Prologue: The Crater
Her mind was blank. A still silence hung in the air through the black out, and only seemed to drone on as Rachel regained consciousness, slowly finding the world fading back in.
She opened her eyes, seeing a large, indistinguishable blur of gray below her. All feeling of touch seemed gone, for she couldn't distinguish the texture of the surface she was on, nor could she get over how empty and light her body felt. She took a moment to close her eyes once more, trying to concentrate and regain her senses within her body. Rachel found the quiet to be very uneasy, like it was swarming around her. She couldn't hear any of the passengers, nor the sounds of the train moving.
When she opened her eyes once again, everything began to focus in perfectly. She stood slowly up, trying to maintain her balance, but despite the return of sight, her body still felt quite strange and numb. She exhausted, and her head was throbbing from the pain of an intense headache. Once her stance was perfectly still, she began to look around the area, astounded by what she saw.
The station, which she had departed from in her reluctant trip to New York to chase her dream, was in ruins, and she found herself standing in a crater, looking up at the mess above her. It suddenly hit her, seeing the train completely trashed in the hole she was in and many passengers lying dead in the crater. Somehow, something went off here, like an explosion. Was it a terrorist attack? What had happened? Thoughts were racing through her mind, a million questions needing and craving answers that she possessed none of.
It wasn't just her train, as the whole station was in ruins. If the entire station had been hit as well, that meant that her friends who had all been standing there waving goodbye to her could be hurt. She felt terrified. Why was this happening?
She tried to yell out, to see if any of them would respond, but no audible noise came out. As Rachel put her hands to her eyes and touched them, she realized she had gone deaf. Whether or not it was temporary she wasn't sure, but a sad thought crept into her head that. If she was deaf, what would happen to her voice if she couldn't hear it? Would she still be able to sing?
For the first time since she rose up, Rachel looked at herself and realized that despite some of the numbness she felt in her body, she looked bad. Her white stockings were ripped and she could see small stains of blood, though whether or not it was her's she couldn't tell since she saw no visible wounds, and her red jacket she was wearing was ripped and torn all over the place to the point that it wasn't even salvageable. She began to rub her hand over her hair and on her scalp, discovering no wounds and no blood.
It all seemed like too much at once, and she hunched over, nearly falling from her unstable balance, and vomited. She couldn't tell if it was from the panic, the death all around her and the destruction, or the fact that maybe fate was sending her a sign that she was doomed to forever be in Lima through some sick, cruel joke.
Rachel took a moment to breathe and not to panic. She threw her jacket off and tried to calm down. If what she was seeing was truly there and not some sort of illusion her mind was conjuring up, the train and track had been blown up and created this crater she had to get out of, leaving mounds of bodies lying about that were clearly nowhere near recovering from their fragile state of being deceased, she realized she was the only survivor.
Rachel Berry was in a crater full of bodies of people she never knew and now never would, and for once in her life started to truly fear the idea of being alone, that she may have been the only survivor from the entire station. She looked up around her, trying to find a stable area to climb up from, and began to make her way up. She had to go up, go back up to where the station was and see. She had to be sure herself.
"You're going to get on that train, and you're going to go to New York, and you're going to be a star."
Finn's voice was echoing in her head, and it was the boost she needed. Even though it looked like a steep climb, and her legs felt like jello, she reached out and took a hold with her right hand and began to climb. Rachel Berry was a star, and stars wouldn't give up in a crisis like this; no matter what, she was going to keep pushing on because one fear kept plaguing her mind.
"Without me."
She couldn't bear the idea that Finn Hudson may be dead.
