So, first and foremost I would like to thank everybody for being so patient! I know it's been a while, but life's really been eating me up lately so thank you everybody for baring with me, and I tried to make it up with a really, really long chapter!
And also, for all of you who are wondering, I promise that you will find out what happens with Will, Rachel, Finn and Shelby in the next chapter. All of you guys eagerly waiting have been extra patient, so an extra big thanks to you.
As always, huge shout out to all of you sticking with me here, you guys are awesome so I hope you enjoy this chapter!
Chapter 11
Life and Doubt
(Noah "Puck" Puckerman)
He had been raised to hide his fear behind the façade of toughness.
When his father walked out on his family, when his mother struggled to afford food for her children, when he lost his best friend to his own errors in judgment, when he handed his daughter over to another woman, another life…
Each and every time, his upbringing had taught him to take it with a stony coolness and a straight face; no outward expression of emotion whatsoever.
So he'd learned to compensate with anger, with violence. When he was upset, he yelled when really, the only thing that he wanted to do was cry; instead of throwing tantrums, conditioning had taught him to throw fists.
But not today.
Today, he watched empty and aghast as his friends, his family fell all around him leaving him unable to turn in a single direction without being met with destruction…
The pressure built behind his eyes, weighing him down impossibly with the images; David Karofsky, Azimo Addams, Mercedes – all dead in a flash right before his very eyes…
And finally, just as he feared that any more would break him in his entirety, Santana Lopez's lifeless body slumped forwards against Quinn's strong shoulders; his two most prominent ex's meshing together poetically as the faceless entity that a bullet had since turned the striking Latina into launched Puck's emotions directly over the edge of an already teetering mountain.
And so, he cried.
He no longer cared about who saw him, no longer cared what they would think, what they would say in response to witnessing arguably the toughest guy in this entire school lingering with tears in his eyes…
The truth was that Noah Puckerman had always been equipped with a weak side, a sensitive spot in his desperate desire to have somebody to hold onto, somebody to tell him that everything was going to be okay when he in turn, couldn't find the strength inside of him to believe those words himself.
So he reached outwards, hands grasping to satisfy his burning need for comfort from the only other person in the entirety of this world who knew of Puck's weaknesses, and not only embraced, but appreciated them even more than she did his strengths…
Through his subconscious desire, his senses directed him over towards Quinn, watching as the young blonde scrambled just out of arm's length, away from her motionless friend; her pale face exemplifying her wide, shimmering eyes as she performed impressive pirouette motions that got her absolutely nowhere, like a mouse trapped inside a maze, looking for safety that they both knew she would never achieve.
He wanted to stop her, wanted to convince her that she needed him right now just as much as he needed her, allow her to fold perfectly into his arms so that he could create the allusion that he was taking care of her when really, it would be her taking care of him, but his endeavors proved to yield nothing but failure…
Reaching a blind hand outwards and towards her, he subconsciously grabbed for anything on her body that he knew he would be able to latch onto, coming up with nothing but air each time… He had failed her, certainly not for the first time, but with the consequences of his failure lingering painfully on his mind, he knew that it could very well be the last.
His eyes were scanning about the cafeteria with the depth and focus of a panoramic image; each detail extending from his peripherals straight into the innermost depths of his brain so that the concept of slow motion struck him like a blow to the head just as Quinn seemed to have lost the concept of her spacial orientation all together, becoming disoriented enough to allow her hand to slip from beyond the boundary of their hiding place where it rested heavily atop the booted foot of Jacob Ben-Israel, permanently locking in the notion that now, his attention was attracted towards them, and it wasn't going anywhere.
They were screwed.
"Boo."
Jacob's voice rang eerily loud across the underside of their table, thick like fog in a manner that forced Puck to release a subconscious shudder that was merely reciprocated by Quinn tenfold as she reacted violently to the sudden presence of Jacob's face beneath the cover that was supposed to protect her from him…
She leapt impressively, the entirety of her body leaving the ground by which she rested on by solid inches before the laws of gravity pulled her miraculously downwards, perfectly between Puck's arms, already outstretched in his anticipation, always ready to catch her any time that she found herself falling.
Flinging his muscular arms forwards and around her shoulders, he laced his fingers together at her sternum, using brute force to position his body as much between her and Jacob Ben-Israel as he possibly could given their constricting spacial limitations.
He craned his neck behind him until his muscles began screaming their protest against his actions, fighting valiantly through the pain that this unnatural motion was causing him just so that he could ensure that he would be facing Jacob in all of his stony glory so that at the very least, he would be looking directly into the boy's eyes as he begged him for his life, hopefully diminishing the pathetic vibes that he knew that these actions would radiate in the process.
"Come on man, don't do this."
He slapped himself mentally upright and over his head when these words became the best that he could manage to come up with, repeating the self-inflicting action twice as hard upon feeling Quinn tense beneath his arms; an unspoken indication that she had caught the fear that he'd tried so hard to mask behind his voice, subconsciously scaring her even more than she already was…
"If you're trying to get to Quinn, you're gonna have to go through me first." He attempted to make up for his abysmal excuse for an opening statement by enforcing his commitment to playing the part of Quinn's hero; a role that he had always wanted to be granted despite the fact that he'd never particularly imagined it being under conditions such as this.
"You know that that wouldn't be a problem, Puckerman." Jacob sneered beneath Puck's words, taking no sentiment behind their meaning as his eyes merely glistened with the idea that now he would simply be able to get to the both of them without putting in so much as an ounce of extra effort. "In fact, you'll be doing me a favor; I can kill two birds with one stone."
"BANG!"
He screamed with such a sudden vigor that Puck hadn't had so much as a second to prepare a reaction as Jacob moved with an abrupt swiftness that he had never even thought to associate with the boy… By the time Puck's body had responded to Jacob's sudden shouting with a rush of adrenaline that forced his muscles to flinch from within their cocoon of skin and bone and his heart to ram painfully against his ribcage, Jacob's arm was already extended, outstretched so that the gun clasped firmly within his tangled fingers was suddenly a mere millimeter from the side of Quinn's head.
Sweat beaded in profound droplets across Puck's forehead; a direct result of the overwhelming fear currently wracking his every nerve cell combined with the heat radiating off of the weapon being held uncomfortably close to the mother of his child's head…
He struggled with the concept of logical reasoning; his words catching up with themselves somewhere deep along the back of his throat as the feeling as if somebody had just shoved an entire box of cotton balls into his mouth permanently ensured the fact that not a single sound would be emitted from him in this moment.
He couldn't think of anything to say, couldn't think of anything to do that would save either of them from what, in this moment seemed to be a sealed fate… It was why he knew that if they both died right here and right now, it would all be entirely his fault strictly due to the fact that he couldn't seem to find it inside of himself to stand up and be the man that he knew that he had to be right now; the man that was willing to stand up for the woman that he loved…
No, the only thing that it seemed that he could possibly do in this moment was simply just to sit and watch as this deranged psychopath before them pointed a gun at the mother of his child's head and flexed his finger tauntingly against the trigger before them.
"Is this what you want, Puckerman?" Jacob's face had transformed with an abrupt suddenness into something that Puck could only find to describe as pure evil… All at once, his expression had become inhuman, his actions presented as sharp, defined as his eyes glowed black underneath the overhead lights with pure malice…
But he knew that this was not something that could have just happened as abruptly as Puck had registered it, he knew that this type of vast change, this ungodly shift wasn't something that could have just happened over night… not even close.
No, it seemed as if Jacob Ben-Israel had been shifting further away from human and closer towards this individual that stood before them today for years now, and they had missed it; every single one of them…
And now they were all paying for their selective observations, for turning a blind eye towards the opposite direction, for refusing to give a cry for help, sixteen years in the making so much as a second glance…
"You're the one that did this to me, Noah Puckerman!"
Guilt flashed across Puck's insides alongside Jacob's words, burning him with shame so that he could physically feel his autonomic thermostat increasing his body temperature so that the only thing that he could truly bring himself to concentrate on was the idea that his face was currently flushing a deep, prominent red…
That is until he'd felt the sudden rush of wind followed immediately by a sharp pain that connected against the side of his head making it so despite his concentration being previously so focused, he now found that he couldn't really bring himself to concentrate on much of anything at all…
He'd somehow managed to catch the quick flash of metal, the image of the barrel of Jacob's pistol as it approached him with a speed that made it register with Puck's range of vision as a mere flash of light…
The connection of steel against bone rang prominently between each of his ears, a heavy echo that filled his brain with a fog that was only exemplified by the damage that the sudden blow was bound to have caused as for a fraction of a second, his entire body went limp…
His muscles were tingling, his eyes blurring over; but it seemed, that they only thing that could possibly pull him back into any sort of realm of conscious thought was the only thing that actually happened as the feeling of Quinn slipping steadily from his grip overwhelmed his senses, allowing him to commit to gathering all of his strength together just so that he could secure the grip that he had previously held around Quinn's upper body once more…
"You and this slut girlfriend of yours," Jacob carried about his deranged speech as if he hadn't just knocked Puck out cold with a firearm, as if the scrambling currently infiltrating Puck's head would actually allow him to listen… "You both did this to me."
"No…" Puck muttered feebly, fighting the tingling sensation that had managed to infiltrate each of his limbs as Jacob redirected the business end of his weapon from Puck's head and back onto Quinn's.
He solidified the meaning behind his slightly slurred stance by pulling her as closely into her body as he possibly could muster before continuing to pull her even closer.
"No, don't hurt her."
"Jacob, please!" Quinn begged Jacob from her position nestled safely beneath Puck's arms, her voice muffled by his muscular biceps so that he could feel her warm breath against his skin as she spoke, lingering alongside a cascade of wet tears as they began their descent down the full length of her cheeks. "We're sorry, okay! We never meant to hurt you!"
"Ha!" With a serene sense of sarcasm blatantly evident behind his voice, Jacob turned, directing the entirety of the weight of his words onto Quinn despite the fact that Puck knew that he was the one to blame, that it should be him sitting with a gun against his temple, not her. "Well guess what Quinn; it's too late for that now."
His heart gave a particularly painful lurch inside of his chest as the finality behind Jacob's words lingered for a painfully lengthy amount of time before dissipating against his face…
Without so much as another word, Puck watched as the boy straightened himself out, standing perfectly upright in the acknowledgment that he had a roomful of cowering teenagers at his mercy by his feet; his confident poise allowing his outline to catch the light above him in a manner that made him seem impossibly bigger than Puck had ever seen him before…
Raising his arms outwards, Jacob showed off his impressive full wingspan, signifying for the attention of the cafeteria's occupants although Puck was more than certain that they had all been watching him this entire time anyway, just waiting to see exactly what it was that he would do next.
"This is all of your faults!" He wheezed in the sudden, pronounced boom of his voice as it rang ominous off of the cinderblock walls and beyond, "You all hurt me!"
His voice dropped in his final statement, fading into a silence that Jacob in turn, accepted comfortably as his lingering classmates stared horrorstruck amidst the unsettling pause as it rattled their nerves, if possible, even more so than they already were.
He rested his hands steadily against his scrawny hips, gun remaining securely at his side as he fashioned his thumbs through the hoops support the belt containing his seemingly infinite rounds of ammunition and scanned his eyes proudly amidst the destruction that he initiated, that he had caused.
In fact, Puck had gotten so used to Jacob's calm watch over them all that the suddenness of his next movement took him by complete and utter surprise; so quick that there hadn't even been a transition, and all at once, much like only mere moments before, Puck had blinked, and Jacob was once again, holding the barrel of his pistol firmly against her temple.
"And this time," He made the strides to complete the initial statement that he had started addressing to the entire unfortunate student body before him, this time ducking his voice downwards so that it was merely Puck and Quinn that could hear the hissing anger laced within every word as he spoke. "You're going to pay for it."
Puck could feel Quinn shaking in his arms beneath him; her body trembling to the point that he was struggling to retain the firm grip that he had across her upper body.
Subconsciously, he found himself squeezing his arms tighter, begging her to embrace this sense of comfort that he was trying to enact inside of her, but he doubted very much so that she had so much as registered it, her mind much too busy racing alongside the thoughts of her impending death to be comforted by much of anything; especially something as mundane as a simple squeeze.
His mind was scrambling he had to think of something more productive, something that could effectively manage to save Quinn's life, and he had to think of it fast…
It had become apparent to him in these past seconds that Jacob was no longer fooling around with them, he was no longer hovering tauntingly above them, scaring them merely for the sake of fear… This time, his intentions were obvious; he wanted them dead, and Puck was never one to simply roll over and accept much of anything – especially this… He couldn't do that; not for himself, and certainly not for Quinn.
"Wait!" The word slipped from Puck's mouth without him particularly meaning to allow it… Of course, calling Jacob's attention away from his current intentions upon placing a bullet into Quinn's skull was a step in the right direction, but beyond that, he had nothing; no game plan, no heroic action, nothing.
His mind raced for the presence of an effective follow up, but each successive idea seemed stupider than the last… At this point, the only thing that he really had to go on was the thought that maybe, just maybe, his calling to Jacob would cause Jacob to instead shoot him first, buy Quinn a couple of extra second; and who knew, maybe they would be enough extra seconds to allow her to achieve escape…
He could only hope.
His eyes locked with Jacob's, and as much as he tried to maintain that wrought of stony confidence amidst his features, as much as he tried to silently communicate with Jacob that he knew exactly what he had gotten himself into, knew exactly what he was going to do next, it was all a lie, and he knew that Jacob would never fall for all of the bullshit lingering beyond the fear.
But in a sudden rush of light and sound, all at once, the image of Jacob's hate-filled eyes, the insides of the barrel of the gun that he was currently staring down disappeared in a flash of brilliant colors, replaced instead with images of his entire life dancing across his subconscious – some of his proudest moments, laced between those he regretted the most.
And yet, through it all, there seemed to be but one consistency, one solid portrayal of his life that never seemed to go, never seemed to leave him behind so that even when he was brought back into reality with a sharpness that roughly resembled a punch to the chest, even after dreary images faded and became replaced with vibrant red curls and a smoking handgun, he saw it – Quinn and Beth.
And suddenly, it all made sense; suddenly, he knew exactly what it was that he had to say, exactly what it was that he had to do.
"You can't shoot her; she's a new mother, Jacob!" He professed, the desperation prominent behind his eyes, "Come on man, you can't shoot a mother, not when her baby needs her!"
For the quickest of seconds, he had actually believed his final, desperate act to have worked… Watching with a sigh of relief and the relaxing of his muscles that filled his chronically tense muscles with a rush of gratitude, Jacob lowered his weapon downwards and away from Quinn's head, positioning it briefly against his side…
Conducting a premature prayer of overwhelming gratitude deep inside of his head, Puck foolishly allowed his guard to fall; the adrenaline that had previously been running so prominently inside of his veins that his heart had been on the verge of exploding fading so that the organ's frantic thumping was allowed to dissipate back to its previous pace.
He allowed his muscles to fall flaccid, his head rolling into Quinn's shoulder in the silent acknowledgment that she would be alright, that he would always be there to protect her; a motion that she returned with the smallest of gratuitous smiles that was laced with the sting of residual tears clouding her striking blue eyes.
"Valiant attempt at saving your little girlfriend, Puck," Jacob reciprocated, pulling the two teens away from each other's own thoughts and back into reality, back into the reminder that they were both currently hanging on by a mere thread. "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."
Puck's heart froze so suddenly that it physically pained him; Jacob hadn't been fooled, he should have known that he wouldn't have been…
The sob that emulated suddenly from the very base of Quinn's throat, echoing harshly throughout the entirety of the room became a very accurate description of exactly how he was feeling himself at the moment; his head was spinning, he felt physically nauseous…
But he had to stay strong; if not for himself, then for her, for them; for Quinn and for Beth…
He was almost sickened with the idea that he had used his daughter as a bargaining chip for Quinn's life, and now that the desperate act hadn't even met him with success, he had become downright appalled with himself… He could only hope and pray that Beth would never be able to find out for herself what her father's final act in life had been; that he had died a coward…
No; he couldn't leave this life with so much as the possibility that Beth would grow up with an image of her father as being anything less than a hero, he just couldn't… He had to do something to fix this; something, anything.
"You won't do it."
Okay, so admittedly, he knew before the words had so much as escaped his mouth that this may not have been the best approach that he could have taken. It was a big game for even a person of his stature and reputation to be talking, after all, one quick glance about the cafeteria, at the multitude of bodies littering the floor – most of which had been shot by Jacob himself – not only told Puck, but everybody else around him that Jacob would indeed shoot any of them without so much as a second's hesitation towards the matter.
But it had already been said, he had already started this… He had chosen to cross that line from protective into pure insanity, and now he had to stick with it; even if it did mean facing the untold consequences of his actions.
"You don't have the balls to shoot either of us, Israel, I know you."
From in between his arms, he could feel Quinn shifting uncomfortably against him; a silent emphasis towards the fact that she wanted nothing more right now than for him to shut his mouth before he got them into even deeper shit than they'd already found themselves in.
"Why don't you look around, Noah." The tone behind Jacob's voice had shifted with a sudden, dramatic force so powerful that it had Noah Puckerman cowering in fear; an action that he hadn't allowed himself to succumb to since he had been a child, hiding beneath his bed with his infant sister cradled between his arms, listening as his parents fought audibly, and more often than not, physically right outside his door…
Above him, Jacob's eyes narrowed into slits, the reflection of the fluorescent lighting striking against the lenses of his glasses at such an angle that from where Puck was sitting, they appeared to be glowing; a red so deep that Puck had to do a double take just to ensure that he hadn't made the entire thing up…
But despite the difference in the shades, Jacob's pupils were empty; there was absolutely no life behind them, no feeling, no nothing… just pure, unadulterated hate; hate that he had never before seen, hate that he never before believed possible for a single human being to possess… and for Puck, that was what scared him the most.
"Look around at all of your friends, all of your classmates, and then say that to me again." His voice rose steadily until he was shouting once again, motioning proudly towards the multitude of prone bodies that littered the room so that Puck had been practically forced to follow Jacob's instruction, sneaking quick glances outwards despite his insistency upon maintaining a strict eye contact with Jacob just to ensure that he would be prepared for Jacob's next move when the right time came for him to make it.
And he had been prepared; he had been more prepared for that move than he had been prepared for absolutely anything else in his entire life and he knew it, because when that gun finally did go off, he pounced; leaping upwards and over Quinn's body, covering it with his own to the best of his ability just hoping and praying that he possessed the capacity to move faster than a point-blank range bullet.
But his first thought as the blaring shot finally settled distantly inside of his ears, as the world around him faded into a silence even more deafening than a gunshot was that he had failed; his heart sinking with the idea that he had not been prepared enough, that he had not moved fast enough, that he had not saved her… he never could save her; not now, not ever…
To him, this telling factor came alongside the notion that he had felt no pain, none whatsoever… He was throwing himself into the line of fire, he was taking a bullet for her; at the very least he had expected pain; earth-shattering, indescribable burning…
But it never came.
From somewhere surrounding him, a harsh grunt of pure agony infiltrated into his every sense, freezing his heart in the acknowledgment that he had been wrong all along, the bullet hadn't struck him, in fact, it had missed him altogether, sparing him at the expense of another…
He pulled himself harshly away from Quinn, scanning quickly across her body in an effort to take in the extend of the damage; he looked for blood, he looked for any indication that she was in any pain, he looked for anything at all, but he never found it…
His mind was just racing with the idea of what it was that he could do to save her now that she had fallen victim to Jacob's bullet when he realized that she hadn't even been acknowledging him at all; instead, she was merely looking horrorstruck over his broad shoulder, eyes wide and directed towards an image behind her…
And all at once, he realized that they had both been spared… for now.
But with a heavy pang, he realized that this was something that couldn't be said for the rest of them, and with a sensation of guilt that seeped through him straight down into his very core, he realized that by challenging Jacob, he had achieved nothing more than awakening the sleeping bear…
Jacob was ready to prove to Puck that he in fact was not afraid to shoot anybody by shooting everybody; and right now, that everybody included his teammate; the star running back that, with his wide receiver skills and Finn's stellar performance as quarterback had turned William McKinley Football's offensive line into something that people used to laugh at, into something that people feared… It included his fellow glee club baritone; the only other kid that held the capacity to hit the lowest notes right alongside him…
So now, Matthew Rutherford had been left doubled over in his pain, tears stinging subconsciously at his eyes despite his best abilities towards holding them back as he clutched desperately onto his stomach, blood seeping through his fingers and onto the floor, dripping with the relentless, taunting sound like a faucet that you could never quite shut off all the way.
For a brief moment, he impressively retained his firm stance sitting upright, fighting against everything that his body was screaming at him about giving up before finally, he lost it completely, teetering backwards too prominently too right himself back up again so that his body slammed downwards, forcing him onto his back, his legs tucked unceremoniously underneath him, his head rolling limply to the side as Mike scrambled to take over the role of staunching the blood pouring from Matt's stomach now that the boy could clearly no longer do it himself.
Directly besides him, he could feel Quinn begin to hyperventilate; her frantic breaths hitching within her heaving chest in erratic motions that Puck could physically feel against his body…
The noises being emitted from beyond the base of her throat were terrifying him, leaving him confident with the understanding that if he didn't find a means by which to calm her down quickly, she would be passed out in a manner of seconds; an issue that he currently just did not have the capacity, or the strength to handle.
"Quinn –" He began, but his words were suddenly drowned out to even his own ears as they rang out alongside a second gunshot; one that he had not found himself as prepared for as he had been the last one so that the echoing inside of his head disoriented him momentarily, leaving him forgetful of his previous intentions as he scrambled to find where the trajectory of the bullet had been pointed.
Through his peripherals, a flash of blonde hair skirted across his vision; Brittney scrambling sideways, stumbling unceremoniously over her own two feet in order to distance herself from a bullet that had been clearly intended for her, as it grazed directly past her head, leaving Puck prominently aware of the idea that she had just missed death by mere inches…
But beside her, Jacob's bullet had found it's unintended home, and with a stab at his heart, Puck watched as it buried itself deep within the unresponsive skin and musculature of Santana's limp arm…
The effect of seeing a bullet striking a live human being was shocking in itself, devastating in the manner by which you could physically watch the life exit a person's eyes…But to his utmost surprise, Puck found something even more appalling about watching a bullet striking a dead body, because as he watched Santana's limp form shift only slightly with the force of the bullet before falling equally as still as it had been before, he felt as if he had just been slapped clear across the face, the reminder of the idea that Santana was dead and that she was never coming back had struck him so hard.
He could only guess that it had been the realization of how final death truly was that had pulled such a dramatic reaction out of him… It was just that it was something that he couldn't deal with, something that he wasn't ready to understand…
But it had since become something that had been forced upon him despite his level of preparation; and the more he thought about it, the more he understood the idea that he couldn't quite imagine any of the rest of them to have been any more prepared for this day than he had been…
But somehow, despite the fact that Puck had been rendered irreparably motionless, incapacitated by the image that had stained his eyes before him, by some sort of miracle, Jacob had actually begun to retreat, walking slowly away from the glee table, back turned and eyes scanning cautiously against the width of the entirety of the room before them.
He had become a wild animal, hunting relentlessly for prey, and by some sort of miraculous act of God himself, he had decided both Puck and Quinn unworthy of his hunt…
But this hadn't granted him a free pass not to be wary of Jacob or Suzy's every where-about… He wasn't willing to risk going as far as to say that they were safe quite yet; no, that would have been much too bold a statement – even for somebody like Noah Puckerman…
"Quinn," He sighed deeply into her hair, relaxing the tight grip that he had on the girl only slightly as he turned downwards in an effort to catch the blonde's attention, only to be met with no more than a sobbing heap before him…
He could feel her body between his arms, trembling violently as she scrambled for refuge, rendered temporarily insane by her desperate desire to achieve escape… Her bony appendages were pressed so deeply into his own that it was starting to become painful, her tears had begun to seep a clear puddle across the barrier of his sweatshirt and onto his skin, staining it in an even film that left him chilled with the lingering moisture.
And through it all, the only thing that he could think to do was to wrap his arms protectively tighter around her, squeezing with an equal, if not greater strength than what she had pressed down into him, focusing the entirety of his attention on keeping her calm until a distraction overcame him in the form of a sudden motion that had caught the very corner of his eyes…
Everything, everybody throughout the room had been previously rendered so still and so silent that when Jonathan Smith, a young freshman who's name Puck knew solely because he had spent the summer torturing him relentlessly after he had been cut from the football team due to his horrendous lack of athleticism, ducked from underneath his hiding place and made a sudden, mad dash for the door,, it had caught the attention of absolutely everybody within the vicinity of the cafeteria…
Absolutely everybody, that is, except for – by some God-given miracle – Jacob Ben-Israel and Suzy Pepper.
Puck could distinctly remember this kid from his football try-out, remembered Coach Tanaka having them run suicides until Jonathan ultimately became the first to be rushed to the hospital from severe dehydration…
At the time, he had easily been the slowest kid to try out for the William McKinley Titans, probably in all of history, but today, he ran… and he ran faster than Puck had ever seen any human being run in their entire life.
He could hear the collective inhale being taken simultaneously by each and every person throughout the room, all of them holding their breaths in their anticipation to see whether or not Jonathan Smith would ultimately become one of the lucky ones as they crossed their fingers, hoping for the best while simultaneously expecting the worst.
Puck's head swelled with hope so that his brain swelled within his very skull… He found himself subconsciously tightening his grip around Quinn's body from the sheer tension alone…
After all, if one person could manage escape out of this God-forsaken cafeteria, well than who was to say that the rest of them couldn't either… right?
And just like that, in one single, split second, Jonathan Smith had silently become universally recognized as that symbol of hope that all of these kids still stuck hiding beneath the tables that they had been eating lunch at mere moments ago truly needed right now…
He was so close to freedom that Puck found himself able to taste it for him.
He was ten steps away… nine… eight…
But Puck couldn't help but feel that a knife stabbing directly through his heart would have hurt less than the indescribable feeling that he experienced as he watched, in slow motion, Jacob's attention shift suddenly as he sensed the unexpected presence of somebody biding for escape directly behind him…
The first shot missed by a solid mile, the second shot by even more.
All across the rooms, head had begun to turn, kids were risking peeking up from behind their hiding places as if they had been watching a movie, all holding their breaths in their waiting to see what the fate of poor Jonathan Smith would ultimately become…
He was seven steps away… six… five…
The shots being fired from Jacob's pistol were quickly becoming more and more erratic, his frustration towards his sudden, uncharacteristic lack of accuracy clearly affecting him in a manner that seemed to even surprise himself as he fired round after round towards the boy, but just couldn't seem to hit him…
Between his arms, Puck could feel Quinn tense tighter and tighter with each successive shot fired, her face buried deeply into the crook of Puck's arm so that he couldn't help but believe her to be the only person inside the entirety of this room who wasn't watching the scene currently enacting directly before her…
She was shaking so violently that even Puck's muscular forearms had begun shuddering alongside her motion… He could feel the tears continue to puddle against his skin, growing with more and more prominence as her sobs grew closer together until he could no longer distinguish between her breathing and crying…
And finally it seemed, she had lost all notion of her whereabouts, of herself in her entirety, and in a split second, she silenced; building all of the air that she possibly could into her lungs before releasing it in a piercing, shrieking scream.
He was stunned momentarily, the sheer unexpectedness of Quinn's high pitched wails throwing him off guard as they pounded downwards and against his eardrums, forcing him to commit to a temporary struggle before he could bring himself to react, begging Quinn to stop, begging her to quiet before the audio centers of his brain shattered, before his heart physically exploded from the pain that hearing her like this was causing him…
"Quinn; Quinn stop!" He begged, grasping her by the shoulders firmly, applying all of the strength that he could between his muscular hands without hurting and shaking her down to her very core in an effort to force her back into the reality that she had since clearly left behind. "They're gonna come back here, Quinn, please! Quinn shut up, please!"
Jonathan Smith was four steps away from the door… three… two…
The boy was inside of the doorway, he'd literally had one foot out and into the hall, and despite Quinn's lingering screams, Puck's heart swelled so huge that for a second or two, he could barely even here them…
He was going to make it; he was going to make it out of here.
The towering rain of gunfire paused only briefly, an attentive hesitation as Jacob screwed his face up in his concentration to detail, a single eye closed in his effort to exact the most accurate aim that he could possibly muster; and in one final attempt to forever stifle Jonathan Smith's escape, Jacob took his final shot.
In a flash of red, Puck felt as his heart leapt straight upwards and into his throat, reacting violently alongside his eyes watching as Jacob's bullet struck Jonathan directly against the back of his neck, opening it in an explosion of blood that roughly resembled a firework show on the Fourth of July…
He tipped forwards, not being given the chance to utter so much as a single sound as he fell; the evidence of how close he had been to freedom prominent within the spot that he had died in; with the upper half of his body projecting outwards into the hallway, but his legs forever stuck inside of this godforsaken cafeteria…
And all at once, there was silence once more; the sound of Jonathan Smith's scrawny body striking the linoleum, the lingering echo of the frantic gunshots that had since been fired from the end of Jacob Ben-Israel's pistol, even Quinn's ear-splitting screeching all fading into silence so that all at once, Puck couldn't help but think that he'd rather prefer the noise…
"Now why don't you tell me who it is I won't shoot, Puckerman!" Jacob's cackle echoed between Puck's ears as he indicated with outstretched arms prominently towards the plethora of dead bodies strewn in ever which direction before turning back towards him and Quinn…
Footsteps echoed closer and closer towards them as Jacob descended upon the two parents once more… He could feel Quinn clutching onto his shoulders, feel his own heart sinking further and further downwards and into his stomach with every step towards them that Jacob took…
This was all his fault, Jacob had been right all along… If he had just learned to keep his big mouth shut, maybe Jonathan Smith would still be alive, if maybe – even just once – he had told his football buddies that enough was enough as he watched them toss Jacob Ben-Israel into the school dumpsters, Santana wouldn't be lying next to him with her face blown off, Mercedes would still be singing, still be breathing… all of them would be.
But he was a coward; had always been and seemingly would always be… Despite his best efforts, it seemed, he had grown up to be no better than his father after all, and like with his dad, it wasn't just him that had to pay for his actions, it was everybody.
He had been so wrapped up in his own self-deprivation, his own guilt that he hadn't even noticed that Jacob had climbed atop the table above them until the wooden frame had begun to tremble over their heads…
"I'm not afraid to kill anybody, Noah!" Jacob was shouting like a maniac, his words ringing clearly through his ears despite the wooden barricade that was currently separating them…
Puck could hear the heavy thumping of Jacob's boots against the table's frame as he began to pace up and down the length of the wooden plank, and Puck couldn't help but to throw his arms instinctively above his head, protecting his body feebly for fear that any second now, the bullets would start literally raining down upon him.
And not being able to physically see Jacob, not being able to read what it was that the boy would do next was ultimately what scared Puck the most.
"Test that theory again if you really want to!"
He pointed his eyes timidly overhead, glaring at the underside of the table until his pupils began to sting as he begged his body to acquire some miraculous sense of x-ray vision in a matter of seconds, just so that he would be able to keep track of Jacob's poignant motions above them…
But the adrenaline rush currently running rampant through his system didn't seem to possess the capacity to grant him such superpowers; the only thing that his heightened senses provided him with being a particularly acute notion of hearing, his eardrums picking up every step of Jacob's feet against the wood so with every step, he was able to track his motions, know when he was standing directly above him, or directly above Quinn…
Puck had been so intensely focused, so tuned into everything that had been going on above him, that he'd temporarily forgotten everything that had been taking place directly in between his own two arms…
He hadn't even noticed Quinn wriggling out of his arms until she was already half way out from beneath the table, barely within his arm's reach of his frantic grasps towards her, barely within earshot of his hissing warnings, his hysterical insistencies that she returned to him before she made every effort that he had made upon saving her life futile and got herself killed anyway…
"Quinn!" He whispered as loudly as he possibly could, "Quinn what are you doing?"
He launched his hands outwards, made several impressive grabs for any part of her that he could reach, but his palms were sweating impossibly in his fear; every time he so much as got a hand on her, she merely slipped easily from his grasp. "Quinn, please! Come back here, please!"
His pleas were growing more and more desperate with each second that past with her still ignoring his calls. She never so much as looked back towards him as she made her way into the open, stood steadily to her feet, and faced her potential killer…
"Jacob, this needs to stop." He could barely even recognize her voice it was trembling hard. "Please, before anybody else gets hurt or… or killed."
"And why should I do that, Quinn Fabray?" He asked her smugly so that Puck could practically see Jacob's body language despite the fact that he couldn't actually visualize the boy from his position beneath the table; arms crossed in defiance, glaring down from a top his lunch table podium in a symbol of his current dominance…
But there was nothing that Puck could do for Quinn now… No, the only thing that he could do was to strain his ears to catch her and Jacob's exchange of words and trust that she knew exactly what it was that she was doing, trust that if there was one person in this room that could talk Jacob Ben-Israel and Suzy Pepper into putting an end to all of this madness, it was Quinn Fabray…
And so he listened; ears poised as Quinn presented her case, keeping impressively calm, collected the entire time in a manner that allowed Puck to believe that maybe, just maybe this crazy idea of hers could actually work…
But despite the fact that he was leaned inwards as close as his body would physically allow while still remaining firmly hidden, despite the fact that he had begged his ears to suddenly acquire the hearing capacity of a hunting dog, he could only catch mere bits and pieces of Quinn's words, her voice strategically soft in an effort to keep Jacob from reacting violently to her attempts at persuading him into surrender…
His heart froze every time he'd heard Jacob begin to raise his voice, softened once more every time his tone dropped back down into a whisper; until finally, the presence of a third voice simply confused him into a steeper level of concentration…
"You're wrong."
Suzy had been so remarkably silent throughout the majority of the interaction that Puck had nearly forgotten that she had even been there to begin with…
And apparently, judging by the silence that Suzy's abrupt harshness had rendered over Quinn, so had she.
"I already did kill somebody, Quinn Fabray." Once more, Puck's muscles tensed with fear, cramping with their frustration towards their owner's sporadic movements throughout the day… But he couldn't help himself; despite the weapon nuzzled comfortably in between Suzy Pepper's hands, he hadn't exactly perceived her to be a threat… at least, not more so than he had pinned Jacob as…
But now… well now alongside the revelation that she did indeed have murder in her heart, he feared a sudden outburst from Suzy Pepper, and he feared that not even she understood the power of the Remington Shotgun that she'd been holding onto like a security blanket this entire time…
"Your little friend, Rachel Berry," Puck closed his eyes heavily against Suzy Pepper's revelation towards who her victim had been… Sure, he'd wanted to gauge his eyeballs out every time Rachel opened her mouth, but she was going to be the one.
She was going to be the one to get out of Lima, she was going to be the one to make it big one day… She didn't deserve this; none of them did.
"I shot her, and I killed her. So don't tell me that I'm afraid to kill anybody, because I'm not."
Images of Rachel Berry danced poignantly across the backs of his eyes; all of the moments that they had shared together, from all of the times that he'd wanted to hug her, to hold onto her, to all of the times that he was ready to kill her he was so sick of her… each and every last one of them.
His head was racing with such an array of colors, memories so vivid that for a split second, he was carried atop them straight out of this cafeteria, straight out of this life, out of this idea that there was so much as a world left around him, let alone one as terrifying as this one had proven to be…
A shattering gunshot was ultimately what brought him back into this existence, this striking sense of reality; the reality that hat struck him so hard that he'd nearly choked on it.
The sound resonated deeply within the back of his very mind; deep, thunderous, different from the sound that Jacob's pistol had made every time he had fired it… No, in fact, based upon Puck's relatively descent knowledge of firearms, he would say that this sound much more strongly resembled that by which his shotgun made every time he went out hunting with his friends, the same shotgun that Suzy had conveniently walked into their high school carrying that morning, the same shot gun that she had been pointing directly towards Quinn the last time he'd checked…
Quinn…
"No, Quinn!" He was on his feet and sprinting up and outwards from underneath the table before he could so much as process the potential consequences that his actions might rain down upon him.
Her back was facing towards him, but the first thing that he'd noticed was that she was still standing upright, still supporting herself on her own two feet so that for a single, foolish moment, he'd actually allowed himself to believe that Suzy's bullet had missed despite the fact that the girl had been standing mere feet away from her.
Suzy's gun was still drawn; smoke billowing prominently from the end so that Puck could physically smell that nauseating scent of gunpowder that lingered only stronger with every step closer that he took…
He had been just out of arm's reach of her when he'd noticed her beginning to teeter violently against gravity, her weakened knees no longer capable of supporting her body weight so that he knew in an instant that if he didn't move faster, if he didn't force his legs to push him harder than they had ever pushed him in his entire life, she would fall with nobody there to catch her, she would die with nobody to hold onto, nobody to let her know how much she had been cared for, how much she had been loved…
So with a sudden burst of adrenaline, he forced himself to move faster, his legs pumping him so quickly forwards that he was certain that from a distance, he couldn't have appeared as anything more than a faint blur.
He arrived at her side just as her body began its irreversible descent downwards, coming up behind her so that he'd managed to catch her gracefully underneath the arms in a professional fireman's carry that allowed him to lower her gently to the ground below them.
Sinking to his knees, he positioned her into a comfortable seated position, propped up gently against his chest so that he could easily peer over her slender shoulder and inspect the damage that Suzy's bullet had inflicted her with; carefully assessing whether or not it was a damage that she would ever be able to possibly walk away from…
The blood was so prominent against her white sweatshirt that it appeared to him almost black as it spread so widely across the fabric that he couldn't even tell exactly where it was that it was coming from.
It's not so bad. She can survive this, she can fight this. It's not so bad.
The thought rang prominently across his mind as he attempted to convince himself that there was any truth behind it whatsoever… But he had found it nearly impossible to so much as believe the words coming out of his own mouth… It was just that there was so much blood…
There was so much blood, and she was just so little… There was no way that her tiny body could withstand such damage… no way in hell.
Stop this, Noah. Stop thinking like that… It's not so bad, Quinn is a fighter, that's what she does… She's going to be okay, we'll all be okay.
He wrapped his arms gently across her midsection, palms grazing against her intertwined hands that she'd had gently pressed up against the wound in her abdomen, pushing them inwards with an additional force that caused an unintentional grunt of pain to escape her lips…
The sound nearly tore his heart straight upwards and out of his chest… Tears stung at the corners of his eyes without him so much as bothering to try and hold them back; instead, he simply embraced their freefall as they slipped down the length of his cheeks, dripping unceremoniously from is chin and into Quinn's hair…
But just as he began to fear that he might scare her, seeing him like this; just as he believed himself to be making this situation even worse than it already had to be, he looked downwards towards her, stared into her shimmering blue eyes, and instead of fear, instead of sadness, he saw a smile; a genuine smile that wrinkled at the corners of her mouth until finally, much to his surprise, she began to laugh; a gentle, meek chuckle that sure, could barely be distinguished as such, but there was no mistaking it… she was laughing.
"What the hell can you possibly be laughing at right now?" He marveled downwards towards her… He had always known how much of a better person that she had been than him… he had always known her to have been so much stronger than he could have ever even hoped to be…
She was strong, she was resilient, she was brave and talented, and if she died in his arms right here, right now, he knew that he would be entirely to blame…
But for now, she didn't seem to want to think like that, so he respected that, and he opened his mouth, and he reciprocated her actions; their eyes connecting in the form of genuine happiness, of genuine love that they could have been absolutely anywhere in the world right now other than on the floor of their high school's cafeteria saying their last goodbye's to one another…
"I was just thinking…" She started slowly, pausing as her eyes widened in a sudden flash of pain that erased even the ghost of a smile clear off of her face, squeezing at Puck's heartstrings in a manner that made his face turn down into an expression of fear that he could only pray she hadn't picked up on…
But with a steady breath and a fierce determination lingering like fire in her eyes, she kept going… She always did just keep on going; a notion that Puck was currently relying on.
"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."
Her words struck a nerve deep inside of Puck's very heart so that his muscles tensed involuntarily, his hands squeezing harshly downwards against Quinn's stomach so that a gasp of sharp pain quickly escaped her lips in response…
"You need to watch over her, Puck." She craned her neck, silently asking for the eye contact that he'd granted her easily so that he could register with the fierceness behind her eyes, so that he would know exactly how much she meant absolutely everything that she was currently telling him…
And he knew; God did he know.
"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." He felt himself tripping unceremoniously over his own words, mentally knocking himself upside the head for expressing to her, his most selfish of fears in the moment that she needed him to be strong the most.
"You need to fight this, Quinn!" Blood trickled relentlessly from between the cracks of his fingers despite how hard he was pretending not to have noticed it… He couldn't help but feel as if it no longer mattered how loud he yelled, how many times he begged her to hang on… "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 at him once more, begging him to accept this gift of confidence that she was attempting to enact upon him, but he couldn't… No matter what she ever told him, he knew that he would never be able to live a life that didn't have her inside of it.
"I can't do this without you."
"Yes you can." She muttered upwards to him through the softest of laughs directed towards his uncertainty… Beneath the two of them, he could physically feel her as she directed each and every ounce of strength that she had left in her body into squeezing his hand; so he accepted the movement, he sunk into it, he begged his mind to embed it inside of itself, so that it would always be there… even when she wasn't.
"Do you remember when we were younger Noah… when things were easier?" Her voice shook as she began to ramble through her haze of natural endorphins and a diminishing blood supply…
"Of course I do."
"Do you remember when we were growing up? You used to say that you needed me, Noah." He could feel his eyes growing steadily redder from trying to withhold his tears for so long… And despite himself, he'd allowed a single one to fall.
I do need you.
"I never said it, but I always used to think that that made you sound so much smarter, so wise…" Her words were growing further and further apart, her breaths heaving heavily upwards within her throat as she spoke. "More than you'd ever actually admit that you actually were anyway."
"Please Quinn…."
"Noah…" She professed, clearly exasperated towards his constant attempts to avoid the obvious. "Noah, you have to promise me."
"Of course," He finally responded after yet another second's hesitation; but his promise came alongside a prominent pang of defeat that rang prominently from his chest, straight outwards and into his voice. "I promise, Quinn… But Beth… she needs her mom too."
"She's got a mom," Quinn waved off his incessantness, barely pausing between Puck's statement and her response as she reminded him that she had never been Beth's mom, and now, never would be. "Shelby will take care of her, Noah… She might just need some help for a little while."
His eyes glistened over once more as he processed Quinn's words… He knew exactly what it was that she was currently thinking; she was thinking about Suzy, thinking about everything that she had told Quinn in regards to Rachel.
"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 was right; Shelby was going to need all of the help that she could get with Beth… But he couldn't give her all of the help that she could get, he knew that… Quinn was Beth's mother, no matter what Quinn said otherwise; inevitably, Beth would need her as well.
But Quinn didn't seem to reciprocate this notion, because with Puck's promise, she'd seemed to have deemed all of her life's conflicts complete, she'd now felt it safe to finally let go…
He could feel her every muscle relaxing from within his arms, could feel the gentle rise and fall of her chest diminishing steadily… Death was lingering directly above them, and Puck now knew that it came in the form of a literally shadow hovering overhead, blocking the light from framing Quinn's fragile frame in a manner that practically forced Puck to glance upward to identify the source despite the fact that deep down in the back of his mind, he had known all along exactly who it was…
"How adorable…" Puck could feel the muscles surrounding his eyes begin to twitch painfully in his rage as Jacob approached him, staring down tauntingly upon him as he clutched onto the girl that he loved, attempted to guide her through her final moments as to make it so that they didn't have to be quite so terrifying, "William McKinley High School's celebrity couple dying together."
The single only thing currently preventing Puck from leaping upwards, from pouncing upon Jacob, from bashing his skull inwards with his bare hands was the fact that Quinn was still resting gently between his arms, fading rapidly into and out of consciousness, her breathing growing miniscule to the point that it had nearly disappeared…
But still, he wanted revenge; and if he was going to be killed in the process of taking it… well then that was a risk that he was now more than willing to take.
"I mean, it would only be fair that if one of you dies, well then the other should too…" His eyes refused to avert themselves away from Quinn, but through the additional height placed upon his remaining senses, he could hear the every groove of Jacob's finger as it brushed against the safety along his pistol, could feel the barrel of the gun pointed directly upon him despite his refusal to avert his eyes away from Quinn…
And still, he didn't care, because for the first time in the entirety of his life, he had suddenly found both him, and Jacob Ben-Israel on the exact same terms, and finally, after he'd deemed it safe to release Quinn upwards towards all of those who could do much more for her now than he could even think of doing any longer, he stood; body stringently poised and straight, muscles firm, but eyes remarkably, already dead.
"Do it." He muttered, his voice emitting as nothing more than a low growl. "Come on, Israel! You wanna shoot me? Then just fucking do it already!"
His voice grew steadily louder and louder with each syllable that he spoke, the anger professing venomously behind his voice as he watched Jacob's mouth twist upwards into a satisfied smirk; victory apparent across his features towards the idea that he had finally found Noah Puckerman's only weakness… and he had exploited it.
But it wasn't really as if he was afraid to die, he never had been, really…
Throughout the entirety of his life, the only thing that he had truly ever believed in was that there was millions, billions of people even, scattered about the world, all more terrified of death than the last, left to pour the entirety of their minds, their bodies, their souls into a belief, or into a religion that he knew would never saver save them, and that each and every one of those people were idiots.
Being afraid of dying was like being afraid of eating, being afraid of going to the bathroom… It all had to happen eventually, didn't it?
So yeah, he wasn't afraid of dying, that much he was certain of; but that didn't mean that he wasn't a little bit afraid of what would come afterwards… whatever it was that that may be…
So that was why, with the slightest hint of trepidation lingering deep across his mind, he simply accepted the blaring gunshot that had turned his world into a sheet of pure light in an instant as tunnel vision forced his eyes to focus only upon the bullet spiraling straight at him…
He stood still, waited with anticipation until it had finally struck him, square in the chest, with such a tremendous force that he felt as if he had just been hit by a truck… Falling onto his back, he quickly accepted the darkness that had rapidly begun to overcome him before he so much as had the opportunity to feel the pain with the idea in mind that if this is what dying was like, than it really wasn't as bad as he had initially thought…
Especially if, wherever he was going, at the very least, he would get the chance to see her once more.
Shit, there really is a heaven…
Reopening his eyes slowly, Puck felt dazed, disoriented as he blinked several times against an overwhelming brightness, his eyes slowly channeling in on a single, pure white light dangling pointedly directly above him.
Sighing heavily, he attempted to shift, attempted to evaluate his new surroundings, but he was met with an immediate resistance; a resistance that manifested in the form of the most overwhelming pain that he had ever experienced, rendering completely immobile as he released an involuntary gasp that left him choking, spluttering on what was unmistakably blood as it filled so thick, so heavy into his mouth, that he nearly suffocated.
There was no way that this was heaven… But the more he thought about it, the more he realized; it was stupid of him to ever have thought that there was a chance in hell that he was really getting into heaven anyway…
Shit, there really is a hell…
That was the second thought to have infiltrated into Noah Puckerman's overwhelmingly sporadic senses as this time, it manifested not in a crippling pain radiating throughout his entire body, but in a slow, steady hissing… background noise… voices… all around him.
Wherever he was, he was suddenly very much so aware of the fact that he was not alone.
"Come on, we have to get out of here." The voice was distantly familiar, but still, he couldn't quite place it.
He tried to focus, tried to direct his brain to follow his instruction as much as humanly possible away from the unforgiving pain and onto his surroundings; his success registering prominently as his body began to take in minor details all around him.
The ground below him was cold, rough, that was for certain, but at the same time, he found himself laying in something invitingly warm; a liquid of sorts…
Above him, the spotted ceiling tiles began to grow vivid surrounding bright fluorescent lighting fixtures.
Where the hell was he?
"We can't leave them!" Another voice, again, familiar, yet still unrecognizably amidst the hazy fog that his brain had since become…
"Brittney, they're gone!" Brittney… he knew that name… where did he know that name from? And that voice… God, it all just sounded so familiar. "Come on, we need to get Matt out of here while we still can; let's go!"
"Wait… wait; he's moving!" Directly above him, a shadow descended down upon him, forcing his eyes into an uncomfortable squint as they slowly adjusted upon a face in front of his own, blurry at first, but slowly, very slowly coming into focus. "Puck? Puck, can you hear me?"
Brittney…
His head felt heavy with an impossible suddenness as he attempted to respond to her, his neck muscles no longer to withstand the weight any longer… His mother had always told him that he had been born with an impossibly thick skull; he could only guess that she had been right all along…
He fought through the pain, fought through the resilience as he tilted his head upwards just enough to allow him to take in the scene before him…
Students were scrambling in every which direction, some supporting others as they limped steadily onwards, some making futile efforts to drag those that weren't…
They were trampling over one another, pushing, shoving; exhibiting their most primordial of instincts just to find the first means that they possibly could out of this room… this room… where was this room, exactly?
Rotating his head upon its access, he tried desperately to jog his fuzzy memory using visual cues… He remembered eating lunch inside of the cafeteria, he remembered behind huddled beneath a lunch table, holding tightly onto Quinn.
He remembered Jacob Ben-Israel pointing a gun directly at him.
He had been shot… Oh Jesus, he had been shot…
"Quinn…" He murmured gently, the reverberations behind his voice gurgling upwards against the blood still filling up inside of his throat faster than he could even think to spit it out.
"Puck, it's okay," Brittney sobbed desperately, blatantly ignoring his clear inquiry as she attempted to gather the entirety of his rock solid body weight upwards and into her scrawny arms, clearly prepared to carry him out of this school himself if she had to…
She shifted him impossibly, subconsciously releasing, in her motions, a blast of radiating pain that felt like fire radiating off from the very center of his body itself…
With a guttural cry, his vision blasted into a sheet of solid white; for a split second, he couldn't see anything, couldn't hear anything, couldn't so much as feel a damn thing other than excruciating pain…
His vision returned to him slowly, and by the time it had, Brittney had already had him propped into a seated position, granting him a full access, panoramic view of the entirety of the cafeteria; most prominently, the young blonde resting at his feet before him, her striking features still impossibly gorgeous despite being clouded by an impossible paleness laced with a gentle tinge of blue that contrasted sharply with the starchy color of her hair…
"Quinn, no!"
"Quinn…" He muttered outwards to nobody in particular, his lower lip trembling as he extended his arm automatically outwards to reach her, his fingertips barely getting far enough in his endeavors to graze across her own.
"Puck, please!" With another sharp tug, Brittney attempted to get Puck upwards and onto his feet, but as if by an impenetrable magnetic force, he could only find himself moving closer towards Quinn, gravity connecting the two until his lopsided weight became too much for Brittney to hold onto and he slipped from his grasp, crashing downwards and onto the floor below where he landed flawlessly besides the girl that he had loved with every fiber of his being, the girl that he had spent a lifetime fearing rejection from… He'd always been too afraid to tell her how he truly felt.
And now it was too late.
He no longer felt any pain; he didn't feel any defeat, he didn't feel any fear… No, the only thing that Noah Puckerman could currently feel was pure agony, the kind that originated straight from his very gut itself and emanated outwards in the form of a sob like none other to have ever been heard…
Suddenly, he no longer cared about what happened to him… he no longer cared about what happened to any of them, really…
He didn't wonder where Jacob Ben-Israel and Suzy Pepper had run off to upon delivering their fatal bullets, he didn't wonder who they were currently chasing or whether or they had since been apprehended…
He didn't wonder whether or not help was on its way, he didn't wonder whether or not Brittney had chosen to give up on rescuing him or if she would return for a second try…
No, in fact, the only thing that Noah Puckerman could possibly wonder right now was whether or not Quinn was currently watching him from wherever it was that she was, and how impossibly small he must have looked to her from way up there in the sky.