Title: Turning Thirty
Author: DarkRose1902
Fandom: Glee
Genre: Angst, Family
Rating: K
Warning: mean!Finn (should that be a warning?)
Spoilers: minor, up to latest episodes
Summery: A look from Rachel's' POV at where the choices in life can lead a person.
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters you recognise but do own the ones you don't. This is my way of loving them.
Rachel was thirty tomorrow and as she sat down in a rare moment of solitude she wondered how she had gotten where she was. Less than twelve years ago she had been getting ready to attend Juilliard, one of the best art colleges in the world, after graduating high school and winning regionals two years running. Her perfect boyfriend Finn was preparing to move with her (even though his grades weren't good enough to get into a college). They were going to get a flat and he was looking for a job. They had pretended his job would be so he could support her but both knew her dads' would actually be paying for everything. Now she was a housewife raising five young children in Lima Ohio while Finn (now her husband) had long since taken over his stepdads motor garage.
Her dad's had not been happy when she told them (on a plane on the way to New York) she was pregnant and as a result Juilliard's had withdrawn her placement. They quickly worked through their upset and agreed this was a minor setback and she would easily get in, in a couple of years. They did tell her off for not telling them sooner … like before they shipped her stuff off and got on the plane themselves.
When she mysteriously got pregnant for a second time (just after applying again) they sat her down and asked her if she wasn't subconsciously ruining her chances at being a star for some reason. She had instantly refuted that: yes she loved her daughter and being a mom but she still desperately wanted to be a star on Broadway. It had been her dream since before she could remember and she had worked hard to keep her body fit and her voice trained.
In the year 2023 she sat on her living room floor by the side of a Christmas tree (the kids were Jewish but Finn insisted on having Christmas) she remembered back to the summer of 2014 when she wanted to leave Ohio: leave her beautiful daughter Lea and her new son Michael and Finn and just move to New York. She figured she could be a star even without college education. She remembered folding her clothes into a bag while Finn stood next to her with streaming eyes. She remembered putting her newborn son into his crib and reading her daughter a last bed time story. But then her three-year old daughter had, had a nightmare and she decided to stay just a little longer. A month later her Lea asked her why she and Finn weren't married like most of her friends' parents and she finally caved in to Finn's near-constant pressure to get married.
It was hard; like she was giving up all her dreams but she had found it hard to deny Finn all these years and against him and their daughter it wasn't a choice any longer. What made it so much harder was the fact that Kurt (her soon-to-be step-brother-in-law) had just been given a role on Broadway. Not a large part but he had only graduated from college a couple of months before and it was in a really good play. Now ten years later Kurt really was a big star; rumour was he had turned away a part in a Hollywood movie because they was still too homophobic and she still wondered where she would be if she had just left. Kurt would have got her an audition somewhere even as he tried to get her to leave. Maybe Finn would have moved east to join her. She looked over to a family portrait proudly presented on the wall – would it have been worth it? Would they have had Shelby, Cory and baby Kurt? Would she have been happy?