A/N: tumblr prompt: 100 words on Rachel's star. Ran away from me a little, as you can see =P
NYADA is ruthless. If she had thought that Lima and the endless teasing that she had went through there was hard, it's still nothing compared to the cold and calculating way the students here tear each other down. If she's being honest with herself, some days it feels like she's living in a world full of other Rachel Berrys, people exactly like her. Ambitious, talented, driven, and conniving enough to do whatever it takes to be the star, to be the one in the spotlight. NYADA can get lonely. New York gets so very lonely without the two most important people in her life, without the friends she learned to make, and the family she left behind, and sometimes, all she wants is to go home.
She has a telescope in her room. A small one she found in a second hand shop a few blocks away from her dorm about three weeks after she moved in. It cost an arm and a leg, but she knew when she saw it, sitting there among all those things that other people no longer want, she knew that it was worth every penny. She learns to read the stars, learns to chart one very specific coordinate. And when it's dark at night, and the New York skyline is too polluted to have anything worth seeing with the naked eye, she climbs up five flights of stairs up to the rooftop, her trusted telescope in hand, and she finds him.
Finn Hudson.
"It's your own star…I named it Finn Hudson. Because there's already a star named Rachel Berry and she's right here on earth and she's brighter than any of those stars up there. So I just wanted to make sure that whenever she feels lonely, she can look up in the sky and no matter where I am, she can know that I'm looking down on her."
She misses the warmth of home, of loving, beautiful whiskey brown eyes, dimpled smiles and a touch that could make even the coldest nights feel warmer. She misses Finn. Sometimes, sometimes it's easy to forget how she stands out, easy to forget what makes her special. But he's always there, at the back of her mind (He never leaves. He never can.), leading her on, giving her strength because Finn believes in her, and she believes in him, and if she's his star, then she'll do whatever it takes to shine for him.