Falling Slowly

Quinn Fabray wasn’t stupid. Sure, she was pregnant, but just because she was carrying a baby didn’t mean she was no longer carrying a brain. She rolled her eyes. It was so obvious that there was unresolved tension, or something like that—Quinn was an ex-cheerleader, not a shrink—between the new girl and Rachel’s oddly good looking boyfriend. (Sometimes Quinn wondered how Man Hands scored a guy like him, but then she remembered how high maintenance they both were. She stopped caring after she got to that point.) Not only was the tension obvious, it hung around the air, thick and heavy, making Quinn feel like she was being dragged down by it.

Her shoulders drooped a little as she tried to relax. The girls were about to perform their number, and she didn’t want to be tense.

“Gabi,” she heard Mr. Schuester ask, “why aren’t you up there with the rest of the group?”

Quinn turned to face Gabi. She tilted her head to the left and slightly pursed her lips. Why wasn’t Gabi up there with them?

“Mr. Schue, I’m really sorry, but I just can’t do GaGa.”

Quinn dropped her jaw. Couldn’t do GaGa? What was she, a boy or an alien?

“I—I don’t think I understand, Gab,” Mr. Schue shook his head. “The assignment for the week was to a GaGa number.”

“I know, and well—I just prefer ballads, I guess…so,” Gabi took a deep breath, “I was wondering if I could do a number on my own? This way I’m still completing the assignment without having to compromise myself.”

“I personally don’t see how performing a GaGa number would be compromising yourself,” said Rachel snobbishly. “I mean you already decided to not dress the part. A good performer takes shortcut whereas a true performer can pull of anything. Just because you hate or are scared of something doesn’t mean you can just completely avoid it. You stand up and face the challenge, head-on. The real world doesn’t always work the way you want it to. Sometimes you have to make sacrifices to make things happen.”

Quinn was puzzled when she saw Jesse go rigid at Rachel’s words, and she was even more puzzled when she saw his eyes dart to Gabi’s face.

“I’m not trying to avoid anything, I just really don’t like Lady GaGa. She’s just not my style, okay? Back off,” said Gabi.

So much for being timid and shy, thought Quinn. Gabi’s tiny figure beamed off rays of anger and something else. Quinn couldn’t put her finger on it, but she definitely could tell that Rachel’s little speech made something in Gabi’s mind tick.

“I’m just saying, you shouldn’t be exempt or allowed special privileges. We’re a club, Gabrielle. We function as one,” Rachel pointed out. “It wouldn’t be fair if one person could do whatever he or she wanted to do, right?”

“I’m still doing the assignment.” Gabi’s jaw was clenched and she looked like she was ready to walk over to Rachel and punch her in the face. “I’m not asking for special privileges, I just don’t want to do the song that you guys chose. I understand how a club works, thank you very much; I’m not brain dead. Maybe you need to get over the fact that not everyone wants to do things your way.”

Quinn could definitely agree with Gabi’s last statement.

“Well if you know how teams work,” Rachel started, obviously annoyed, “you should understand that you performing a number alone does not constitute what a team stands for.”

“Girls, girls, girls!” Mr. Schuester finally cut in and interrupted their argument. He raised his arms, signifying that Rachel and Gabi should both wave their white flags and cease-fire. Neither of them looked like they wanted to consent. Rachel still had that usual, haughty look on her face, and Gabi’s face told Quinn that she wasn’t ready to retract her claws. “Please, stop. Gabi—you can perform your own number, but just this once. Rachel—just, calm down. Please. We’re all a family here, okay?”

“Sorry, Mr. Schue,” said Rachel.

Gabi glared at Rachel and stormed off.

“Okay,” Mr. Schue sighed. “Let’s get started, shall we? Girls? Kurt?”

The music started playing, and Quinn stopped caring about the Gabi-Rachel drama. Instead, she focused all of her energy on the song, choreography, and not tripping during the performance—though the latter of the three was the one she gave the most attention to. Quinn was smiling. She hadn’t had this much fun since Sectionals! She lifted her head to see the boys’ reactions, and saw that they all looked bored, minus for Jesse. Of course they all looked bored. Jesse, however, looked worried.

Sadly, Quinn found herself not caring and she was about to turn to look at Mr. Schue when she noticed Jesse glance around the room inconspicuously. This sparked her attention. He then got up from his seat and left the auditorium. Quinn was curious, to say the least.

She glanced around to find Gabi and noticed that she was still gone.

It didn’t take an idiot to piece everything together. She may have stopped caring, but that didn’t mean she stopped watching. Quinn Fabray was as perceptive as they came.

---

Gabi sat alone in the choir room, trying not to fly off the handle, but she could feel her anger boiling up and she just couldn’t control it anymore. She got up and kicked over a chair, then balled her hands into fists. Who gave Rachel the authority to tell her what she could and couldn’t do? What did Rachel know about sacrifice? Sacrifice was practically Gabi’s middle name! She had sacrificed so much ever since Elisabeth—

“Are you okay?” asked Jesse, interrupting her train of thought. He closed the door behind him and locked it shut. “I could tell that what Rachel said about sacrifice upset you.”

“Go away,” she snarled. “I don’t want to be near you.”

“ If you don’t want to talk about Elisabeth,” he said over her voice, “we can talk about something else. Your mom, maybe? Your dad? Your grandmother?”

“I already told you, Jesse. I don’t want to be near you. Not being near you entails not talking to you about what goes on in my life. It’s none of your business anymore.”

He got closer to her. “Gabs, please don’t do this. I told you, I know you. I know your story. If you’d just talk to me, things wouldn’t be as bad as they probably are; I could help you fix things. You’d be happy again, but you refuse to allow yourself happiness. Rachel was right; you are running away from something—your ability to live for yourself.” He took her hands in his. Gabi hadn’t noticed Jesse get that close to her. She inched away from him, but he grabbed her. “Don’t push away the one person who cares the most—”

“Don’t tell me that you care the most about me, Jesse St. James!” she snapped. “I know what I’m doing with my life, whereas I can’t say the same for you. What are you doing here at McKinely, Jesse? Spying for Shelby? Gonna go break your girlfriend’s heart once Regionals comes along? I’m not stupid. I didn’t forget how things work at Vocal Adrenaline. You guys play dirty—you’re all foul people, and you’re like, the little leader of the entire gang.” Gabi glared at him. He looked so hurt by her accusations, but she didn’t give a damn. She was still so angry from Rachel’s words, and she felt so betrayed that Jesse took her side. “You may be the only person who really does care about me right now, but that doesn’t mean it can’t change.”

“What are you doing with yourself?” asked Jesse. “This isn’t my Gabi. What happened to you?”

“Like I said before, people change,” she said bitterly. “Now leave me alone. You don’t understand what I’m going through.”

“Yes I do, Gabi,” he sighed exasperatedly. He ran a hand through his hair and gave her a look that said: What the fuck are you talking about? “Don’t let the fact that I’m dating someone else get in between our friendship—”

Dating someone else. Gabi was fuming. He always had to bring it back to himself, didn’t he? Of course, he did. He was Jesse St. Freaking James. “Get away from me,” she gritted. “You don’t know anything. You don’t know what I went through, living alone with my deranged mother, and my power hungry grandmother! You don’t know! So just do me and you both a favor, Jesse,” she spat out his name like it was something disgusting, “just stop talking to me, and leave me alone. I don’t need to deal with this anymore. You wanna talk about friendship? Maybe you should stop looking out for Number One all the time. If there’s one thing I learned about you, it’s that Jesse St. James only looks out for one person, and that person is himself.”

---

It was three in the morning and Jesse’s phone was ringing.

“What?” he snapped vehemently after he opened his phone. “What could you possibly want at three in the fucking morning?”

“Jesse,” the voice cried, “Jesse, I had that dream again!”

He softened right away. “Gabi, it’s only a dream,” he told her quietly. Gabi only sobbed harder into the phone. “It’s not real, baby. It’s not real.”

“But it felt so real,” she sobbed. “I could feel her hair, Jesse! I could hear her voice!”

“Gabi, Elisabeth is gone…you have to accept it. It’s not your fault, either. It was an accident. You were only seven, for Christ’s sake! It wasn’t your fault!”

“But I didn’t save her! It is all my fault; if I’d just listened to her, if I hadn’t been so stupid, she’d be here now and I wouldn’t be having these nightmares! I wouldn’t have to do all this stupid theatre work; I wouldn’t have to work this hard to keep her alive inside of me! You know why, Jesse? Cause she’d be here!” Gabi was practically screaming into the phone. Her voice was cracking and she hiccupped after every word.

“That’s a lie, and you know it. You’re in theatre because you love it, not because of Elisabeth.”

“Did you know,” she choked, ignoring his comment, “that every time I open my mouth to sing, I think of Elisabeth?”

“Gabi, you need to stop this,” he said. He needed to calm her down before she did anything stupid.

“No!” she said fiercely. “You need to listen to me, Jesse. My grandmother keeps pushing me to audition for all these plays, all these musicals, and all these schools. She told me that I have to do this—for Elisabeth. My mom still calls me Elisabeth when she’s in one of her moods. My father—he can’t take it anymore. Did you know that he’s been cheating on her for over a year now? He’s been cheating on her; he’s been cheating on us. If he’d just listen to me and get her help, this wouldn’t be happening. Oh God, why is this happening, Jesse?”

“I can’t make her come back, Gabi,” Jesse spoke slowly. “I’m sorry, but I can’t. The only thing I can do is help you learn how to forgive yourself and move on. You have to move on…you can’t keep paining yourself like this. It’s not healthy for you—”

“I’d rather feel pain than nothing at all. It’s the least I owe Elisabeth,” she interrupted before hanging up.

Jesse exhaled heavily. He wasn’t going back to sleep anytime soon.