AN: Hi. Against my better judgment I'm attempting to inject a dose of reality into what went down during the season finale.
Title is from the Goo Goo Dolls song of the same name. I don't own their fantastic lyrics or anything to do with Glee. Unbetaed.
During the train ride, she indulges in the dramatic turn of events.
She thinks about how she woke up so excited for her wedding day and so determined for it to actually go as planned this time. She nearly boils over with rage at the notion that Finn conspired with her dads to pull the rug out from underneath those plans at the very last minute. Her heart breaks recalling all the little plans she and Kurt had made, albeit tentatively, for their shared future stardom on Broadway.
Mostly, though, she thinks about what Finn said in the car. The saddest part is that everything he said about surrendering to the universe and having experiences on her own makes so much sense. He may have proposed to her those few months ago, but she was the one who pushed for the wedding to be so soon and went absolutely batty planning it when it looked like her NYADA plans had fallen through. And poor Finn. She would love for his future to involve music or performing or something of that nature, but acting school was never a real option for him. She doesn't think the army is, either, and tears pool in her eyes once again at the mere thought of what could befall him if he was shipped off to some war-torn foreign land. But he needs to find his own way, wherever that is.
By the time she gets to New York, she's strangely okay. This is where she belongs and it always has been, long before Finn showed up at glee rehearsal and they sang "You're the One That I Want." If he wants her to set off on her own and have the experiences that are coming to her, that's fine. And if he needs to redeem his father by joining the army, he can do that too. But Rachel Berry does not surrender.
That night, she realizes a critical flaw in his scheme and sneaks out of the hotel room while her dads are asleep.
"You never said yes."
"Uh, what?" Finn's voice is hesitant and a little sleepy. She's just glad he answered the call.
"In the car, I asked " 'You're joining the army?' and you didn't say 'Yes'."
There's a pause, and she can imagine the adorably befuddled look on his face as he tries to think of what to say.
"I'm not enlisting," he admits, his voice small and quiet. "But I need to see if there's anything else I can do about my dad's discharge status. I figure Fort Benning is a good place to start since that's where he first reported."
"And after that?" She allows her question to be hopeful even though she knows it's going to be met with resistance.
"Dammit, Rach!" He yells, immediately giving way to sobs. "Don't you see? I don't know what comes next. You've always known where you wanted to be and you found a way to get there and… I'm not like you. I still need to figure out what my dreams are and what I'm going to do with my life."
"I told you, we can figure it out together—"
"Rachel…"
She huffs, begrudgingly accepting that this isn't a conversation they can have over the phone.
"You once said that you don't give up that easily. Well neither do I."
Hanging up on him feels almost as good as one of her classic storm-outs.
They're only in New York for a few days. She takes a tour of NYADA and picks out a dorm that she'll move into in mid-August.
When she returns home she goes straight to Finn's house and starts talking before she's even fully in the door.
"I will surrender by accepting that circumstances prevent us from getting married right now. And I will surrender the notion that we should get married any time soon. Finally, I surrender any plans of you coming to New York with me now. But it's not as simple as you putting me on a train and saying that we need to let the universe decide if and when we'll be together again."
His stony expression says that he's trying to be strong and stick to his principles, but when the slightest trace of guilt appears on his face she knows she's on the right track.
"We should let the universe 'do it's thing' to a certain extent, and if that means that you need to ascertain what happened to your father and try to change his discharge status, you should go ahead. And after that you can do whatever it is that comes next, when you figure out what that is. But if you think for one second that anything about you will hold me back from following through on all the things I want to do, then you really don't understand how the universe works at all."
After another brief pause she decides to go for broke.
"I'm not resisting the surrender plan for the sake of being stubborn or because I think you're wrong. I'm resisting it because I did not work this hard – practicing for my audition, getting over the pain of having choked, tracking down Carmen Thibadeau and persuading her to come to Nationals where we gave the performance of a lifetime that got me into NYADA—" she hurriedly gasps in a breath and continues her explanation "—so that I could be 'set free' and pursue my dreams completely on my own. You don't need to be there with me, physically, to share in the experiences. In at least some sense of the word I'll always be with you, and vice versa, and there's no surrendering that."
She exhales dramatically and allows him to process everything she said – everything she should've said in the car before she got on that train.
Eventually, a smile tugs at the corner of his mouth.
"Okay."
He says it so easily that she indulges in her own mile-wide grin, despite knowing that this is only the beginning of a long and winding road.
AN: By way of further information that I'm sure no one cares about, my husband and I started dating exactly ten years ago today, five weeks shy of our high school graduation with plans to attend college in different places.
We don't live in a TV show so there was no premature teenage marriage proposal or dramatic train station send-off, and we just sort of dealt with the challenges of the long-distance relationship as they came. The arrangement isn't for everybody but I've always envisioned it as a feasible option for Finchel given all the personal growth that needs to happen, especially on Finn's end.
Since there's a lot to explore in my vision of their future, and because I routinely ignore the instinct to quit while I'm ahead, this will be continued for a presently indeterminate number of chapters.
Your reviews appreciated.