Started my daily ficlets to make the hiatus pass, then decided to keep going with a 2nd cycle, and then a 3rd, 4th, etc through 86th cycle. Now cycle 87!

IT'S THE FIFTH ANNIVERSARY CYCLE OF GLEEKATHON! - Five years! Five years! *insert flailing* Okay, not quite, but by the end of this cycle, it will have been five years of daily stories (sometimes twice a day! ... and for seven very frightening days a couple years back, three times a day!). It will also be the end of this crazy ride. I started thinking about ending gleekathon months ago, and I wanted to finish my ongoing series before that happened. It made it so I could finish out this fifth year, and it couldn't be any better that this cycle is actually ending on October 22nd 2014, which was the day it began, in 2009... Now here we go!

This story is 'Do it with a song' for Just a Bell, a Red series story originally posted on January 30th 2014.

"Father Oh Father"
((older) Rachel, Sophie (OC),) Chloe (OC), Julian (OC)
Red series

It was hard to put into words just how it felt to step off that taxi and come to stand in front of what she now knew to be her birth father's home. How long had she wanted to find where he lived, not just the outer building itself but his actual home, the inside, to see what it all looked like, anywhere from the books, and the furniture… coffee cups and knick knacks… musical instruments, records and memorabilia he might have gathered over the years… anything that might have told her who he was.

She had not even been two years old when he'd left, and her mother would refuse to speak about him, kindly at first, evading the subject for the sake of the four, five, six-year-old Chloe. But the more she grew, the more she had been able to detect the bitterness in her mother when it came to her father, and so she tried not to bring it up again. That didn't mean in any way that her curiosity had vanished. If it had, then she wouldn't have run away to New York the way she'd done, when the possibility of finding him had presented itself. The day she'd left Indiana, she had committed herself to getting her answers at last.

Maybe it all hadn't gone exactly as she would have thought it did, but she was here, wasn't it? She was right where she'd wanted to be. Now all she had to do was ring that bell… and it would be over, for better or for worse.

She climbed one step, another… Her head was swimming, still just tipsy enough, and in the end she grabbed hold of the rail and sat herself down, catching her breath. For the first time, she wondered what else she might find in there, who else. How had she not stopped to consider it before? What if he had remarried? What if he'd had other children? Half brothers or sisters who might not even know that they had an older sister… What would they think? Would they see their father any differently, now that they knew he'd abandoned her the way he'd done? For a split, selfish second, she didn't care. They'd gotten to keep him, so they should know what they'd gotten, right? Why should she be the only one to suffer because of his decisions?

So why couldn't she make herself stand and ring that bell? Yes, she'd been drinking, but she wasn't nearly as tipsy as she'd been earlier that night, and her brain wasn't as muddled. She could stand on her feet, physically, then it had to be her head that kept her sunk on the steps.

When she was little, she had a doll like Dorothy, from the Wizard of Oz. She carried it wherever she went, and if poor Dorothy was ever torn, or dirty, or lost, she would move heaven and hell to make her right again. She never knew for sure, but she believed it had been given to her by her father, before he left. It had to be him, because for how little she'd had to hold on to of him, she had just this one image stuck in her head, just one good memory. She remembered her father, sitting next to her crib, singing to her. And sitting on his front step today, all her thoughts were reshaped to the tune of the familiar melody, as though she was singing it for him.

[Chloe] "Somewhere over the rainbow way up high / There's a land that I heard of once in a lullaby / Somewhere over the rainbow skies are blue / And the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true.

Someday I'll wish upon a star / And wake up where the clouds are far / Behind me / Where troubles melt like lemon drops / Away above the chimney tops / That's where you'll find me

Somewhere over the rainbow bluebirds fly / Birds fly over the rainbow. Why then, oh, why can't I?

If happy little bluebirds fly / Beyond the rainbow why, oh, why can't I?"

She'd only told her mother about it once. She'd been nine years old, and her mother had been having a bad day, she knew… that had to be why she'd said it. She'd said she had only imagined that he'd sang it to her, because of the doll. But then when Chloe had asked her if he'd been the one to give it to her, she wouldn't say. So she'd been able to hold on to her memory of her father. If she believed it was true, then it was all she needed.

Now that she thought of it, so much of her love of music had sprung from that one song, that one connection. She had loved the movie, and she could perform the entire soundtrack without a single missed note, even to this day. It had led to her music teacher taking her on in her singing lessons, and then the Glee Club at her high school, and her passion for Broadway and musicals, and then Rachel Berry, and… and now here she was. One simple song, turned to a road map back to her father. So she wasn't wrong. In some way, he had given her the music. Whether it was because of his blood or not, did it really matter anymore? They were just two separate people, with two separate lives. He'd had his chance. Rachel Berry had found him, and he'd seen her perform at the workshop… and he'd left. Maybe it was high time she made her choice, too, and leave him behind the way he'd done her. She had a father, not by blood, but that didn't make him any less special. If anything, it made him better in her heart.

So she had called in a favor with Julian Lucas. She wouldn't call her workshop friends, who still didn't know she was living with Rachel Berry, and she couldn't call her, or Sophie, for the more obvious reasons. Sophie's boyfriend was the closest thing she had to a reliable friend who had nothing to lose or gain, and who she knew she could trust to keep her secret. She waited for him, huddled on those front steps, feeling more and more like she'd made the right decision. She wasn't tempted in any way to rise and ring that bell anymore. She was closing the door on her birth father, once and for all.

THE END

A/N: This is a one-shot ficlet, which means that signing up for story alert will not bring you any alerts.
In the event of a sequel, the story will be separate from this one. And as chapter stories go, they are
always clearly indicated as such [ex: "Days 204-210" in the summary] Thank you!