Hey everyone! First and foremost, sorry for the wait but updates are gonna come slow the next few weeks. My rugby team is going to nationals for the next week so I have to make up all the school work that I'll be missing now. Then with Thanksgiving and finals things are starting to get hectic so bare with me! I promise I'll have things up as quick as possible.
Also, for all of you who have been asking, I not the next chapter but the one after that, we'll go back to what's going on with Rachel, Finn, Shelby and Will, so just something to look forward to :)
Thanks again to everybody sticking with me on this one! Love you all.
Chapter 10
Hold on to Who You Love
(Quinn Fabray)
The first conscious thought that she found herself actually able to hold onto within her skewed impression of the time-space continuum was the fact that it had been shattered in its entirety.
Defying every law of physics that she had ever been taught, she watched as a spiraling bullet, travelling faster than her naked eye could ever possibly keep up with, struck dead center against the glass casing of the old-fashioned clock face hanging above the main entrance, pierced the device with ease and rendered time in itself at an absolute standstill so that she couldn't help but wonder whether or not this whole act was supposed to be some sort of tragic metaphor this entire time.
But whatever it had been meant to be, the lesson had ultimately served its purpose, allowing Quinn to finally and fully understand the implications towards the idea that life was in no way near as pressing as all of the people who are constantly doing the pressing would like you to believe… So she simply sat and embraced the fact that the world had just been made to spin a little bit slower than it had been doing before, that the idea that she had nowhere to go and nowhere to be actually made this situation as a whole seem that much easier…
And you know what, that worked… for a little while anyway.
Until, that is, she registered the liquid warmth splashing red against her porcelain skin, felt the full weight of a lifeless body slump over against her shoulder, turned only to find a body who's facial features had been distorted by a single bullet so that its only identifiable mark was the carefully inscribed Santana stitched in curly script across the chest of the Cheerio's jacket she adorned.
And suddenly, her ability to define time, to define anything at all was shattered in its entirety.
Her heart constricting deep within her ribcage, Quinn's eyes widened, her conscious thought process beside itself with fear as she took a couple of subconsciously tentative strides backwards, allowing Santana's prone body to slip from the support of her sturdy shoulder and onto the floor below.
However, in her bid for escape, it suddenly seemed obvious that she had absolutely nowhere to go.
Everywhere she turned, she found herself met with yet another obstacle; a dead or injured friend on either side of her, one gunman standing at her front, another at her back… She was trapped; a feeling that she'd never found settled well with her, a feeling that she hadn't experienced since she was still living in her parent's house amidst the burden of the lie regarding the one good thing that had ever come out of her – her daughter.
She couldn't help herself but to release the shudder that had been building up deep within her very bones ever since the inception of this tragic mess; a tremendous quake that sent her entire body flailing, forcing her to reach a hand out behind her to steady herself.
The appendage reached firmly backwards, subconsciously crossing the barrier between her and the outside world that had been created by the lunch table that she was currently crouched beneath, landing in such a manner that forced her to only vaguely register the fact that she felt, not the cool linoleum of the floor below her, but the stiff material of thick shoelaces, holding into place, a heavy boot, stained with a warm liquid that she didn't want to register, although she knew exactly what it was…
She could feel the physical presence of a body behind her back; could hear the creaking of joints as it bent forward at the hips, hovering before her so that warm breath swept through freezing cold air, coagulating together before landing on the back of Quinn's neck in a manner that forced her hair to stand on end.
She knew that Jacob Ben-Israel was currently standing directly behind her, tempting her to turn, to meet him eye-to-eye, and despite her better judgment, despite her brain screaming at her not to succumb to his attempted eye contact, to not allow him to win, her conscious had other plans; enforcing the idea that if she was indeed about to die, she best do so with at the very least, a shred of dignity…
And so she turned.
Her head swiveled against the stiff axis of her spine, the first feature her eyes consciously recognizing being the overwhelming array of red curls sweeping unceremoniously into Jacob's face so that for a single fleeting second, Quinn couldn't help but wonder how his accuracy had been so good thus far with all of that hair blocking his vision this entire time…
But just as suddenly as this thought entered her mind, his hair was swept back and away from his face with a single shake of his head, leaving her staring directly into the cold, dead, black eyes hiding behind the thick lenses of the glasses that he adorned, and suddenly, she found herself answering her own question, suddenly, she understood.
She understood the fact that his eyes no longer saw what everybody else's did, probably hadn't for some time… It was just a shame that it took until this for anybody to actually notice.
"Boo,"
She had been so caught up in analyzing and assessing the physicality of Jacob's features that when he actually spoke, she couldn't help but to find herself taken aback; her mouth opening to form a silent scream although no sound was ever actually emitted as she threw herself backwards, the entirety of her body weight subconsciously landing against the firm frame sitting directly behind her – Puck.
She felt him throw his arms protectively around the width of her body, positioning his body as much as he possibly could amidst the cramped cover of the table top, directly in front of her; a noble act of heroism that Quinn always knew Puck to be capable of despite the fact that she knew his deepest fear was losing his reputation by expressing it.
"Come on man, don't do this…" Puck's voice may have sounded steady, confident even, to the untrained ear, but Quinn was one of the few to have the honor to say that she has seen the boy in his true form; the Noah within the Puck… She caught the slight wobble behind his voice, yet somehow, it just made her trust him even more. "If you're trying to get to Quinn, you're gonna have to go through me first."
"Noah… please," Quinn begged him not to feel obligated to play the hero, tried to express the notion that she could take care of herself, that if he got hurt, or worse, killed strictly for her sake, she would never be able to forgive herself…
But her voice emitted in no more than a mere whisper, a gentle breath of wind that even she barely registered… Her words fell unnoticed to both boys before her.
"You know that that wouldn't be a problem, Puckerman." Jacob's wheezing, nasally voice emitted with a sense of confidence only enhanced by the pistol that he was currently waving between clenched fists, holding firmly onto the handle of his firearm with such a desperation that his very knuckles were turning white before him. "In fact, you'll be doing me a favor; I can kill two birds with one stone."
"BANG!"
He screamed with a harsh suddenness behind his voice, thrusting the barrel of his gun forwards simultaneously so that it grazed so close against Quinn's face that she could literally feel the heat radiating off the end from all of its repeated usage.
Quinn found herself flinching involuntarily; Jacob's echoing exploitative barely even coming close to registering with the same pitch and power as that which his gun made every time that it had been fired, but still, she couldn't help but to be prone to reacting unexpectedly to sudden noise at this point…
She even felt Puck's muscles flex subconsciously tighter around her, felt his heart lurch forward within his ribcage in his own physical response.
"Is this what you want, Puckerman?" Quinn watched as Jacob transformed directly before her very eyes so quickly, she'd almost missed the transition; his previously calm demeanor morphing into the expression of a full-on lunatic, the brunt of his violent personality emitting in response to Puck's open challenge towards him. "You're the one that did this to me, Noah Puckerman!"
He straightened himself up at the waist, presenting his body at its full height as his pupils narrowed into slits so small that Quinn couldn't even comprehend how it was that Jacob could even see properly as he thrust his gun forwards once more and jammed it against the side of Puck's head so forcefully that Quinn could hear the collision of metal against bone, simultaneously feeling as Puck's grip against her body loosened as the blow to the head dazed him momentarily.
"You and this slut girlfriend of yours," He jabbed the brunt of his attention back towards Quinn, redirecting the positioning of his weapon so that it rested directly against her forehead, branding a permanent burn mark in the shape of a ring across her skin. "You both did this to me."
"No…" Puck forced himself from the fog of his apparent head injury, pulling Quinn's body deeper into his own so that her head was ducked beneath his arm in a measure that made it impossible for her to see anything other than the underside of his arm. "No, don't hurt her."
She understood Noah's intentions as being only for the best, understood that the only thing that he was trying to do was to protect her, but she was terrified of being blinded towards everything passing by before her, the idea being that should the bullets start flying, she would want to see the one that was made to kill her before it actually did.
"Jacob, please!" Quinn begged, her voice muffled by Puck's muscular arm as she pulled her head forcibly up from beneath the barricade so that she could face him, tears subconsciously streaking a straight path down her cheeks so that her sobs choked up her words nearly inaudibly. "We're sorry, okay! We never meant to hurt you!"
"Ha!" Jacob emphasized his annunciated, sarcastic laugh, pointing it directly into her face, so close to her that she could feel the breath of wind that carried it, bouncing directly off of her cheek. "Well guess what, Quinn; it's too late for that now… What's done is done."
His final words were emitted in no higher than a whisper, a statement that glistened so quietly across her eardrums that she was positive of the fact that she was the only one to have heard it.
With a pang of defeat, she processed the meaning behind his words, recognized the fault laced across his voice as he raised himself upward, straightening his spine stiff and raising his arms wide before him so that Quinn was vaguely reminded of all of those pictures she used to study in her Sunday school books of Jesus preaching to his followers before him.
"This is all of your faults!" With a thunderous boom, his voice carried across the length of the silenced cafeteria, bouncing harshly across the walls before coming straight back into their ears, this time accompanied by a handful of muffled squeals, released subconsciously in response to Jacob's harsh accusations. "You all hurt me."
Pausing briefly in his ministrations, he reflected proudly on the idea that his voice alone had just brought such fear, such utter terror into the entire student body before him before ducking downward once more, bending so that he was directly in front of Quinn, accompanying his action with the motion of pressing the barrel of his gun once more into her temple…
"And this time," He muttered, predominantly to himself as he pulled the hammer of his weapon backwards, the firm clicking sound it produced emanating to Quinn as a tiny voice whispering repetitively inside of her ears – this is it. "You're going to pay for it."
She was shaking like a leaf, left as nothing more than a spluttering mess despite everything her brain was screaming at her about not dying like a coward, not showing Jacob that he had won.
"Wait!" Puck shouted so suddenly that Quinn had nearly jumped straight out of her very skin; her anticipation towards the idea that the next, and last, sound that she was ever going to hear would be a gunshot causing her brain to temporarily misidentify Puck's voice as such. "You can't shoot her; she's a new mother, Jacob! Come on, man, you can't shoot a mother, not when her baby needs her!"
With an audible sigh of relief subconsciously slipping from Quinn's mouth, Jacob lowered his weapon momentarily from her head so that for the briefest of seconds, she actually believed that Puck's final attempts towards reasoning had actually worked.
She turned her head quickly towards him, flashing him the smallest of gratuitous smiles that her emotionally worn body could actually muster… After all, his eyes had been continuously watching over her with an aura of protection ever since the beginning, she knew it, and for that, she couldn't thank him enough.
"Valiant attempt to save your little girlfriend, Puck," Jacob spat, calling Puck's lie out for what it was, his face glistening with malice as he articulated his every word just to prove that he wasn't known as William McKinley High School's gossip hound for no reason, that he wasn't about to be fooled. "But my sources have confirmed that yours and Quinn's baby is currently being cared for by none other than Rachel Berry's biological mother… So don't worry, neither of you will have anything to worry about."
From beyond the very depths of her throat, a sickening sob was released from Quinn's mouth, her heart aching with the reminder of the daughter that she would never be granted the opportunity to see, the daughter that would never know her true mother for who she was…
But at least Jacob had been right about one thing; at least Beth wouldn't be forced to feel the repercussions of his actions today, at least she wouldn't have to live with the knowledge that her mother had helped to cause a massacre of astonishing proportions strictly due to her inability to be kind and reach out to a kid that had wanted nothing more than to be liked his entire life.
Yes, Quinn was certain of the fact that with or without her, Beth would grow up to be just fine at the hands of not herself, as it always should have been, but by a woman that she barely knew, a woman that she had spoken to once in her entire life and had only seen a mere handful of times more…
"You won't do it." Her thoughts were ultimately distracted by the words that even she couldn't believe herself to be hearing… Was Puck really sitting here, cowering amidst the cafeteria table that had since been painted red with the blood of all of their friends calling Jacob's bluff? "You don't have the balls to shoot either of us, Israel, I know you."
With a shuddering breath, Quinn squeezed her eyes closed with frustration and ducked her head downwards into the crook of her elbow… This was a firm example of one of the many moments of her life that she wished that Puck would just shot the hell up already…
Okay, so she knew that Jacob's relentless threats on their lives must have been a pretty harsh blow towards Puck's manhood, and she knew that if there was one thing that Puck defended more than anything else in his life, it was his manhood, but still, just because his options were currently running thinner than air, that didn't mean that he had to go ahead and shoot off comments that were clearly untrue.
After all, one quick sweep of their cafeteria, since turned slaughterhouse, would tell you that Jacob in fact, was not afraid to shoot anybody.
And despite the fact that prior to Puck's comments, Jacob had merely been playing with the two of them – a sick game of cat and mouse to appeal to Jacob's own desire towards power – with Puck's threatening statement, the younger boy's face fell, his mouth curled upwards into a sneer and his eyes glowed a sickening red; the anger prominent in his face as he spoke in the lowest of snarls that turned Quinn's blood to pure ice.
"Why don't you look around, Noah." He extended his arms, indicating towards the cafeteria before him, formulating a directional towards the multitude of bodies littering the floor surrounding them so that both Quinn and Puck were forced to take in every prone form, every speck of blood, every blank stare, every life lost… "Look around at all of your friends, all of your classmates, and then say that to me again."
Jacob paused in his ministrations, his eyes staring relentlessly into Puck's, Puck's staring equally as unblinkingly right back, both refusing to break their eye contact as if trying to read each other's minds, trying to read their next moves before either even made it.
It was the reason, she assumed, that they had both found themselves so prepared, the reason that they processed Jacob's motions before the boy's firing arm was even raised, the reason that when a bullet finally did ring out, they had been prepared.
But despite the fact that she had been ready to experience pain like nothing she had ever felt before, it never actually came… And with this harsh acknowledgment towards the fact, she recognized the idea that just because she had been spared, didn't mean that the rest of them had as well; a statement that became starkly obvious to her upon the release of a low grunt of pain originating from somewhere directly behind her.
She risked glancing towards its origin; her eyes peaking upwards and over Puck's shoulder, her motions slowed in her fear towards finding out who it was that had made that inhuman noise.
Behind her, her remaining friends had been left scrambling; Mike, Brittney and Matt tumbling and turning amidst Kurt's writhing body, Mercedes and Santana's still ones… There was blood, that much was for certain, but the problem now was that there was so much of it that Quinn couldn't seem to identify where it was exactly that it was all coming from…
But then her eyes captured the fleeting image of a body falling backwards from its balanced state, and with that motion, Mike and Brittney parted like the Red Sea in an effort to give Matt room to recover from the air being knocked straight out of his lungs as he clutched onto his stomach, blood seeping through his fingers in his failed attempt to staunch the puncture wound.
Quinn squeezed her eyes firmly shut in an effort to protect her racing head, not wanting to see the definitive result of Jacob's bullet, not wanting to know whether or not Matt could possibly survive the attack, or if yet another one of her glee clubbers, another one of her friends had been taken from her today.
Begging herself to apply the deep breathing exercises that had gotten her through child birth, the idea in mind that they could get her through this too, Quinn found herself entering the ultimate struggle, in through the nose and out through the mouth being a much more difficult feat to accomplish when all she could hear was Matt's guttural cries of agony from behind her, Mike's hushed assurances that everything was going to be okay, Brittney's torn sobs as she struggled to decide between helping Matt and mourning her dead best friend below her.
She found herself suddenly begging for time to move a little bit slower, begging to be given just a little while longer… There were so many things that she still had to say, so many things that she still had to do… this couldn't be it; it couldn't be over; not here, not like this.
Her eyes darted open with an abrupt unexpectedness with the second ringing of a gunshot before her, the bullet releasing itself mere inches away from her ears, rendering her completely and utterly deaf for a handful of seconds as she simultaneously inhaled sharply in a rush of cold air that filtered through her lungs so sharply that it knocked the air straight out of them so that for a second there, she believed herself to have actually been shot.
But slowly, her brain began to process the actual image of the scene before her; Brittney skirting abruptly away from a bullet intended for herself so that it missed the blonde by mere millimeters, instead lodging itself directly into the shoulder of Santana's already dead body…
The girl's limp form jolted only slightly, a direct response to the force of the bullet succumbing to the rules of inertia as it pitted to a stop deep within her body… But the blood was minimal, the effect negligible.
The damage had already been done, a reminder that rooted itself within all of their stomachs as Santana's body ultimately rested just as still as it had been before, not a single sound escaping from her lips nor a single grimace appearing across her face in response to having been shot.
In fact, shooting Santana had roughly resembled the equivalent of shooting a life-sized ragdoll; a reminder that Quinn hadn't exactly found herself prepared for although she knew that she should have been…
She could feel her lower lip quivering despite itself with the realization that the feisty young Latina whom she had been able to call a friend for years now was now dead. Her chest heaved up and down, performing impressive ministration within mid-air despite its inability to actually acquire a single molecule of oxygen, nothing worthwhile stemming from her hyperventilating chest as she felt a single tear slip from the corners of her eyes, followed by another one, and another one that led into a full on waterworks show.
Burying her face into Puck's shoulder, she could feel her tears staining through his sweatshirt, spreading unceremoniously across the fabric until it resembled a damp sponge, the moisture coming right back up and into her face as if she needed a reminder that she had been crying.
She begged herself not to lose focus, tried praying, tried pleading to God himself to will this horrible nightmare away, to get her out of this one alive, but she simply couldn't find it within herself to do so… How could she have been so stupid as to succumb to the ploy of Christianity for all of these years, fooling herself to believe in prayer as if God was listening to a single word that she had to say, as if he was actually there at all when it had suddenly become so clear to Quinn that he wasn't, that he never was.
And as if in a silent confirmation of this thought, instead of retreating, the gunfire was only enhanced, the relentless noise swelling and swirling above her head until it all became too much for her to take.
With her eyes squeezed firmly closed, she raised her palms up and over her ears in an unsuccessful attempt to block out the gunshots, to block out the agonizing scream of defeat as it escaped from the back of her throat…
Her voice carried across the length of the ceiling, meshing with a tragic sense of poeticism alongside the gunshots above; a high pitched wail that stung at even her own ears, continuously covered within her cupped hands.
"Quinn, Quinn stop!" Puck begged, shaking her at the shoulder as she continued to scream, to cry, begging her to silence herself while the opportunity was still there to do so. "They're gonna come back here, Quinn, please! Quinn shut up, please!"
But Puck apparently didn't understand everything that she already had, didn't know that it no longer mattered whether she shut her mouth or not; they were gonna die here today, that much was a damn certainty, and it was left without so much as a single doubt within Quinn's mind any longer…
So she refused to listen to him; instead releasing all of the frustrations that had been mounting inside of her for the past sixteen years of her life; she screamed for the child that she had been forced to give up, the parents that had never truly loved her… She screamed for the friends that she had already watched die before her, the impending death that she knew that she herself was about to face…
And through it all, she refused to open up her eyes; not even once, refused to see whether or not a bullet would be coming for her next… Instead, she just waited, she waited for the pain, waited for the promise of eternal paradise that she wasn't so sure that she was worthy of, and with every passing gunshot that she heard and it wasn't there, well she couldn't help but wonder which one of her friends had been left to take it.
She only chanced peering out from behind her closed eyelids after the bullets finally stopped, dissipating into a cloud of smoke that left her with the understanding that in this latest rampage, she had somehow managed to come out unscathed…
Her face buried deep within her arms and her eyes wet with the understanding of how close she was to the end, she lifted her head slowly upwards, squinting in the sudden brightness of the fluorescents, evaluating the scene before her, almost afraid to see what it was that she would find in response.
But Jacob hadn't even been turned towards them in his rampage… In fact, it seemed as if h is back had been facing them the entire time…
Quinn's eyes followed the trajectory of his still-pointed pistol, following its pathway the length of the cafeteria where it seemed to point smugly towards the prone body of a freshman boy whose name Quinn didn't even know…
She could barely make out his face from the way either of them were positioned; him laying awkwardly in a heap on his side, the upper half of his body projected outwards and into the hallway as his legs splayed permanently inside of the cafeteria so that it became obvious to Quinn that Jacob's distraction from them had come in the form of this young, baby-faced boy darting for escape, and missing freedom by mere inches.
Her brilliant blue eyes found his wide, empty ones… He looked so young just laying there, a kid… He was just a kid amidst the rest of them.
"Now why don't you tell me who it is I won't shoot, Puckerman!" Jacob shouted in his expression of triumph, turning slowly away from the young freshman and back towards the glee table, his feet stamping harshly against the ground with every step forward that he took as he clamored awkwardly towards them, instead of stopping at the head of the table, climbing directly on top of it.
"I am not afraid to kill anybody, Noah!" Quinn could hear him yelling from directly on top of them, could hear the stamping of his boots against the thick wooden frame separating them from him so that the thin layer of wood trembled above them, sending specks of dust and debris flying into each of their hair. "Test that theory again if you really want to!"
Quinn struggled to steady her breathing beneath the ominous feet of Jacob Ben-Israel tracing his path up and down the length of the lunch table that they were hiding beneath… She surveyed the scene before her quickly, trying with a desperate attentiveness to block out Jacob's shouting as she evaluated Kurt, still struggling amidst a seeming unconscious to get Mercedes' limp body weight off of his own with little luck…
She tried not to think about the fact that Mercedes wasn't making any motions at all; no twitch of the hand, no rise and fall of the chest, no nothing…
Then there was Santana… poor Santana. Arguably one of William McKinley High School's biggest beauties, a girl destined for escape amidst the threatening confines of Lima, Ohio, blown to pieces in an instant; her gorgeous features no longer so much as identifiable amidst the mask of blood that her face had since become.
The only ones left amongst them aside from her and Puck were Brittney and Mike… and Brittney was busy struggling to comprehend the fact that she had just watched her best friend's face get blown off while Mike was simultaneously struggling with trying not to become the most recent one able to claim they'd lost their best friend to Jacob Ben-Israel's bullet, his hands pressing against the wound glistening across Matt's stomach firmly, blood smearing his palms as the football player below him struggled less and less, his strength sucking straight from his body with every drop of blood that fell to the floor below.
This was a battle that they were currently losing, Quinn could see that much – she could have been blind and still have seen that… There was that voice consistently snickering in the back of her head telling her that she could be freed from all of this pain of her past, all that she had to do to achieve it was to be willing to die, and honestly, she almost embraced it…
Of course, the more she thought about it, the more she realized that she didn't want to be freed from her past if that meant missing out on her entire future.
And suddenly, it became obvious to her that the only way that she was going to escape a life-ending bullet was to reason with Jacob… Suddenly she knew that it was time to take matters into her own hands.
Wiggling herself strategically out of Puck's arms, she was only vaguely aware of the fact that he was calling back to her before she was even gone, hissing warnings towards her not to be so stupid, to retreat back to the false sanctuary of hiding, but she ignored all of his calls, pushed past each of his frantic attempts to restrain her, and squinted against the open sunlight as she stood confidently upright amidst the center of the cafeteria, forcing her body to resist trembling amidst her overwhelming fear as her eyes darted rapidly back and forth between Jacob and Suzy for several tense seconds before ultimately landing directly upon Jacob.
"Jacob, this needs to stop." Her voice was soft; high in its characteristic calming nature. "Please, before anybody else gets hurt or… or killed." She squeezed her eyes shut at her last word, images of each and every one of the dead flashing behind her eyes as she did so.
"And why should I do that, Quinn Fabray?"
"You're getting yourself too deep into something that's bigger than any of us, Jacob." She pressed him to see reason, begged her voice to sound confident although deep down inside, she was feeling more and more foolish with each word that escaped from her mouth. "It's not too late to take it back, Jacob."
"It is too late." He informed her firmly, shaking his head vigorously from side to side so that once again, Quinn was able to catch that glint of red behind his eyes as they refracted into and out of the fluorescent glow of the overhead lights above. "Look around, Quinn; it's been to late… I can take it back? I can take it back!"
His voice grew steadily louder with each word that he spoke, his eyes narrowing and breathing increasing so that she knew in an instant that she had said the wrong thing.
"What about you? You could have taken it back! You could have stopped this! You could have stopped this long before it even started, so don't you tell me that I can stop."
Jacob's words faded into a silence that tore through the room harsher than any bullet ever possibly could… Quinn swallowed, out of ideas as to how to keep Jacob talking, how to keep him from shooting her, but it seemed that she had at the very least, brought herself a little bit of time as Jacob seemed to bid every intention upon continuing to rant now that he had been given the opportunity to do so.
"Kids at this school have been ignoring me since day one!" His voice shouted harshly, rabid in its anger, everything that had been building up inside of him for the past sixteen years of his life emitting here, now. "They made me hate myself, made me wish that I had never even been born… I'm simply returning the favor. I'm taking matter into my own hands now, Quinn. It doesn't matter, none of it does; fate doesn't wait for any of our plans… The sooner you learn that, the better off you'll be."
"I'm sorry Jacob."
The apology slipped from between her lips, came out without her particularly meaning to say it, but before today, it was impossible for Quinn to ever dream, let alone physically understand exactly what it was that sorry could mean, but today she knew it… and she meant it.
God, did she mean it.
"It's too late for that." Jacob shook his head gently, emphasizing his statement in an effort to counteract everything that Quinn had been trying to tell him this entire time.
She was suddenly out of things to say, suddenly out of things to do… Puck had been right, this had been a mistake, but this was not like any other mistake than she had ever made in her life, this was the ultimate mistake, the one that was going to cost her everything, including her life.
A flash before her eyes captured her attention… She had almost forgotten that Jacob hadn't come alone, that he had not been the only estranged teenager to have walked into their high school with a gun today; a second child transformed into a murderer within a mere handful of heartbreaking minutes.
"Suzy…" She muttered; her mouth dry to the point that her voice was barely recognizable. "Suzy, this isn't you."
In truth, Quinn didn't know how truthful her words actually were, in fact, she didn't know much about Suzy Pepper at all.. But in her bid to work with what little that she had been given, she knew that Suzy had since proven to be skittish, hesitant even with her weapon, leaving her under the firm belief that she would be much easier to talk sense into than Jacob had since proven to be.
"You don't know anything about me." Suzy snarled, seemingly expressing the exact same thing that Quinn had previously been thinking despite her hopes that she wouldn't.
"I know that you're not an evil person, Suzy, that you're not violent…" Quinn tried to reason with the girl but couldn't quite seem to push past the idea that she was right, she didn't know. "I know that you would never actually kill anybody."
"You're wrong." Suzy responded firmly, Quinn grimacing directly in her response, her last attempt at reasoning knocking her flat on her ass in her failure… She truly hadn't believed Suzy Pepper capable of murder, not based on everything she'd seen of her anyway… Jacob's prominent dominance within these walls had given her that idea, but she had nearly forgotten that this whole debacle hadn't begun inside of this cafeteria at all…
Quinn had no idea what had happened within those hallways, what Suzy had done before all of this.
"I already did kill somebody, Quinn Fabray. Your little friend, Rachel Berry; I shot her, and I killed her. So don't tell me that I'm afraid to kill anybody, because I'm not."
Quinn's body reacted physically towards Suzy's unexpected revelation, shudders wracking her every limb as she was forced to dwell upon the relationship that she had had with Rachel over the years – the rare ups and the more prominent downs - now that the girl was dead…
The thought left her uneasy, queasy even as her stomach performed a dramatic free fall as a direct response.
It was only as the echoing gunshot faded into the background, dwindling downwards into silence, as the smoke emanating from the tip of Suzy's shotgun lingered into her nostrils that she realized that this feeling inside of her stomach wasn't one of unease, wasn't fear presented as a physical entity, but a bullet, embedded deep underneath the skin of her abdomen, straight through to the organs within.
The pain hadn't yet physically settled, the impact of this traitorous addition to her body not fully registering in her consciousness as she brought two trembling hands upwards, cradling her stomach in a manner identical as to that she performed mere weeks ago when a child rested in the exact same place that a bullet was currently nestled within.
And all at once, she found herself wondering why she had previously believed that she'd had to run straight through her life without stopping once, without looking back… Now that she was so aware of the world's traitorously unforgiving pace, she just wished that she'd found the time to slow down, to embrace everything that she could now never have ever again.
"No, Quinn!"
Puck's low, growling undertone lingered between her ears as she watched him scramble out from underneath the table out of the corner of her eye, using the speed training that years of being Lima's star wide receiver had left him with to sprint forward towards Quinn, catching her delicately between his two outstretched arms before she could even hit the ground.
He lowered her downwards slowly, collecting her high into his upper arms as they rested as one against the floor, her back pressed tightly into his chest, his hands interlaced between hers, pressed firmly against the bleeding wound in her abdomen.
And for a split second inside of Puck's arms, the world in its entirety managed to disappear, became nothing more than him and her inside one another, so that as the features began to spiral with the various ups and downs that they had been through together, she couldn't help but laugh with the idea that this might just be how it all ended.
"What the hell can you possibly be laughing at right now?" Puck asked, sounding alarmed, yet strangely amused by Quinn's unruly reaction to having just been shot.
"I was just thinking…" She paused, her breath hitching upwards in her own throat as the pain washed even the lingering echo of a laugh, straight off of her face, forcing Puck's expression to turn downward immediately in response to the reminder of where they were and what they were doing there. "I was thinking about how it's a good thing that Beth was already born… She's safe now; she'll always be safe now."
She felt Puck's hand squeeze subconsciously tighter around Quinn's stomach, tensing as he froze at her words, not wanting to relish on this fact, but at the same time, unable to deny how true it was.
"You need to watch over her, Puck." Quinn's face had suddenly morphed into something fierce; her eyes darting upwards to meet his own in a serious glare that she knew would ensure that Puck knew that she meant every word of everything that she was saying to him right now. "You need to make sure that Shelby's taking care of her, Noah… Make sure that Shelby's watching over our daughter."
"No… no, Quinn I can't do this without you." Puck stuttered and stammered incomprehensibly, his voice telling Quinn that he would never be able to do this himself even though Quinn knew deep down in the back of her mind that he could… he always could. "You need to fight this, Quinn! I already had to say goodbye to our daughter, I can't say it to you too."
"You'll do fine, Noah." She shook her head against his uncertainty, trying to profess the confidence that she couldn't help but remember herself shooting down all of those times while she was pregnant with Beth, all of those times that Puck had professed his desire for her to keep the child, that they could take care of her together… all of the times that she had denied him.
"You're a Lima loser, and you're always gonna be a Lima loser."
"I can't do this without you."
"Yes you can." She assured him, her hand twitching underneath his own so that she could grip his hand more firmly as she took several shuddering deep breaths and closed her eyes against the current pain radiating through her very bones.
"Do you remember when we were younger Noah?" Her voice quivered as she rambled into a tangent spurred by the haze of natural pain killers. "When things were easier?"
"Of course I do." He assured her, sniffling against her words as he tried desperately to contain his tears, although the emotion behind his voice told her just how much he was struggling to do so.
"Do you remember when we were growing up? You used to say that you needed me, Noah, and I never said it, but I always used to think that that made you sound so much smarter, so wise… More than you'd ever actually admit that you actually were anyway."
"Please Quinn…" Noah Puckerman had never been a beggar, and even if he had been, the tone didn't suite him very well, but of course, desperate times called for desperate measures, and this was as desperate a time as any… even Puck knew that much.
"Noah…" She pressed him to listen to her, begged him to see reason, to understand that neither of them had any control over what was about to happen, and that this was just something that they would both have to accept, that they would both have to live with. "Noah, you have to promise me."
"Of course," He nodded, but Quinn could still see the tears behind his eyes as he spoke. "Of course I promise, Quinn… But Beth… she needs her mom too."
"She's got a mom," Quinn assured him, as if in a reminder, through a sharp, inward gasp of pain that forced her eyes to water over with a subconscious layer of tears that faded even her most prominent senses closer into darkness. "Shelby will take care of her, Noah… She might just need some help for a little while."
Her mind filtered through everything that Suzy had told her, all about how she had found Rachel roaming the hallways, about how she had killed her… And although Quinn knew that Rachel and Shelby's relationship hadn't exactly been pristine, well, neither was her and Beth's but Quinn still knew that should anything ever happen to her daughter, her heart would still be ripped out all the same, which is why she knew that Shelby's inevitably would as well.
Her vision sweltered rapidly into a blackness that accompanied an unconscious shudder that travelled all the way down the length of her spine; a sudden jerk of fear that let her know that she was riding dangerously close to the border of the bitter end.
She knew that she should be brave, that she needed to be the strong one here, but that internal fear was rapidly taking over, the wonderment of what could have been, what now could never be…
What if a point in time came along where her daughter needed her? What if her family, her friends couldn't find it in themselves to get along without her? What if there was some sort of incredible injustice deep within the very depths of heaven sparred by either overcrowding or the sins of her past and she wasn't allowed inside… Then where would she go?
She could hear voices in the distance; the deep trembling tone that she almost didn't recognize as Puck's solely due to the fact that it lacked the strict confidence that the mohawked boy had always been known for, and immediately following it, the high, nasally whine of Jacob…
But she couldn't make out any distinction between their words, her world suddenly growing too fuzzy, too indistinct to hear much of anything above the thin drawl of air being emitted from within their mouths.
The shades of grey that her vision had since become regarding the world around her was beginning to fade deeper, darker; an inviting blackness that Quinn couldn't help but to find welcoming despite the eeriness of its eternalness.
A glossy, indistinct figure was reaching out towards her, telling her to follow him forward, and she was ready to, truly she was.
In fact, the only thing that could have possibly pulled her back into the world that she had found herself so prepared and astonishingly willing to leave all behind was the blast of a second gunshot ringing above her head, forcing her eyes to fly predominantly into focus, a final burst of adrenaline that allowed her to watch, clear as day, as Puck clutched onto his chest, grimacing in pain as his subconscious shout of pain leaked above the residual shot of the bullet that had just struck him.
He toppled forwards, eyes firmly closed even before he so much as hit the ground so that when he finally landed against the ground below him, face to face directly before Quinn, the only thing that she could see was his closed eyelids, clenching at her struggling heart so that it lurched painfully and threw her straight forwards once more into the jet-throws of death itself.
"Noah…" Through gritted teeth, she allowed his name to emanate off of the tip of her tongue, focusing the entirety of her concentration upon moving her hand, just a single inch to her right in order to land on top of his own, desperate to feel that pulse beneath her fingertips, that warmth spread upwards from his palms.
She couldn't see a single thing; her vision impossibly skewed by blood, her body paralyzed with injury…
She called out to him once more, but her voice was so soft, so fragile that not even she was able to hear her own words, her ears still ringing with the lingering gunshots as they faded into mere echoes just as suddenly as they had erupted with the force of fireworks.
Her elbow bent inward, arm outstretched, amazing her in its expression of the human body's ability to always find that secret hidden strength inside of it, even when it seemed as if there were nothing left…
She dropped her hand down directly on top of Puck's, initiated first contact, felt the cool skin of the top of his hand radiating underneath her own clammy palms.
"Noah, please…" She choked, her tears streaming down the back of her throat so that they choked her as she begged him for a response that never came. "Who's going to take care of Beth? Please Noah, please be okay."
Her vision was fading quickly into absolute nothingness, Puck's unconscious features blurring before her very eyes as she put her ever effort into forcing herself into retaining consciousness, into finding that tiniest spark of life hidden deep within the very crevices of her body, but her efforts were futile, she knew it; she could feel it.
Her hand was latched firmly onto his own, all of the strength that she had left inside of her focused solely on her commitment to hold onto him until the very end.
Their fingers were entangled; Puck's limp hand intertwined within Quinn's weakened one until finally, one by one, her muscles submitted to a welcome unconsciousness, her fingers slowly began to unfurl around her until ultimately, her hand fell limp, landing lifelessly at her side, mere inches away from the only one that she had been searching for this entire time.