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Chapter 15

Pink hair is the first thing I see when Quinn materializes now. It's been such a long time since we last saw each other that seeing her now seems so surreal, so abstract that it's like I'm looking at a canvas of a sunset. She's so far away, although she's standing right there in front of me. I blink a few times to reassure myself that she's really there.

Her outlines come into focus: the tip of her fingers and the confused frown on her face. Her nose is scrunched up slightly and she licks her lower lip. It's her, without a doubt. And without a doubt we're not thinking the same thing.

The last thing I remember is Brittany's embrace.

The last thing Quinn remembers is my kiss.

She glows with life like I've never seen on anybody and I can only guess that it's because she's been dead to me. Now pure energy seems to radiate from her.

Maybe it's life that's still trying to get used to being with her again. Like her soul's not accustomed to having a vessel again; like it's trying to escape through her pores.

But she holds onto it tight and refuses to vanish. She's here, now more than ever.

She turns her head and the moment she sees me she tears up and plunges forward and wraps herself around me. "I'm back," she says. "It was you, wasn't it? I knew I could count on you."

Whoa, easy there. I'm not that predictable.

Am I?

She takes a step back and wipes at her eyes. "Got something in my eye," she comments with a contagious smile. I remember that smile. I remember it so clearly that actually seeing it again seems unreal. As if my eyes were playing tricks on me and the next time I blinked she'd be gone.

Then she punches my shoulder with her fist and reminds me of how real she is indeed. Without dropping her smile she furrows her eyebrows and says: "Quite a move you pulled on me there."

For a second I wonder what she's talking about, but she steps closer again and almost whispers: "I forgive you. Just don't kiss-attack me again. I'm not that into that."

Oh, right.

"Don't worry. Me, neither," I reply and she smirks again when she sees me blush.

"So, what'd I missed?"

I'm not sure what to tell her. Everything. Nothing. I mean, not much has actually changed since she died. I've been going on missions like before, getting points like before and being mocked by Gantz like before.

"Same ol' story," I shrug.

This is not the time to tell her about Brittany and it's surely not the time to ask her about her website.

"Shit, Rachel!" I gasp when the exit appears and it earns me a frown from both Quinn and Brittany. But I can't deal with any of that right now.

"Look," I say, "We'll catch up, I promise. Right now I gotta make sure a tiny dork doesn't ruin my reputation at work."

As I'm about to click the device on my neck, though, Brittany grabs my hand and I freeze. I have no idea how she managed to come this close to me, but suddenly her face is only inches from mine. "Wait," she says and I obey. "Let me come with you."

Before I can say anything I hear Quinn say: "I've been dead for I don't know how long now. Do you really think I'm just going back to my parents' place? I'm going with you, too. Besides, if we're a team now we need headquarters."

Headquarters? No way. It's still my freaking apartment and with Rachel ignoring my boundaries I've got enough on my plate already.

But Brittany smiles at me and I forget to object. "We're going to have so much fun!" she squeals and if it weren't for the back flip my heart just performed I'd call her out on her insanity. Fun? Really?

"Hold up."

Right. I completely forgot about Finn.

"I can't go home," he says. "Everyone thinks I'm dead. I can't just walk back through the front door and pretend nothing happened."

He approaches us and I instinctively take a few steps back.

"Where am I supposed to go?"

He looks broken, shattered actually. The latest turn of events was not what he'd expected, either. The expression on his face tells me he's sorry for what happened. Or maybe he's just sorry for his own lame ass. And I even have some sympathy, because he killed himself. If nothing else, we have that connection.

But I'd rather poke my eyeballs out with a blunt knife than have him sleep in the same room with me, or Brittany, the person he tortured, for that matter.

"Away," I comment and turn to the door. Quinn's already invisible when I grab Brittany's arm, click the device on my neck and walk us outside.

As it turns out having three roommates isn't as awful as I thought it would be. Rachel apparently spent the day shopping so she's now got a mattress of her own as well as clothes and towels.

Neat.

Except that we're now four people with two mattresses and the whole sharing my stuff thing's kinda getting out of hand. Remember when I used to laugh at pathetic fools who relied on friends and spent time bonding with teammates?

Yea, who's laughing now?

The moment Quinn and Brittany entered my apartment the whole atmosphere around us changed. I swear I felt reality shift and turn and slip away for a second, just to come back renewed. Because as much as I want to hate the whole situation - being stuck with three people in an one-room apartment, without privacy, without a spot to hide, without my fucking own sleeping space - I can't.

When I killed Brittany and revived Quinn the rules of the game changed. I never trusted Gantz, but I respected her rules and I played along. I obeyed, because I never had anything to lose. I sacrificed myself, my sanity and my only friend to Gantz just for this one promise. I kept playing, thinking I could earn my right to live again.

My life was worth a hundred points.

Now that's been taken away from me. Gantz betrayed me and my life's worth shit.

And I'll take this shit and make it mine. I did what Nishi taught me and that failed. Of course I didn't count on Gantz changing the rules. Maybe it's time to learn some new rules.

Even if I tried, with Quinn back in my life, with Brittany breaking through all my walls, and with Rachel insisting on talking all the freaking time, it's impossible to keep up my old ways. Even though I'm still lonely, even though I'm still a prisoner of my mind, I'll never be alone again.

I'm rearranging the room, making space for the second mattress. The others were supposed to help me, but instead Quinn decided to throw a pillow into Rachel's face with a challenging grin. Brittany picked up on that quickly and now I got three girls bouncing across the room, trying to hit each other with pillows.

I look up when I hear Rachel shriek. Quinn is hugging her from behind now, gripping her wrists and making sure Rachel can't hit her. Both are grinning and giggling like fools while Brittany is doubled over with laughter. It's sort of cute and sort of annoying. All three of them had an instant connection, like they'd known each other for years, and what's even weirder is that somehow I'm included. When I was alive I never had a single friend and suddenly I have three and I didn't even try. But they decided that I'm their friend and I didn't have a say in it.

To be honest, though, I'm kind of glad no one asks me about my opinion.

A pillow hits my spine hard and forces me out of my thoughts. Next thing I know I'm lying face down on the floor and Brittany is lying right on top of me. "Gotcha," she giggles and as much as I hate being dragged into their game I can't hate her dragging me into it. "No one's ever managed to ambush me," I giggle (I mean, I fucking giggle). "I guess I'm special," she shrugs and apparently has no intention of getting up.

Her breath hits my neck and I gulp. Whatever it is that I wanted to say has escaped my mind. I don't even find the words to tell her that she's hurting me a little.

"Wanna go outside?" she asks quietly. "Why?" I respond and it's the weirdest thing ever, because I've never questioned anything she's done, but the prospect of spending some alone time with her is…

…oh, it's actually scary.

But she's three steps ahead of me and drags me by the arm and pulls me up and outside before I can retreat back into the safety of my thoughts again. "C'mon," she chirps and it's sort of a relief not having to make all the decisions.

We sit down outside leaned against the wall next to the door. It's a row of one-room apartments, each one shittier than the next. Sometimes you can hear people fight through the doors. Sometimes you even hear dishes break. Every now and then scantily-clad girls come and go. I'm always thankful that I never manage to hear any of those noises through the walls.

"Sorry about the shitty view," I say, because it's the only thing I can come up with at the moment. We're looking at a parking lot and there's a construction site to the left that seems to be abandoned, because I don't recall ever seeing anyone actually work there. They just dug this massive hole into part of the lot and then I guess their funding ran out or something. Or maybe they just forgot about it. I can't even blame them. I'd try to forget about this place as well.

"I felt like we should leave Quinn and Rachel alone for a while," Brittany replies, ignoring my lame attempt at small talk. I agree with her, though. The moment Quinn saw Rachel she blushed. The moment Rachel saw Quinn she shut up, which was kinda mind blowing and totally worth having another roommate. They've been all over each other since then and I can only hope they'll get their shit together soon so we can move on to more important issues.

"Yea," I answer.

There's an awkward silence, which I have caused without a doubt. But there's really only one thing I want to talk about with Brittany and at the same time I want to avoid that topic forever.

"Why aren't you mad at me?" I finally blurt out.

"For what?"

I close my eyes and hope she's not seriously making me say it.

Fortunately she interprets my expression correctly.

"Santana", she says and scoots closer. So close, in fact, that her side is now flush against mine. I pull my knees up to rest my cheek on them and look at her, waiting for whatever is coming next. Maybe she really does hate me and just can't show it, because we're stuck in this together. Maybe she's already planning her revenge. "You didn't kill me." Yes I did. But she continues: "Gantz killed me. I'm not stupid. I remember how it happened. I remember how the chair hit me and the sound of glass breaking and I clearly remember falling. I know I wasn't shot. I know you didn't shoot me. If you wanted to kill me, you would have shot me. Gantz wanted me dead. Probably because I knew too much. And maybe because a part of me wanted to come back."

That's…strange. I furrow my eyebrows. "You did?"

She nods and adds: "When I reached a hundred points my memory was erased, but something still compelled me to start investigating. I was so intrigued by death that the concept of Gantz immediately got my attention when I saw the website. I guess once you're in this, you're in this. Also,"

And there it is again. This stare of hers that pierces right through me, traps me, binds me to her and lets me forget everything else. "Even though Gantz called me back you're not the one who killed me. I died three and a half years ago in a car accident."

"Sorry." It's the only thing I can think of, but Brittany just shrugs.

"It's just weird, you know. You'd think I'd be desperate to go back to my old life, but I'm somehow not. I'm just not..." She hesitates and bites her lower lip. "… ready," she finally says and it sends a chill down my spine that I have no explanation for.

Ready.

Odd.

Then Brittany bumps her shoulder against mine and playfully smiles at me.

"Do you think this is a coincidence? You and me meeting here?"

Wait, what?

The door opens and Quinn appears. "There you are," she says with a big grin on her face. "We were wondering where you two had disappeared to."

"Right," I comment. "And it only took you like half an hour to even notice we were gone."

Quinn shrugs off my remark with an I-don't-give-a-fuck-half-smile and turns to Brittany. "Would you mind finishing that pillow fight with Rachel for me?"

Brittany looks puzzled and I roll my eyes at Quinn. As if pillow fighting was what they'd been doing. It takes a few seconds before Brittany catches on. "Oh," she finally says. "Sure."

I watch her go back inside. From where I'm sitting her legs seem to go on for days and the spring in each of her steps causes hurricanes within my stomach. She's elegant and swift and just so… alive.

Quinn plops down beside me, one leg stretched out, one bent up. She rests one elbow on it and the way she looks at me is kind of heartbreaking, because it's like she doesn't know she's been dead. It's like she spent the whole time sitting here next to me in front of my apartment and I didn't go on fighting without her, alone. I never made all these vows to never trust anyone again, to never let anyone close. I never built this box made of bitterness and filled it with what was left of my humanity and stored it in the darkest corner of my soul so no one could touch it.

She was never gone.

"So, we should talk about the elephant in the room, huh?" she says.

"Pass. Rachel's your problem." I deadpan. "And to be honest, I don't think her nose is that big. You're just being mean."

Quinn punches my shoulder. She should really quit doing that, because once I decide to punch back things will get ugly.

"You know exactly what I'm talking about."

And I do. She knows me well enough to understand that me bringing her back is more than just a friendly gesture. I've sacrificed my way out and now she wants to know why.

"It's complicated," I say.

"Well, I've got time." She doesn't even blink, just challenges me with her eyes.

I inhale sharply. There's a lot to say, because there's a lot of stuff I've been thinking about; too much to put into coherent sentences; too much to capture everything in a couple of words. And everything that's happened since Quinn's death, every pain I've felt, every conclusion I've reached, every person who's died, every time Gantz mocked me, Brittany and Rachel and Puck and work and home and dad and even Finn, it all bubbles up to the surface and forms a knot in my brain and on my tongue. All I want to do is to take this knot and leave it as it is, tangled up in a giant black ball of mind and mystery and throw it to Quinn's feet. There. I'll leave it to you to pull at those strings and sort them out until they make sense.

I don't want to have to explain anything. It's just too much.

But Quinn's gaze lies calm on my face. She'll be waiting forever if she has to. Eventually I've got to start somewhere.

So I open my mouth and I start at the beginning.