prove her wrong. She decides to yell at Santana later, because Santana was always getting them into trouble.
Santana doesn't move, though, and Rachel can't get her to budge. She prays that the man hasn't seen them, but just as she does, he looks up at them. His eyes are piercing. They're every color all at once and they make Rachel think of the universe the way her teachers explain it - it's all stars and planets and galaxies and whole other worlds out there.
"Santana," she hisses, desperate to leave now before something happens.
The man with the universe eyes is right there in front of them, though, before either of them even move. "I've been waiting for you," he says.
Rachel's crying before she even knows what's going to happen, because he's grinning as he grabs Santana's arm and it terrifies her. And Santana isn't even moving, isn't even reacting to him; she's just staring at him as he pulls her up into her arms, her eyes wide and her jaw hanging slack.
Rachel yells at him, begs him to let Santana go; she promises that she'll get her daddies and she'll call the police. She beats at his legs, but he just laughs at her. His voice is full and thunderous as he laughs at her and lets her hit him. Santana does nothing.
He reaches down towards Rachel, then, and brushes his fingers through her hair. "You'll never save her," he says. "You can't."
And Rachel collapses.
When she wakes up, she's in the family car with her dads, en route to their new home in Lima. Her head hurts and she squints in the bright sunlight hitting her face. She has the nagging feeling that she's forgotten something, but when she asks her dad if they can go back, he tells her that they've already gone too far to turn back now.