Glee 1. Chapter 1

**AN:** So this is a bunch of angsty ficlets inspired by poetzproblem's angsty, angsty not-yet-written fanfic wherein Rachel, having married and been with Quinn for several years, gets in a car accident, suffers a brain injury and forgets everything that's happened since high school, including her love for Quinn. Read her wonderful, terrible teasers here:

poetzproblem dot tumblr dot com slash post/44586218033

poetzproblem dot tumblr dot com slash post/52906268598

Then go and read everything else she's written, because it is all amazing.

* * *

"Quinn, why do you even love me anyway?"

Rachel's head felt like it was filled with lead, and that lead was being melted and welded and reshaped into something very spikey that was skewering her skull from the inside. It was awful and the analgesics weren't helping. When she looked at Quinn, her face was drawn with an expression of extreme pain, and Rachel felt a hint of anger join the familiar guilt that'd been weighing on her for a while now.

How dare Quinn seem so hurting? How dare she suffer? It was Rachel who'd been in an accident. It was Rachel who'd lost fifteen years of her life. It was Rachel who now had brain damage, who might never be the same again, who might never live completely free of pain. It wasn't as if any of this was her fault. It wasn't as if she could make any of it better.

And then, like a vicious magic circle, the guilt resurfaced, because it wasn't Quinn's fault either, and Quinn lost things too, and sometimes it did feel like Rachel was the one responsible for that. And hurting Quinn was never something that she wanted.

"I love you for everything that makes you who you are, Rachel," Quinn said in her infuriatingly soft voice. "I love you because you're you."

And Rachel wasn't sure whether she wanted to cry or shout at Quinn to go away or beg for her forgiveness or ask her to hold her awhile and hope it'll feel as right as she deserves.

"I don't even know who I am," she said instead, in a voice much too small to be heard over the jumbled mess of her thoughts.

"It's okay," Quinn told her, eyes shining with unshed tears (_how dare she_ I'm sorry I'm sorry _I wish it could be different_). "You're Rachel Berry. And I will always love whatever that means."

She didn't ask for this love and she still wasn't sure she wanted it, but at that moment, Rachel was grateful for it. It was one thing, at least, that she was allowed to take for granted.


	2. Chapter 2

"So, um. Rachel's filed for divorce."

Santana stares at Quinn, for a moment not entirely sure if she should laugh. Quinn doesn't seem to be about to say something like, "Sorry, I misspoke. What I meant to say was, can you pass the soda?" though, so she forces herself to form a response.

"Wow," she says. "Bitch must be brain damaged or something."

"_Santana!_"

"What? I thought you wanted to be comforted."

Santana _hmph_s. Quinn looks tired but annoyingly prim, and Santana knows what that means: Quinn has entered Stoic Bullshit Mode Type 4 – "I feel like shit but I think I deserve it so I'm gonna pretend to be graceful about it." Personally, for these circumstances, Santana much prefers Crazy-ass Revenge Mode Type 2 – "I feel like shit and it's your fault so I'm gonna make sure you regret it."

Unfortunately, this is Rachel they're talking about here, so pretty much all Revenge Modes are out of the question. Bummer.

"It's okay," Quinn tells her, breaking Santana out of reminiscing about their high school days, when they hated each other's guts. "I knew this had to happen eventually. Rachel isn't the kind of person to stay in a loveless marriage. She's far too honest."

"It's not a _loveless_ fucking _marriage_," Santana snaps at her. Martyrdom doesn't suit Quinn half as well as she appears to think, the arrogant little shit.

A brief image of grief passes through Quinn's features and is gone. "It is to her," she replies quietly.

Santana bites the inside of her mouth. Enthusiastically cursing Rachel's name or bodily shaking Quinn into cheerfulness aren't going to be very helpful, she realizes, despite both of these reasonable courses of action being her first instincts. She sighs.

"Quinn," she starts, but doesn't finish. Quinn looks up at her, and suddenly her despair is plastered clearly across her face, and Santana thinks about the revoltingly blissed out grins and reverent fucking glances Quinn used to carelessly throw around whenever Rachel was in close proximity, and she knows there is no meaningful way to finish that sentence, really. "Just, come here, you pathetic idiot."

They hug for a long time; long enough for Santana's tears to dry on their own, so she doesn't need to worry about wiping them in an inconspicuous manner.

So that's a plus.


	3. Chapter 3

"Please, Rachel. Just one kiss. Just one last kiss."

Quinn was drunk. No, she wasn't just drunk; Quinn was absolutely up-her-ass plastered. And that should probably be a good enough reason to cease all activity and stay away from all persons, but Rachel was here and she was here and her judgment was compromised and so there you have it.

"Quinn, please stop," Rachel told her. "You're being unfair."

"Unfair? Unfair, huh," she half sobbed, half laughed. "I'm being unfair. Un_fairrr_. That must suck."

"Quinn."

"Rach, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Rachel. Sorry. I am being unfair, you're right, and selfish, it's a flaw. But I love you so much, please, Rachel, one kiss you won't even feel it, it'll be quick, you might like it maybe, please."

This was terrible, what she was doing. This was sad. She knew it, but she couldn't help herself. She missed Rachel so badly – the smell of her unwashed hair, the salty smoothness of her skin, the texture of her smile against her lips, firm and warm and familiar; hugging her from behind while she sings in the shower and feeling the vibrations of her voice in her hands and forearms and chest; getting kicked in the shins in the middle of the night because a sleeping Rachel is like a puppy dreaming of running; catching the rare wrong notes no one else will ever have the privilege to hear – irreplaceable, impossibly precious things that Quinn was _terrified_ she might one day forget.

This wouldn't even help with any of that at all. One sloppy drunken kiss would be worth even less than an accidental brush of the fingers. This was a bad idea. And yet,

"I miss your breath, Rachel. I dream about it sometimes. God, I'm pathetic."

And Rachel, lips pursed and with more stern disapproval than a thoroughly schnockered Quinn could even perceive, placed a hand on Quinn's shoulder, pushed her down onto the tall seat, looked at her with curious intention, and kissed her.

Quinn hadn't meant to close her eyes; she didn't want to miss a single detail. But the moment she felt those full, soft, perfect lips press against her own, she knew she had to, or she would simply start blubbering and ruin everything. Even with her eyes squeezed shut so tight she was seeing spots, the tears still leaked out. She couldn't open them; the moment she did, she knew with perfect drunken certainty, it would all be over.

They lingered in this absurdly ill-advised, impossibly tender moment, Rachel wearing some expression Quinn couldn't see and didn't want to imagine, Quinn wavering under the weight of a thousand other remembered kisses that to Rachel didn't even exist.

When Rachel pulled away, she exhaled briefly against Quinn's cheek and followed the warm breath with a warm thumb to wipe away the mascara-infused tears.

And when Quinn finally summoned the courage to open her eyes again Rachel was gone, and Quinn was left with only a slightly circular smudge of mascara on her left cheek as evidence that she'd ever been there in the first place.


	4. Chapter 4

Quinn and Rachel were on their way to get coffee. _Coffee._ This was almost surreal. Except that Rachel had been through three minor surgeries that month, filed divorce papers to a marriage she didn't remember agreeing to, and was not, in point of fact and contrary to her brain's constant assurances, even remotely seventeen. So she supposed going out for coffee with her arch nemesis slash kind-of-but-not-really friend who also happened to be her future ex-wife wasn't really all that surreal.

Maybe a dinosaur in a trench coat with a pink umbrella singing show tunes? That would likely cut it, yes.

"I'm sorry for making you do this," Rachel told her.

Quinn shook her head. "No, it's okay. I'm the one who should apologize."

Well, to be fair, it was indeed Quinn who requested the coffee; but Rachel was the one who asked for the divorce, so, really, there was a slight difference in magnitude here.

Never mind. They didn't arrange this for apologies.

"So do you have them?"

Quinn nodded. "In my bag. Nice and signed and in a fancy plastic sleeve."

In all honesty, Rachel hadn't quite expected this to be so easy. Divorce seemed like it should be a bigger thing; or at least a less amicable one. "And… how are you with that?" she asked.

"I'm fine." Quinn flashed Rachel a tight smile.

"Really? You're fine?" Rachel repeated doubtfully. According to several of her recent memories, which, she'd been assured by several medical professionals, were mostly reliable, Quinn was about the opposite of fine.

And even Rachel herself, who couldn't remember the _wedding_, much less any of the apparently years-long marriage; who couldn't imagine what it would be like to be in love with _Quinn_ of all people; who still didn't understand how it was possible that Finn was living in a different state, happy, a father of three, without _her_; who felt like physiotherapy was too much to handle right now, let alone a big career and a _lesbian lover_ – even Rachel had seen some photos, heard some stories, noticed how close her dads were with Quinn, and she wasn't entirely sure that she was entirely _fine_.

But Quinn didn't drop the smile. "Yes," she said simply. "I am. Because I finally understood something." She looked at Rachel, love and longing spelled out so obviously in her eyes, but she kept her hands in the pockets of her coat and her shoulders a safe distance away from an accidental brush. "I may have lost my wife, but I didn't lose _you_, Rachel."

And Rachel stared at her, wordless, and only realized she'd reached out her hand when her fingers found nothing to hold onto.

Quinn looked away. "And that's the only thing that matters," she said with finality.

So why was Rachel no longer so certain?


	5. Chapter 5

The café Quinn and Rachel arrived at looked small and ordinary, with a little green chalkboard hung outside announcing this week's specials. It didn't strike Rachel as much of anything, but Quinn gazed at it fondly.

"This is one of our favorite coffee shops," she told Rachel.

Rachel raised her eyebrows. "Our?"

"Well, I guess I should say this _was_ one of our favorite coffee shops," Quinn mused. "And yes, _our_. You're the one who introduced me to it, and then I fell in love with their almond milk latte once I started going vegan."

"You're _vegan_?" Now she just knew her eyebrows would have disappeared behind her bangs had she still had them.

Quinn smirked. "Not exactly. I don't think I can live a life completely devoid of bacon."

Rachel smiled. That sounded about right.

"But I lead a mostly vegan lifestyle now, what with living in the same house as – uh –" She faltered.

"Me," Rachel finished for her.

"Right." Quinn took a deep breath, presumably to steady herself. "_Having lived_. With you. Is what I meant to say."

When they stepped inside they were pointed to a table that was apparently _their usual_ and provided drinks that appeared to also be that. To her slight mortification, Rachel discovered that the coffee she was handed, despite not being at all familiar, was divine.

"We used to come here a lot?" she asked Quinn.

"Yep."

"This feels so strange," she confessed. "None of it makes sense. I don't recognize anything here."

"Well, you never came here until you were in your twenties," Quinn said. "The funny thing is," she continued, a twisted little smile on her lips that suggested it was anything but funny, "we didn't even fall in love with each other until we were about twenty-five. So I understand if you don't like me very much right now. I was in a pretty bad place at seventeen."

"I'm not really seventeen, though, am I?"

"To me, you definitely aren't," Quinn agreed. "But the important thing is what you are to _you_."

"So what are you saying? That if I'd defaulted to twenty-four instead, you could have waited for me?"

Quinn's expression wavered slightly for a moment. "I can still wait for you," she murmured.

Rachel chose to ignore that for now. Mostly because she hadn't the faintest idea what she was supposed to do with it.

She sighed. "All right, that's enough chitchat. Hand it over." She held out her hand.

Quinn chuckled a little stiffly. "Here you go." She pulled the divorce papers from her bag and placed them in Rachel's grip.

The plastic sleeve was indeed fancy. Also, pink. And through it, blurry but visible, Rachel could see Quinn's thin and loopy signature at the very bottom.

_Quinn Berry-Fabray_

Rachel could feel something deep inside her clench painfully.

And Quinn, considerate and oblivious as always _(and where did that _always_ come from? Since when had Rachel known anything about Quinn's _always_?)_, raised her coffee mug and smiled and said, "To singledom!"

"To singledom," Rachel echoed distantly. But even as their cups clinked flatly (and Quinn yelped when a bit of her latte spilled accidentally but said not to worry because the papers are fine, and hey isn't it lucky she kept them in that fancy plastic sleeve), Rachel's mind was very, very far away from the state of being single.


	6. Chapter 6

**AN:** Quick reminder that poetzproblem is super cool; that this is even less my idea than if it were just fanfiction of a show instead of fanfiction of fanfiction of a show (ficception? [99.999% chance somebody somewhere already used this portmanteau before]); and that I think all of you are also pretty chill for reading. So thank you!

* * *

"Hello, Quinn."

"Leroy," Quinn breathed. The relief she felt at seeing him was almost embarrassing.

Leroy was one of those excellent huggers, the ones who know just the right amount of pressure for reassurance but not suffocation, the right amount of time to be heartfelt but not awkward. And while he was about as tall as her father, Quinn's head seemed to fit on his shoulder in a way it never had on Russell's.

"I wasn't sure if, um –"

"What? If I'd come? You didn't think we stopped caring just because you no longer share our surname, did you?"

Quinn smiled shyly. "Thanks." He squeezed her shoulder. She took a deep breath. "How is she?"

"Better," he said. "A little bit. Still struggling. Being strong, just like she always is."

Quinn nodded. "The strongest person I know."

Leroy smiled at her. "Me, too."

"Is she eating enough? Does she have the vegan brownies she likes? Is the sound system working? She likes her music loud and everywhere sometimes. Does she have enough socks? I think some of her socks are still at our – at my place. Does she need me to bring her more socks?"

"Hey, sweetie, slow down. You'll pass out if you don't take a breath. And trust me, Hiram and I are taking good care of her. We're absolute experts at that pampering thing."

Quinn tried to calm herself down. "I know," she said. "I'm sorry. I just feel so cut off sometimes."

"I understand, Quinn."

"She still doesn't want me to go with her to the checkup?"

Leroy shook his head. "I'm sorry."

She felt the tears in her throat first. "I don't know what I'm supposed to do, Leroy. The woman I love is suffering so much, and I don't know what I can do to help her." She wiped her eyes angrily with the back of her hand. "Shit. I'm sorry."

Leroy covered her hand with one of his and wrapped the other around her forearm. "Shhh, Quinn, it's okay. I've got you."

"You'll be with her, right?"

"Of course."

"Good. She needs to be with the ones she l-loves." She kept wiping, but her cheeks wouldn't dry.

"Oh, baby…"

"M-maybe I should… ask Finn to…"

"Stop, Quinn, stop. Finn isn't what Rachel needs right now. Finn is regression. I'm sorry that you're not what she needs right now either, and I'm sorry that I can't guarantee you ever will be again. So deeply sorry, I swear to you, Quinn." He leaned down to catch her eyes, and his gaze was almost too sincere for her to hold. "But that might change," he continued. "And I know it's selfish of me, and I know that it's asking a lot, but I really hope that, if the time comes that Rachel does need you, that you'll be there for her, Quinn."

She cried harder. She couldn't stop. It was like being a kid again, crying until she ran out of tears and was left with nothing but hiccups; only she seemed incapable of running out of tears. But through the sobs and the hiccups and the sloppy sniffling, Quinn somehow managed to repeat two words, over and over again.

_"I promise. I promise. I promise. I promise."_


	7. Chapter 7

Rachel stared at herself in the mirror, trying to make sense of what she was seeing.

_This is you now_, she told herself. _This is _me.

But that couldn't be right. She had bruises and stitches and a shaved patch of hair where the surgeon had cut her head open. She had frown lines and laugh lines and crow's feet. She had _wrinkles_. Not many and not very deep, but definitely more than she remembered herself to have, than she _should_ have. She had no traces of acne at all. Her teeth looked much whiter than she remembered, and she had always been a dedicated flosser. She must have had them artificially bleached.

She tried to smile at herself, and quickly stopped. Even her smile was different.

Why did this happen to her? Was it because of all the time travel fantasies she'd had? Except that in them, when she finally arrived at her sparkly, successful, happily-married future, she was ready for it, emotionally and physically well-equipped to handle it all, and she most certainly did not have fucking brain damage.

And _this_… this was very, very different from her dream in several crucial ways.

The Quinn thing, for one.

"Knock knock," came her dad's voice from the other side of the bedroom door, interrupting her very fruitful brooding. "Can I come in?"

Rachel closed her eyes, rubbed her aching temples and said, "Okay."

Hiram stuck his head in first before entering. "Hi, honey," he said softly.

"Hey, Dad."

"How are you doing?"

"Fine."

"Really? Then why's there no music playing? Not even your Gloomy Playlist?"

As soon as Rachel felt the first tear sting her eyes, her dad was there, cradling her to him like he used to when she was little. Which, she realized with a painful jolt, was a really long time ago, what with her actually being thirty-two now and all.

"Everything's different," she mumbled into his chest. "The music here is different. _I'm_ different." She shut her eyes tight. She felt so lost. "What do I do?"

Hiram just squeezed her harder. "What you always do, sweetie," he told her in his calm, assured voice. "Love yourself. Just the way you are. Because the way you are – and take it from the man who loves you more than anything in the universe – the way you are is absolutely perfect."

She looked up at him, and even though he looked older too, the love in his expression was perfectly familiar.

She snuggled closer. "Thanks, Dad," she said. "I love you too."

He kissed the crown of her head. "Always."


	8. Chapter 8

"Dad… did I really love Quinn?"

Rachel was nursing a large mug of (vegan) hot chocolate, feet snugly wrapped in luridly colored wool socks and knees bent close to her chest. She felt about as comfortably juvenile as was humanly achievable.

"You did," her dad easily replied.

She tried to wrap her mind around that idea, and came up blank. Finally, she asked simply, "_How?_"

Hiram chuckled. "To hear you tell it, very easily." He hummed softly for a moment. "Honestly, I can't say I was all that surprised."

"Really? Why?"

"Well, you'd been friends for years, visiting each other all through college even though you couldn't really afford to spend the time and money, celebrating all the holidays together, sending me bad quality cellphone pictures of the two of you having fake Thanksgiving turkey and holding hands." He sipped from his own cup before continuing. "This is nice. I don't know why I don't just drink some cocoa for no reason anymore. Anyway, I'd already assumed something was going on by the time you casually informed your daddy and me that you were bringing your lover over for dinner, and that she was snarky and sweet and a shiksa and we had better approve."

Rachel smiled. Sometimes she sort of liked the person she couldn't remember being. "And you did?" she prodded. "Approve, I mean?"

"Absolutely. I'd be lying if I said I was ever as fond of Quinn as Leroy is, but she certainly had her charms. And over the years, seeing how happy she made you, I started liking her a little bit too, I guess."

Rachel shook her head. "This is too weird. How could she have made me so happy if I can't even remember loving her?"

Hiram smiled sadly at her. "The brain's a complicated thing. Just because those feelings are gone now doesn't mean they never mattered. Or don't matter still, to somebody else."

She ran a hand through her hair. "I feel awful for putting her through this."

"I imagine she does, too," Hiram said. Rachel winced. "I also imagine that the last thing she'd want is for you to feel that way," he added gently.

She sighed. "She seems like a much less terrible person than the Quinn Fabray I remember," she said.

"Well, it has been a few years since high school."

She stared contemplatively into the sugary depths of her chocolate. It unfortunately yielded little insight.

"Dad, sometimes… when I kissed her, when I saw her signature with _my_ name in it… I don't know. It's like suddenly thinking, 'hey, death metal's not so bad. I could be a fan.' And then immediately realizing how ridiculous that is."

Hiram laughed. "Death metal isn't the first thing that comes to mind when I think of Quinn," he said. "But even so. I would suggest you try to approach this strange new subgenre with an open mind. It might surprise you."

"You said you didn't even like her that much."

"I said I never liked her as much as Leroy does. But he has practically appointed himself her number two fan, so that isn't saying much."

"And her number one fan would be…"

"Take a wild guess, sweetie."

Rachel sank down further into the couch. The experience of trying to figure her own self out, and failing miserably, was indescribably frustrating.

"This is so unfair. Why can't I just remember? Why couldn't she just _forget_?"

"Honey, I've never been very religious, so unfortunately I can't tell you that everything happens for a reason. Usually nothing does. But I _can_ tell you that things are often not as dire as they seem, and that while I'm not much of a believer, I have, as I've always had, all the faith in the world in you. You will make it through this. You and Quinn both. Whether you do it together or not is less important. You _will_ make it."

"Did you read that in my chocolate?"

"I read it in your stars."

Rachel failed to suppress a smile. "I have some pithy rejoinders to say to that."

"Naturally."

"Another time, though," she said as she leaned her head on his shoulder.

Hiram wrapped his arm around her and squeezed. "Another time."

Hopefully by then she'll have figured out which parts of herself she could live with, and which parts she could live without.


End file.

Glee, Angst, Romance