This was all built on the first sentence that popped up in my head while I was browsing Glee fanfics. This was brought on by something Rachel said in the Pilot.
WARNING: Unbeta'd, and this is first draft as well. It's bedtime for me, and Idk when I have time to revise right now, so I posted it. Enjoy anyway!
Rachel Berry resented her parents. As she stood in her drama acting class, in college, she listened to the teacher picking her acting apart. Shredding the hope of the talent she thought she had, and shoved the pieces in the dumpster in the alley beside the building.
That was when the seed of resentment was planted, and she longed to her dorm room, where she would hide under the covers and cry her eyes out until it felt better. Though, she doubted these words would ever sting left.
Maybe if someone had critiqued her acting before, or her singing, or her dancing. They always had something to say about how much she talked, they always shad something to say about her being in Glee, or that her clothes didn't match, or her man-hands or… But they hadn't told her that her talent was mediocre when it came to Broadway. That being the school's musical talent didn't stand for much in New York. Or maybe they did, only that she didn't listen.
Her dad shouldn't have encouraged this, they shouldn't have started this. They should have let her live a normal life, where maybe she would want to be a doctor, or a veterinarian, or a dentist, maybe a kindergarten teacher (or maybe not), maybe a zookeeper. There were so many other things she would have been able to do, but her dads always pushed her to Broadway.
Well, she was on Broadway, anyway. Standing outside the doors as Wicked was playing. She cleaned up after the show. Vacuumed, dusted, picked up trash. When they'd sing her favorite songs she would press her ear up against the door and listen. She'd listen like it was a water source after days in the desert.
When the theatre was empty, and she was alone with the clumsy and too big and heavy vacuum, she'd sing those songs again. The theatre seemed like a sad place without the murmurs of people, and without the singing. She'd imagine the producer of a show walking in as she sang, and he'd be awed by her talent and beg her to play in his show. This never happened.
It killed her to sit there during the show and hear the singing, and know that she might never get there.
She had thrown away her elementary school days, her middle school days and her high school days at something that just didn't happen. It wasn't about wanting, or needing. It was about luck. And she knew by the amount of times she had been slushied that luck wasn't something she had.
After seven months at the theatre she calls her dad and yells into the receiver that he has ruined her life and she hates him. Then she hangs up.
He calls pack ten times, but she doesn't pick up. The fact that she truly does hate them scares her.
Who hates their parents?
..x..
When she was nine both her dads came to her dance recital. She had gotten her first solo, and her dads had been talking for weeks about how proud they were.
Backstage she had thrown up because she was so nervous. What if she forgot her steps, or what if the wrong song played, or what if she tripped? Her dads would be very disappointed, and she hated it when they got disappointed.
In New York she takes Ballet classes. And she practices the basics, especially battement lent, which she has always had problems with, and she gets better at it. She gets really good at fouette rond de jambe en tourant (which isn't as basic), and in the middle of the night when she can't sleep because of all the sounds she silently does pirouettes and pliés.
She meets a man, James. He's older than her and takes dance classes just for fun. He owns a popular café close to one of the bigger Broadway theatres, and invites her there for when she gets off work. She tells him that she doesn't get off until after midnight, but he says he'll open it up again for her.
They sit in the only lit corner in the middle of the night in his café and drink coffee. He tells her about growing up in New York, and she tells him that there's nothing to tell about Lima. Really, she just wants to forget that Lima ever happened.
Sometimes she wishes her mother would have kept her, taken her to New York and let her be what she wanted, let her live through her mother's disappointment so that she would have learned herself. She doesn't tell James about her birthmother, but mention casually that she has two dads.
..x..
When her teacher sighs tiredly as Rachel finishes reading her lines, Rachel knows that this is the last class she will go to. She's dropping out. The teacher goes off on a rant, but Rachel doesn't listen. She thinks about possibilities. Suddenly there are so many of them.
There's a rush of excitement in her, the rush of not knowing where she'll be, where she'll end up and what she'll do. The freedom in the thought 'I'm done' is like wind rushing through her, slamming doors open. And in the middle of her teacher telling her that she should think about the meaning of what she's saying, everything clicks for Rachel.
..x..
She calls her father and tells him that she managed to salvage her life, after all. But she still hasn't forgiven them.
James offer her a job at the café as a singer on Mondays and Wednesdays, and she gladly accepts.
They talk a lot, and she gets to know him, and she likes what she knows about him.
She has no idea what she wants to do in her life, she thinks about it for a while, a long while. For some reason she decides to major in International Relations. She figured that it has a lot to do with talking, and she's good at talking.
For the first time in 21 years she feels completely content and free. And scared absolutely shitless.