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my-meadowlark · 2 years

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Fic: Proverbs 4:23 [Glee - Quinn/Rachel]

Title: Proverbs 4:23 Fandom: Glee Characters/Pairing: Quinn/Rachel, with mentions of all or most of their canon ships. Rating: T Word Count: 5877 Summary:

Lucy Fabray is thirteen years old when her Sunday school teacher holds up a single red rose for all the students to see. “This,” she says, cheerful in a way Lucy has learned to associate with lessons that end in talks of hellfire and eternal damnation, “is your heart.” Quinn's life between Lucy and the night Rachel wins her Tony award, from her point of view. A series of unfortunate events, if you will.

Written for the prompt 002: Heartbreak from my femslash100100 Zeros table. Available on AO3 or under the cut.

Proverbs 4:23

Lucy Fabray is thirteen years old when her Sunday school teacher holds up a single red rose for all the students to see.

“This,” she says, cheerful in a way Lucy has learned to associate with lessons that end in talks of hellfire and eternal damnation, “is your heart.”

The teacher smells the rose, puts on a big production about how lovely it is. Just like their hearts. Is Lucy’s heart lovely? She doesn’t see why it wouldn’t be. Her mother always says it’s a shame she won’t lose weight so her inner beauty can shine through.

“Here,” the teacher continues, handing the rose to a girl in the front row, “smell it. Feel how soft the petals are. Beautiful, isn’t it? Pass it on so your friends can feel it, too.”

By the time it reaches Lucy, the rose is a little bit droopy. It’s missing a few petals and some of the ones it still has look like they’re barely holding on after being rubbed by half the class.

“Would you like to receive that rose?”

The teacher is looking at her, and Lucy nearly sighs because she knows by now what feels like the right answer is never the right answer in Sunday school. She doesn’t even know what they’re supposed to learn from this. Is it gratefulness? Then yes, she would like to receive the rose. Humility? Keeping sweet? All signs point to “yes” being the right answer.

“Yes?”

“No!”

The only reason Lucy doesn’t roll her eyes is the last time she did it she was grounded for two whole weeks. No, then. Fine. No.

“No, ma’am.”

“Exactly,” the teacher emphasizes, like they’re all supposed to ignore the fact that she told Lucy what to say, “you wouldn’t. And that — that’s what your heart looks like after letting a bunch of people play with it.”

Lucy looks down at the sad little rose. She’s sure there’s a lesson here somewhere but she’s not really seeing it right now.

“Purity! It’s the only way to protect your hearts.”

Ah. Lucy feels herself relax on her chair. Okay. This is about purity. About not letting boys anywhere near her heart (she’s fairly sure when her teacher and her mother say “heart” they actually mean boobs, not that she has any just yet). These are Lucy’s favorite lessons. She doesn’t need anyone to tell her to stay far, far away from boys. She doesn’t want them anywhere near her.

“Lucy, can you tell us what’s Proverbs 4:23?”

The only thing Lucy is naturally better at than keeping boys away is memorizing Bible verses.

”Above all else, guard your heart.”

***

1 Corinthians 10:13

Quinn Fabray is fifteen years old when she decides purity is, actually, her least favorite topic in Bible study (Sunday school is for children).

It happens little by little. At first she doesn’t even realize she’s falling behind. In fact, she thinks she’s the best at it. Most of the other girls at Bible study have boyfriends already. They talk constantly about crushes and boyfriends and saving themselves for marriage and how much they struggle to keep their purity promises.

Quinn feels like an example to them all. Look at her. Look at Quinn Fabray. She’s thin and pretty and she never thinks about boys at all. She doesn’t struggle with purity, ever. She’d sooner eat vegan bacon again (gross) than touch a boy. She’s perfect, isn’t she?

You’d think so.

The first thing she notices is a change in tone when they ask her if she likes someone. It’s subtle, but it makes some kind of defense mechanism within her ring the alarm bells.

“You still haven’t found a boy you like, Quinn?”

There’s no admiration in the girl’s voice. No envy. This girl doesn’t wish she was just like Quinn Fabray, and that’s— Quinn is doing something wrong, and whatever it is needs to be fixed before everything else that makes her Quinn comes tumbling down and all that’s left is Lucy again.

“Frannie?” Her sister was born perfect. No surgery or eating disorder needed. Surely if anyone is going to be able to help, Frannie is the person to call. Even if she lives in a whole different state. “Are you listening to me?”

“Yes. Yes, I’m listening. Do not lick your sister’s foot.” Quinn can hear her niece screeching in the background. “Luc— Quinn, it’s not about avoiding boys. You’re not supposed to avoid them.”

“I’m… not?”

“No. No, you— Okay, this is your warning. I will superglue you to the naughty step.” There’s a deep sigh, and (not for the first time) Quinn wonders if Frannie’s perfect life makes her as blissfully happy as everyone says she is. “You’re supposed to want to be with boys. You know?”

There’s something in Frannie’s wording that makes Quinn feel like whole paragraphs will appeaar in the empty space between the words if she points one of those CSI purple lights at them.

“Quinn. Are you listening?”

“Yeah. I think so.”

“You’re just— you’re a late bloomer, okay? I was, too.”

“I… am?”

“Yes. But people will start talking if you keep avoiding boys so you need to find a nice boy you don’t hate and just… you know. Go to a movie or something.”

There’s so much she needs to ask. People will talk about what, exactly? Isn’t she supposed to keep the rose hidden away? Why can’t she just keep going to movies with her friends? Why does this whole conversation feel like it’s in a secret language and she’s lost her decoder ring?

“But Frannie, I don’t get it, what are they going to talk—“

“Sorry. Sorry, Quinn, I’m— listen, Tobias just got home. I have to go. Just play along, all right? Fake it ‘till you make it.”

“Fake wh—“

Quinn stares at the phone for a few seconds after her sister hangs up. She doesn’t think she’s been this confused in her life.

Two weeks later, a girl at Bible study asks her again if she has a boyfriend, and when Quinn says no she mutters “that’s a bit weird” under her breath. For a split second, Quinn thinks she used a different word. A Q word that’s not Quinn and means something like weird but in an entirely different way.

Her mouth goes dry. Of all the sins she’s heard discussed at the dinner table — and there have been many — that one is by far the worst. Jesus saved prostitutes, but he didn’t save any of them.

She has her first date with Finn Hudson two days after that.

He’s nice and Quinn doesn’t hate him and he’s the quarterback so he’ll earn her a few more votes to be prom queen like she’s supposed to be. He takes up too much space and his hand feels uncomfortably large in Quinn’s and his voice is all wrong when he says the right things. But he’s nice and she doesn’t hate him.

By their first month anniversary, Quinn feels like she’s finally starting to understand the unspoken rules of this whole thing. She notices the subtle looks and comments that mean not letting Finn kiss her has crossed the line from suitably pure to weird, and she gives him a good luck kiss before his game. She joins the Celibacy Club for extra ideas on things she’s supposed to struggle with for Bible study. She even uses the time they spend making out (that’s one of the struggles that gives you extra points for stopping) to revise for her exams in her head, so at least it’s not time wasted.

“Stop. Finn!” Quinn pushes him away, wills herself not to shudder at the feeling of his rough, large hand on her thigh. He’s so nice, but he’s wrong, wrong, wrong, and Quinn sits up on the bed and smooths the skirt of her cheerios uniform over her thigh like she’s hoping the familiar feeling of the fabric will erase the other one. “Stop. Remember— remember 1 Corinthians 10:13.”

He stares at her, obviously confused.

Quinn sighs. “He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear.” There’s more to it, but that’s the important bit right now. Finn is nice and Quinn is perfect and she will make sure he is not tempted beyond what he can bear. “Okay?”

Finn nods.

“Okay.” Quinn taps his hand in a way she hopes comes off as affectionate and offers him a tight smile. “Go. I have to shower before Bible study.”

They’ve been dating for almost four months when Rachel Berry barges into her carefully curated life like an unnervingly tiny bull in the proverbial china shop. Finn wants to join Glee club, which makes no sense from a prom king point of view. And he’s been getting close to Rachel Berry, if Santana is to be trusted. Which she… kind of is, most of the time.

And Quinn can’t lose Finn. Finn is nice and she doesn’t hate him, and he always stops when she tells him to, and she’s almost completely used to the smell of his aftershave so she doesn’t feel like taking a shower every time they make out anymore. She can’t start all over again with another boy. She just can’t.

So she confronts this Rachel Berry, as is her right and her duty. And here’s where the trouble starts: she gets it.

She gets it. She gets why Finn would like her. It’s the big brown eyes, she thinks. With long dark eyelashes that don’t even look fake. The soft-looking skin. The slight hint of floral in her perfume. The ridiculous outfits — those ugly soft sweaters and patterned skirts and knee-high socks and the strip of tan skin between the hem of the skirt and the elastic of the socks. The small hands, the delicate fingers, the manicured nails.

Fear has a taste, Quinn will have you know. She knows because she feels it the second she realizes she’s somehow discovered the decoder ring that reveals the true meaning of Frannie’s advice. She tastes fear the very second she stares down Rachel Berry and feels like she’d act just like Finn if she was in his shoes.

That evening at Bible study, she gets to choose the verse to reflect upon. 1 Corinthians 10:13.

“He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear.” Quinn reads out loud from the highlighted paragraph in her study Bible, and for the first time since she was a chubby little girl praying for a pony at Christmas, she actually hopes there’s someone up there listening and willing to help.

“But when you are tempted,” she continues, “he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.”

When Noah Puckerman offers her the fourth wine cooler of the night at the party, she takes it as a sign. This, Jesus can forgive.

***

Proverbs 23:22

Quinn Fabray is still fifteen years old when she realizes she’s been lied to.

Forgiveness is a lie. Hate the sin, love the sinner? A lie. Unconditional love is a lie. It’s all lies. All lies, and she doesn’t have a home anymore.

She lies in Finn’s bed at night and stares at the ceiling and forces herself not to focus on how his light snoring sets her teeth on edge. She doesn’t have a home and she doesn’t have her parents and she figures Bible study and the Celibacy Club are out of the question, too.

She has a baby she can’t keep. She has Finn, who’s nice and in love with Rachel Berry and that makes her jealous in all the wrong ways. She has Puck, who’s more a problem than an asset but at least he’s a boy.

She has her father’s loud, thundering words etched in her brain.

”Honor thy father! Exodus 20:12, honor thy father!”

Her mother’s silence felt just as loud.

And then the kitchen timer ticking down the seconds she had to grab the essentials and leave her father’s home (it was never really hers, was it?) forever, and her mother’s hurried kiss wet with salty tears and her hushed words as she closed the door behind Quinn.

”Proverbs 23:22”

Quinn closes her eyes even if she knows she’s not going to be able to sleep. She can feel her baby kick sometimes, like popcorn. This isn’t the baby’s fault. Poor baby, she figures, being born into this mess.

Proverbs 23:22. Listen to your father who begot you. Quinn wishes she could stop listening to her father in her head. Calling her a whore, telling her she’s condemned. Ruined beyond repair.

A few months later she’s holding her baby girl, ugly and perfect in that way only a newborn can be. Wet with Quinn’s blood and all kinds of gunk (they really should make a bigger effort with the sex ed curriculum at McKinley), her little face too swollen for her eyes to fully open to look at Quinn.

She doesn’t even identify the feeling as love at first. It’s like an uncontrollable wave. Something beyond comprehension. She’d die for every wrinkle on her daughter’s brand new hands. She’d jump into traffic to save every single sticky hair on her little head. She’d kill with her bare hands anyone who tried to keep her from breathing in the smell of pain and life on her skin.

Beth is perfect. She’s perfect and Quinn can’t hate herself because she made her. She made this perfect little baby girl and her father was wrong. She’s not ruined. Just a little broken, but not beyond repair. Her mother was wrong. She doesn’t need to listen to him.

When Shelby comes to pick Beth up a few hours later, Quinn asks for a moment to say goodbye. She apologizes to her daughter and assures her Shelby will be a wonderful mom. And when she kisses her warm little forehead and smells her hair for the very last time, she suddenly remembers the second half of her mother’s verse.

“Listen to your father who begot you, and do not despise your mother when she is old.”

Quinn cries for both her mother and her daughter, and whispers that last part in Beth’s left ear before she hands her over to the woman who will be her mom.

***

Song of Solomon 3:4

Quinn Fabray is sixteen years old when her best friend comes out.

And the ground doesn’t open up to swallow her whole. God doesn’t smite her, their friends don’t shun her.

There’s just a guitar and a song by Fleetwood Mac. And it’s not — and this is the important bit — the first time someone’s used a Glee Club performance as a vehicle to declare their love. Lord knows it happens far more frequently than it should. What amazes Quinn, what has her feeling unshed tears burning at the back of her eyes, is the fact that this is just that. Just another love song. Another two people in love.

Santana is in love with Brittany and that’s that. Their love isn’t worse or better than any other love that’s been paraded around this room. It’s not different. It isn’t lacking. They’re not unhappy. Their relationship isn’t a constant struggle or some deep dark secret best left hidden away.

Two girls, as it happens, can just be in love.

Later that day, when she’s holding Santana through the heartbreak of Brittany wanting to stay with Artie, Quinn thinks of that droopy little rose for the first time since Sunday school. Above all else, guard your heart.

Finn is nice, and he’s in love with Rachel. Quinn doesn’t love him and that makes him perfectly safe. His mediocrity and lack of drive makes dating him the equivalent of choosing the merry-go-round instead of a rollercoaster. Except, of course, for Rachel Berry.

Rachel Berry who seems to know she’s above them all and yet keeps tying herself to human anchor Finn Hudson. Rachel Berry with her big brown eyes that well with tears when Quinn tries to tell her — tries to make her see that she’s so much better than this stupid town and all the stupid boys in it. Rachel Berry who asks why Quinn is so mean like she’s an idiot and blind and stupid and why can’t she listen? Why can’t she understand what Quinn means when she says she’ll be Finn’s wife? Why won’t she look at her and understand? Why can’t she see?

God, she hopes nobody can see.

Quinn feels like she’s on a treadmill that’s just a little faster than she can run. Finn and Sam and Finn again and Rachel freaking Berry and Santana resurrecting Lucy Caboosey like a nightmare from hell that’s somehow less terrifying than this ever-growing feeling in her chest that flares up every time she sees Rachel.

People talking about the future and Quinn picturing her own face in one of those real estate posters on the back of a bench at the park and feeling like she used to when she had morning sickness.

A t-shirt that says LIKES GIRLS in big bold black letters which she hides in the darkest corner of her closet so she can wear Lucy instead.

Her mom wanting her back.

Junior prom and a dress that’s perfect just like her face and her date except he’s wrong. He’s all wrong. And Rachel Berry who just— she can’t— she won’t listen to her, really listen, and the look in her eyes when Quinn slaps her because she can’t take it anymore.

Finn calling her the most beautiful girl he’s ever seen in his life because he’s a dumb boy who doesn’t realize how stupidly, unbearably lucky he is for the way those big brown eyes look at him. Finn calling her the right thing but it sounding wrong, and then Rachel calling her the prettiest girl she’s ever seen and it feeling just right.

Just right.

She’s not prom queen and her mom holds her like she hasn’t since she was a little girl and tells her she loves her anyway. Judy tucks her in and kisses her temple and tells her she’ll be crowned next year. Senior prom is the real one, anyway. She soothes Quinn’s sobs even if she has no idea what they’re for, and when she reads from Quinn’s old book of Bible verses for children, the only one Quinn can think of is Song of Solomon 3:4.

I found the one my heart loves.

***

1 Corinthians 16:14

Quinn Fabray is eighteen years old when Rachel Berry gets engaged.

Not to her.

Obviously.

She wants to shake her. She wants to ask if one slap wasn’t enough. She wants to murder Finn Hudson just so he’ll set Rachel free.

God.

She has Ryan Seacrest’s face tattooed on the small of her back and her hair was pink for five minutes and she tried to steal back her daughter in what she’ll call a momentary loss of sanity but even she knows this is a mistake. She can’t marry him. Rachel can’t marry him.

And the worst part, what keeps Quinn up at night, is that if Finn loved her like he says he does — like Quinn knows she does — he wouldn’t have asked. He’d step aside and let her be the star she is. Can’t he see? Can’t he see Rachel was born to do amazing things? Can’t he see she’s so much bigger than anything he can offer her?

Can’t Rachel see?

Sometimes in the middle of the night she convinces herself Rachel is just as scared as she is. Just as terrified of saying things out loud. Does Rachel wonder why Quinn can’t understand what she really means, too?

Just in case, she decides to ask.

“Were you singing to Finn and only Finn?”

Rachel says yes.

And yet.

Quinn keeps running through the scene in her mind. The look in Rachel’s eyes, the way her hands moved, the tone of her voice. She doesn’t want to go to the wedding, but she decides to go anyway just in case. Maybe Rachel will stop halfway through. Maybe she’ll look at her with those eyes when they ask if anyone knows of a reason why they shouldn’t get married and Quinn will stop this tragedy of a wedding in its tracks.

Maybe she should forget about it. Take Rachel’s answer at face value, admit she lost, and let it go. Maybe she’s the last person in Rachel’s mind on the day she’s going to marry Finn.

Except.

There’s a text. Rachel is thinking about her — wants her to be there — and Quinn, of course, of course, of course is on her way.

When she wakes up in a hospital bed, she can’t move her legs and Rachel is not Finn’s wife.

She should probably take it as a sign. Being hit by a truck while on her way to (maybe) stop someone’s wedding is a pretty clear sign she’s not exactly following God’s plan.

And she does take it as a sign. At first.

There’s Joe and Artie who are even safer than Finn. Yale which will take her far, far away from Rachel and on to a completely different life. Senior year keeping her too busy to focus too much on anything else. There’s physical therapy and her mother’s hyper focus on prom going on overdrive because this is the real one. The big one. The very peak of Quinn’s high school career (the department of admissions at Yale would beg to differ, but Judy Fabray follows her own agenda). Finn again, because he’s always been prom king material and Quinn has a dream to make true.

And then, once again, there’s Rachel.

“Do you not understand what you mean to me?”

The words are right. Quinn is sure Rachel said that word for word in several of her wildest dreams, right before kissing her. But — and here’s the heartbreaking part — the thing is, Quinn does understand. Right there, at that very second, she understands. She understands exactly what she means to Rachel, and she understands it’s simply not the same thing Rachel means to Quinn.

Love works like that, sometimes. It doesn’t always go both ways.

So Quinn lets Rachel go. But first, she gives her her crown. She makes her prom queen. She gives Rachel her dream. And as she watches her dance with someone else, another one of those perfectly memorized verses comes to mind.

Let all that you do be done in love.

***

Psalm 139:14

Quinn Fabray is nineteen years old when she sleeps with another woman for the first time.

It’s Santana, who is her best friend and in love with Brittany, which makes it all feel just short of real and takes the edge off the knowledge that she’s actually going to sleep with a girl.

They dance first, and Quinn doesn’t love Santana — not in that way — but it feels right. Her cheek is soft when it brushes against Quinn’s. She smells like perfume and her hand fits perfectly in Quinn’s.

She likes the way Santana’s breast fits against her palm, the way she kisses her, the sounds she makes. After a split second of trepidation, she discovers she likes the way Santana tastes, too. The way she feels around her fingers. The way she says Quinn’s name when she comes.

There’s a part of Quinn that knows what it all means. She knows how she feels and what she needs to do to be happy, but she can’t. She sees it doesn’t have to be the end of the world. She sees Santana and Brittany and Kurt and Blaine and she understands it’s not that big a deal these days, but she can’t do it.

She can’t.

And so, there’s Biff. Biff who is not nice and she sometimes hates him but he’s not in love with Rachel Berry like Finn was, and he will give her the adult equivalent of a prom queen crown. She’ll get an obscenely large engagement ring and summers in the Hamptons and her children will be called Miffy and Archibald, probably, and won’t her mother be proud?

Won’t everyone envy her?

She’ll be perfect again, like she was a lifetime ago for a brief few months when she was the head cheerleader dating the quarterback and she couldn’t put a face to the name Rachel Berry.

She’ll be Mrs. McIntosh and Quinn McIntosh and she won’t even share Lucy’s last name anymore. And just like she changed when she became Quinn, she can change when she becomes Mrs. McIntosh. She can be someone who never got pregnant in high school. Someone who never had to give her newborn daughter to another woman. Someone who never fell in love with the same girl her boyfriend loved.

And then it all comes tumbling down once again, right there in Lima (where else?) when Biff finds out and looks at her with the exact amount of disgust she deserves and Quinn realizes she’ll never, ever be perfect again. Maybe she never was.

Except for one single beautiful perfect moment when it was just Quinn and Beth in the world. Beth who was absolutely perfect and made Quinn perfect just by virtue of having brought her into this world.

So when Puck asks her for another chance, Quinn forces herself to focus on that. Beth was half Puck and she was the best thing Quinn has ever done. Sometimes, she tells herself, people simply don’t get to be with their soulmate. Sometimes people just get to be with someone who’s nice enough. Someone they don’t hate most of the time. Someone who reminds them of the one perfect thing in their life.

Eleven months later, after a fight outside a wedding chapel in Las Vegas and a returned engagement ring, she stands in front of the mirror in a motel bathroom and looks at herself. Her outside has been carefully built piece by piece. From Lucy to Quinn. Shiny blond hair and a perfect little nose and the proverbial curves in all the right places. It’s all very pretty. Perfect, even, if you overlook a stretch mark or two which she’s made peace with because they remind her of Beth.

She’s rebelled against all that perfectly crafted beauty before. The pink hair, the tattoo, the nose piercing. Anything to distract herself and everyone else from what was underneath.

”You’re the prettiest girl I’ve ever met. But you’re so much more than that.”

Rachel’s words come to mind as she keeps studying herself. What else is she? She’s a very pretty girl. And what else?

It takes her a long time. Minutes pass and she holds the word on her tongue but stops herself before she can let it out.

She’s so pretty on the outside. It took so much work to be this way. Is she really going to ruin it now?

Quinn closes her eyes and thinks about Finn and Puck and Sam and Joe and Artie and her professor from Yale and Biff and Puck again. She thinks about their voices and their hands, the way they kissed her and touched her.

She thinks about big brown eyes and the most beautiful eyelashes. About Santana gasping her name. The strip of golden skin between the hem of Rachel’s ugly skirt and the elastic of her even uglier socks.

“You’re a lesbian.”

She opens her eyes and looks at her reflection in the mirror and is genuinely shocked to see she looks the same. No three sixes on her forehead. No ground opening up to swallow her whole. Nothing’s changed. She’s still herself. On the outside. And she’s herself on the inside, too.

How can that be wrong?

She remembers, vaguely, waking up after her nose job high on all kinds of drugs and barely able to focus her swollen eyes on the people around her. She remembers a blurry shape that looked like her dad and another that sounded like her mom, and a third one she couldn’t place until she heard her voice.

“I hope you’re proud of yourself.”

It was the first and the last time she heard her sister speak to her father in that tone. Quinn had a feeling the only reason she wasn’t raising her voice was the fact that she thought Quinn was asleep.

“It’s for her own good,” her father said, “you’d do the same if your children needed something fixed.”

Frannie’s toddler son started fussing, and she picked him up and held him as comfortably as her gigantic seven-months-pregnant belly allowed.

Quinn watched her sister shake her head, and though her swollen eyes didn’t let her see her face very well, the scoff she heard told her the family eyebrow had definitely made an appearance.

When she realized her sister was walking over to her bed, Quinn closed her eyes and pretended to be asleep just so she wouldn’t be pulled into whatever they were fighting about.

“Take that lollipop out of your mouth, please. Give your aunt a kiss and go get grandma Judy.” The little boy’s lips left a sticky candy mark on Quinn’s cheek.

And then there was just Frannie.

“Oh, Lucy Quinn,” she said in a way that sounded like a sigh. Frannie kissed Quinn’s forehead and tucked a strand of still-brown hair behind her ear, “there was nothing to be fixed.”

Before she left the room, Frannie said one last thing: “Psalm 139:14, dad.”

Quinn knew it, of course. It made her cry then and it makes her cry now, for entirely different reasons.

I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

***Proverbs 4:23

Quinn Fabray is twenty-six years old when Rachel Berry wins a Tony.

She watches from a hotel room in London at an ungodly hour of the night (morning?) thanks to timezones, but she knows she wouldn’t have been able to sleep anyway if she tried.

So she stays up and watches.

When they say Rachel’s name, she feels vindicated. She was right. She was right all those years ago, when she told Rachel she was meant to be a star and do great things far away from Lima and its stupid boys. She was right when she told her she shouldn’t get married because she had dreams to chase. She was right. She was right.

The screen doesn’t do Rachel’s eyes justice, but when she looks into the camera Quinn feels a little out of breath anyway.

Several of her wildest teenage dreams started just like this. With Rachel walking onto a stage to receive an award and Quinn watching in awe of her. And Quinn can’t look away. She knows she should. She should at the very least mute the television because she knows whose name is going to feature in Rachel’s speech, and she knows it won’t be the one in Quinn’s dreams.

Her thumb hovers over the power button on the remote, and then the mute button, and though it’s been what feels like a million years since she’s prayed or read a Bible, she finds herself remembering that one day at Sunday school when the teacher showed them a rose.

“Proverbs 4:23,” she mutters under her breath, equal parts amazed and annoyed she still remembers most of the verses she was forced to memorize. At least they come in handy at trivia nights from time to time.

Proverbs 4:23.

Quinn has broken every single rule she learned as a child. One by one, she’s managed to shatter them all. All except for one. Proverbs 4:23.

”Above all else, guard your heart.”

And she has. God, she’s guarded it so closely if it really was a rose it’d be in a glass case like the one in the Beast’s castle. Finn and Puck and Sam and the rest of them. Santana, even. All the women she’s dated since coming out. She’s never let any of them go anywhere near her heart.

So why can’t she just turn off the TV? Rachel’s already unfolding the (perfectly memorized, Quinn’s sure) speech and Quinn is sitting there like an idiot, waiting to be hurt.

What’s the point in guarding your heart if it’s going to get broken anyway?

And then it happens. Rachel says his name, and it hurts but not in the way Quinn was expecting. It’s a pang of sadness, a lot like the pain she gets in her back sometimes when her body remembers just how much it used to hurt. A phantom pain, almost.

Quinn figures it out as Rachel exits stage right. She’s carrying her Tony and Kurt and Blaine’s baby and Jesse’s ring. And Quinn’s heart. She’s had Quinn’s heart for the last eleven years. And Quinn is so happy for her. She’s where she belongs — on Broadway, making history, proving she’s always been a star. In a different life Quinn would’ve been there in the audience and in the speech.

She wonders where she would have had to change course to end up there and not here, alone in a hotel room half a world away. Maybe if she’d remained Lucy. Maybe if she’d never dated Finn. If she’d never joined Glee Club or given up Beth or been terrified of what would happen if she stopped guarding her heart.

Eventually, Quinn decides the phantom pain of a broken heart is a fair price to pay for everything else. If she was still Lucy, maybe Beth wouldn’t exist. If she’d told Rachel how she felt, maybe Rachel wouldn’t be holding her first Tony award.

With a sigh, Quinn looks at the clock and realizes she only has five hours before she’s supposed to be at her first book signing this side of the Atlantic. Matters of the heart aside, she has a good life. Her novel, where someone who sounds suspiciously like a Lucy that was allowed to exist gets the girl, has become an international sensation. She gets to travel and write and be free in a way she wasn’t even aware she’d been craving.

She likes to think she kept that promise she tried to make by the piano all those years ago. She likes to think she did send Rachel on her way. That she had at least a part in it.

Love looks like that sometimes. Like letting go.

Quinn picks up the copy of her book on her bedside table. The copy she meant to mail to Rachel but then didn’t because it felt like intruding, somehow. Like letting a piece of her into a life Rachel shares with someone else should be Rachel’s choice alone.

In all her book signings and talks so far, there’s one question she always gets asked: What’s her favorite part of the story?

And she always answers the same way: the third page.

She flips to it now, with the sounds of Rachel’s perfect night still coming from the TV, and the sight of the words makes her smile. The real love story begins and ends on the third page.

To Lucy, and Beth, and her. ★

Title: Proverbs 4:23 Fandom: Glee Characters/Pairing: Quinn/Rachel Rating: T Word Count: 5877 Summary:

Written for the prompt 001: Awakening from my femslash100100 Zeros table. Available on AO3 or under the cut.

#faberry #fanfic #unrequited faberry #fanfiction #fic #femslash100100 #zeros #my fic

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