A/N: I've had this on my hard drive for months and I have no idea why I didn't upload it sooner. I commend anyone who's been patient and is actually going to read this, despite the three month lack of updates. I'm sorry for taking so long!
The door creaked open and Rachel edged into the room, her face glowing in the aftermath of her performance. She had a light smile playing on her lips and a faraway look in her eyes. Quinn couldn't help but smile a little too at the expression on the other woman's face. But when Rachel saw her, sitting in a rickety chair in front of her vanity, she looked as if she'd been slapped. The smile dropped away, like a pattern in the sand being washed away by a wave, and her whole body went rigid, cautious.
"Quinn," she said slowly, as if testing out the sound of the name on her tongue.
"Rachel," Quinn nodded back.
"It's time a proper conversation happened," David said, pushing off from the wall against which he had been leaning. Rachel raised her eyebrows and leant against the edge of her vanity, the back of three Rachel Berrys reflected in the mirrors. She made a gesture with her hands, encouraging David to continue. He opened his mouth to speak.
"I wanted to apologise," Quinn jumped in, cutting off whatever words David was about to say. "I reacted badly the other night, and every other night for the past eight years, for that matter, and I'm sorry. You're not the caged dreamer anymore, you're a Broadway star, but you're a lot more than that, and you always will be. I'm sorry that for a second there, I forgot that we weren't in high school anymore, and that you and I aren't the same people anymore. You're not trapped in your cage of insecurities, and I'm not trapped in mine either. We've got other things now. I won't make that mistake again. But I'd still like you to use the ticket I made you trek through Central Park to find. I'd love for you to be at my reading, so I can have a chance of making up the past eight years."
Rachel stared at Quinn, keeping her face impassive. Part of her wanted to slap the other woman for daring to come into her dressing room, her personal space, and demand forgiveness. The other part of her wanted to say yes. That part was howling her agreement, strangling into silence any other ideas which tried to surface and combat it. But Rachel was still quiet; she didn't want to so readily agree.
"Why should I? An apology doesn't make up everything you've ever done to me Quinn; it doesn't even come close. It seems you have learnt, but how I do know that's not a lie? How do I know that you aren't just inventing things to get me to agree to your request? You're right, I am a Broadway star. A star, Quinn, not some low life tramp who lives on the streets, starving for any scrap of attention or affection someone might be willing to give them, especially not if that someone is a person who, one day, could treat you worse than a piece of garbage."
"Wow, Rae, that was uncalled for," David said, stepping forward, but Quinn waved him away gently, shaking her head.
"It's ok, Dave, she has a point. And Rachel, you aren't going to know unless you give me another chance. I don't deserve it, I know, but I was hoping to appeal to the forgiving girl in you, the one who was always there for me before, even when there were bigger things happening. I'm trying to fix the broken pieces here, Rae, but I can't do that if you're not willing to let things fall back together."
"Firstly, don't you dare presume that you can call me 'Rae'. Just because David has let you be the only person allowed to call him 'Dave' doesn't mean that familiarity extends to me. Secondly, you killed that forgiving girl, Quinn. You broke her heart and ground it into dust; there aren't any pieces left to be put back together," anger came flooding back into Rachel at the sound of David's nickname for her coming from Quinn's lips, and with it, came the anger she'd spent eight years hoarding, "You may as well have put a gun to her head and pulled the trigger, so don't strut back into my life and pretend that there is something to fix, because there is absolutely nothing left of that life, or that person. So, no, I'm sorry, I'm afraid I'm declining your invitation. I won't be coming to your reading, and wouldn't if my life depended on it."
With a huff, she crossed her arms, and glared at Quinn, her brown eyes dark with the tempest of her anger. Quinn stared at her, the way she remembered her teenage self doing, all those years ago, when she was trying to seem cool, calm and collected in a situation which distressed her beyond belief. She hoped it was working. Rachel gestured with her head towards the door and said "well?", dismissing Quinn and David. Quinn felt David's hand on her elbow, advising her to move. She complied, shuffling out of the cramped room and out of the slowly darkening theatre, into the alleyway, where only a couple of people waiting with the hopes of seeing a Broadway star in the flesh. They sighed in disappointment when she and David came through the door. The two of them walked a little way down the alley, until Quinn stopped them, collapsing her back against the wall of the theatre and slamming the back of her head against the bricks.
"Don't hurt yourself, honey. You can't try to get Rae back from a hospital bed if she won't come and see you," David said gently, putting his hand behind Quinn's head and pulling it forward from the wall until they were eye to eye. "She will come around. She's just being her typical stubborn Berry self. You should know that better than anyone. She does love you, I know it, she's just too scared to let herself see it."
"How do you know? How could you possibly know that if I don't know that? I used to be able to look at her and just know. Now, it's like looking into a black hole; I get nothing. How can I make her fall in love with me again when I don't even know the first thing about what she's feeling?"
"That's not true," David smiled sadly, "you know her better than anyone else; no one is ever going to know her the way you do. You've fallen out of practice a little, but that's ok. It's like those people who haven't ridden a bike in decades, then one day, decide they're going to start again. It's awkward at first, and they wobble as they try to get their balance, but soon enough, it all comes back, and they're as confident and in tune with their bike as they used to be. You haven't forgotten, Quinn, it just takes a bit of remembering."
Quinn sighed, and slid down the wall until she was sitting on the ground. She tilted her head back until she could see the sky - the almost purplish sky with no stars; she missed the stars. If she went out of Lima a few miles further than the House of Chaos, and she stopped her bike somewhere by the side of the road and decided to look up, she could see the stars perfectly, the whole sky dusted with them, the Milky Way making a jagged, dangerous, beautiful rift down the middle of the sky. And she used to feel so close to the rest of the universe then, like she could reach up and touch it, and everyone, every being, every blade of grass, every grain of sand, would feel the brush of her finger and not feel as alone as they had a moment before. She'd always wanted to take Rachel out to see that and to feel it too. But they were both stuck here in New York, where the tiny slivers of sky between buildings made her feel dirty and small and mangled, and more lost than ever. She felt like she was searching for a lost part of herself that was never going to be found. With both hands tangled into her pink hair, she looked down at the ground, flecked with cigarette butts and the wrappers of various candy bars. A plastic bag was caught against pole, and made a rustling sound every time a draught of wind slithered through the alleyway.
"Maybe it's time to give up," she said softly. Eyes closed, she felt David sit down next to her, their shoulders rubbing. The point of contact comforted her.
"It's never time to give up. Don't be afraid to fight the hard battles, honey. And I guarantee you, Rachel Berry is the hardest battle you're ever going to have to fight. But she's worth it, and you know it, which is why you're not really going to give up. I may not know you very well, Quinn, but I can see it, the same way I see Rachel struggling not to break down and just give herself to you all over again. She wants to, but she wants security this time too. It's not teenage love anymore; she wants a show of commitment, and she's terrified of the possibility of losing you again," he explained, gently pulling out her hands from her hair, disentangling the pink strands from her fingers.
"She doesn't need me."
"Yes she does. You just have to remind her of who you are. Remember how you wooed her the first time, remember how she fell in love with you, and do it again, but adjust it enough to account for the fact you've both grown up since then."
"I used to write poems on walls," Quinn murmured, wiping her nose on the back of her hand, "that's how she fell in love with me. She didn't even know it was me, she just fell in love with the words, and some person called Errant."
"Try it again. Try wooing her with your words again."
"I can't. I don't know if I have it in me anymore," she whispered.
"Oh, you do," David smiled, nudging her lightly with his elbow, "you just have to remember. A poet's soul never dies. Just think, what did you tell yourself in all those intervening years before you saw Rachel again. What did you whisper every night before you dreamt? What kept you sane?"
"There's always New York," Quinn quietly replied, half speaking to herself. David smiled again. She turned to face him, "I used to say 'there's always New York' because I believed if there was one place we'd fall in love again, it would be here."
"Well you're here now, Quinn Fabray. Make it happen."
Quinn said nothing, resting her chin on her knees, looking out across the alleyway. On the opposite wall were scribbles of graffiti, quickly scrawled tags in black paint, almost blending into the wall; they stirred up a sense of longing within her gut. She hadn't written on an unsanctioned surface in such a long time, she could barely remember how to get away with it; oh, but she remembered the exhilaration, the freedom which zinged from the tips of her fingers right through her body, setting every nervous fibre on fire. She remembered streaking away from her site of vandalism, fighting off giggles, and swelling with pride. The aching for it sunk in her chest like a ton of bricks. Suddenly, her fingers itched. Curling them into a ball, she fought the urge; it would be foolish, it would be reckless, it would be the wrong way of winning back Rachel. Or would it? Errant was the person who broke them, all those years ago, so maybe Errant was supposed to be the person to glue them back together. Quinn ran a hand through her already dishevelled pink hair, making it stick out in all sorts of otherwise impossible directions.
She would need help. She would need a plan. She would need to access that part of her that she'd locked away a long time ago because of what it had done. Her mind ticked over, thinking, accessing in her head the resources she'd need and who she'd get them from. Dark alleyways and half falling down warehouses in the rickety suburbs of New York came to mind, forcing goosebumps to race down her arms, and raise the hairs on the back of her neck. Squaring her shoulders, she did not back down from the thought. They weren't dirty places with illicit behaviour. Taking a moment to think it over, she conceded that yes, they were dirty places with illicit behaviour occurring there, but they weren't the type that would normally spring to mind. There was certainly no manufacture of drugs happening, and no mistreatment of anyone. The warehouses she thought of were the residencies of artists who painted out of a spray can instead of with a brush, who were forced to the outskirts of society for their 'vandalism'. She hadn't been there in months, she realised, guilt spreading from the pit of her stomach to her chest, where it collided painfully with the painfully sharp ache of wanting to re-enter the community she'd only tentatively trod in.
Turning her head, she found David looking at her with an arched eyebrow. She bit her lip and tugged lightly at the nose ring she'd gotten from a seedy looking man who tried to feel her up, when she was back in high school. It was a big plan, and it was going to be a big operation. Rachel once said that she'd hated ostentatiousness, but ostentatious is what Quinn was going to be to win her back. If she didn't push, then Rachel was going to fall back into the abyss, the void that was their time without each other; seeing her on the edge, Quinn couldn't imagine letting go, not when the possibility that she might be pulled back into her life was so close. This time she wasn't going to be small, she was going to be big. Rachel wasn't going to be able to help but see her, see Errant, see all the things which proved that they ought to be together.
Doubt gnawed at her. What if she estranged Rachel even further? Could she live with the consequence? Biting her lip, she thought about it further. What if she did give up? What kind of life would she be going back to? The same life she had lived for the past eight years - not the worst kind of life, but not the life she'd hoped she'd be living; she'd only made it through the last years by harboring that small hope in her chest that she and Rachel would be together again. In losing Rachel, she would lose her incentive to live. She recalled Lima after Rachel had left for New York, she remembered not being able to see a way out of her situation, she remembered one night, riding her motorcycle out of Lima, towards anywhere, how the weight of the hopelessness gripped her chest, how her arms angled the bike towards a tree just off the side of the road, how she flooded with relief, knowing that if she hit the tree, she might not wake up the next day, and it would all be over; she wouldn't miss Rachel anymore, and Rachel wouldn't even know that Quinn wasn't in the world anymore. A part of her had wanted to think that Rachel wouldn't even care, but she knew better, which is why, when she woke up the next day, nestled in a hospital bed with countless tubes feeding into her, she was glad that she'd survived. She awoke, she was glad that she'd absolved Rachel of any guilt the girl would have definitely felt.
But she couldn't slide back into that depression. The thought of it sent shivers running up and down her spine and filled her with a cold dread. Never again, she couldn't do that ever again. She'd almost taken her own life once, and she couldn't do that again, not when afterwards she realised how much she would have missed if she'd died that night. It took almost a year of physical therapy, but she'd gotten back to her old life, and now, with a chance of having Rachel permanently back in her life, she wasn't going to mess up her chance. She'd lost everything before. She wasn't about to risk it again.
With that thought, she pushed aside her ostentatious plan. It wouldn't do to cover every inch of New York City in graffiti pleading for Rachel to give her another chance. Rachel didn't like being forced to do things; she would have to be gently persuaded. Quinn looked up at the sliver of sky between the buildings, and sighed. It didn't give her even the slightest hint of encouragement. David placed a hand on her arm.
"What's the plan?"
"I don't think I have one," Quinn replied. "Just, not to lose her again, but I have no idea how to do it."
"What about Errant?"
"Errant is what fucked up our relationship in the first place. I don't know if that's the best way to go about winning Rachel over. And there's Finn fucking Hudson in the way now too, and she seems happy with him, and there's no way he is going to just giver her up for her to be with me. He was furious when she broke up with him in high school for me. He wouldn't suffer the insult again."
"Hm. I'll talk to her. All you need is one chance. She'll fall in love with you all over again, I know it. Whatever you do, honey, don't give up," David said, patting her arm. She smiled at him. Who would have guessed that she'd make an ally so quickly?
"You know, I sent her a box, well actually, I got a friend to give her the box just before she left for New York, and in it was a letter. If she'd wanted to reach out to me and pick up where we left off, she could have. She had every chance in the last eight years to do it. Part of me thinks that she really doesn't want to be with me again, that's why I never heard a word from her. And that wasn't all that was in the box. I gave her diaries, I have her photos, I gave her pieces of writing, all which were inspired by her. It was my way of proving to her how much she meant to me, how much I loved her, but she didn't even give a word of reply. I wonder if she ever kept it, or whether she threw the whole thing out as soon as she realised that it was from me. I wouldn't blame her, but it would be a shame; the box was given to me by my grandmother, a family heirloom. It took a lot to part with it, but I knew it was for a good cause," Quinn said, trailing off.
"You gave it to her knowing that there was a chance she might dump it in the garbage? Even though it was so precious to you? That was brave of you."
Quinn shrugged. "Like I said, Rachel is worth it. She was and always will be worth the risk."
"Does she know that?"
"She should. Maybe she chooses to ignore it, but she should know it."
"Remind her," David urged gently.
Quinn stared back at him with hard eyes. "I will."