Author's Note: So I decided to do my own little angsty take on season 6. I know I have a couple of stories in progress that haven't been updated in forever and people have been asking me when I'll get back to those, but truthfully, I'm at a bit of a standstill with my other work and can only say hopefully soon. So while it might not be the best idea to be starting something new when I have unfinished stories to worry about, this new idea popped into my head and I couldn't resist. And who knows, maybe writing this will get me back in the right mindset to finish my other stories.
As with pretty much all my stories, this story will be dark at times. This first installment is just a brief prologue to set the story up, I'll be adding the first real chapter in a couple of days. It's mostly canon up until the start of season 6 but I do make some changes to certain characters' stories.
She had flamed out, just like everyone had predicted she would. They tried to warn her. Her friends, her parents, her teachers, they had all been in agreement that she was making a huge mistake when she dropped out of NYADA to take on Funny Girl full time. She wasn't ready yet. She wasn't mature enough. She didn't have enough experience. She needed a college education to fall back on.
Turns out they had been right. But she didn't care what they thought then and she didn't care what they thought when she decided to leave Funny Girl to pursue a television career in Hollywood. Yes, her heart belonged to the stage, but the glamour of Hollywood was too hard to resist to a girl who never imagined she'd be considered pretty enough for TV. So she dissolved her contract with the producers of Funny Girl, left her friends behind in Brooklyn and took off for California. Of course everyone had wished her luck and told her how happy they were for her, but she knew the truth. She could see it in their eyes, they were expecting her to fail and fall on her face, and boy did she deliver.
After her show That's So Rachel bombed, she had tried to go home again. But it only took a few sad weeks in Lima for her to realize her hometown wasn't necessarily her home anymore. Things had changed. McKinley was barely recognizable. Sue had taken over as principal and rid the school of all arts programs. Mr. Schue was gone, now off teaching the soulless automatons of Vocal Adrenaline for more money than McKinley could ever offer him. The Glee club had been permanently disbanded and none of her former friends were around anymore, they were all off living lives of their own in various cities across the country.
Quinn was thriving at Yale and Tina was loving Brown. Mercedes, Santana and Brittany were still on tour and, judging by their Facebook and Instagram posts, having a blast. After achieving brief success as a male model in New York, Sam had returned to his family in Kentucky to spend time with his younger brother and sister and attend community college. Puck had joined the Air Force and was currently finishing up his technical training in Texas. After Kurt and Blaine's fourth or fifth breakup, Blaine decided to leave NYADA and transfer to the theatre program at the University of Michigan. Mike was studying dance in Chicago and Artie was dorming at his film school in California. And of course Finn was gone, but the ache of his loss was still ever present in her heart.
At home, matters weren't much better. Her parents were separated with a divorce on the horizon. Her dad Hiram had already moved out to live with his new boyfriend, a loud mouth real estate agent 15 years his junior, and her daddy Leroy was selling the house so they could pay off their debts. Her dads had hidden the truth from her while she was away, but apparently her parents were having money trouble and eventually the financial strain had led to strain on their relationship. Leroy had been forced to take a paycut at work in order to stay on at his job and her tuition, plus the mortgage and all the other bills, had simply been too much for her dads to manage.
Leroy had found a one bedroom apartment not too far from his office that he'd be moving into once the sale of the house was final, and while he had offered to let Rachel sleep on the couch for as long as she needed, Rachel declined. She couldn't be any more of a burden to her fathers than she had already been. Even if there was any money for them to offer her, she wouldn't take it. They had worked hard to be able to send her to an expensive private school like NYADA and she blew it. She threw it all away and she felt sick at the thought that her parents' marriage had fallen apart because of the strain she put on them. She would support herself, and she'd do so in New York, where she could fall back into the obscurity of a big city and not trouble her fathers.
That's So Rachel may have been a complete and total joke, but since it was a complete and total joke nobody actually watched, she wasn't exactly a household name. In fact, not even her brief but critically acclaimed turn as Fanny on Broadway had been enough to make her known outside of her own inner circle. Sure she occasionally got recognized by the rare Broadway fanatic, but she was still an obscure enough figure to be able to blend back into the hustle and bustle of a city as large as New York, and for that small mercy she was grateful. Never did Rachel Berry expect she'd long for anonymity, but it would be hard enough to get back on her feet as is, she didn't need to do so under public scrutiny. Maybe it wasn't such a bad thing no one had watched her show.
Kurt, now in his third year at NYADA, was still living in Brooklyn. He had called off his engagement to Blaine and was more than happy to welcome Rachel back into the loft they had once shared.
On a cold January day, Rachel Berry packed up her favorite pink suitcase, kissed her dads goodbye once again and set off on her journey back home to New York.