Started my daily ficlets to make the hiatus pass, then decided to keep going with a 2nd cycle, and then a 3rd, 4th, etc through 71st cycle. Now cycle 72!

"Silence Before Songs"
(Older) Rachel & Chloe (OC)
Red series
(no listing yet; sequel to "After the Storm")

It used to be that their car rides to the workshop were one of Chloe's self-professed favorite parts of the day. It was when she would get to sit with Rachel Berry and talk to her, one on one, and sometimes, when the right song came on the radio, she would get to hear her idol sing along, just inches away from her. She would have to resist pulling out her phone to record it all.

That morning, the radio had been left turned off, and Chloe had gotten into the backseat, not saying a word and making it all too clear she didn't intend to change that.

She was still upset at her, and she would stick to that feeling for as long as she felt the need to. Rachel was more than willing to let her work through this at her own pace, provided that once they did get to the workshop, she would cooperate again. She wasn't going to tolerate anyone, not even her, disrupting her sessions.

She couldn't even tell her how she was angry, too, not at Chloe herself but at her father. The two of them had been friends, yes, once upon a time, and the fact that he'd shown up at the workshop to see Chloe had made Rachel feel like maybe this unexpected connection between the two of them had been like fate giving the girl a second chance at the family ties she hadn't had. Rachel could certainly understand the yearning, not simply for an unknown parent but for the blood ties it would possibly reveal.

Rachel had wanted to know if her mother could sing like her, and Chloe had wanted to know if she'd gotten her love of music from her father. They had both wanted something, an answer to fill a hole.

And Chloe's father had deceived them both.

She wanted to tell Chloe how much this had made her angry, too, but it wouldn't have been the right approach. Deep down, the girl still wanted to think she had a shot with the man who'd abandoned her, and Rachel didn't have the heart to take that away from her. Deep down though she knew: he wouldn't come back. She'd felt it in him, the day she saw him, but she didn't want to believe it. He'd allowed himself to see her, and in that same moment he had denied his daughter the opportunity to see him back.

She was going to let Chloe be angry at her if that was what she needed… But then the morning traffic snuck up on them, and they were stuck.

"We're never going to make it on time," Rachel breathed out, reaching for her phone to call her assistant.

"It's fine, I can walk from here," Chloe started to reach for the handle.

"Don't even think about it," Rachel turned to her.

"Why not?" Chloe half yelled at her.

"Because you never know when a car will come at you out of nowhere!" Rachel blurted out, and she could hear the sudden panic in her voice as much as Chloe had heard it, judging from the look on her face. Rachel closed her eyes and sighed. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to…"

"No, I'm sorry, I-I didn't realize…" Of course she'd know, Rachel had thought. It was in the papers, the news… How long was it before she'd let Sophie see those, her father's smiling face printed next to the stories about the accident that claimed his life?

The short exchange had done one good thing: it had gotten them talking to each other again.

"Listen, about today…" Rachel had started. "I hope this situation with us is not going to cause any problems."

"At the workshop? I wouldn't do that," Chloe shook her head. "I came to learn, didn't I? If I didn't care, I wouldn't have come." It wasn't until then that it dawned on Rachel, maybe Chloe wasn't as mad as Rachel thought she was. If she had been that angry, then she could have gotten to the workshop any other way but by riding along with her.

"Right, no, of course, I don't know why I…"

"Nothing's changed about your talent or how much I respect it, or how I think I can learn from it and from you," Chloe went on, and Rachel couldn't help but smile. "What's changed is you," she said then, and now Rachel's smile began to fade, "I know it doesn't seem like much, what you did…"

"That's not it, really," Rachel shook her head. She couldn't say she knew how it felt. When it came down to it, her mother had done everything that had been required of her, for her part in helping her fathers get the child they'd wanted; Chloe's father had chosen to leave.

"I don't know that things can ever be the same. And that's what it is. So, yes, I will be silent around you, and I won't feel the same way being around you, for a while… maybe ever. But when we'll be in that room, I'll be your student, same as I was. I'll learn what you have to teach me, and when it's over, I'll go back home."

She stopped there, but Rachel could tell there was more she wanted to say, maybe the parts where she did want to get better. For the time being, she was upset, and she was going to stay upset. Rachel had promised not to try and force the smile back on her face, and she would hold herself to that promise.

So she looked back on to the road, and when the traffic finally allowed for them to keep moving, they did. For the whole week of rides to and from the workshop, Rachel would wish she could tell the girl in the backseat how much she missed their old car rides, too. It wasn't anything she would tell her, because she knew the power in the words, but the talks they would have, the way the redhead would smile when she sang to the radio, it only reminded her of car rides with Sophie, and this in turn made her realize how much she'd come to see Chloe Clarke as a daughter, how she'd miss her when she'd go back to Indiana, and how it hurt to see her so upset with her.

THE END

A/N: This is a one-shot ficlet, which means that signing up for story alert will not bring you any alerts.
In the event of a sequel, the story will be separate from this one. And as chapter stories go, they are
always clearly indicated as such [ex: "Days 204-210" in the summary] Thank you!