Author's Note: Rachel, in her darker moments. I haven't seen any of the newer espisodes, so there aren't any spoilers.
Summary: She leaves the song, playing on and on, filling the silent house with notes that will repeat for a thousand more times. Because Rachel Berry feels so much that she can't feel anything anymore. Rachel-centric.
Translation: au revoir, mes amis - goodbye, my friends.
au revoir, mes amis
She is laying floor, listening to the same song on repeat. It's a new song, and this is how she learns—this is how she's always learned. Repetition and cold memorization. Over and over and over again, she must listen. She needs to hear the subtle peaks of the soprano notes as they hover in the silence of her bedroom, their last whispers finally dying as the song ends.
And . . . repeat.
She stays on the floor, and lets the beginning notes build around her, the now-familiar crescendos and decrescendos marking paths in her mind for her to follow later.
She cannot help but feel this is a wasted endeavor. She knows that Mr. Schue will reject this song for competition, that the rest of the club will mock her and sneer behind her back, their sometimes-smiling faces twisting into sneers. Their decent singing voices will turn to teasing, and she will be left with only the song in her head.
It always happens this way: there is the one song that hits her hard, crashing down onto her head and doesn't leave and wants to be sung in the quiet and in the noise.
She closes her eyes as the song begins again.
This must be the thousandth time that she's hear this song. Her dads left hours ago, with strained pleasant faces, and a quick "We're going to the store."
Rachel, in a kind of desperation, thinks that this is the only way she can ever learn.
And . . . again.
Slowly, she raises her hand to her mouth. She's read in books how a girl could shove her fist into her mouth to stop from screaming, normally right before she's rescued. Rachel wants to prevent a scream too.
She finds she cannot fit her fist into her mouth.
So she bites down on her fingers instead.
And when she withdraws her hand she expects to see blood. There isn't any.
She stands on wobbly feet and shaking knees. It's so easy in the movies and shows and books, she thinks. The troubled girl creates pain and there's so much blood. And then everyone is sad and loves her.
"That'll never be me," she whispers. And she stumbles to the bathroom across the hall, hungry and angry and tired. Her toes and nose are cold, and the valley between her breasts is collecting sweat.
And she takes up lying on the bathroom floor, the cold tile against her fingers and the fuzzy mat under her legs.
She wonders how she can ever be content to just lay on the floor like this. Every nerve is hypersensitive; she thinks she can feel every point where her body meets something else.
Does everyone else feel so much? Because it's times like these where she wishes she could just stop feeling, stop the thinking and the analyzing, and just feel nothing.
But what does nothing feel like?
And . . . repeat.
She can still hear the song playing in her bedroom, the notes a bit muffled but the melody is distinct. She mumbles along with the music. She shouldn't; the map in her brain isn't perfect yet, and if she sings too early it will ruin whatever progress she's made.
She turns and presses her forehead to the floor beneath her. She lets the tip of her nose graze the tile, her lips just a ghost-breath away.
But finally the cold is just too much, and she lurches up and makes her way to her bright room. The song continues in the background, almost forgotten. She hasn't listened to it for nearly long enough to be even passably decent, but she finds herself hating it. She resents the voice climbing higher and higher to reach the dramatic flourish of the second chorus.
She decides, impulsively, to leave.
She would like a reason, anything to give her an excuse to get out of the house, to leave behind her schoolwork, still waiting to be completed, and her music that suddenly is more of a burden than a relief. Even if it would be a few minutes, she wants to be gone.
She flees her room, grabbing a coat and scarf from the hall closet, and forgets to lock the door on her way out.
She also leaves the song, playing on and on, filling the silent house with notes that will repeat for a thousand more times.
There is nothing around her pretty little home in suburbia. Nowhere to go, nowhere to hide. She thinks of the English novel in her room, stuffed under her mattress because if she can't see it, she won't have to read it. And she thinks of the chemistry worksheet on her desk, the math homework on her bed. The Glee Club folder in the bottom of her t-shirt drawer.
She does not think of the song that must still be playing in the background.
Instead, she marches on, through the woods and over a fence and past the convenience store.
When she lives in New York City, she thinks, she will have too much to do: parties and events and outings with the famous and the rich. She will have a crowd of fans who admire and love her. There will never be silence like this, oppressive and harsh. She will always have music and noise and laughter; and she will feel so much that she doesn't feel anymore. If she can make it there, she can block out the bad, and just take in the good. She will never have a night where she has nothing better to do than wander throughout the darkness of the suburbs.
Maybe then the silence and the feelings won't scare her so much anymore.
Maybe she can be happy.
But for now, she just walks. She walks until her fingers sting from the cold, her jeans are stiff and hard, and her knees barely bend with each step. She walks until her ears are numb and her steps become shuffles.
The cold is a welcome distraction from the song in her head, taunting her with its vibrant life and vivid color and clear notes.
And as she walks she wonders when she lost all her passion. Because her heart is silent, and her voice is thin, and she can't remember if she's ever walked away from a song before. Broadway doesn't take quitters. They don't take half-assed actresses or mediocre vocalists. They take the strong and the patient and the talented. They will only ever have the best.
Rachel thinks she can never reach that level.
And she stops. Stops walking and stops thinking and she gasps on a tiny choke of air, and just stops.
The music is filling inside of her, and is building and crashing and mounting and—
She begins to sing.
It's not quite the best, she knows; her words have to fight against her lips and her mouth and her tongue. They struggle with her teeth, and yet they still come.
It's quiet at first, the beginning notes unsure and hesitant; she feels vague and not all there, but she can feel the movement in her gut. It slowly grows, louder and louder, reaching the highest note, the pinnacle of the song, and she is singing for an audience of hundreds—thousands—on the biggest and grandest stage she's ever known, and she knows these words, these quick rapid heartbeats in time to the rhythm.
Then they fade, and Rachel is back in the middle of some stranger's backyard, feeling ashamed and embarrassed and empty. She looks at the bare branches of the winter trees and whispers, "Me too."
If she was a heroine in a novel, this would be the point of epiphany. She would learn she was who she was, and nothing and no one can change that, and she would be happy and dance all the way home.
But she's tired and sad and has lost all feeling in her toes.
Rachel thinks of her bloodless hands and the tile on her bathroom floor. She thinks of smiling faces with angry words.
Mostly, she thinks the words of the song, still pounding in her head even after they were ripped too early from her lips. It wasn't perfect; she'd sung it too soon.
Rachel presses her heel into the snow at her feet. She reminders herself that when she's compressing it to make it thinner, better, harder.
"Just like me."
It is terrible, she knows, to wish she was a character in a book. To be a Shakespearean tragedy that is relived a thousand times—a million billion trillion times—in every time and every culture.
She wonders if anyone mourns her.
She sure as hell does.
And she begins to walk away, her shoulders caving forward to brace herself against the cold that has settled in her heart.
Somehow, she's made it back before her dads. She doesn't know where they've been and she can't find it in herself to care.
The music is still playing. How many times has it gone through the same ups and downs, the same minor falls and major lifts? If she leaves it be, perhaps it will play until the end of eternity.
Besides the notes hanging in her ears, the house makes no sound.
Then she is where she started her evening: on the floor of her bedroom, learning. It's the only way she can teach herself anything. Cold, hard repetition.
And . . . repeat.
She has been so filled with cold and sadness that she can't move.
Her phone buzzes, breaking her thoughts for the first time that night. It's a text from Mercedes.
She regards the screen in front of her blandly. She doesn't want to see the Glee Club; she doesn't want to be happy, or warm or anything else.
She wants to feel nothing.
And . . . again.
She turns the phone off, tosses it over her bed to land somewhere on the floor, a continent away as far as she's concerned.
She rolls onto her stomach and stares at her decorated wall.
Across the universe, someone somewhere must feel the same. Rachel is not alone. There is no way in hell she's the only one who feels the walls of the world closing in, suffocating and crushing her until there is only just a tiny bit left over. Until there's just enough to spend her nights on the bathroom floor with a distant voice echoing in the hallway.
She locks herself in the bathroom, forgetting that one can easily unlock it from the outside. But she is giving herself precious seconds from her dads' entrance.
And she feels the cold, cold tile beneath her bare thighs, and the rug chafes the skin of her belly.
The only time you feel nothing is when you sleep.
She's only ever been able to learn through repetition.
.
And . . . repeat.