I don't own glee otherwise a few of the guys might never wear shirts -
Vocal Adrenaline is completely made of soulless automatons. That's why they win no emotions getting in the way of business. Because that's all glee is for them business. There are no little assignments that teach life lesions. No days where you just sit back and don't even talk about music. No anger, hate, sadness, disappointment and certainly no place for love.
That's all it comes down to the big secret of how V.A is so good. They just don't feel. They dance until they can't walk and sing until they almost can't talk. Almost because they can't risk losing their voices. If one of them looses their voice their replacement would be on stage before they had even left the auditorium. Andrea was lucky to even be allowed back into V.A after she ran out of the rehearsal to throw up. She had all her solos taken away and was put in the very back. She should have known Shelby expected more from her leads.
Shelby was surprisingly lenient on her and restored her rights as the female lead after only a month. Shelby was either being compassionate or was tired of other girls trying to do the same parts and managing not only to be even more soulless than usual, but sounded so tone deaf that they should have joined the horrible teams from the McKinley sectionals. It was life at V.A and he was the center of it. The rest of them at least had some emotions, yet he didn't. He was Jesse St. James they were all soulless automatons, but Jesse more so than the others. He was perfect no emotions and his show face didn't have a single crack. But that was before.
Before Shelby had somehow heard about the episode in the library. She called him into her office and explained everything about Rachel being her daughter and how much he wanted to meet her. Contrary to popular belief he meet Rachel before Shelby approached him. He had asked her out on a date all by himself. She was shy, timid, quiet, and from what he had heard honest and trustworthy. Pretty much everything that V.A isn't and that's what scares him.
It scares him that they are so alike and yet so different. It's actually kind of ironic if you think about it. She's exactly like him except she has emotions. Yet he has the one emotion that she lacks is the one he has, confidence. He understands about the Run Joey Run fiasco. If he were her he would have done it to. That wasn't the thing that aggravated him about that video. It was what happened when he saw Puck and Finn cast in the same role as him opposite of Rachel. For the first time in a long time Jesse felt. He had felt sadness, betrayal, and jealousy. When they were singing total eclipse of the heart Rachel wasn't the only one fighting tears. He thinks that what scares him the most.
The next week he went on spring break with some of the others from V.A. He spent the week with his face constantly guarded showing no emotion. It felt good to be himself again but he also felt slightly weird. Rachel had dug out all of his emotions and he was having a hard time reburying them. When he got back Shelby told him that she was getting to impatient to wait and gave him a tape to give to her. He told her the truth he was starting to care for Rachel even if he was originally only supposed to seduce…erm befriend her. He didn't know when it happened, but he was falling in love with Rachel Berry. That was when he realized that his time with Rachel was running out.
Rachel had listened to the tape and had eventually met Shelby. Then only a few days later all of his hard work had gone down the drain. Jesse had given up everything Carmel, V.A, and even being emotionless (he's not that ignorant he knows what he's felling are all the emotions he's tried so hard to suppress) and she threw it all down the drain in only a few days. As he holds Rachel while she cries after Shelby's rejection (because no one can not be affected by that) he feels another new set of emotions. Hate, rage, and anger he's mad at Shelby mad at the world.
He's mad that something like this could happen to someone like Rachel. He's mad at Shelby for doing this to her. He's mad at her for making him do this in the first place. He's surprised for a second that part of him is mad at her for making him come back to V.A. He's mad at the world for everything that's happened to Rachel. He's mad the she gets slushied, that she didn't get a mother who actually cared about her, and he's mad that they weren't on the same side to begin with.
He saw the look in her eyes as they sang another one bites the dust. As he feels his show face crack for a second as she stares at him with that look in her eyes he knows that he will be haunted by that look forever and just as quickly as his show face cracked it was repaired. When the younger members of V.A t-p the choir room he didn't. He spent enough time with New Directions to know how much that room means to them. At lunch he and the other senior member are driving over to Aural Intensity with eggs. They were passing the McKinley turnoff when Andrea got an evil glint in her eyes and asked if they could make a pit stop. Maybe it was the way she started looking at him or the fact that she looked like she was about to wet herself in excitement, but he had a feeling that he wasn't going to like what was about to happen.
He didn't want to tell Rachel to meet them, but he wanted his place in V.A more (or at least thought that at the time). He put on a show face and waited for her. When he saw her running to him it was like his world was slowly becoming complete again. She was almost there, almost safe in his arms when it started. As soon as the first egg took air he dropped his show face. He felt as though every single egg that had hit her had physically hit him as well. In the background he can hear Andrea saying something to Rachel, but tunes it out.
Soon it's his turn all eyes are on him and he didn't know what to do. He was stuck he could choose to be brave or a coward. He could choose the lady or the lions. When she met his gaze unwaveringly and told him to do it he had to. As he smashed it on her he said that he had loved her. Through the whole experience he had told many lies, yet that one the one he has just told was the worst he could think of. All he knows is that he will never get the look on Rachel's face as he said it out of his head.
At the end of the day Vocal Adrenaline is filled with soulless automatons, but as he drives away from the pool of broken eggs and the girl he loves holding back the tears that threaten to spill out of his eyes he wonders if he is still soulless Jesse St. James. He wonders if in addition to bringing out his emotions she also brought out his soul. He is Jesse St. James the center of life at V.A, but right now he feels a whole hell of a lot like Jesse.
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