She's sitting on the floor of the choir room with tears running down her face when she, Rachel Barbra Berry, realizes something that only makes her want to cry more:

Weak is now a word she can frequently use to describe herself.

All because of a boy that gives her the day of light when it suits him, throwing her away like a piece of trash when he gets bored with her never disappearing love of Broadway and her unavoidable ramblings. His name is doodled on every single page of the book sitting on the tile floor beside her and she doesn't know if she wants to open it or not. There's a part of her that wants the pain that will come from reading his name over and over again, because she's desperate to perfect everything; even wallowing in self pity and swimming in a puddle of tears caused by heartbreak.

But there's this one voice in her head - far too soft to make a difference but loud enough to make her stop and think for a second - telling her that she needs to get up and find a trash can to throw the book in. Like he had done to her feelings, like he had done to her heart, like he had done to the future she had seen them share in her dreams.

Just throw it away like it doesn't matter because you don't matter to him. You never fucking mattered.

The little whisper at the back of her mind is showing her a glimpse of the light, but at the same time it's pulling her further into the cold darkness. Only because she wants to matter to someone, to anybody. The back of her head hits the leg of the piano she's sitting in front of and her eyes are closed and she's back to dreaming.

Dreaming has always been a distraction for her harsh reality, a way to escape when everything got to be a little too much. In the dream world she created, she's needed because she is loved, not because she is talented. She's loved because her heart's a prize that someone wants to win and not because her vocals have won someone a prize. She's kissed and touched because Finn wants to show her how much he loves her, not because he wants to get himself some kind of fix to have the bulge of his pants vanish.

She loves the golden painted walls of the world of her dreams, and the safety and security of knowing that she is appreciated for both her voice and her heart. She loves knowing she is loved for everything she is, even the things she doesn't like and everyone in the real world hates about her.

Acceptance, she thinks, I need it more than I need applause.

A hand rushes up to wipe away the dry tears sticking to her cheeks when she sees the door swing open. She isn't fast enough to at least make an attempt at freshening up and she's too afraid to look up from the sneakers her gaze is fixed on, but she knows the eyes staring down at her can see everything.

"Rachel," his voice is kind and dripping with concern, but it isn't the voice she wants to hear. "Are you okay?"

I've been sitting on the floor for the past hour crying my eyes out, Finn got back together with Quinn and no one's bothered to check up on me until now. Yes, I'm doing wonderfully and you?

She sort of wishes she was capable of covering up her true feelings and emotions with anger and hatred for the world around her, like so many females she came into contact with day in and day out, but she wasn't any of them. She was Rachel, 'put my heart on the line and hope for the best' Rachel, 'romance is one of the greatest forces on this world and I want it, I believe in it so much it hurts' Rachel. There was a large chunk of her that didn't want to be Rachel any longer. It seemed treating men like dirt attracted them to you like flies (and vice versa, if the Finn and Rachel saga was anything to go by) and people seemed happier in those situations, even if they all ended badly.

Temporary happiness was better than loneliness in her books, and she vowed never to rewrite what she had been written because that applied to she and Finn and they were destiny. She wasn't going to be the one to tamper with destiny, not when she didn't have the strength to challenge it any longer. Not after it had knocked her down so brutally.

"I'm fine," she whispered, her voice raspy and worn and torn.

Scrambling off the floor, she finally gathered up the courage to look at his face, but she kept her eyes from meeting his. She immediately noticed the slight downwards curl of the corners of his lips and the wrinkle between his eyebrows. She doesn't have the energy to tell him what the problem is, even though he probably already guessed, and she makes a dash for the door when she sees his lips part.

His unspoken 'want to talk about it?' turned into a 'where are you going?', with only the first word making it out of his mouth and into the open air before she was out of the room, into the empty hallways, and heading home. He doesn't go after her because she isn't his to chase after, so he just stands awkwardly in the front of the door and looks piano she was sitting against.

She hopes he'll spot the book on the floor (he does), she hopes he'll be curious enough to open and flip through it (he is), she hopes he'll get the answer to the question she ran away from in the margins of the pages (he already knows the answer, she knows he does too) and she prays he doesn't know she left her book there on purpose because him giving it back will be one of the most uncomfortable moments of her life (he knows her plan, all too well, figured it out the minute he saw the star covered book on the marble tile but he'll lie and act as though he doesn't because he gets why she did it and he doesn't want to hound her for information, or bombard her with the questions filling his mind).

It's funny how she didn't realize he was standing at the door the entire hour she was in the choir room, watching her cry but saying nothing because he couldn't find the right words, because he didn't feel he could comfort her as much the silence. It's strange how he was the only one who scolded the tall jock for his actions a while after he saw his and the blonde strolling down the hallways, hand-in-hand, like they had never broken apart. He hates how he couldn't pluck up the courage to make an effort to comfort her a little sooner.

No, he isn't doing as horribly as she is and perhaps he cares a little too much but she needs a pillar and he's the only one who'll see through her show face the next day, and the day after that, and the day after that. He's the only one who's prepared to carve through her thick walls of mock happiness, stubbornness, protectiveness and denial, just to show her how much he cares when he shouldn't be caring at all.

Acceptance, he thinks, she needs it more than she pretends to need applause.