Higher Power
A Glee One Shot

A/N: I was watching GLEE last night. I was enjoying my summer vacation. Then I woke up this morning to learn that a true GLEEK-Cory Monteith-died the other day. And I realized in any one of my stories where he was a big part, I turned him into a cruel, heartless monster. Cory is nothing like that nor is Finn. This is my apology for that, even if it is too late. And in all further stories, there will not be any of the usual Finn-bashing that comes along with a Puckleberry story. This is my first story of any kind that is Finchel in any way, so please don't judge my cruelly for it.

Rachel Berry entered her old high school wearing a blue pleated mini skirt and a navy sweater-tee shirt with a bright yellow bow at the collar. Navy knee socks and matching flats completed the look and with her hair pulled back in a navy plaid headband to hide her bangs, she was brought back to her sophomore year of high school.

The year that she had met him and her entire life had changed.

The only difference between her life now, a year after her high school experience was over, and then, was that she wasn't greeted by a cool mess of colored ice, designed to be a certain flavor. Slushy facials were not meant for graduates, after all, and nobody would want to be in the school in July anyways. Rachel was only there for a certain reason, after all, and then she would be gone and back in New York City.

It was horrible to think that he had come to New York, the place he told her he was afraid to move to, twice to see her. One time, to learn that she had cheated on him, and the second time to beat up a guy who had hurt her.

He had always been protecting her, but he couldn't do that any longer. He just couldn't. And that hurt more than the pain of losing him when he wasn't really hers. When she didn't have a special tie to him that made them one in the same. For the first time, something happened when she couldn't be a drama queen about it without seeming like she really was seeking attention. Yet it was the only time she really needed to let loose and have a full on diva-out.

"Rachel!" It wasn't a yell, but it snapped at Rachel in full volume, despite the blonde's whispered voice as she raced down the hallway and wrapped her in a tight hug, burying her shoulder into the brunette's shoulder as she awkwardly wrapped her arms around the girl she had never been friends with.

Around the girl who should probably hate her, especially now, because he had been the reason for most of their fighting.

With that dopey smile and those sparkling eyes...with that tall, muscular built and the way his hair always seemed to do whatever it was he wanted, even when they would run their hands through it to mess it up...with the way he kissed and how secure the girls had always felt in his arms...he was a cause well worth fighting for. And in the end, Rachel had won, and she had refused to accept her award.

So why should Quinn Fabray be hugging her as if they were old friends?

"It's just so sad," She whispered, unraveling herself from Rachel, but keeping one arm wrapped around her as she led her down the hallway and down the familiar path to the choir room, that been a second home for the two of them, as well as their fellow club members, back in high school.

Sad was a bit of an understatement, though. It was morbid, horrible, depressing...Rachel wasn't even sure if an actual adjective existed that could describe just what her feelings were. All she had was a hollow feeling, anyways, and a broken heart being tossed around inside of the emptiness.

"Berry!" A stronger, huskier voice cried out, shocking the silence of the choir room and Rachel saw as everybody turned to look at her. She winced as the tall boy-who still wasn't as tall as he had been-came hurrying towards her and wrapped her in a tight bear hug, lifting her off of the ground. Quinn would have been knocked out of the way if it hadn't been for her quickly hurrying away towards other former members of the club.

Rachel was too short to see past the tall, muscular mass of man in front of her to know where she was going exactly.

"Noah," She sighed, accepting this hug with much more ease, even though she knew it was wrong. Even though she knew that every single time she had had problems, it was because of Noah Puckerman, and that he had tried to ruin their relationship more times than she could count. But, she couldn't help it. He was sweet and loving and caring. And he was probably the person who was the closest to him, so it just made sense that she would find ease in his best friend.

"Come on," He sighed, wrapping an arm around her shoulders and guiding her towards two chairs in the front row, where he had only ever sat when dating her. When either of the boys had only sat when they were dating her, actually.

Mr. Shuester, the director of the Glee club, came walking into the room in his typical style, turning towards the white board and writing a single name on it before turning towards the group with tears filling his eyes. After all, Mr. Shuester had thought of him as the son he'd never had.

"Finn was the glue that held us together. Even when we weren't all here and even when some of you graduated and moved on to do new things and we accepted new members. He was still here and his love for the club helped to keep us together and keep us as tight a unit as we could be," He said, his voice sounding as hollow as Rachel was feeling.

"You're not going to make us sing, are you?" Kurt Hummel spoke up, shocking Rachel as he reached out and grabbed her hands.

She had been so focused on what was right in front of her, she had missed her roommate and her best friend sitting right besides her. Of course, she should have known he would be there, as he had been Finn's brother. And she should have suspected him to be making jokes, because Kurt was always cracking jokes. His sarcasm was the only thing that kept him going and focused on something other than his emotions.

"I'm not going to make you do anything," Mr. Shuester lowered his head. "I just thought this would be a good way for you all to have somebody at a moment like this, and I thought if any of you had something to say, a smaller audience to hear it would be better than a larger," He said softly, raising his gaze to focus on Rachel, as if he expected her to be the first one up. As if he really thought she would be volunteering to say something about the boy whose heart she had broken.

Rachel knew that she had no place to say anything about Finn after the way she had treated him since he had called off the wedding.

Finn had done it with her best interests at heart. He hadn't wanted to hold her back and he had wanted her to go and become the star she was destined to be. So she had left and he had gone to the army. He had named his gun after her, shot himself in the leg, and gone back tracking. Rachel had hated that he hadn't come straight to her, or at least called. She had honestly believed that their relationship had ended and was over. So, she had found peace in Brody Weston, a talented boy at her new school in New York City who honestly thought the world of her, reminding her of Finn.

When Finn had shown up, Rachel told him exactly what had happened between her and Brody. He had left, and she had shown up at their old high school to find him, ending their relationship for the final time.

The next time they saw one another, they hooked up and she left him. And when Brody hurt her, lying and sneaking around behind her back, Finn showed up and beat the crap out of him, never telling Rachel he was there or what he had done. He came because of a single phone call from Santana, and Rachel found that pretty incredible. But she didn't take him back because she knew they were in different places, at least for the moment.

And now he was gone.

"This was a stupid idea," Santana Lopez said, the pain in her voice shocking most of the club, but not Rachel.

She knew how special Finn was and the effect he could have on people. She knew how he was impossible to not miss and that everybody in the world would love him for a long time, even long after he was gone. The effects of knowing him would linger forever.

"You can't expect us to come here and just look at one another after we lost Finn. Do you know how much being in this room hurts?" Artie Abrams wondered from his wheel chair.

"He was the reason we even had a glee club," Mercedes Jones whispered, and everybody could hear the tears starting to fill her eyes.

"I'm leaving. You can't make me stay here and look at a room that he used to perform in. A room he used to love more than his own bedroom," Kurt snapped, jumping to his feet and racing out of the room.

Only Rachel knew his anger was an effort to try and cover up the tears forming in his eyes. Kurt hated to cry in front of people, after all.

Slowly, after Kurt's exit, the rest of the club stood up and began to make their way from the room, going in either pairs or by themselves. Large groups were just something none of them were ready for at the moment. But Rachel stayed sitting there, and because she was still there, Puck stayed besides her.

She wasn't sure if that was the truth, but it felt right.

Even Mr. Shuester wondered out of the room, mumbling something about turning the lights off and locking the room on their way out, before the pair exited.

"I need to talk to you, alone," Puck sighed, turning towards her in his plastic chair.

"He told you to watch after me, didn't he?" Rachel sighed.

"He made my promise that I would keep you safe, if anything happened to him while he was in the army. I know he's not gone because of that, but he's still gone and I know that he would want somebody looking after you," Puck sighed.

"I have somebody looking after me," Rachel said harshly.

"Are you talking about the star?" Puck asked her.

"He told me that he put the star under his name because there was already one with my name. And he told me that whenever I was lonely, I could look up and that star would be there, looking down on me, to let me know I wasn't alone. I can't see it in New York, Noah. I can't," Rachel said, finally allowing the tears to fall down her face.

"Come here," He said, holding his arms out to her. She crawled onto his lap, allowing him to hold her close.

She remembered when there would be a time that Finn would have come storming in just at that moment to scream at Puck for trying to take Rachel from him. When he would refuse to talk to Rachel for weeks because of this scene. But Finn was gone now, and he wouldn't be doing any of that. He had even requested that Puck watch over Rachel, and even though she knew how Puck felt for her, she didn't believe he was making it up. She honestly believed that Finn had asked Puck that, because she knew it was something he would do. And she knew that Finn was aware of Puck's feelings, which made him the perfect choice.

"I'm coming to New York," He whispered into her hair. "But first, we're going to take you to look at that star and you're going to take a picture. That way, you still have him, each and every day," Puck said to her.

"Graduation's a year away...got any plans 'til then?"

"Good Luck,"
"I love you,"

"I really like you Rachel,"

"It was the superman of kisses. It came with its own cape!"

"I'll never break up with you,"
"Me neither,"

"Rachel Berry, will you marry me?"

"You're sexy, you're beautiful, and you're an inspiration to every single person in this room, just like you are to me,"

The words, his words, flooded through her head and she knew that all of them were true, at least in his eyes. But she also knew that she wasn't the inspiration to the glee club. If anybody was an inspiration to anyone in that club, it was him.

The boy who had gotten the football players to join.

The boy who had gotten the cheerleaders back.

The boy who had helped heal the club when Mr. Shuester couldn't do it alone.

The boy who had brought Mr. Shuester back countless times.

The boy who had never left.

It took a while, more than a couple of months, but after a year without him, she was able to laugh again without feeling guilty.

She didn't have to change the radio station whenever a song they had sung together came on and she didn't think about him and only him whenever she sang a song, just as movies were not longer compared to how the two of them had been.

And, once her junior year at NYADA started, she was ready to dive into another relationship, as long as he understood that Finn would always be her first love and he would always hold a special place in her heart. And she was lucky enough to fall in love with a boy that loved her so much he didn't mind sharing her with Finn. She was lucky enough to be with the boy who had never mind having to share her with Finn.

She and Noah Puckerman fell back into that wonderful ease that was Puckleberry and whenever she hit a lull and sat in her room watching Barbra Streisand movies and eating her vegan-friendly chocolate with her eyes focused on the picture of the star Puck had hung up on her wall, he would knock before entering and sit on the edge of her bed, telling her about how much Finn really loved her and how he was watching down on her, hoping that she was happy and feeling miserable that she was still so upset, before cracking a few well-placed jokes to cheer her up with tear filled giggles.

So, their new relationship wasn't perfect. But they never fought about her feelings for Finn, the way she might have had to if she was dating somebody else. And Puck was well aware of the fact that she had picked him because he reminded her of Finn in so many ways, but he couldn't bring himself to care, as long as he had her. And they both knew that their former club members were a little weary about the relationship, because they didn't believe Rachel truly felt anything for Puck. But, after a while, things got easier and the club realized that they were making it work and they really did love one another. The only problem was that they didn't end up having their same name from high school. Kurt had come up with clever name, Puckleberry Finn.