The air was cold and wispy.
Rachel should have known something bad would happen today; she ignores it. New York was amazing and beautiful. Summer vacation had never been better. She had never been better. For the first time in her life she felt alive.
Its midnight and Rachel's being oh-so-rebellious going to a concert in Times Square. The clocks chime and she runs. Runs to get back to her hotel before her fathers' find out. Runs to not get caught. Runs because…it felt so freeing. Rachel's been running a lot and she doesn't care, besides its good for exercise.
She runs down the street two blocks away from her hotel when she falls to the ground. A bright yellow taxi slams its breaks but it's too late. The cool hard metal hit her like thunder and lightning.
A bloodcurdling scream filled the air. Limbs flying everywhere; blood spilled across the street. The lights were getting hazy. Rachel had a morbid smile. She was finally getting her tragic dramatic death that she had envisioned... this wouldn't do. How could they write a biography on her if she was already dead?
The darkness was fading over her now. The lights were getting harder and harder to see. The promises of Broadway and a future in New York began to fade away. Succumbing to the darkness she closed her eyes.
As she lay on the road splayed like road kill she heard sirens and screaming. She felt tears on her skin. It seemed fitting. Dying and people begging for her to stay; didn't they know she was the drama queen?
The darkness consumed her. She embraced it with welcoming arms. It was time to leave. She was going home.
She wakes up in a room of white attached to wires as she sees two men crying holding her hand.
They're squealing and giving her hugs. They tell her that they never gave up hope. They are happy she is okay.
"We love you baby." They said with so much love and passion that only a father could have for a daughter.
"Who are you?"
The doctor plays games with her.
Memory games. She's not a child.
She knows her name, and what year she was born in.
She doesn't remember any life stories. She doesn't remember her dreams, hobbies, talents.
She doesn't remember her family.
She doesn't remember anything besides facts.
The doctors continue playing their little game with her. The result never changes…she always loses.
She overheard Doctor Ritchie whisper to her "fathers" one day:
"She'll never get her full memories back again."
She never tells, but some days she remembers cruel names, pornographic pictures, and slushies' thrown on her skin.
Leroy and Hiram Berry were suffocating.
"Rachel don't you remember?"
"Oh you love this! Broadway is your dream!"
"You only like Broadway musicals!"
"You have a boyfriend named Finn!"
"Why are you wearing all black? You abhor the color black!"
"Sweaters and skirts are what you love to wear!"
"Don't you remember them? They're in your Glee club!"
The questioning is annoying. Her teeth begin to grate as she holds in her anger. She hates this. Her so called parents won't answer any of the questions she wants to know.
"Who is my mother? "
"Why isn't she here?"
"You say everyone loves me but why do I remember being bullied?"
She never asks. She just nods her head and pretends to go along with what they say. Rachel wants them to leave and never come back. She hates how vulnerable, confused, and irritated they make her feel.
Sometimes she just wishes she never survived.
They take her home a month after the accident.
"Look honey, this is home." Her fathers would stress to her like she was one years old.
The house is cool. It's big and apparently has a pool in the backyard.
Then she goes inside.
Bombarded with pictures of a time she doesn't remember. Pictures capturing memories of a happy family. Memories she will always forget.
"You found the pictures! Oh I love this one! You cried for two hours because you got second place in the Lima Little-Miss Singing Competition!" Ler—Hiram tells Rachel laughing along with Leroy at a joke that she has no clue about.
She stares at them blankly.
"What's a Lima Little-Miss Singing Competition?" she asks.
The laughter is silenced in a blink of an eye. Mouths drop and eyes widened.
They gawp at her for what feels like hours.
"It's a singing thing…never mind." Hir-Leroy stumbled out.
They stop reminiscing picture after picture as they show her around the house.
She hates the stares of her "fathers" and the pictures screaming, pleading for her to remember.
She feels like a stranger in her own home.
She cannot stand her room!
It looks like a place where Strawberry Shortcake and Holly Hobbie come to hook up.
The cruel thought pops into her head. She thinks someone's told that to her before.
She reminds herself to find new friends.
She feels like she's a child in this room and she cannot stand it.
She tears down all the trophies, posters, and those ridiculous gold stars off of her walls.
She rips them up and throws them in the trashcan.
She starts to feel a little better.
Her diary becomes her best friend as it told her the tales of the other Rachel.
She cannot believe who she was before the accident.
The other Rachel was selfish and conceited.
The other Rachel had an unhealthy obsession with Finn.
The other Rachel thought she was friends with people who were cruel to her.
The other Rachel believed too much in her dreams.
The other Rachel was oblivious to the treatment she received at school.
The other Rachel let others walk all over her and get away with it.
The new Rachel wasn't going to let that ever happen again.
Her "fathers" had lied. Finn had broken up with the other Rachel the day before she went to New York. The other Rachel had hope that Finn would realize the mistake he was making by going back to Quinn.
This Rachel… the new and improved Rachel, Rachel 2.0 was stunned and ashamed at this behavior.
That asshole would get what he deserved.
"Karma is a bitch, and he's coming for you Mr. Hudson."
The world is suffocating around Rachel 2.0.
Her "fathers" keep throwing comments and memories down her throat and she cannot stand it.
She asks for permission to leave the house and smiles wildly at the credit card she discovered in her wallet.
It's time for change.
She runs to the paint store and gets lilac and black paint for her bedroom; a coffee color for her bathroom.
She runs to the linen store (not Sheets-And-Things) and picks out gothic vintage bedroom bed sets; she gets a nice bathroom set too.
She runs to an antique furniture store and buys the best furniture she can find.
She returns back to the Berry house and begins to paint.
It's freeing. She thinks she's found a new hobby.
It takes a couple of days to get the room together but once it's complete she is so…proud.
She doesn't believe the other Rachel ever felt this emotion. She created it…it was all Rachel 2.0's.
It truly looks like a vintage gothic bedroom you would find in an old film.
The bathroom looked like a wish room. It had black and white pictures of the world. Her favorite part was the map with strings and push pins indicating where she wants to go.
The other Rachel only focused on New York. That was about to change.
Rachel 2.0 showed Leroy and Hiram her room and they burst out in tears of shock and utter devastation.
"What was wrong with it before?"
"You loved this room!"
"You swore that you would never change it in your entire life!"
Rachel 2.0 has to hold herself together before she can scream.
"I'm not her!"
After Rachel 2.0 redid her room, Leroy and Hiram started to push harder and harder the dreams of the old Rachel.
If she had to sit through one more viewing of old Rachel's performances she was going to lose it.
She's seen the YouTube channel; she knows what the world thinks of her: She sucks.
She nods along to their fantasies and thinks of ways to escape their delusions.
After Leroy and Hiram force her to wear that god awful dog sweater and plaid short skirt she puts her foot down.
When they are at work, she throws all of her clothes in trash bags and drives them to Good Will.
For the first time in weeks she smiles.
She goes to the vintage shop and gets loads of clothes from retro fashions, jeans, and dresses.
She changes into one of the new outfits she bought before she walks out the store; old Rachel's outfit is thrown into the trashcan.
She starts to feel like a new person.
When she enters the hair salon she tells the hair dresser she wants change, and that she's into retro fashion now. All colors, cuts, and styles were all negotiable.
The hair dresser just smiles and begins to cut away. Rachel 2.0 feels the hair color and tin foil rustling around and she grins.
The hair dresser was interesting. She chatted away about indie bands…but most of all she talked about photography and film with passion, along with canvases and paint; pencil and paper.
Rachel 2.0 stores away the information in her head for another time.
It's hours later when her hair is finished…and it is beautiful.
It's red. Not fire engine red. It's all different types of red. Its auburn red, it has some bright red, and it has some strands of yellow.
She has bangs too, side swept.
Her hair has been put up to look like a pin up girl.
Rachel 2.0 looks like an entirely different person; she can't help but think it's a good thing.
The hairdresser, whose name turns out to be Mandy asks her name.
Rachel 2.0 hesitated for a second in thought.
"Rae. My name is Rae."
Before coming back to the house she made her way to the camera store. She found what she was looking for.
It was a big, bulky, black camera. It was perfect.
She bought it and walked out of the store grinning like a fool.
Rae took it out of the box and began to take pictures.
It was amazing. The world was a beautiful place, now that she thought about it.
Leroy and Hiram start to scream the minute they see Rae.
"Rachel Barbra Berry what is this atrocity!"
"What are you wearing?"
"You died your hair! You swore up and down that you would never die your hair!"
"You are letting down your Idol Barbra! You are changing parts of who you are!"
"Ever since that incident you haven't been the same!"
"You need to get your priorities in order Rachel Berry!"
Rae glares at them before grabbing her camera and storming out the door.
"My name is Rae…and I'M NOT HER!"
Pictures become her hobby. She bikes down to Lima Heights and begins to take photographs.
A child jumping in the air, a man sleeping in his car, a dandelion being ripped apart, a cat leaving its litter.
She thinks she's found her passion.
The people down in Lima Heights aren't mean to her.
She's just Rae.
"Rae can you take a picture of this?"
"Rae, you're a lifesaver!"
"Rae you're pictures are amazing!"
"Rae these should be published in a magazine!"
"Rae…we love you."
It's the first time someone's ever told Rae that they love her. Leroy and Hiram like the idea of the old her…she's not okay with that.
She's nothing like Rachel Berry, she's the exact opposite…and she loves every moment of it.
Rae's painting a picture in her room with this indie mix that Anita from Lima Heights gave her blasting from her stereo when Leroy and Hiram burst through her door.
They were a little mad when she had painted it with her original designs.
Leroy and Hiram tell her that school starts tomorrow, and handed Rae her school schedule.
They leave after giving her a stare of longing, guilt, and resentment.
(She's not their little girl anymore. She's not Rachel Berry anymore. She's Rae. Just Rae.)
She looks at her schedule for two seconds before calling the school (they'll change her schedule…Figgins knew about her forever amnesia).
She changes advanced classes to regular, and dropped the period for Glee club, Spanish 3, and the extra science credit.
She signs up for photography, art, and home ec instead.
She continues on her painting to depict the horrors of the universe.
It's seven in the morning and she's got forty minutes to get ready and to school.
She smirks at the thought that the old Rachel would have had a heart attack; Rae doesn't have that problem.
Her makeup takes the longest as she coats on the foundation, blush, mascara, eye shadow, and lipstick.
She puts her hair into the way that Mandy had done on her first hair cut as Rae.
She puts on her ripped skinny jeans, her vintage t-shirt that promoted partner dancing, her black converse and ray bans on.
She skips down the stairs grabbing her leather brown satchel bag before grabbing a banana.
Leroy and Hiram are standing at the counter holding out a protein shake with excitement for her.
"Rachel baby…don't you want your protein shake. You used to love these every morning." Leroy pointed out.
"Sorry Leroy…but no." she states plainly as she walks around him and grabs the water bottle out of the fridge.
"Young lady! What are you wearing? The Rachel I knew wouldn't have dressed like that! She certainly would not have disrespected her fathers! She would have taken the shake gratefully and would have called your father daddy not by HIS FIRST NAME!" Hiram yelled back at her as she began to walk out of the door to grab her bike.
They took her car away a month ago (they realized she was done playing along to their fantasies.)
"I'm not your little girl! I'm not Rachel fucking Berry! My name is RAE!" she screamed over her shoulder as she climbed onto her bike.
"WHAT DID YOU DO TO MY BABY!"
"She died after getting run over by a car!" Rae shouted as she peddled off into the distance ignoring their cries.
The old Rachel is dead and she's never coming back.
Note:
the sequel will be coming soon :)