Finn didn't sleep much that night, haunted by replaying those last few minutes with Rachel, hearing his voice say those things, seeing her crumple in tears over and over again, that sudden change from happiness to despair. Their last kiss goodbye, seeing her train leave, running after it and falling to his knees, over and over and over...
He fell asleep eventually just before dawn, and woke much later. He didn't feel much like doing anything, but he reluctantly got up, went down to the kitchen, and had something to eat. It didn't taste like much, though he didn't have a problem eating, so that was something, he supposed. He finished and put away his dishes, then looked for a distraction.
Was the house empty except for him? His mom was at work, Burt had been going into the shop, but he heard Kurt's voice coming from his room, talking. He went closer, some of Kurt's words starting to come out, and then heard the voice, responding...
That's Rachel. He's talking to Rachel. But her voice sounded different, thinner, choked... broken. Oh God. Finn slumped against the wall outside of Kurt's closed door, and he could make out the words now.
"No. No I don't." And she sounded so fragile, despairing... I did that. Finn slid down the wall, sitting against it as he continued to listen in to their Skype session. Rachel managed to go on, but her words, hearing her tortured voice, it broke his heart.
What have I done to her?
"I mean, at the time I could get a little into the drama and romance of it all, it didn't seem real, but now - it doesn't matter how he put it, I'm still alone. Still back to being just a voice, rejected by the only one I had thought really appreciated me and loved me as a full person." She sobbed again. "I guess I don't get to be a person after all, not a real one. I don't get to be loved, just admired, that's all I'm good for. He said he was setting me free but all I get to be is a bird in a cage, I get to sing but not to fly."
"Hey," Kurt protested. "Ease up on that, okay?" But Rachel just ignored him, barrelling through, still sobbing out her words.
"Sometimes I just wish I was tone deaf or something, that I didn't have this, like it's a curse, it takes over everything... but then I wouldn't have anything at all, would I, I'd just be nothing at all without my voice, I wouldn't even know who I was. But people can't see past it to me, I always thought Finn could but now I guess not."
What? No, you're amazing, Rach. So much more than just your voice.
"Rachel, Finn loves you. Real you, not just your voice. He just doesn't want you to lose out on the stage, on NYADA. He wanted to make sure you followed your dream."
"My old dream."
"He thinks he broke you by getting you to be willing to abandon it for him."
Finn was relieved to hear Kurt put his arguments for him, to try to help Rachel understand. Even though yesterday Kurt had been arguing against him.
"How is it somehow so wrong for me to wait a year for him, but he can give up his whole life for me? How can I ever live with that? All that wasted potential, that wonderful man even when he doesn't know he is, even when he pulls stupid stuff like this, he's going to throw it all away, and for what? Because he couldn't figure out how to talk to me about it?"
Is she right? I just thought she'd get over me if anything happens, I'm not that special. It'd hurt, but she'd find someone better. She'd probably find someone better anyway, I just don't want to be there to see it.
Rachel went on, still crying. "One year. He's going to go off and get killed, because he didn't want me to wait one year, and then I'm going to wish I was dead too. Or he'll come back and it'll be even worse than now, the better I do the more he'll just think he can't measure up, he can congratulate himself that he helped make it happen, and applaud like everyone else, but that pedestal is cold and drafty and the bars on the cage are hard and I don't want to be there, not for Finn." Rachel sobbed again. "My dream isn't special, you know. It isn't any different than anyone else's, and it's what it's always been. I just want to be loved, is that so hard? Am I so difficult that it was easier to lie to me and abandon me than to try to be with me? It's not like we had to get married, that was his idea."
No... that's not what I was trying to do, it's me I can't handle...
"And Broadway?"
Rachel sniffled. "I've probably always confused praise and applause with love," she admitted. "My dads combined the two, mostly. And I never had friends before, I was always alone, I wanted to find somewhere I would belong. For a long time I thought Broadway was the only place I could get that. Of course I love performing, but the big need for Broadway was more because I thought it was the only place I'd find people who'd accept me and love me. And... and I told him all this," she went on, her voice rising. "He asked me to be sure I really loved him, and I told him all this, how he's where I belong, and he said I inspired him, and it's all such crap because he left me anyway!"
Please don't think that, I love you...
"But he does love you, surely you believe that," Kurt said haltingly, and Finn could tell that he was crying too.
"I don't know what I can believe any more," Rachel said tearfully, her voice shaking. "Nothing makes sense."
And there was a pause, because Kurt probably didn't have anything he could say to that.
Then Finn heard a great heaving sob, and it was Rachel. "Nothing," she said. "This isn't living, this isn't being free, this is hell. And the army, he said that's because I can't follow him there..."
I said that? Shit, I said that.
"I don't know if that's true or not, god, how could he be that desperate to get away from me..." Rachel sobbed again for a while. "They lost two more today," she continued eventually, softly. "It was on the news, my dads didn't turn it off before I heard."
Finn listened more closely. Who lost two more what?
"A transport went over a bomb, and two more men are coming home in coffins, if there's anything left of them at all, and -" Rachel couldn't continue.
Oh. Shit. Hearing Rachel barely able to gasp it out, it made the danger seem a lot more real.
"It would be different, if that was what he really wanted to do, at least I hope I'd try to support him, but... to risk that just to get away from me..."
Not what I meant...
"... or for my sake somehow..."
well yes but...
"... Finn's life is the most precious thing in the world to me, doesn't he know that, doesn't he know I'd give everything else up to save him, he doesn't have to marry me or love me..." and Rachel dissolved completely into sobs. Finn, sitting next to Kurt's door, crumpled too at hearing her so devastated, all over what he'd done. He'd never meant to hurt her like this; in thinking about how much he loved her, or thought he did, he hadn't given that much thought to how much she truly loved him. He'd been afraid to go to New York and be a failure, have to watch her be destroyed by him or leave him, and he'd pulled the plug himself instead of trying to do better.
He sat there crying, hearing Rachel's gasping sobs, Kurt yelling out over the link for Hiram since Rachel needed help. Then quiet, but Finn buried his head in his arms and cried on. What have I done? To us, to her?
Finn was brought out of it eventually by a sharp kick to his hip, and he looked up to see the furious face of his stepbrother. Kurt's eyes were red, he'd been crying too.
"You heard some of that, I take it," Kurt snarled. "Good. Because if you go through with it and anything happens to you, there'll be a lot more of that, and you can throw in your mom, my dad, and me while you're at it. Or are you so down on yourself that you think we're all complete idiots to love you and value you?"
Finn shook his head dumbly, not trusting his voice.
"That's a start. Now get your head out of your ass, Finn." Kurt kicked him again, and Finn started to move out of the way. "Because Hiram's practically begging me to come to try to break Rachel out of her fugue, but I know she won't want me to leave here as long as you might do something irrevocably stupid." He stepped back and let Finn rise, then continued to glare up at him. "And I'm not above doing something drastic, you still need to pass a physical."
Finn was taken aback by Kurt's uncharacteristic threat. "You've been taking pointers from Blaine?"
"Santana, actually. The Marquess of Queensberry would not approve, but frankly I don't care."
Finn wiped his eyes. "You actually know how to go all Lima Heights?"
"I know how to go a little Lima Heights. That, desperation, righteous fury, and superior foot coordination should be more than sufficient." Kurt's glare eased, but his look was still pointed. "Like she said, it'd be different if it was really something you wanted to do. But you're courting danger and you're putting it on her, that's a horrible thing to do to her, especially when you completely blindsided her with it. And to the rest of us, we're complicit if we go along with this. So please don't make me do it, but don't think that I won't." Kurt turned away and took a few steps, but stopped, hesitating.
Then he turned back suddenly, and was back in Finn's face. "Though don't tempt me. I don't know if you heard the part where she's terrified that nobody's ever going to be able to look past her talent to truly love her, but I think I finally understand the cathartic potential of violence, so don't tempt me." Kurt turned away again and stalked off. "How could you do that to her?" he yelled back.
How did I screw everything up so much? Finn asked himself as he lay in his room, alone. I thought everything through, I know I did, I just always forgot something... It's so fucked up, I just want to start over, but I can't.
Mistake had piled on mistake had piled on mistake, and each time he'd tried to fix the previous mistake it just got worse, overcorrecting, going too far the other way. Flailing out of control like a car swerving one way then another until it was flipped over in the ditch. He'd recognized how selfish he'd been in proposing, at least, desperate not to lose her because she was the only good thing he had. And he'd tried to pull back. But even then he'd made it all about him, his sadness at "letting her go" (making her go), his own feelings of inadequacy masking the concerns he should have had about how she'd take it. Forgetting that their engagement was, or should have been, as much his commitment to her as hers to him, her pain as real, that just because it hurt him to break it didn't mean it should be an easier commitment to break than the one he'd made to the recruiter. He'd always found it easier to break commitments to Rachel, somehow, which was awful, maybe because they didn't feel like obligations because he wanted to do them, so he didn't feel like he had to suck it up and do them anyway.
God, the recruiter. Well Burt was right that he could still back out. But backing out just felt like being a failure again, a quitter. Changing his mind, again, he'd been all over the map in the last few months, no wonder Rachel didn't know what she could believe any more. And no, he didn't know why she loved him, especially not when he did stuff like that to her. She had sounded so broken, so wretched, and he had done that.
He'd thought he was being so selfless, doing the right thing by Rachel, all the while ignoring what she'd want. Insisting that he could sacrifice but she never could, she was worth more than he was anyway, but she didn't see it that way. And his great noble selfless act, really about the most selfish thing he'd ever done, all about how he felt, how he couldn't bear the failures that were all he could see coming and how he couldn't live with himself if she gave up anything for him. Though part of that was guilt because he'd asked her to when he shouldn't have, and he was trying to fix it.
Trying to fix the past. He'd done that before too, hadn't worked then either. Fuck, he was such an idiot. At least she wasn't married to an idiot, even if she was in love with one. But though it was tempting to give into his panic to run and hide in the army, to hide from making decisions when he so obviously sucked at them, to gain some self-worth at least by living up to what he'd promised the recruiter, he couldn't shake how desperate she had sounded over the possibility that he could die. Now that he'd heard it, heard her, he couldn't do that. But he didn't know what else he could do instead, he was right back at "my life sucks" like he had been before, just now with a broken-hearted and traumatized Rachel to show for it.
He hadn't wanted her to give up anything for him... forgetting that what he was making her give up was him.
He'd made so many promises to her. Promised to go to New York and try to make something of himself there, and at least that promise was for something he'd actually wanted, even though he didn't see how he'd succeed. He'd let himself off the hook for breaking these promises as promises to himself, but he shouldn't let himself off the hook for breaking them to her.
Easier to risk a bullet than risk failure, really, you didn't have to live with yourself if you were dead. Game over, though this wasn't a game. But he'd done the hard thing before, he'd been reminded, and at least he could try. He owed it to her to try, and who knows, maybe he really did have some of the potential that she saw in him. He couldn't see it, but he couldn't see much these days. He'd certainly gotten the crowd going at Nationals, that was something, right? And after what he'd done to her, the misery he'd heard, he owed Rachel, even if it was just the chance to kick him in the teeth as he knelt begging at her feet.
Finn made up his mind, pulled out his phone, and called Santana. If nothing else, he knew she was one person who'd never let him back out of a commitment, and he'd better stick to this one.
