AN: In this story, Rachel and Finn are in their mid-twenties. Quinn and everyone else from the Glee-verse are their age as depicted in canon. Rachel and Finn are not a couple. They never were a couple. There is no such thing as a Finchel in this story. Consider this chapter the prologue.
Rachel Berry was always the girl who said yes. That scornful, son of a bitch God of her ancestors must have foretold it to Moses on the mountain: There shall be a girl chosen among all those who the Lord your God hath created. She shall come from the tribe of Berry. Such a name will remind future generations of the sweetness of the Jewish people. Yet let her name not deceive! For Rachel Berry shall be plagued by the desire to help others when it would behoove her to turn away from their pleas. She will serve as a lesson to your people, Moses. And let us say, Amen.
Rachel was traversing the misty and hissing streets of Manhattan when that thought bumped into her mind for the eleventh or so time since this ordeal began. This nightmare, this cosmic cataclysm turning the already fragile and weakening particles of her life into ever thinner grains of dust. She was about to collapse right out of existence.
Holding the phone closer to her ear was proving difficult as she maneuvered herself between pulsating bodies that trapped her between them. She wasn't one to shove a shoulder out for leverage. Or to kick clean a clear path. She was as timid in her movements as she was quick with her words.
This was how she managed to continue berating Finn even as she patiently waited for enough wiggle room to launch herself past the latest batch of pedestrians clogging her space. She hoped Finn was paying attention – he tended to drift out of conversations like a dog suddenly losing interest in a toy if you offered it a treat. This was an uncomfortable topic for her. One that made her flinch as if every word she uttered was an actual punch to her sternum.
"I'm certainly glad you don't work in the news business because I've known about her accident for days. I'm honestly surprised this is the first I'm hearing about it from you."
Secretly, she'd been relieved when he'd failed to mention the biggest news story to come out of Lima, Ohio since two elderly gentlemen won the mega-million lottery in 1982. They'd eventually fought over the winnings and…now she was the one losing focus.
"Yeah, I've just been really busy with work and didn't connect it until tonight that you were friends with her sister."
Rachel hesitated as she approached along the avenue directly across from her apartment. She knew if she looked up she'd bear witness to the light beckoning to her from her living room. She let her eyes trace over other buildings. She imagined other lives. What was Finn doing at that precise moment, for instance? Aside from talking to her on the phone.
"We were mere acquaintances, Finn. Definitely not friends."
Rachel heard the faint fizz – the insistent pop – of Finn opening a can of beer.
"Oh, sorry, I don't remember her that well anyway."
She pinched the bridge of her nose and forced herself not to glance at her apartment. She didn't want what awaited her inside those rooms. The distinct cooling of her body and the throbbing within her proved otherwise. She shook her head in a silent attempt at dismissal.
"Didn't know which one well, Quinn or Frannie?"
Finn laughed. "Both, I guess, but I meant Frannie."
It was funny, all those stories that led one to believe that hell was underground. As Rachel let her eyes take in the upper reaches of a nearly dark Manhattan skyline, she understood that hell was the burning luminance behind which stood her living room. And within those confines was the girl who was most likely lounging on her couch with her pink hair tugged back into a tight ponytail. Probably wearing shorts and a tank top even though it was the height of winter and the heat in Rachel's apartment worked intermittently at best.
Finn chuckled again. "Guess your Dads have been keeping you updated. It's pretty intense around here."
"Not every day that a McKinley High School senior gets in a car crash but no one can find the body despite a massive search effort that, to my knowledge, is still being conducted."
Rachel heard the beep of Finn's microwave and it acted as a timer for her as well. She crossed the street and said her goodbye to Finn before he could protest. Whatever microwaveable disaster that constituted his dinner would soon occupy his attention completely and he'd forget altogether that she'd rushed him off the phone.
Rachel stole one final peek upward before she ascended to her own personal hell.