Due to popular demand, I am going to make an attempt to carry this on. I doubt it will be long, like three chapters or something (one of these days, I will write a proper, long fic for Glee). I was just getting tired of seeing this added to alerts knowing there was nothing to finish, it made me think that perhaps the story didn't have to end after all, not just yet anyhow. This chapter gets a little graphic. It may be triggering.
She did not know when Glee had become a chore, but suddenly, the very thought of going caused a groan to rise in her throat. Perhaps it was when Finn stopped sneering at her in the halls and took to ignoring her completely, making an extra effort to sit and talk with Quinn in every meeting, because he knew that would hurt her more than any words he ever spoke. Or perhaps it was when she stopped fighting for solos and just handed them over to whoever challenged her, so she was more often than not swaying mindlessly in the background. Or perhaps it was when Finn had walked in hand in hand with Santana.
There were many reasons Rachel had for suddenly hating the one part of her day she had looked forward to beyond anything else, and Finn Hudson was at the centre of it all. He was the reason she pulled the covers over her head and hit snooze rather than leaping onto her exercise bike the moment her alarm went off. He was the reason she walked down the school halls with the weight of dread in her heart because there was no longer a hand to reach out for when she felt herself being crushed under the insults that followed her along them. He was the reason the stars no longer gleamed in her eyes.
Or, perhaps more accurately, Santana Lopez was. But it was not Santana who was bothering her anymore. It was strange, but the Cheerio had left her alone in the past weeks. Maybe it was because she had found someone new to torture, or maybe she just had what she wanted, but whatever it was, Rachel could not bring herself to care. In the past, she would have been overjoyed at one less tormentor, but now the news was acknowledged with nothing more than the tiniest of flutters in the far corner of her heart.
It didn't matter if Santana left her alone because so did Finn, and Rachel watched as every day he took her hand, rubbed his own against her leg, dragged her off in breaks and sat beside her at lunch time. She watched as he sat beside Quinn instead of his old seat at the front with her in Glee and openly flirted with her, all the time his arm remained around Santana's shoulders.
Glee passed in the same mindless fashion that it had adopted in the past few weeks, nothing out of the ordinary happened and Rachel spent it avoiding the eye of Finn and the Cheerio on each arm. It briefly crossed her mind to wonder why Santana and Quinn were putting up with his blatant flirting with them both, but the thought had barely crossed her mind before she knew the answer. They were willing to go along with it to get to her.
Once again, Rachel did not get given the solo. It went to Mercedes without even passing by her first, Mr Schue having long given up on getting her to sing anything. She had not stopped singing, not by a long shot. She just did it alone now, either in her bedroom or the school auditorium when no one else was around to hear her. The songs she chose now were not the sort she wanted her peers to hear her singing. She sang to empty walls to match the aching loneliness inside her own heart and no longer cared about the silence that followed.
The hour flew by, and in what seemed like no time at all, the bell for the end of the rehearsal sounded and it was time to pick up her heavy body from the chair and drag it out to the car park to find her car and drive it home. Time seemed to be doing that lately, either dragging by so she was sure it must have actually stopped, or whizzing by so fast it could be fourth period before she had even registered the sound of her alarm.
It took Rachel several moments to realise that meant she would have to get up, leave the choir room and make her way to her car, and just the thought was enough to drain her of the small scrap of energy she had managed to collect sitting in silence. So she stayed there, not caring that everyone else had left or that Mr Schue was still gathering up his sheet music, shooting her worried glances every few seconds. She didn't care when he put down the papers and came towards her, but she was out of her seat and through the door by the time he reached the one next to it, before the 'are you all right?' could even form on his lips.
…
As soon as she got home, Rachel began to count. She thought of Karofsky shoving past her on his way to the cafeteria and calling out 'man hands' as she fell against the lockers. That was one. Then there was Finn, he had not said anything, but just once during the Glee meeting, he had looked at her. For just a few seconds, he had taken his eyes from Santana and gazed up her body before settling his eyes on hers, and with them said, look who I can have when I'm not tied down to you. Then again, maybe she imagined it. There seemed to be insult in every sentence directed towards her, people's words twisted inside her head so something ordinary became a criticism. It was as if her mind was programmed to notice only the hate.
Once she had taken a mental journey through her entire day, remembered every look, word and slushie, Rachel had counted nine. Nine. Nine in one day. There was no room on her stomach for nine, most of it was already taken with previous cuts and words, if she wanted to fit them on, she was going to have to overlap. Unless she started elsewhere. It wasn't as if anyone was going to notice now, barely anyone spoke a word to her throughout the day, let alone touched her. The tops of her legs would do, that was a spot easily hidden.
Rachel pushed up her skirt to reveal the large patches of clear skin that suddenly itched to be scarred. She pictured the web of cuts, the pattern it would make and knew it was what she had to do. She wanted the rest of her body to be marred with scars, she wanted it to be as ugly as the rest of her. To her, the patch of clean skin was like a blank canvas to an artist. It just had to be painted. But the canvas was her body, the blade was a brush and her blood was the paint.
The coldness of the metal made her gasp as it pressed against her warm skin. It was something she had never grown used to, but a part of the process that she enjoyed. Feeling the blade before she cut helped her focus, it put her mind directly on what she was about to do so she could feel the effects of the weapon. She ran it along her skin, over and over until she had the nine pains from the day right there in front of her, a physical pain on herself which proved it was real. She hurt so quietly inside that she needed it to show she wasn't imagining it. It was there, she did hurt.
But nine were not enough. They were there, but they were just lines. Marks that could mean anything. So Rachel took a fresh brush, found a new piece of blank canvas and began to pain the words that were screaming inside her. Unpretty. Man hands. Rupaul. Finn's girl. It was so much easier to write words on her leg than it had been her stomach. She could reach it better, carve at an angle she hadn't been able to achieve before. Once she had started, stopping was impossible. She needed the words to be there to remind her what she always would be, to scar the truth right into herself, to tell the world what she was feeling inside even if no one was meant to see it. It was like her own private journal that she could take any place she pleased.
Totally irritating. She wrote that next, she remembered the exact words perfectly, but wanted space for more, so selected just the two words that stuck in her mind, screaming themselves over and over every time she opened her mouth. Why? Reminded her of Finn's words when he had dumped her in the middle of the hall as he wondered what it was that had ever made him date her.
Half of her right thigh was soaked in red before Rachel allowed herself to stop. Looking at the mess she had made of herself, she waited to burst into tears. She waited to be ashamed of what she had done, she waited to feel the pain, but nothing came. All she felt when she looked down at the now covered canvas was a sense of calm. It was real now, she didn't have to worry she was going crazy, she didn't have to sort the jumbled feelings inside her for anyone, the scars were enough to communicate that. It was real.
After several minutes of just gazing in wonder at the damage she had caused herself, the blood began to drip onto the carpet, staining the pale pink with crimson droplets. Each one spread as it hit, creating another pattern beneath her feet. Without taking her eyes off her leg, Rachel reached for her first aid kit and unzipped it, feeling around inside for a bandage and antiseptic. If it got infected, it would be much harder to hide and the infection would ruin the pattern, it would make it ugly.
Once her leg was cleaned and wrapped, Rachel pushed herself gingerly to her feet. Her legs wobbled underneath her and she collapsed instantly back down onto the bed with a hiss of pain. She swore. Looking at the clock, she saw she had thirteen hours until she had to go to school. That was okay, the woman from Kill Bill had learned to walk all over again in thirteen hours. She hadn't even been able to move her toes.
It took Rachel just thirteen minutes to be able to get to her feet and cross the room without disaster, and although it hurt and she walked with a pronounced limp, it was possible. Of course she was going to have to make something up about pulling a muscle during her morning exercise ritual, or maybe she would throw herself down the stairs (carefully, she could do without a trip to ER) and claim to her dads to have hurt her leg, but then they might stop her going to school, and she always went to school, no matter what.
…
The floor clicked under her small heels as she walked down the corridor, her eyes flickering from the lockers on either side of her to the far wall. Messages were scattered across the fronts of the lockers, some single words and others phrases. Some were quotes from others, but all had the same purpose. To tear her down. The traditional Rupaul was up there, along with Hobbit, Willow and just the word 'nose'. But then there were others too. New names, new taunting words. Mommy's Reject, Dyke, Man-girl, Vermin, Rat, Swine, Hebe.
Rachel let out a strangled gasp at the last four. They did not seem like the worst names on the list, but she remembered her dads once sitting them all in front of a documentary on the Holocaust. They insisted that it was something they had to do to learn about their culture and what their people had endured, and those were amongst the names ordinary German folk spat at Jews as they passed them on the street.
With the words already burned into her mind, Rachel turned away and felt her stomach flip as the iron smell of blood hit her. She heard it plop onto the floor as she continued her walk down her school hall, realising it was from the messages. Each one was painted on the metal in blood, large, swooping letters. A lot must have been taken to write all of that. The person it was taken from could not have survived.
As she walked along the rest of the corridor, Rachel kept her head firmly forward. She did not want to read any of the other messages, but they seemed to reach her anyhow, their whispers carrying in the gentle breeze that ran the length of the empty hall. The words wrapped themselves around her, enshrouding her in their unrelenting hold so she could almost feel them, feel their meaning, their sound creeping under her skin and burying themselves inside her, becoming a part of her, one after another until they built her almost completely.
There was someone standing ahead of her. A figure that cast a shadow against the wall, which Rachel was thankful to see was free of derogatory terms. She opened her mouth to call out to the figure, but one more step showed her it was Finn. Following the recognition, an almost overwhelming sense of calm fell upon her. If Finn was there, it would be all right, he made her safe, nothing and no one could hurt her in his presence, not even herself.
But as she took another step forwards, a grin breaking out over her face, she felt something warm begin to spread across her stomach. Without taking her eyes off Finn, she pressed her palm to the patch. It was not just warm, but wet too. The smell hit her stronger than ever then. The smell of blood. And it wasn't just her stomach that was warm now, it was her arms, her legs, her throat, her back, even her face.
A scream erupted from her mouth as Rachel finally snapped her eyes away from Finn to look down at her blood soaked body. The words from the lockers were beginning to form on her skin, slashed into it by something she could not see. Without having to check, Rachel knew they were deep. Deeper than she had ever cut before, and suddenly, she knew who the blood had come from. The messages were not only inside her both emotionally and physically, but spread across the walls in her own blood, leaked from the terms scrawled across her skin.
Her legs shook so violently underneath her that she collapsed and as soon as she hit the floor, Rachel knew she wouldn't get back up again. She lay shivering, her own blood pooling around her as she tried desperately to call out for Finn. Surely he had seen her fall, seen the blood. He would come and help her, he wouldn't just leave her bleeding and dying, no matter what had happened between them.
He was coming. He was getting closer, Rachel could hear his footsteps, even if she was not at the right angle to see him. She knew he was there, not because the footsteps stopped, but because she could feel him. His body stood over hers, and the panic died inside her. He'd help her. She would be okay. A smile graced her lips as he knelt down beside her, his fingers brushing the hair from her face. Rachel shivered all the more violently at his touch, willing for him to stay right here, his fingers entwined in her hair.
With a strength she barely possessed, Rachel twisted her head to look up at him, the smile growing wider as her eyes were met with his, but it soon fell away. It dropped from her lips as she saw his too were curled up in a grin, but it was not a soft one filled with trust and love, as hers was. It was twisted out of shape in an un-Finn-like sneer. His eyes were cold, empty of everything but a burning hatred that seemed to set them on fire.
Rachel's expression turned from one of hope to fear. A cold, heavy fear unlike anything she could ever remember feeling before. She had never been afraid of Finn before, no matter what he had been doing, but the way he was looking at her told her he was not there to help. He was there to watch all of the blood drain from her body, he was there to watch her fall to the floor, he was there to watch her die.
Then something cold touched her cheek. It was a stark contrast to the warmth of the blood that seemed to cover every inch of her, and Rachel felt it immediately. She knew what it was too. She had pressed the sharp edge of a blade against her own skin enough times to know what it felt like. Finn's sneer twisted further, the hatred in his eyes burning brighter still as he bent forwards, leaning so close to her she could feel the hot tickle of his breath against her neck.
"I'm free."
Rachel's eyes shot open, her limbs scrambling in the darkness as she opened her mouth to let out the scream tearing through her, but the silence remained around her, broken only by the strangled gasps made by the tears that streaked down her cheeks. She leaned against the bed, shaking so hard that it trembled against the wall and buried her face in the warm comfort of her duvet, her cries muffled by the material until the cheerful chirp of the birds sounded from the other side of her glass window and the golden streaks of dawn basked her bedroom in a soft glow
There was something I intended to say in this author's note, but I've forgotten what it is. One of these days, I will write a one shot that stays a one shot. I do have a couple hanging out on my profile, but what can I say, I'm awesome, people just want more ;) (That sounded sexual).
The next update won't take this long, I just didn't think I was going to continue this for ages and ages.
Oh, and to anyone that read it, I've posted the first chapter to the sequel of 'Fade Away'