A/N: The song is "River" by Joni Mitchell. I own neither Glee nor its characters.
Finn settled into his seat, eagerly awaiting Rachel's performance. She had coyly refused to tell him what the song would be, only that it was one of her presents to him for Christmas, as well as her audition piece for the television show. But as he saw the trees and the snow on stage, a vague uneasiness came over him. This was almost exactly like the set she used last year! Surely she wasn't going to recreate that horrible moment. He still felt shame for how he had treated Rachel that day. But something in the back of his mind told him to trust her, so he waited.
Brad started to play a soft introduction that sounded like "Jingle Bells". Then the lights became brighter, and he could see Rachel sitting now, in a gorgeous green satiny dress, with her hair pulled back, and he began to relax. This wasn't a recreation after all. Then she began to sing:
It's coming on Christmas
They're cutting down trees
They're putting up reindeer
And singing songs of joy and peace
How he loved her voice! And Christmas! What an awesome present, he thought happily.
Oh I wish I had a river
I could skate away on
Finn smiled. He just found out last week that Rachel loved ice skating. He was enjoying the song, even though it was in a minor key, and sounded kinda sad. He'd never heard her voice sound lovelier.
But it don't snow here
It stays pretty green
I'm going to make a lot of money
Then I'm going to quit this crazy scene
I wish I had a river
I could skate away on
I wish I had a river so long
I would teach my feet to fly
Oh I wish I had a river
I could skate away on
But then her face looked deeply sorrowful as she sang this heartbreakingly sad line:
I made my baby cry
A lump formed in his throat. Was Rachel trying to tell him how she felt that day? Did she still feel it was all her fault? It was then that Finn realized they had never actually talked about it. They both just seemed to enjoy being back together so much that it didn't seem necessary. Could it be that the wound he inflicted never healed? The thought that his lover could still be bearing an open wound, and had been for a year, was devastating. But wait—she was smiling now, and walking through the snow to a stool closer to the audience. Finn raptly watched and listened as she crossed her legs on the stool.
He tried hard to help me
You know, he put me at ease
And he loved me so naughty
Made me weak in the knees
Oh I wish I had a river
I could skate away on
She fixed her gaze only on him and smiled as she sang those lines, and the fact she was essentially ignoring the rest of the audience, as if only the two of them existed was just about the sexiest thing he had ever seen or felt in his life. The emotional roller coaster Rachel was taking him on made him dizzy. And she wasn't done, because she looked sorrowful again:
I'm so hard to handle
I'm selfish and I'm sad
Now I've gone and lost the best baby
That I ever had
He wanted to jump out of his seat, hold her, reassure her that they had both messed up, and, as the lump in his throat became a clenched pain in his chest, Finn wondered if he hadn't healed yet, either.
Oh I wish I had a river
I could skate away on
I wish I had a river so long
I would teach my feet to fly
Oh I wish I had a river
I made my baby say goodbye
It's coming on Christmas
They're cutting down trees
They're putting up reindeer
And singing songs of joy and peace
I wish I had a river
I could skate away on
Rachel ended the song beautifully, singing the last line in one breath, getting softer and softer, until all that was left was Brad's piano. She stood to bow to the audience, holding out her dress with her left hand as if in a curtsey. Then she did something remarkable. Her head bowed slightly as she brought her hands up together, palm-to-palm, in front of her. Finn recognized the gesture from the comparative religions class Rachel and he took together—it was namaste, the greeting used by many Buddhists and Hindus. It was the recognition of the soul in one by the soul in another. And she looked directly at him with a smile of absolute serenity. Everything suddenly became perfectly clear. His Rachel was at peace now, after having been broken a year ago. She was telling him—and only him—that the time for guilt, the laying and acceptance of blame, regret and heartfelt apologies was over. That they had come more than full circle, reaching a place far better than they had ever been before. A place where it was okay (even good) to recognize and accept the bad times as essential threads, along with the good, that made up the tapestry which was their story.
It was a little overwhelming. Under any other circumstances he and Rachel seemed like normal, goofy teenagers, making mistakes, miscommunicating, stumbling into understanding. It seemed like the only way to reach that was through screwing up, apologizing, then moving on again. Yet, when they sang to each other, when they tapped into that place where the music came from, all they ever heard was truth, pure and undistorted. Their inexperience at love, their inarticulateness, vanished into irrelevance by comparison. They had something very few people ever had: a perfect communication channel. This was what Rachel meant when she said what they had was special. They had both seen its power with their original songs. Wait. He sat, stunned for a moment. Their original songs.
Then it came to him. A vision. It was still a little fuzzy and undefined, but it was a vision of his future, their future, or at least part of it. In New York. Finn was so absorbed in his thoughts that he missed the kerfuffle between Rachel and Artie over her song choice. And when she shook him gently later, asking what he was thinking about, he smiled. "My dreams," he said, much to her delight.