Description: A St. Berry Musical Crackfic. Jesse St. James, home from UCLA on winter break, runs into New Directions, when a hilarious accident renders him unconscious. He wakes up in a creepy fairy land, where all the fairies seem really familiar, and they want Rachel to play Eponine in their staging of the seminal classic Les Miserables. Wait, what?

A/N: Loosely based off of the book The Perilous Gard by Elizabeth Marie Pope. Ok, sort of a lot based off it, other than the fact that the original was set in the 16th century and does not involve musical theatre. This will necessarily depart from the actual things that happened on the TV show, but basically occurs soon after the events of Episode 2.10.

Anyhoodle, our scene opens with Jesse St. James, finally home from his triumphant (interpretation: remarkably undisastrous) first semester at the University of California, Los Angeles, which is in Los Angeles. (Which is in California. (Which is in the U.S.A.)). It was Christmas break, which he was glad for. Not that he'd ever admit it, but college had turned out to be slightly more of a struggle for him than he had expected. While he had always worked hard on his performance skills, everything else in his life had come pretty easily to him: schoolwork, socialization, getting noticed by the right people at the right time. (It was pretty convenient that Shelby had needed a new male lead just as he had entered Carmel High School. He hadn't been "Jesse St. James" yet, either. He had been damn good, but Shelby had seen the deeper potential in him and rebuilt him from the ground up). So having to exert himself in all areas of his life for the first time had been something of a trial. But he had survived.

And now he was back, doing one of the things he loved: giving others the gift of his enormous talent by holding an impromptu performance for homeless schoolchildren. At least that WAS what he had been doing, until the 13 people he least wanted to see in the world (less than 13, he would later note – they seemed to have had some lineup turnover from the previous year), including the individual with the dubious honor of being Number One on that list, a Miss Rachel Berry. They noticed him immediately, but there was no immediate conflict (he still sort of hoped there might be a dance-off later), no shouting, but he could feel more than a few glares aimed at him as they filed in slowly, placing brightly wrapped packages under the somewhat dilapidated fake Christmas tree that was an old standby at the center, bringing them uncomfortably close to where he sat at the piano.

Mrs. Jackson, the program's director, was understandably oblivious to the new tension in the room, and was effusive in her thanks over the donations.

"Things have been so hard this Christmas, what with the economy being so bad. It's so nice to see young people like yourselves taking an interest. Of course," she said, finally remembering Jesse's presence, "we have the very talented Mr. St. James, here, who used to give us weekly concerts here at the center until he went off to college."

"We are happy to help out, of course, while I personally am of the Jewish persuasion, I have always found that the holiday spirit transcends..."

Rachel, of course, was verbose as always, although pointedly avoiding the subject of 'the very talented Mr. St. James,' but even her speech on the merits of community service couldn't drown out Finn and Puck snickering in the background.

"Dude...weekly concerts?"

"Yeah, loser said "it was important to give back.""

Jesse, who suddenly made a point of being very interested in the sheet music in front of him, wasn't sure which made him angrier, the fact that Rachel had repeated to her boyfriend the things he had said to her, or how terrible Finn's impression of him was. Eventually the roaring his ears, just in time to catch the tail end of Mrs. Jackson saying how it would be such an honor to have New Directions perform for them. Jesse, a little angry, and unsettled at the whole affair, lost a bit of his standard composure.

"I can't see how being serenaded by a third place glee club would be much of an honor at all."

Ok, so that wasn't smart. New Directions really, really outnumbered him here, and honestly, he wasn't all that happy about the disappointed way Mrs. Jackson was looking at him. But it was Rachel, our of all the McKinley students who spoke first.

"That. Is. It!" she said, striding purposefully toward his seat at the piano, hands balled into fists at her side, nostrils flaring, "how DARE you say such a thing? After YOUR team won Regionals through chicanery! And trickery! And skullduggery!"

Oh lord, she was already three deep into synonyms: not a good sign.

Jesse stood up to put his height advantage to better use, towering over her, his own nostrils flaring a bit.

"As if we needed to cheat. To beat small-town, unrehearsed talent like New Directions? Oh please. Face it, we were better than you. Yeah, it hurts doesn't it, you put all that love up there on that stage, you just opened up your hearts – but it wasn't good enough. You guys didn't need heart; you needed to be better."

Jesse always enjoyed it when he left Rachel Berry speechless.

He probably should have seen the Christmas tree falling into them, but he was pretty intensely involved in the argument. Mrs. Jackson would later tell him that little Timmy, in his infinite wisdom, had been attempting to come down the stairs on roller skates and a skateboard simultaneously, which, unsurprisingly, ended in disaster: small child crashing into the base of the tree, roller skate flying towards the immediate vicinity of the back of Rachel's skull. It was very quick and hectic, but it basically went like this: the skate hit Rachel in the head, Rachel fell into Jesse, the christmas tree fell into them both, Jesse stumbled backwards, but tripped over the piano bench, Jesse's head hits the floor hard, and everything goes black.

Jesse suspected something was wrong as soon as he began to regain consciousness – the lighting was all wrong, and the air was cool and damp. As his vision cleared, it became more and more evident that all was not right. Rachel was there, looking to be unconscious, but the rest of New Directions, Mrs. Jackson, and the youth center were all gone. They appeared to be in a cave, lit by torches - reasonably fancy torches for, you know, a cave. And standing over them was a small group of strangely dressed people, and at the front of them was a woman who looked disturbingly like his former glee club coach – except with point ears.

Yeah, they were definitely not in Lima anymore.