Trigger warning. We're nearing the end here :'( I like writing this. I shall miss it. But on the bright side, I can get on with the next part of 'Fade Away'.
I really love getting all of your reviews :)
The silence could not have gone on for any longer than a few seconds really, but to Rachel, it felt like a lifetime. Her mind blanked at the same time as her body froze, and she could not think of a single word to say that could make any of it any better. There was no cover up to this, no talking her way out of it and putting her show face on. They were real and they were there, standing right in front of her and staring as if she had disembowelled a kitten. Her mother and father.
One of them anyway. Where was the other? Perhaps he had stayed downstairs to get away from all the yelling and storming. It sounded like something he would do. Hiram Berry had never been one for confrontation, it had always been Leroy to discipline and punish Rachel in the past. Hiram had always preferred to stay well out, because he knew as soon as he took on look at Rachel's pleading face, he'd relent. At least it hadn't been him to walk in on her. Both her dads loved her equally, but Hiram was far softer than Leroy. He was the one who cried at Titanic, and on Rachel's first day of school. She couldn't even imagine his face it it had been him.
There was a dark brown stain on the carpet. Rachel had never noticed it before. It was about four inches from her bed, a small patch. Just a droplet of some substance. With a lurch of her stomach, Rachel realised it was blood. Her blood. Then her mind was swung painfully back to reality. The reality in which she was sat with a blood drenched blade and her scars on show with her mother and father's eyes burning into her.
Rachel's hand began to shake and she quickly dropped her tool so they wouldn't notice. Not that there was anything that could make the situation worse. She felt sick, and didn't so much as dare herself to look at her parents. She began to wish someone would say something, because her mind was coming up blank and she couldn't stand the silence any longer.
"What the hell is all this?" Her dad whispered at last, but it was no a soft whisper. It was harsh and furious and Rachel knew the time bomb she had made from the moment she first cut was just moments away from exploding, tearing apart everything that lay within its reach. She had never longed for her ability to talk her way out of anything more, but that time, there were no words. There was no explanation other than the truth.
The stain Rachel was focused on seemed to grow darker, burning on the carpet like a fire scorching right through the floor. She quickly averted her eyes, casting them instead onto her scars. Looking at them always calmed her, but along with the rest of the effects of cutting, it seemed to have flown away along with the secret. Now looking just made her feel sick. Her stomach gave such a violent lurch at the sight of one of the scars, that for a moment she feared she actually would throw up. Mommy's girl.
Quickly, Rachel pulled down the hem of her skirt, as if covering the scars would erase the images from the minds of those who had seen them. She didn't see her father fly at her, but she felt it when he seized her by the arms and began to shake her so hard her head snapped backwards. "I asked you a question! What do you think you're doing, you stupid-" he didn't finish the sentence, and Rachel had no desire to hear the end of it. She wished he would let go of her, his fingers were digging painfully into her flesh.
"Do you know what your mother," he spat the word as if it were blasphemous, "came here to say? She thought we were hurting you, but it seems you've been doing a pretty fine job of that yourself." He shook her again and Rachel gasped, beginning to struggle in his grasp.
"Let go of her!" Shelby's voice came from the blue. Rachel had almost forgotten she was there. "You're hurting her now!"
"This has nothing to do with you," Leroy snared, turning on her. Rachel was sure he didn't realise how hard his grip was. He wasn't a violent man, although the tougher of her two dads, he had never once raised a hand to her, he rarely even raised his voice, but she couldn't push out the rising feeling of fear in the pit of her stomach. The man holding her wasn't the father she had grown up with, and a part of her was afraid of what he could turn into.
"As much as I agree that this situation is nothing that concerns Shelby, I must agree with her in that you are hurting me. Contrary to popular belief, that is not what I desire. Now I would appreciate it if you would loosen your grip." Rachel's voice finally returned to her, welcoming the distraction from what had been seen. Leroy glared at her, but his fingers slacked and he lifted her from the bed into a standing position, not as roughly as he had previously been handling her.
Rachel stumbled slightly as Leroy half lead, half dragged her from her bedroom and down the stairs, Shelby following close behind them. Rachel looked calmly ahead, show face back in place. She loved words. Just speaking them, saying whole sentences when a couple of words would do told the world 'I'm okay'. They made her seem sure of herself, confident. She was harder to knock down when she was as strong and confident as that, and no one ever looked past them to the tiny, quiet girl who longed to whisper.
But whispering was hard to come by when one father had a hold of her arm and was raging at her other dad while her mother stood stunned behind them, and Rachel took the role of the silent statue that was often so much easier than using words, no matter how much she loved them. She just wished the part didn't have to come when her soft, kind father found out what she had been doing to herself. Having Leroy know was bad enough, but he was tough and Rachel knew he could deal with it. Hiram, on the other hand, had always had the gentle side that had been both a curse and a gift. He was looking at her now as if she'd taken away his puppy.
"Sweetie, is this true?" He asked in a whisper, but it was nothing like the whisper of his husband. It was a disbelieving, broken whisper and Rachel could hear the plea in his voice for her to say no, even if it was one sick prank to pull because that was one million times better than it being the truth. But Rachel could only look at him, sadly and whisper in return.
"I'm so sorry daddy."
"Sorry?" Leroy exploded. "You should have thought about being sorry before you slashed yourself up!" Rachel flinched at his choice of wording, and she could tell by the quiet hiss from behind her and Hiram's paled face that she wasn't the only one the phrasing had an effect on. Somewhere in the back of her mind, Rachel wondered what her mother was still doing there. Why had she not left as soon as she found out what a freak her daughter really was?
"Why would you do that to yourself baby?" Rachel winced again. She almost wished he would be as harsh and angry as her other father was. Anger, she could deal with. She was used to people's anger, she was used to being shouted at, brought down, rejected, pushed and hated. She wasn't used to his kindness, the soft, broken tone of his voice and the way he still called her 'baby', even after what she had done. But she couldn't explain it to him. She couldn't explain it to anyone. There was no logical reason for doing what she did. Not only would the scars hold back her Broadway career, but it was an awful thing for someone to do to themselves. Rachel knew why she did it, but she couldn't voice the reasons aloud. Not to anyone. So she simply shrugged, much to Leroy's fury.
"You don't know?" He fumed. If they were in a musical, it would have been the part he burst into a very loud and angry song before storming from the stage, or swearing to devote his life to revenge. "So you just woke up one morning and decided this was how you were going to spend your time? Thought it might get you a bit of extra attention did you?"
Rachel's head snapped up, fury blazing behind her eyes. "No I didn't! If for one second this had anything do to with wanting attention would I really have hidden it for so long? It is the exact opposite of wanting attention! I do this because keep all the words I long to voice inside me, I don't want anyone to see me as anything other than the confident self assured girl I have painted myself out to be. I hurt myself so I have one victory over anyone else who tries. Don't you dare tell me this is for attention when the last thing I wanted was for anyone to ever know!"
Something flashed behind her father's eyes and for a moment, Rachel feared her would actually hit her, but then he shot her a disgusted look and turned away, as if he couldn't even bear to see her anymore and stormed out of the room, right out of the house. Rachel heard the door slam, and then there was a silence, one just as deafening as it had been in her bedroom.
Seconds later, Hiram pushed himself up from the couch and stood in front of Rachel, opening his mouth as if to say something, but then he simply looked at her sadly and left too, wondering slowly into the kitchen and shutting the door with a small click behind him. Both exists wee so different, yet meant such similar things. Neither of her fathers were going to be there for her. One was too angry, and the other too sad. More people had glimpsed her private world than she ever thought possible, but Rachel had never felt so alone.
Defeated, she sunk onto the sofa, leant back and closed her eyes. She was so tired, falling asleep and forgetting the day seemed like the most appealing idea in the world. Rachel had completely forgotten about Shelby until she felt someone's hand on the side of her head, brushing away her hair from where it had fallen across her face. Her eyes snapped open and she drew away from the touch as if her mother's hand had been dipped in poison.
Shelby allowed her hand to fall back to her side and gazed down at her daughter, as if trying to find something in her she had been missing for a long time. Rachel sighed softly and drew her knees up to her chest, tucking them under her chin as she rested her head on the arm of the couch. There were so many things they both wanted to say, so much that needed saying, but Rachel was too exhausted and Shelby just didn't know where to begin.
"Why are you here?" Said Rachel at last, if only to break the silence. As tired as she was, sleep was a stranger to her, and she was growing sick of the quiet. She felt like she was constantly speaking, but forever silent at the same time, and the effort of living two parallels was exhausting.
"Hi-your dad told you. I thought something was going on, Rachel." Something. Well, 'something' certainly had been going on. It just wasn't even close to what Shelby had in mind. Somehow, the real explanation seemed even worse than the scenario she had dreamed up. Rachel was quiet for a while, as if the news meant nothing to her, but then, quietly, she responded.
"I know that Shelby, but why are you here? What exactly were you planning to do if your assumptions proved correct? Why did you not just dismiss the situation as nothing that concerned you and stay well out?"
The questions poured out of her mouth like another personality that she couldn't control, and she had little energy to try. They were not the questions she really wanted answers to, but they had the potential to lead to the answers she needed to hear. Shelby was staring at her curiously, as if she couldn't understand what she was saying, or the answer should be obvious, but Rachel was completely at sea. She could not understand what it was that had driven her mother to be there in the middle of the night on a hunch, and still be there even when that hunch had been disproved.
"I couldn't just leave you," said Shelby, simply, as if that one sentence held all the answers Rachel would ever need.
"Why?" Snapped Rachel, harshly. "You've had plenty of practice, one more time should not have proved difficult. I did not plan on bothering you again." Shelby stared at her daughter, as if first realising how alike they really were. Will had told her Rachel wasn't hard like her, but there she was in what must obviously be a very emotional and vulnerable state considering the circumstances, yet she was speaking in that way she did by using the longest possible way to say something. No one spoke like that when they were distraught. They screamed and shouted and altogether made very little sense. Rachel was calm and composed. At least much more so than she should be.
"Rachel," Shelby began, taking a seat beside her daughter. She paused, considering her next words and Rachel took that time to push her own emotions in line before they got the better of her. "I left you last year because I thought you didn't need me. If my suspicions had proved to be true, and you'd needed me after all, I would have taken you in a heartbeat."
Rachel didn't allow herself to believe her, not even for a second. People claimed to care all the time, but very few of them really did. As soon as things began to get even the slightest bit rocky, Finn had flung her aside without even asking for her version of events. Kurt was her friend now, but things had not always been so relaxed between them, and no matter how many compliments he gave her now, she couldn't forget the criticism she'd faced at his hands. As for the rest of her 'friends', they hadn't even noticed a change.
"How long would it have been for this time? Perhaps an entire week would have passed before you saw I wasn't good enough once again." Rachel sighed. She didn't want to go through this again. They'd been there before, and she didn't have the energy to argue again. She was just exhausted in so many ways. It felt as if there was nothing left of her, like she had used everything up just by going through day to day life.
"It was never about you not being good enough. It was me who didn't fit into your life, I-"
"Will you just stop with that?" Rachel snapped, surprising even herself. She'd only meant to think the words in her head, but now she had started, there was no going back. "You said that and I believed you. But then I came to you again, I made it clear that I did need you, I believe I used the words 'only you' and you still rejected me. You wanted your perfect life with your perfect new baby that I could never fit into so stop playing the 'it's not you it's me' card, because it so clearly is me."
Shelby was silent. She could think of nothing to contradict her daughter's words, although she desperately wanted to. Rachel was wrong, so wrong, but she could not explain how, because as wrong as it sounded from her lips, everything her daughter had said was true. She had made it clear that day that she did need her mother. She hadn't even demanded a relationship, she'd asked for a co director, tried to ease her in gently. But it hadn't been Rachel Shelby had meant to reject that day, it was the offer of directing yet another glee club. She had rejected her through. She'd never offered her daughter a slot in the grand new life she had planned.
"Was that what that was in aid of?"
Her mother didn't have to specify what she was talking about for Rachel to know. She had been expecting it to come up since they were left alone together, but that didn't mean she was ready to discuss it. "That was in aid of your total denial of my existence," she said, shortly, making it clear the topic was not up for discussion, but Shelby persisted anyway.
"I don't understand." From Rachel's tone, it was clear she was talking about something specific, but for the life of her Shelby could not think what it was. They had barely seen each other since Regionals the previous year. In eight short words, Rachel cleared the mystery.
"You told the waitress you only had one." Of course. What other incident could she have ever been talking about? Shelby had seen Rachel in the café that day, or more, she had seen her bolt from it. She'd guessed the reason for it too, but she never would have contemplated that it would have upset her that much. If she had allowed herself to think about what happened next, she would have seen the boy she was with run after her and cheer her up with a speech about how Shelby wasn't worth it, and because he was in her glee club with her, a song.
Without another word, Rachel leant her head against the arm of the chair and closed her eyes once again. She was tired, so tired and she just wanted to sleep. The thought of getting up for school in less than five hours to face a student body who knew her darkest secret filled her with such a weight of dread that she wanted to be asleep, if only to get away from it. And her mother. The conversation had taken a quick turn down a road she had neither the mental or physical energy to go down, and she just wanted to close her eyes so the woman would be gone when she opened them again in the morning.
After a long stretch of silence, Rachel heard Shelby call her name, quietly, like she was scared of breaking her with volume, but she didn't respond. Even speaking seemed like too much effort to consider. She was hanging on the fringes of well welcomed sleep, and wasn't going to let anyone drag her away from it. Minutes, or perhaps seconds or hours later, Rachel felt a blanket being draped over her body and she was just about awake enough to wrap the edges tightly around her body, cocooning her in its warm embrace as she fell into the peaceful oblivion of sleep.
Happy Halloween. I'm not big on Halloween, I had a horror movie marathon with my friend at the weekend, and then we went on a ghost tour/hunt (an actual one), but that's about as far as I'm gonna go with the festives. And that wasn't even in aid of Halloween, we just happened to be going on the ghost tour this weekend so thought we'd watch horror movies to get in the mood. But I do love Christmas on the other hand and am already shopping and singing :)