Never asked to feel your halo (Faberry)

41: Falling Either Side of the Line.

All Rachel could think about that night was the pain in her heart, caused by the nose against her neck, those lips on her skin, Quinn's voice in her ear.

It tortured her. It made her cry, it made her want to die.

She thought over their conversations, every single one of them, but mostly their last and it churned within her, burned her, made her feel too much but she couldn't stop it.

She hated her, she hated her, she hated her . . . she wanted her, so badly.

It wasn't even physical, or not solely, she just needed Quinn in her life, she needed to be something to her, she needed to be something to Quinn, but she never would be. She'd never count, she'd never be more than a dirty secret. Part of her wanted to be okay with that, she really wanted to be, but she wasn't.

She could be hidden, but she couldn't be ridiculed. She could be on the side-lines but she couldn't be nothing. She could keep their feelings close to her chest but she couldn't be pushed in it to force her away.

She hated her.

She wanted her.

And she sought for middle ground.

What did she do?

Quinn cried into her pillow, and then she got angry and screamed into her pillow, and then she mixed the two and screamed through angry tears.

Why did everything have to be so stupid?

Why couldn't she just want what she had? Why couldn't she just have what she wanted? Why did they have to be different things?

She'd checked Rachel's Myspace page over and over, had stared like a hawk at her Facebook chat box, and had sent three of Finn's calls straight to voicemail.

She was losing it, at a time when she really couldn't afford to because she was already losing it over so much other stuff already. She didn't know what to do though, there was nothing she could do, and God she felt so sick!

She spent the whole night hovering over the toilet, nothing came up but that made it worse.

She needed Rachel. She needed Rachel, She needed Rachel.

But Rachel hated her.

When the following morning dawned far too early and Break My Stride blasting from her iPod dock threw her eyes open wide, Rachel sat up in bed like Dracula. Her entire night had been spent tossing and turning and it had caught and tangled the sheets around her body, she swung her legs out of bed like an Egyptian Mummy. Sleep deprived and mind-weary but with a morning routine ingrained since the start of Freshman year, she walked to the elliptical like a zombie.

This was it, Quinn had actually killed her but by some torturous plan of the universe she'd been left in her body to experience every painful second of it. She was Rachel Berry, Undead.

Halfway through her workout her body and brain woke up a little, enough to allow some emotion other than disappointment to seep in.

Anger. She could work with anger. Anger would get her through this. Anger would drive her, rage would build her strength back up and the fury would make her invincible to those fallacious charms in the future. Quinn was a dead woman walking, metaphorically of course. She wasn't going to know what hit her until she rolled her crumpled heap of a life over and saw the rear lights of Rachel's life speeding away.

Rachel could ruin her now, do to Quinn exactly as Quinn had done to her and make her school life a living hell. She held all the cards. She knew all of Quinn's secrets. She had the power!