A/N: So, I'm back from the dead. Senior year of college was just really hard, and I didn't have any time to do anything I actually liked. But, thank god, that's over now. Ironically, I actually got done with Glee in the meantime. I just feel like the show is not for me anymore. It started to frustrate me more than it caused me joy, so I decided to walk out after Idina's last episode. However, I got attached to Shelby (and a few other characters, and I hope one day I'll be able to write a Santana story too), so instead on giving up on fan fiction I just felt an even bigger urge to write. I feel Shelby was always a poorly developed and misunderstood character. You and I was an attempt to make her a bit more complex, and now this fic is trying to take that to another level.

This fic is not related in any way to You and I. In fact, it might be its exact opposite. There is no Rachel, and no Will, and I must warn you, it's a dark fic, hence the rating. I was inspired by a prompt at the Glee Kink Meme on LiveJournal (sometimes I get bored, hehe), and I wanted to take up a challenge. I draft occasionally for almost a year, but now that I have time to really dedicate myself to the project, I resurrected the fic. I hope some of you will like it. I understand it won't be most people's cup of tea. But I'll appreciate anybody that gives me even a few minutes of their day, as I always have. I really, really love this project because it's different from anything I could imagine myself doing. And I hope that, at least, I was able tackle the complex dynamics of a twisted teacher/student relationship better than the writers on Glee this season.

This fic starts right after the events of Funk, in the first season and it's completely AU. I know it's been a while, but I hope you'll enjoy it somehow.

Chapter 1 - Yesterday

Nobody had any doubt that Shelby Corcoran could be quite the monochromatic presence. Nobody would argue she had a defiant preference for black in everything and anything but especially her clothes, a trait that, no one would argue either, made her even more intimidating. Occasionally a flash of color would creep its way into her wardrobe, but people were still trying to decipher the pattern there. Was it when she was feeling most confident and therefore not in the need of using the now symbolic apparel to create intimidation? But if it was, then why did she never use color after victories? It was impossible to tell also if it had anything to do with happiness or sadness, given that most people were just not privy of her personal matters at all, and she possessed the very best poker face in Carmel High.

Her office honestly looked like an extension of that idiosyncratically obsessive behavior. Her modern furniture and the leather enveloping the small sofa and the chairs were all black, and the only contrast was the white on the wall and a few other details of décor that thankfully had been chosen for balance, otherwise she surely would be working on a Addams Family-themed room.

The lonely occupant of the office rested back on the plum leather chair that hugged her hips nicely, her long walnut hair effortlessly tumbling around her angular face as she let her head fall and pinched her nose in annoyance over that faint but acute pain tugging on the center of her head. She had become a little hypochondriac after her big health issue so the tiniest pain was cause for concern, and she had to control her nervous fingers not to lead her to WebMD because that surely would only worsen her state of mind.

"You're just tired," she whispered to herself, shaking her head disapprovingly at her insanity. She had had a long month, and she was having a very long day, which had been the reason that had led her to dismiss a stunned Vocal Adrenaline at five; that had meant they only had had two hours of rehearsal. It was hardly unprecedented, but definitively rare. Shelby always insisted in working until at least six, even though her kids were allowed to fill their after lunch schedules with classes from the Arts Program only, unless there were academic problems, which meant that Vocal Adrenaline already had more exclusive dedication hours than any club. Still, she always made sure Carmel's course catalog listed VA's working hours from 14:30 to 24:00, as she reserved herself to the right to rehearse until the time she deemed fit, especially when they had important competitions and performances approaching. She didn't want anybody to have a breach to complain.

She also had gotten a permission to insert an "Independent Performance Coaching" class in the program, which was pretty much a one-on-one session that all of her soloists took at least once a week. A good deal of why her day had been long and miserable had been the fact that Jesse had managed to switch schedules with both Chris and Andrea and had booked three consecutive sessions with her, which meant she had had to spend two-and-a-half straight hours staring at his face and pretending she wasn't currently very much at odds with him over throwing eggs at her daughter.

She really did remember having the "sometimes you have to try and be considerate of other people's feelings" conversation more than once with Jesse – he had always lacked a certain empathy ability. But considering his selfish response to her almost plead that he at least apologized to Rachel and explained the situation (she had fully authorized him to disclose her portion of liability for his actions), some endless juvenile babbling about her ex-boyfriends and how she hurt him first and hence he would not try to make amends, she was very much convinced she might have imagined those pep talks.

Jesse still found it extremely hard to put himself in anybody else's shoes, something she had hoped would have happened when he accepted to help her with Rachel but she had also since discovered he had done so because it might have been "a good acting exercise". She was still to hear something coming from his mouth that wasn't exclusively about him. Even his apologies to her were all about him.

She wanted to tell him about everything that had been happening to her in that intense week. She really hadn't shared with anyone the overwhelming weight on her shoulders: the last and quite inflamed chapter of the Rachel debacle backstage at Regionals, the odd process she had unleashed by showing up at the hospital, how she had somehow ended up as the most likely mother of the baby from her biological daughter's romantic rival and her first boyfriend. How her life had become a dinner party populated by social workers and lawyers, coming and going and expecting her to graciously host and enchant her way into maternity. It still felt like the plot of a surreal film how it had ended up being agreed to by all interested parties that she should remain as a temporary guardian of the baby, at least until the state was absolutely convinced she wasn't a sociopath. Quinn and Puck had already filed for an adoption decree with the probate court and as soon as she was approved by the state Beth would be put into her care.

Granted, the idea hadn't quite landed yet. Even though she was completely healthy, Beth had been born premature and wasn't being breastfed. The doctors wanted her to gain weight in the hospital, which was buying Shelby some precious time to get the whole unexpected adoption situation together. Nevertheless, the responsibility had already been shifted into her anxious shoulders and her days had become a blur of baby shopping, visits to the hospital, redecorating her apartment, going through every paper again and again with her lawyer, having strangers ravishing through her financial and personal life and endlessly poking her in the eye over every little blemish they encountered, and they sure were many. And they didn't even know there were many more things about her she was adamant they would never dig up. Once upon a time, Jesse was the person she gladly babbled to about these things. But how could she do that then? When she couldn't make herself believe he would sympathize with the roaring commotion inside her head and her heart? When she didn't even know if he would feel joyous for her getting the one thing she had wanted more than life itself for almost a decade now?

What he couldn't understand while he pushed and pushed and sworn he was sorry time and time again was that she wasn't angry anymore. She wasn't a person to hold grudges, especially not against a kid. She wasn't keeping up with their "fight" out of resentment. She just felt alienated from him now. He just had left her feeling alone and in Shelby's opinion there was nothing more brutal than to experience loneliness within a friendship.

Trying to sit through two-and-a-half hours of him acting like a child and trying to jazz-hand his way out of the doghouse had only aggravated her to a point where she had just stood up, walked out and then childishly hid in her office. One of the things she had loved the most about Jesse was that he was one of a handful of people (and not even a complete hand) that managed to make her laugh. But now it just made her want to punch him in the face.

Unfortunately, work didn't reduce itself when she needed a break. If anything, it was only mounting up. She had finally finished preparing the finals for her Advanced Placement Music Theory class just that morning, then she had a long meeting with Dakota Stanley to talk about Nationals and other upcoming performances, and she still was responsible for organizing the Vocal Adrenaline summer camp even though she was expecting not to be in charge anymore by then. She had taught her three classes, administered the long Vocal Training exams and then ate a salad in her office while she finalized the budget report for Regionals during lunch before going off to face Jesse.

Most of why later that day she had ended up dismissing the group early had to do with the fact that she couldn't stand Jesse staring her down from the stage and being helpless to stop him for even one more second, but it was also because she had had three painfully detailed letters of recommendation to polish and rush to her contact in the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. And, on top of that, she had been unkindly requested to rewrite the five-page-long babblings of Dakota Stanley into a cohesive letter for Andrea's application to the Juilliard dance program. She really rather not have to redo her colleagues' sloppy work, especially Dakota's, but she would never let one of her children suffer and lose an opportunity like Juilliard because the dwarf was too full of himself to give one of the best dancers she saw in her coaching career the time of the day.

Shelby raised her head and stared at the clock on her MAC desktop, marking just past seven. She had been lucky to finish so fast. But honestly, that part of the job wasn't a hassle at all. It was actually her favorite aspect of it, even more thrilling than the euphoria of winning. She could always find something passionate to say about even the most problematic or apathetic pupil; she loved to see them through to promising futures and renewed hopes and dreams.

She turned to her left wall, the one that was heavily decorated with black-framed black-and-white photos of Vocal Adrenaline. It had been a challenge putting that together, but she really loved that wall. They were mostly relaxed moments, little pictures she grabbed when her kids had no idea what she was doing. Of them chatting between themselves, or fooling around on stage or a special moment or two of performance. The one in the middle, the one her eyes finally settled down on, was of Jesse and her. Danielle, a soloist that had graduated the year before, had snapped it on their last Nationals. They were at their dressing room, and she had been sitting on the arm of the couch trying to stitch up a button to Jesse's shirt, which he was still wearing. He kept trying to make her laugh by impersonating all of the rival coaches and she had poked him with the needle. He had feigned indignation but ended up cracking up too, and Dani had captured that perfect moment, their eyes glistening with amusement and affection for each other. How could that be over now? Worse, how could she deal with the fact that it may never even been there? She had cared too much for that boy, she had grown to love him; how was she going to accept that he may not even care for her? But Jesse only proved over and over again that he only cared about himself.

Shelby felt her heart twist into a knot and forced herself to look the other side, take a breath and go back to work. No use in whining to herself. She scanned her to-do list quickly and decided she would give a jump start to the preparations for a festival in Florida in which Vocal Adrenaline was to perform. The club had some commercial sponsors, which was technically against the rules, but one of the top things that had made her so valuable and valued in Carmel was the fact that she had managed to bypass those rules and earn the club and the school hundreds of thousands of dollars in corporate sponsorship without actually committing any offenses. Vocal Adrenaline paid for practically anything in that school. New sports uniforms, new annex, new library, new whatever the crap the board voted that they needed and that the Booster Club and she approved. In turn, VA performed in certain events organized by the sponsors and the club was popular enough with the hot girls and boys, the acrobatics and pop songs that revenue was usually quite high.

In competition she worried more about having an impeccable composition of vocals, performance, choreography and staging in her shows, since those were the aspects that really counted for your score, but on the other instances she liked to have fun and create little concepts. The year before some of her students had begged her to let them do a vampire-themed performance, half of them being really excited about Twilight and the other half just really wanting to mock Twilight. She had given in and prepared an extensive performance that comprised David Bowie's Nature Boy, Stevie Wonder's Superstition, Florence and the Machine's Drumming, Roxanne's tango version from Moulin Rouge, Kings of Leon's Notion, Lady Gaga's Monster, Nirvana's Smell Like Teen Spirit, Cheryl Cole's 3 Words, Pearl Jam's Immortality and Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Skeletons into one huge medley, and featured the most intricate choreography she had ever worked on, with even some flying involved, and had her pupils act out the silly but certainly entertaining story of the girl who fell in love with the vampire. Jesse, of course, played the main vampire and Haylee had been their ingénue, with Andrea and Gisele grabbing huge solos as the vampire queens that were all too willing to show the mortal a very risqué (and musical) vampire version of fun, and it all ended with Jesse transforming the girl because everybody agreed that otherwise was just too boring. They had had to perform that number again at least seven times because everybody was positively addicted to it.

It wasn't exactly going to be easy to top that. She knew that half of her seniors had sent the video of that performance to their top college choices and the few that had done early admissions had all gotten in, most of them with scholarships. She knew the pressure that the parents of her junior class would bear on her. She went through her repertory list trying to gather a concept that could be used for many of her numbers; she was already dreading how elaborate she would be forced to make that performance and she really did want to utilize their year-long work in the best way possible. The theme from their last summer camp had been The Beatles so they had done a lot of that, then Amy Winehouse, Adele, Aretha and Duffy on the beginning of the year when she was trying to throw something more soulful around, plus Jesse had had laryngitis so she had benched him and used only the girls; after that there was some AC/DC, Green Day and Queen during rock month, Lady Gaga and David Bowie, some musical theater…

She pulled her laptop into her lap, kicking off her high heels and settling into an Indian pose. She opened Word and wrote down 'Revolution', '60's', 'teenage rebellion'. She went through the list once again and opened the video recordings as a playlist, listening to some of the lyrics and making more notes. She wasn't quite there yet, but she could feel a story starting to build. She managed to draft without stopping for a good half-an-hour until she grabbed her water glass, one very similar to the one she had presented to Rachel, but it was empty. She turned to her jar to pour some more, but found it empty too. She had adapted a mini-bar as a tiny fridge in her office and she reached for it only to find out she had already drained the dozen Perrier bottles she had stacked there only two days prior. With the decision of cutting all of the anxiety-eating, she had apparently adapted into anxiety-drinking water. Thankfully she had an accommodating bladder or she would spend half of her time running to the bathroom. She looked at her glass, thinking she should probably leave school around eight and so perhaps should just let it go.

But she knew she was going to get fidgety and be unable to think about anything but her imaginary thirst from that point on, so she sighed, slipped her shoes back on and got up, grabbing the jar on her way to the door.

The hallway was eerily quiet, exposing the deserted state of the school at that hour. Carmel was a strong college preparatory school with endless after-school programs, from the prestigious art's options headlined by Vocal Adrenaline to the competitive sports programs that got some real traction exploring venues that were not really options for most schools in Ohio such as fencing, horse riding (Vocal Adrenaline had paid for their stables), lacrosse and tennis, the triumphant debate and model UN teams, to the usual SAT preparatory classes and independent projects. Still, they served a very conservative community, so, with the exception of VA, every kid usually would be dismissed as soon as the sun set as to arrive home in time for family dinners.

The teachers really appreciated that too. There was no doubt in any minds in the faculty that Carmel was a beyond excellent place to work. If you could resist the pressure and the constant parental and alumni interference without developing an ulcer, chances were a teacher would be very happy there. The money was excellent. The structure was unbelievable for a school that was technically public (and she knew for sure that even though the district they served was fairly affluent, at least thirty percent of their student body came from more humble homes, and every single extra-curricular program was need-blind, meaning that if a student couldn't pay the stipends that were often quite high (especially for things such as horse riding or Vocal Adrenaline with the endless costumes, make-ups, strict diets, numerous bottles of powerful sun block, and so on) they could still participate and the school would cover the costs).The teachers were competitive but they had a sense of cooperation, and they didn't pull each other's rug as she had so often seen in other schools, in fact everybody liked everybody. Some students were pretty difficult to deal with, but most of them were a delight - well-rounded, smart, overachieving young men and women that valued so much their education, their school, their mentors, that sometimes she felt school spirit went way over everybody's head.

She had worked at Carmel since she had graduated college, ten years total, and only knew other schools from afar. She knew she had hit the jackpot being recruited by her principal straight from his alma mater and she had no idea how she would adapt working in some other place. She knew she couldn't stay. She was that teacher that had developed that ulcer, the only one that worked way beyond normal hours. And weekends. And holidays. And she had the most troublemaker students, and the least independence to make disciplinary decisions. After the year she had, it was becoming unnerving. Even after Jesse left, she knew that if she wanted a real life, she would have to give up on Vocal Adrenaline. She would probably be invited to stay at school, but could she be so close to VA and not interfere? She was so controlling, competitive and jealous, she would probably go mad.

She maybe could try her luck out of the education business. She had learned so much from VA. She knew she was an excellent creative director, and a fairly decent stage manager. But showbiz had even crazier hours, and once it was official that she was going to be a mommy, she wouldn't want that. The unknown, the infinite possibilities, it was all scaring her a lot.

She closed her eyes, keeping her hand on the water fountain so the water wouldn't stop flowing into her jar, but trying to let her mind take a break. Sometimes it was hard to silence the constant chatter going on in there. But she let herself relax so much that suddenly water fell to her hand and down her legs, startling her and making her jump two feet to her back and almost trip on her four-inch heels. The front of her pants was slightly wet, but checking herself she figured it wasn't any disaster. Laughing at her own clumsiness, she emptied the jar a little and made her way back to her office.

She was grateful that after her scare she wasn't in any way distracted, so she wasn't heavily startled when she opened her door to find Jesse slouching on her chair, feet perched on her desk like he owned the place, fussing with her laptop and listening to one of his own solos with the volume all the way up. She took a deep breath and nervously ran her free hand through her hair while she tried to figure out how to respond to that. She couldn't exactly hide under the table and even if she could, she had a feeling he would pester her until she faced him. It wasn't that she didn't want to; the case was that she honestly didn't know what to say to him anymore.

Before she could figure out a line of action, Jesse turned the volume down, looked up at her innocently and casually commented, "I think we should perform the Come Together/Helter Skelter medley. Beatles is always a crowd pleaser."

She nodded slowly, in a trance, and responded with a calm, "I'm not really liking the choreography on that right now. It's not as evocative and strong as I would have hoped. Please move from my desk," that really didn't do justice to how badly she wanted him out of her sight at that point.

"We need to speak," he announced with that little pedantic tone that grated her nerves when she wasn't in a good day. She was really not in a good day.

"About?" she asked flatly, crossing her legs and deciding to let that one exhaust itself, as it inevitably always did when Jesse figured that his strategy of the time had been argued to muteness.

"Our situation."

"Spoken. Many times."

"And yet, unresolved," he gave her a pointed look and she felt shaken. He had a point, and she knew he was suffering over that and so was she, but unless he had a brilliant solution for her dilemma, she was going to stick with ignoring it until he left for college. "I suggest putting a ballad on the beginning, a vulnerable moment. I was thinking Let It Be for me, or Blackbird for Haylee. Like on the movie version, by Evan Rachel Wood. See how I was totally not egocentric there?"

Shelby thought that a normal person might have some difficulty keeping up with Jesse's incapacity for staying on point, but she was quite used to it. Nonetheless, she wasn't very satisfied that he was trying to lead her into two conversations at once. It was a trick to keep her engaged, and a cheap one at that. She would never refuse to talk about Vocal Adrenaline with a pupil, and he was aware.

"You were doing really well until you felt the need of licking your own ego," she whispered, still without a hint of emotion, or bothering to look him in the eyes.

"Please let's sit down and have a conversation," he pleaded, a hint of desperation and pain in his tone that made her stomach hurt. But he was an actor; she reminded herself of that and tried to keep that in the front of her mind. His whole life was about expressing fake emotions and he was playing her. She didn't know for what purpose, but she was sure it was self-centered.

She saw in her peripheral vision Jesse getting up and marching towards her, and shifted on her feet agitatedly. He stopped suddenly and acted as if he was considering something, and if she wasn't certain he had planned that little pretense before hand, she was sure then.

Yesterday

All my troubles seemed so far away

Now it looks as though they're here to stay

Oh, I believe in yesterday

Shelby looked up at Jesse as soon as the melody was strangled out of his chords, sorrow dripping from it, and getting to her. He knew how music touched her deeply, where no words ever would. It immediately did. She immediately saw him the way she knew he wanted to and she felt sorry for him, evidently.

Suddenly

I'm not half the man I used to be

There's a shadow hanging over me

Oh, yesterday came suddenly

"Shit, shit, shit," Shelby cursed inwardly. She tried to make her brain disconnect herself from that room, knowing it wouldn't happen. She kept repeating to herself that he was manipulating her, but the words couldn't evade her. Not when they held so much truth. If everything had changed for her after Rachel, it had changed for him too, even more so because he was going away to college; away from his family and from his friends, and away from the mentor he had to know he would lose forever, because she was already making herself lost to him.

Why she had to go I don't know

She wouldn't say

I said something wrong now I long

For yesterday

Shelby bit her lip, tensely. Jesse had that way of making their hearts pulse on the same rhythm with one song and that one certainly said it all. They both longed for yesterday, but there was no magic that would turn them back to that moment of that photo, the time when they were happy, carefree, accomplices, content. When they didn't feel that emptiness in their hearts and tried so hard to make someone else fill it that they destroyed everything. But maternity would be a life blessing for her, and college could be good for him. If he could just accept that and keep moving on… But he wouldn't.

She was still deeply staring at the water in the jar, feeling too fragile. Her strongest parts were still standing, but he always found a way around to her heart. And now that he had her bare and engaged, what would he pull? He was walking to her, she could feel him. She always did feel him, and her body felt touched before his hands even stroked her elbows.

"What do I have to do to get it back?" He blew the words through her hair and into her ears, there was an agony in his tone, and she felt honestly sad that she couldn't give it back to him. She shook her head slowly, letting the realization travel back to him before speaking.

"You can't. All our yesterdays are lost. There is only the future. Yours. And mine. There is no ours anymore. We have different paths from here on, and they will be good paths. Good lives." She finally looked up to him and saw that he was revolted. She wanted to believe that he just needed time to make peace with the changes, but Jesse was spoiled and didn't deal very well when the world didn't go according to his wishes. She tried to convince herself once again that it wasn't her burden to carry and shrugged at him, trying to appear blasé. "At least we can end on a good note. With a victory."

"That's a fake clown smile and you know it. Anybody with eyes knows we have been broken since the Rachel thing, and you are only deluding yourself by shoving the pieces under the carpet." There was an anger to him that was so adult that shook Shelby a little off her base. But at the same time she felt self-assured of her decision. He could stand like that, not even an inch away, and not even see her. She didn't need that relationship, and it certainly wasn't healthy for her anymore.

"Maybe I am the only person I wanted to fool. I just don't have the strength for this right now, Jess. I want to look the other way, find a clear path and walk towards it. And so should you."

"It's not so simple," he exclaimed, heatedly, brushing his always perfectly combed hair with his fingers and there he was again, a man. When had he become a man? They couldn't get on the same page just that morning because he kept acting like a bratty little boy.

"I can't," he choked through greeted teeth and she once again didn't found much to do but move her head affirmatively. She wasn't being the most generous human being. He was so attached to her.

Don't you think you've done enough

Oh, don't you think you've got enough, well maybe…

You don't think there's time to stop

There's time enough for you to lay your head down, tonight,

Tonight

She felt the words escape her lips before she knew what she was doing; the melody wasn't quite right, but in that moment she could forsake perfection. She was just trying to have a conversation with her protégé. She was just trying to find a way to comfort him somehow. Her free hand found his jaw, and brought his eyes down to hers, boring into her, dissenting, even as hers begged him to just take rest in the unknown, to just stop trying so hard to force a door that wasn't going to open, even as her fingertips caressed his cheek; if only he could feel in the warmth of her skin that it was safe to let it go.

Let it wash away

All those yesterdays

She bit the rest back, not seeing the point, but Jesse picked up right where she stopped, his voice loud and incensed storming onto the walls of her office and reverberating around them.

What are you running from?

Taking pills to get along

Creating walls to call your own

So no one catches you drifting off and

Doing all the things that...we all do

They broke contact almost at the same time. She was irritated. She hated this insinuation that he made every once in a while that she wasn't human enough. How much more human could she be than when he saw her? Than in that very moment when he held her heart in his hand and was pretty much sinking his nails into it? She paced in circles, feeling abruptly claustrophobic. It didn't help that Jesse was doing the very same thing, and with the furniture blocking them, there was already not that much space as it was.

She turned to him and raised her eyebrows, and if asking "Now what?", and he scoffed before getting even more riled and screaming "I don't know what you want."

"Yes, you do! You just don't accept it. I want you gone."

Shelby only realized what she had said one second too late, when the intense hurt crossed Jesse's eyes and his open vulnerability let it clear that the game they were playing was long over. There was no more room for clever theatricality; they were just ripping at each other at that point and she was sure she had made a pretty big gash in Jesse's soul after that one.

"Well, I'm not going," he spat at her and raised his chin up and it was almost funny. She could have chuckled if it wasn't so poignant. Instead, she felt herself roll her eyes and huff a spiteful "Oh God, please don't break into that song. I'm really not into Dreamgirls, especially after the movie." And she knew that if she had any decency she would have apologized after that one because that was really one of most petty things she had ever uttered, but she just stood there, clenching her teeth at her ugliness while Jesse turned into a light shade of crimson that was all new to her. Jesse St. James was never fazed, never enough to blush anyway, but in that moment he wasn't quite that persona, and she didn't know anymore which Jesse was the one that had left her hollow.

"I'm one of the few people in this group that even knows that is not just a movie," he mumbled pitifully; now he was a boy again and she wanted to hold him and make it better, and it was all disturbingly confusing. But at least she knew what she had to do with that Jess— she had to force him to grow up.

"Should I pet you in the back for your magnanimous interest in musical theatre and your vast education in Broadway matters? Should I tell you it makes you super special? Well, it doesn't. You are not the first student that I take a liking to, you won't be the last. But you are not my friend, and certainly not anything more than that. In the long run, you'll just be… nothing." Shelby was pretty good in tearing people down; that was the main reason people were so afraid of her. But she didn't know how she had dared to voice that, especially because it wasn't true. It was just plain cruel.

Still, it startled her when a hot pain spread through her left cheek, and a metallic blood taste reached her tongue. Her lower back connected painfully with the edge of her table as the force of the blow sent her stumbling back and her legs quivered from shock. Her ear was ringing inside her head, an acute annoying sound that made her dizzy, and her lungs were panting from the adrenaline discharge against her ribcage.

It had happened so fast, it was almost an outer body experience. She had heard herself emit a moan of surprise and pain, but it felt like it came from someplace else. Her brain only registered at some point that the jar was no longer in her hand, which was clutching the side of her face, and she could feel wetness on her pants and her feet.

She instinctively whipped her head around and searched for Jesse. She almost expected him to be smug, or at least defiant, but he had a look of utter astonishment in his face and he even motioned to extend a hand towards her, but she marched towards him without even thinking, without even wanting, just a pure primal reaction. She saw he was overwhelmed by fright and shame and if she had any control over herself she would have pulled halt into her trot but something in her wanted to kill him and it was going to try.

Jesse stumbled backwards, now the one desperate for an escape; however, right as she was sure she was going to jump his neck, the door – which Jesse had been trapped against by her furious advance – shuddered under knocks and it made him jump. Shelby didn't have time to scatter out of the way, or to do anything else, because Jesse pulled her into him and clamped his hand over her mouth.

At first, Shelby yelled more of surprise than of anything else…if the pathetic, strangled squeal that barely cut the air could even be considered that. She was a few mental levels behind the idea of screaming for help. She felt her feet skid trough her soft carpet as she was dragged away from the door, bewilderment surging through her veins shortly, before giving way to rage. The struggle finally unleashed itself, as if fuel had traveled through her organism and ignited it and it was indiscernible and out of control, and Shelby could only tell one of her legs had hit Jesse's and the other had smacked against her coffee table painfully. But Jesse had a firm arm lock around her head that didn't slacken, even when he groaned from the blow against his ankle and muttered a stifle "Fuck".

Shelby rotated inside his constraining hold, and pushed against his chest, shouting harder and feeling her throat and lungs burn from the exertion and restricted amount of oxygen, and tears pressing against the back of eyes. Jesse's other arm closed in a tight tourniquet around her torso, pinning her against his chest, his much toner build successfully subduing her struggle.

"Shelby, are you in there?" She heard Jonathan's voice flutter towards her and felt a surge of relief, because surely Jonathan would let himself in and help her if she didn't reply. Sometimes he came by to bid farewell and recommend her to go home in a sensible hour, and since occasionally she worked with her ear buds on and didn't hear him knock, he would just enter.

She realized soon however that she was being entirely daft. Jesse got extremely agitated the second he recognized their Principal's voice, his expression one of pure, innocent despair. "Just tell him everything is fine," he whispered in her ear, frantically, tightening his grip on her and choking "Shelby, please" through clenched teeth. Shelby whined softly into his palm; he squeezed her into him until it hurt, but she still shook her head stubbornly.

"Shelby?" she heard Jon try again and wished he would stop being so polite. Jesse's face darkened, there was no way out. She wasn't about to show him mercy, his principal was outside her door, and if their history pointed to any outcome, it was a pretty grim one; Jonathan had never cared much for Jesse's larger-than-life personality, or the way his father's big pockets seemed to interfere with the hard discipline to which Carmel students were otherwise expected to oblige. Education-system politics were touchy.

Jesse's arm slackened off her upper body, but Shelby stayed still, pretty confident that any physical combat was unnecessary, something she dearly regretted the minute she saw a black, metallic object materialize on Jesse's hand.

Shelby felt her breathing escape, a cold terror invading her as Jesse pressed the barrel of the gun against her abdomen. Her stomach felt as if it had been filled with cement and her mouth went dry from absolute fear. She just couldn't understand. This was Jesse. Her adored, intimate, long-time pupil. She looked up into his eyes, her wires still not crossing in the right places to explain this scenario, blinking slowly at him while hoping that maybe, suddenly, the world would shift and she would find herself in a situation in which the past five minutes hadn't happened, in which it was all just a perverse deception from her exhausted mind.

Jesse looked down at her, still quite wretched, but there was surliness about him as he mouthed another plea and she meekly nodded her head, finally acquiescing.

Jesse warily removed his hand, but she made no attempt of screaming. Shelby could barely speak as it was, she was, but in the end she managed to utter a weak "Yeah, Jon. I'm sorry, I was on the phone."

When Jonathan didn't invade her office to see if she had barricaded herself under loud music, he would usually wait for her to invite him inside. Shelby didn't know what he might imagine she would do in there that would hinder his presence in the room, but had always been grateful for how respectful he was. In that moment, as the door knob stayed untouched, part of her felt royally pissed. Another felt relief though; she didn't want him to get hurt.

"What's with the water, Shelby?" His tone was filled with laugher. He was obviously amused, and not mad, or worried, as he had obviously no idea what was really going on in there, and she was not in the position of filling him in. She took a few calming breaths and forced the words out.

"Had a little accident, Jon. But everything is under control. I'll get it dried."

"Okay. Have a good night."

"You too," she muttered almost inaudibly before Jesse covered her mouth again, which she thought was rather unnecessary considering her semi-catatonic state, while they listened to Jon's steps going away from them. They stayed paralyzed in that position for what seemed like an eternity, Shelby's wide eyes resting on Jesse's the whole time in spite of the fact that he was glaring straight through her. His gaze seemed lost, desperate and pained, but after a few minutes a mask of resolution came upon him; he subtly nodded to himself and released her from his almost asphyxiating grasp. But then he opened the door and pushed her through it. "Go," he ordered. Her feet tripped forward a bit, but she was too baffled to do much else.

She turned to him and asked, "Go where?" but he grabbed her shoulder, shoved the gun into one of her ribs and then dragged her along the dark corridor. Shelby didn't have much to do with anything in that school that wasn't music-related, so her office was a few feet away from the auditorium and from the external exit that lead to the Vocal Adrenaline private parking lot. She guessed, and was proven corrected briefly, that Jesse was taking her there. The parking lot the heads of department, the principal and important visitors used was on the other side of school entirely, and even if she screamed her lungs out and Jonathan was still in the area, he wouldn't hear her. So she could only pray Jesse wasn't planning on hurting her in that parking lot.

He half-shoved her forward when they made it outside and she was free from his hold, but that gun pointed to her head was unsettling. Not being able to handle it quietly anymore she just started to plead, "Jesse, put that down. Please, put that down. I'll go wherever you want, but put that gun away."

Jesse didn't waver an inch though and made a sign for her to go over to his car, which she grudgingly did, still begging him to lower his weapon.

It was chilly outside and for the first time she realized she had left her things in her office. Her jacket, her handbag, her phone. She shuddered at the realization that if her lawyer – or worse the hospital – tried to reach her regarding Beth they wouldn't be able to and she halted her step, making Jesse almost crash into her. He grunted and grabbed her, the gun really close to her face now, but she stuck her feet against the pavement and twisted her neck to look at him.

"Jesse, please, I need my things. Please."

"Don't worry, they'll still be there when you get back for them. Carmel is super safe."

Shelby almost insisted, even gagged a "But…", except she didn't want to release to Jesse the reason she needed her phone so badly. She had no doubts anymore that he wouldn't care and was actually quite concerned he would react badly to the idea that she was getting a baby.

She tripped again when she shoved her forward, and gasped for air when he squeezed her body against the car while he unlocked the passenger door. He forced her inside of the black Cadillac that, if she wasn't mistaken, belonged to one of his parents; the door was rammed behind her, and that made her heart beat even faster if that was possible. She was convinced she was going to vomit it any time now.

When Jesse entered the car through the other side, the cabin light came on again and she stared at his toughened profile. She couldn't even recognize him. Or could she? Some part of her was familiar with that look in his eyes; that detached but focused look that told her he was out of this world. A look that was icy cold but burning at the same time.

She tried thinking of him on stage, but rapidly gave up. Jesse was a man on mission on stage, imperturbable, true; but he was also emotive, open, and vulnerable to his utmost.

Shelby felt trapped in a sort of trance. She was certain some other Shelby Corcoran would have kneed that boy by now, and would be raising hell inside that car until either one of them was dead, but she felt very much like every muscle in her body was anesthetized with the exception of her face which felt tight to movement, as if it had shrunken under her skin, and still, it burned as if somebody had dropped boiling water on it and that whole side of her face was about to undo itself and fall off.

The car came alive, and her stomach felt as if it had been filled with razorblades. Jesse got out of the parking lot and took the narrow streets leading out of the school and into the quiet, luxurious residential lanes in the outskirts of the school. The lights on the Victorian mansions were passing as a blur but she knew that there were people all around her; lots of that people being her students, their parents, their siblings, but nobody that could help her. She was right within their reach and they didn't even know. But the idea that she might want a stranger, any stranger, to just hop out of their house and save her was deeply troubling. She was inside a car with a person she had loved and trusted for a really long time. She didn't want to really feel she was in danger, even with all things that had occurred taken into account, but she couldn't help herself. Maybe it was just her 'flight or fight' response, but she had this nagging sensation that the world was closing in around her and that if she didn't escape, something bad was going to happen.

"What now, Jesse?" she mumbled with so little power she didn't sound very much like herself. Jesse ignored her, of course. They drove for what seemed like half-an-hour, but it could have been more or less. It was probably a lot less. Shelby wasn't really able to tell time anymore or discern where they were headed, she was too burdened with anxiety, but she didn't think Jesse could either.

"Where are we going, Jesse?" His lack of response confirmed her suspicion. They passed more and more houses, time kept clocking away, and she even chanced a look at the digital watch on the panel but she couldn't recall anymore what the time was when she had last checked. She let her head drop and her dark brown hair cascaded around her face, protecting it from Jesse's view, and she shut her eyes and took a breath, willing herself to keep calm. When she opened them again, she spotted dark-red droplets over her silk blouse and her pants, and was puzzled until she remembered what had happened in her office.

She stretched her neck and managed to catch a glimpse of her messy appearance on the rearview mirror, complete with a small trail of dried blood running down her angular chin. She would have looked like one of her kids in the Twilight performance if not for the fact that her lip was cut and swollen, and there was already a dark discoloration forming near her cheek bone. She even hadn't realized Jesse had backhanded her so viciously.

He was spying her reaction from the corner of his eye and she caught him staring. They both huffed their feathers and looked away from each other at the same time, like stubborn bratty children, except she had very good reasons to be so resentful.

Shelby could tell they were driving in circles, but somehow that didn't calm her at all. What seemed pointless could very well be that until she provoked Jesse enough for him to hurt her more; and if it wasn't pointless, she was sure she wouldn't be pleased with his endgame. "Where did you get that gun, anyway?" Nothing. She looked at him, and his face remained the same. Hard.

Suddenly she had a flash from when she had seen that expression before. Jesse had been a sophomore, and he had gotten in a fight with some boy that had called one of his teammates, a boy she liked very much named Nate, a faggot. Andrea had run and got her, and she had marched down the hallway to find Jesse and the other boy pretty much pounding on each other on the floor. Shelby wasn't really one to go around shouting on students, so she had done what she always did when she wanted their attention, she clapped loudly until they looked at her. She had only needed to clap twice.

The other boy had immediately crapped himself at the sight of her, but Jesse had remained with that look on his face, even after she raised an eyebrow at him and he had gotten the clue and gotten up and followed her. She recalled that even as she battered him verbally, she had cleaned the blood from his nose and held a pack of ice to his face because she couldn't stand to see any one of her students hurt. But she sat in his car, bleeding, and he didn't even ask if she was fine. Well, not his car.

She also recalled abruptly when she had seen that car. It was Jesse's mom's and she had actually seen it the same day of that fight, when the woman had been invited into the school to talk to Jonathan. That had been one of the many times she had seen Jesse's mother, Heather, but one in which she remembered distinctively that she had been carrying a weapon. She sighed and shook her head at Jesse.

"Your mother." He did stare back at her this time and she managed to catch a glimpse of fear. "It's your mother's. For Christ's sake Jess, she's the county's FBI head! I don't think she'll take too well to her son committing a federal crime."

He looked positively frightened then, as if the realization had finally sunken in, and yet he refused to talk to her.

"What do you intend to do to me now, Jesse? Do you even have a plan?"

She saw him cringe for a second, but then his face illuminated and she was very much aware that he had gotten an idea. He turned on a few streets she didn't identify at all, then for the first time made it to a main road, and she comprehended that she was fucked.

Jesse finally stopped at a red light to wait to cross into the avenue that would connect them to downtown Lima and a few other upper-class neighborhoods such as her own, and Shelby didn't even mull over much. She swiftly thrust her car door open and tried to jump out, but Jesse was very shrewd himself and flew over her body and grabbed the handle, slamming the door closed before Shelby had managed to wriggle herself out of the vehicle.

Shelby wasn't able to control herself and cried out loudly as the door violently smashed against her side, her head connecting with the glass, making pain explode throughout her muscles and black dots start dancing in front of her eyes. Jesse steered the car into a dark side street, muttering curses under his breath.

Shelby supported her heavy head on her trembling hands. It was like for a second she had been engulfed into darkness, but then it dissipated quickly and she just about wished it didn't. She noted a low, almost childlike whimpering pervade the otherwise uncannily quiet vehicle; it seemed like something out of a horror movie and albeit she apprehended in some level that she was the one producing the sound, it indeed scared her.

She felt Jesse's hand on her head and flinched away as far as she could; unfortunately, in the cramped space of a car, the farthest away was pressing against the door that Jesse had just used to brutalize her, and that evidently was not nearly enough distance. He bent over her legs, popping the glove compartment open and perusing it, but she didn't even open her eyes to try and comprehend what he was intending.

She felt a pinch on her wrist and she mechanically pulled her arm closer, but it only jerked back and she realized, stunned, that Jesse was holding the little chain connected to the hoop he had just clenched around her wrist.

"What are you doing? Stop!" she shouted, and her alarmed voice was raspy and stifled, but nonetheless it was authoritative for the first time, and it fed a certain mutinous wrath inside her. "No!" she screeched, trying to push Jesse away; her arms flung against Jesse's shoulders as she yelped "Get off me! Get the fuck off me, Jesse!" and unconsciously hoped either he would take pity of her or some passing driver would notice the commotion and help her.

None of that came to be, though. She felt both of her upper arms being gripped and her torso being shaken violently and Jesse yelled at her face "That's enough!" Shelby went mute and blinked at him, frightened. Nobody had treated her like that since she was twelve and it made her feel exactly like that perplexed little girl again.

Jesse seemed to notice that and calmed down. There was a flash of self-doubt and guilt, but then he was back to business; he helped her get out of the intricate position she had landed during the altercation, and arrange herself correctly on the seat.

She felt his palm close around her hand, and found it surprisingly clammy. He brought it around to what she guessed was the door handle and asked for her other hand, but she couldn't quite place where he was holding the hoop through her blurry vision.

"Shelby, give me your other hand," he repeated, impatiently, but she was too dizzy to be able to focus her eyes. She could have just told him that, and probably should have, but instead she just neared her hand to the position of her other arm, and felt the metal click around her wrist.

Through her glazy sight, Shelby distinguished Jesse shutting the glove compartment, before straightening his body properly in front of the wheel.

She rested her pounding head against the seat and tried to take deep breaths and calm herself down, but even with the movement of the vehicle being so slow as Jesse restarted it and drove away, it was making her nauseous and more lightheaded.

She thought about how far from her baby she was getting and it made her even more anxious. If she lost custody of Beth because the hospital or the state tried to find her and she wasn't available, she wouldn't think twice before taking vengeance in Jesse. She wouldn't hurt him; nobody should go through what she was going through. However she could always get UCLA to pull his admission.

She mulled over how to make him pay for a while, but then realized she couldn't do that. She wasn't a kid and she couldn't lower herself to his level by hurting him because he hurt her.

She tried to take deep breaths then and relax but it was impossible.

"Jess, please, if you really do care for me, just let me go. This isn't funny, and it has gone too far already. Please stop before a tragedy happens." She knew she had sounded like she was whining, but the truth was she was indeed very close to weeping, even more so after his stoic reaction.

It hadn't been easy for her to side with Rachel on the egging matter. Even if Rachel was her biological child, Jesse was the one she loved, she was connected to, the one that needed her and always sought her out. But she felt his actions and his reasoning had been cruel then, and he was doing it again. It was almost impossible now not to put herself in Rachel's shoes. She had always thought Jesse was the one student she could trust, the one that would never betray her. She looked after him, and he had always given the impression that he tried to look after her, in that boyish, cocky, sloppy way of his. Now he was the person submitting her to a perverse violence, and his eyes were blank from any compassion, any concern. No wonder Rachel thought he didn't have a heart.

Shelby's vision had cleared considerably by then but she gained a raging headache instead and she started to feel very faint, a condition not aided by the movement of the vehicle. A car passing on the opposite direction with a particularly intense headlight made her eyes throb in an excruciating manner and she shut them reflexively, but her eyelids felt too heavy to open again, and her head was becoming too light to be able to sustain any more thoughts…

GLEEGLEEGLEE

Shelby felt an icy blanket of air involve her and shuddered. There were two hands on her shoulders and they were shaking her gently. She heard her name being called twice, and opened her eyes with some difficulty. It was agonizing to keep them like that, but she tried her best not to let them close again. She looked at Jesse, who was towering above her.

"What's your middle name?"

Shelby frowned at Jesse's question— was he trying to get her money from the bank or something? But then it hit her. She had injured her head and then lost consciousness for an unknown amount of time.

"Teresa, because of Mother Teresa. My mom was very devout," she mumbled, not able to recall even if he even knew her middle name, and how.

"What day is today?"

"Friday, March 26th, 2010," she groaned, already impatient.

Shelby turned her head to the side, and glanced beyond Jesse. There was a sizeable cabin behind him, all lit up. It was beautiful, but she was sure she had never seen that place before, and once the events of that night caught up to her, she felt drenched in fear. She heard Jesse talk again but didn't really pick out what he was saying, and he seemed displeased.

"Where am I?" she muttered, horrified.

"My house," he answered with a blasé attitude and a shrug.

"This is not your house," she contradicted, trying to shake her head. She had been to Jesse's house countless times; she was always invited to his parents' stupid dinner parties.

"Yes, it is. We have many houses," he answered with a sigh, then picked up her up in his arms and carried her out of the car and towards the cabin.

She tried to hold onto his shoulders but noted that her hands were still handcuffed together, and she might have offered him a disapproving glare but her strength gave out and her lids dropped. Her head was leaning loosely on his shoulder, but moving too was an effort she seemed unable to afford.

She smelled when they changed environments. Outside was fresh and smelled like trees and wet dirt, and inside the air was heavy – as if it had been trapped for a long time – and there was a distinctive scent of wood mixed with industrialized air freshener.

Shelby was lowered carefully into a soft surface, and her back was propped against what could only be a pillow. She speculated if she could use the little force she had left in her body to drag herself down to a lying position, but before that, something icy and wet touch her chin and her eyes shot open in alarm.

Jesse was holding a towel in his hand and he mumbled a "Sorry," before pressing the cold cloth against her skin again. He was truly being gentle, and it staggered her a bit.

"You must hate me a lot," she whispered accusingly.

Jesse shook his head and retorted somberly, "I could never hate you," never taking his eyes off her bruise and the work he was trying to do.

"Then why are you doing this to me?" she whined, defeated, exhausted and revolted.

"Because you are hard-headed, but so am I. I cannot be expected not to fight back, not to try and recover something that I love."

"Wow. If you do this to who you love, I really don't want to imagine what you would have done if you hated me."

Jesse sighed, looking perturbed for the first time, and their eyes met. He was wordlessly apologizing, and it was intense and sincere and it left her at a loss.

"Shelby, you have to know I never meant to hurt you. I just needed your attention and then… Things just got out of hand so fast. I was afraid you were going to get to Mr. Baris and get me expelled."

Ironically enough, it had never occurred to her to get Jonathan involved after Jesse slapped her; she was going to handle him herself. She wasn't even aware Jon was still in the building until he was at her door. Once Jonathan had been outside though, she had only wanted to get out of there; Jesse's extreme reaction scared her, and she hadn't had time to think if she wanted him to be expelled or not.

Jesse finished cleaning her chin and her lips and then regarded her with what had to be pity, which only enraged her. He shouldn't pity her— he should be ashamed of himself for doing what he did. Jesse left the stained towel on the bedside table and stared at his lap, apparently embarrassed for a moment, fumbling with his own fingers, before hesitantly trying to brush her long bang off her face but she slapped his hand away. His rage came back, like a little switch she kept turning so easily that it was astonishing, and she regrettably cowered away a little.

"You know, I'm the only person that would do anything for you, and I did. You have nobody. Nobody has the patience for your high-strung, controlling, icy, back-lashing personality, but I don't even care that you are not breezy and low maintenance; in fact, that's what I love about you. I'm smart enough to see that there is something twisted in our sick dynamic and I honestly always half-expected this co-dependence to end badly someday. But who else are you planning to turn to? You feel alienated from Rachel and you don't have any family, any friends. I bet with you that nobody will even notice you are gone. When we get back, nobody will even imagine you were ever taken. Nobody will have worried, nobody will have cared. And you are gonna want to tell somebody, but I know you. You'll be embarrassed, and you'll feel self-conscious about asking somebody to sit down with you so you can talk about your problems. You don't rely on people, and you always assume nobody wants to have to put up with you either way, which might be true. The only person who ever wants to hear about your fucking problems is me. So you are gonna suffer in silence until it consumes you. For days after now, and then for weeks after I leave; hell, probably forever. And it will be well-deserved."

Shelby felt her core shatter into pieces. She had been told a lot of bad things, by him included. She had had to put up with pretty disappointing and shaking statements from her daughter. She had been dismissed by men in varied spiteful manners. But that had to be the most brutal, nasty attack she had ever taken from someone, and it ached all the more because of how much she adored Jesse.

The worst part was that he was on point and they both knew it. But she would never forgive him for using how intimately he knew her to cause her so much misery.

A tear slid down her cheek, cold. Then another, and another, and another. She hid her face on her knees and tried to bite back the sobs but her body was shaking and she couldn't prevent that. Jesse's fingers brushed against the naked skin of her arms but she managed to utter a strangled "Get away from me" and after a few seconds his weight lifted from the spot next to her on the bed. She spied between her legs Jesse dragging his feet through the room and then exiting it, and she at last let herself go. A sob wracked her body and the others came in quick succession. She managed to lie down on her side, but other than that her body was barely responsive and she was sincerely beyond caring. She was crying so hard her whole torso became sore, and she was gripping the covers so tight her fingers started to go numb.

She felt a hand creep up her arm again and flinched, but that didn't make it hesitate. She felt humiliated and sickened that Jesse had dared to come back in there. Nevertheless, she kept crying, and she believed that considering everything, she was only entitled to. His hand went up to her face and tenderly brushed her hair away and it kept caressing it, while his other hand rubbed her back soothingly. She didn't want to admit it, but his touch on her scalp and body did take her back to a time when she could just let him throw his arm around her shoulders and even the smell of his hair would make her feel content, the same arms that held her after she had seen Rachel perform during Sectionals and she couldn't stop shaking from the shock. She also had to give it out to him the fact that he was being somewhat respectful and just waiting and silently comforting her until she ultimately managed to calm down.

"Shelby, please, I'm sorry." Jesse patted her arm and pressed his body further against hers, almost as if he wanted to embrace her but didn't have the guts. "I didn't mean what I said," he whispered softly, and his tone did carry an ounce of regret.

"Yes, you did," she retorted grudgingly.

"Ok, fine, yes I did. But what I meant was that I know how much you need me, and I'm not going to let you push me away. I'm here for you."

Shelby tried to turn on her back but Jesse was so close up against her that she ended up on this weird position with half of her back perched over his knees.

"You are here for me? Assaulting and abducting me? That's how you are here for me?"

Jesse grabbed one of her hands into his, caressing it softly. He had done that the day she had had the first encounter with Rachel and had run to the music room to hide; he had found her sitting on the floor, behind the piano, utterly devastated.

It seemed such a thin, bizarre line— the one they had crossed. One week they were fine, he had been comforting her; next one she was convinced he was the devil.

"I didn't want to do any of those things. I wasn't thinking, I was just reacting, and I just lost it."

"You know the things that you said were true. I am all alone and I'll probably always be. And what you did proved me right. You don't care about me. You didn't stop to think about how much distress you were causing me for even one second of the hours, HOURS, I spent sitting in that car next to you, scared and hurt. You know what type of person is like that? A sociopath. A monster. You only like people for what good they serve you and when they don't you treat them like crap. How can I go on when all I think is that every nice gesture you take towards me has an agenda? And now this? Could you be any more self-centered and vicious?"

Shelby turned on her side again, giving him her back and taking her hand from his clutch. He'd always be good at consoling her but it was hard to let him when she couldn't shake the feeling that she was being played.

"What can I do to prove you wrong? I do care about you, I do love you. I'll do anything to prove it to you. Just tell me what."

"Take me home. Now." She wasn't begging or whining this time, she was demanding.

Jesse nodded, agreeing, but there was something bitter and far from submitting in his nod. "And then what? You won't talk to me, you won't look at me. You are not even teaching me properly anymore; you're hurting the whole club because you are angry at me. How was I going to earn your friendship back like that?"

"Friendship is about respecting the other person and I don't feel very respected right now. You're not showing me much respect by taking me hostage at gunpoint."

"I know. You are absolutely right. But I'm right too, and you know it."

Shelby sighed, knowing there was indeed enough blame to go around, and softened her voice.

"I do know it, and I'm sorry. I'm sorry that I just wanted us to stay away until you left because it was too hard not to be able to trust you anymore. It was too hard to think the person I adored was not the person I thought I knew, and that I was indeed surrounded by a bunch of strangers who only gave a shit about what I could to for them."

"I changed schools for you! I dated your daughter!"

Jesse threw his hands in the air, exasperated, and it took her mouth a moment to gather her reply. She wasn't happy that she had been shocked into this, but guessed that after being slapped by him, it was only natural that her body would hesitate anytime he showed signs of losing control. Natural, but surely maddening. She gave him a hard look instead and finally mumbled dryly, "No, you did that because it was a good acting exercise."

Jesse eyes filled once again with what looked like despair, and his hands grabbed the sides of her face in a way that was also clearly filled with anguish and barely crafted to comfort her at all.

"Shelby, that's not true. C'mon. I did it, mostly, for you."

"Why?"

"Because you are really important to me."

"But why?" she defied him again, trying to make him understand that, "I need you, I adore you, I, I, I, I…" just wasn't going to help him at that dark intersection of their lives. That attitude had actually landed him there, and considering how much of a grim turn the circumstances had taken, it was only further rubbing her the wrong way.

Jesse only stared at her for a while, and then seemed to try and come up with a response, going as far as to open his mouth several times, only to shut it again a second later. Finally, he conceded defeat, shaking his head.

"I don't know."

It was hard for Shelby to pretend that she hadn't held that tiny bit of hope that she would get a magic answer that would make everything acceptable, and the silly anticipation probably exploded on her face into a disenchanted scowl.

"You can never, ever, put yourself in somebody else's shoes, can you? I want you to go, and try to put yourself in mine, and then come back and talk to me. You wanted a chance, here is your chance."

She watched as Jesse warily left again, and tried to focus on not falling asleep, an almost impossible task when she was so drained. She hadn't experienced any slurred speaking, she realized, and her vision had cleared considerably but the headache was crushing, probably propelled further by how much she had cried, and she also still felt sick. All of that made her feel so weak that even the thought of Beth didn't make it so appealing to go back to the city right at that moment, but she comprehended that she was likely being unwise in not insisting to go back right away. Her brain could be swelling; she could be in need of a hospital.

Shelby heard Jesse returning and rolled her eyes, conjecturing why that kid was so bad with simple instructions, but when he came to be in front of her she felt a little sorry for being so callous. Jesse had a little key with him and promptly enough he managed to get the handcuffs off, something she was much too grateful for. The metal rings were starting to chafe her a little and there were two thin red lines around her wrists after Jesse removed them.

Then he offered her a tall glass of water, which she drank as if she had just spent years in the desert. It relieved her aching throat a lot and made her nausea subside considerably. She sort of understood now how Rachel could drink water when she was sad. It did have a calming effect to it.

She tried to give the glass back but Jesse had vanished and, with some trouble – her arm felt so heavy – she managed to put it on the bedside table instead. She dropped back on the bed, and, as well as her stamina would allow (which was not with excellent efficiency) tried to bring the pillow down. Fortunately, Jesse materialized back by her side and eased the pillow under her head.

He took another cloth to her face but this one was warm, and he cleaned off her tears and the makeup that doubtlessly was smeared all over her skin, and then he pressed it kindly over her temples, forehead and eyes.

"You know this is not what I meant, right?" She didn't want to be thick-skinned, but that whole thing seemed like him trying to cut a corner proving that he could care for her.

"I know. Just thought you could use some rest, and that it would be hard to settle down after all that."

"Thank you," she managed to stagger out, but barely. She was almost gone. It was undeniable that the warmth and smoothing movements were indeed relaxing her and easing her into sleep. Then she remembered… She grabbed his hand to get his attention and made him stop.

"I could have a concussion," she explained.

"You seem lucid," he countered calmly.

"My head hurts, and I don't feel so well. I need you to wake me up in an hour, to make sure I haven't slip into a coma or something, and check if I'm disoriented."

"Okay, okay," he agreed, resuming what he was doing. He let his other hand slide upon her head and his fingers trailed her skull skillfully, trying to help her headache, hopefully. It did, only a small degree, but it was enough for her already worn out body to surrender and in a minute she was out cold.