A/N: Okay, so this is a little angsty piece that just would not leave me alone. It's vaguely Rachel and Jesse, but like I said, watch out for the angst: it bites. Let me know what you think.
When she hears that glee club has another year, she knows she should be happy. No, she should be totally freaking ecstatic but there's something missing. There's no desire to compete anymore because everyone knows they didn't place. Everyone knows they failed to win; she failed to win. And she's not sure she can take anymore failure, because every time she fails, she swears another piece of her heart shatters into nothing. And at every subsequent competition or performance – Mr Schue thinks they should get in as much practice as possible – her drive is virtually non-existent and her performance just as flat. Her voice is never flat though; she's still a professional and a perfectionist at that, and she knows the show must go on even if she doesn't really want to.
She still smiles in all the right places, winks to the audience and holds clammy hands of her teammates, but it's not the same. There's no spark, there's no life, there's just sound. Sound and movement and blindness. Because she's realised something. She's realised that she used to perform because she wanted people to notice her. She wanted to be so talked about, her mum – her long-lost mum – would hear about her, and come and find her, and tell her that she's loved. Because although her dads have done the best job they could, sometimes a girl just needs her mum.
And she wanted to be the girl that one boy – one equally talented, and beautifully looking boy – would fall for and after Jesse came, broke her and left her high and dry, she's not so sure she wants that anymore. So now when she performs, she wants it to be the others who are noticed, who are pushed to the front whilst she hovers behind, knowing full well she could take them all with the power house that is her voice but deciding that a silent victory is for the best. She had waited so long for those scenarios to come true and somehow, Shelby and Jesse were counterfeit versions. They screwed her over and made all that waiting and longing so very pointless. All her life she'd been waiting for someone to watch her, just her, and when they did, it turned out they didn't see her, not really.
Shelby saw Rachel as the baby she gave away, not the beauty she is today. And Jesse, he saw her as a challenge – a pretty challenge – but a challenge nonetheless. And so she's given up with wanting to be watched and decides she'd rather be wanted.
But first she's got to find someone to want her, so for now she'll settle for her dads, who still want to hear about her day at school, and her plans for the future and how they'll be there every step of the way, metaphorically holding her hands.
Because they know as well as she does, metaphors are important because real life? Real life isn't all it's cracked up to be.
(In fact, it's worse.)