Title: The United States of Rachel Berry
Disclaimer: Glee is not mine. But this version of its characters are. So really, who cares?
2. FIRST AND FOREMOST
this isn't me.
The first time that Rachel remembers actually being someone else, she was six years old. She thinks she's probably been someone else before then, but six is when she remembers the first time it happened.
It had been a Thursday, and she had been at the park, playing by herself (as usual) while her daddy LeRoy read his book on the bench close by. A boy, bigger than her (but then, even kids her own age were always bigger than little Rachel Berry) had wandered over, and was staring at her.
She didn't mind the audience, having finally perfected her rendition of 'My Man' and was busy practicing it to perform for her daddies that Sunday afternoon. The boy had stood right in front of her, eerily silent and staring, until he'd started laughing. His giggles and guffaws grew louder and louder, forcing young Rachel to stop and scowl at him instead. Appreciative (and silent) awe was one thing, but laughing was quite another matter. Once he saw he had her attention, the boy abruptly stopped laughing, sneering at her instead. And it was clear, even before he spoke, that he'd meant to laugh at her, and her singing, and there wasn't anything appreciative or awestruck about that.
"My mom says you're dads are evil fags, and they're gonna burn in hell," he said in his little kid voice, meanness shining through. He was staring intently into her eyes. When she didn't say anything in reply, he leaned in even closer. "They're gonna take you with 'em, I bet. You're gonna burn until your crispy, huh?"
Rachel hadn't been scared or intimidated as she figured she was supposed to be; it was just a little boy parroting his parents' idiotic attitude, after all. As unfair as it was, the little six-year-old was used to it. So she merely huffed in irritation that he felt the need to interrupt her singing for that drivel. Honestly, she feared for her generation.
"You know what else?" he blurted out, clearly caught off guard by her dismissal, causing Rachel to huff again. "That song's stupid too, cos you're never gonna get a man. Nobody's ever gonna marry you, cos nobody's ever gonna love you. Nobody," he hissed, searching her eyes again.
Obviously, he'd hoped she would cry. Unfortunately, what he got was something - someone - entirely different. That was the first of many bloody noses Rachel would become responsible for.
Puck, as he prefered to introduce himself, didn't take any shit from anyone. He liked girls a whole lot, especially older women, and had no compunctions about going after those he wanted, whether they were already in relationships (or marriages) with other people or not. Puck was the reason Rachel knew sleazy pick-up lines and how to expertly roll a blunt, and in fact where to score the best weed for those blunts. Puck was the cause of most of the fights (and drunken brawls) Rachel got into in highschool, when she'd been a self-declared badass; or rather, Puck had been the badass. To her, he'd just been Puck. To everyone else, he was proof that she was a freak.
According to the typically small-minded Lima, her homosexual fathers had infected her with their perversion. How else did you explain a girl, raised by two men, who went around calling herself a teenage boy?
Naturally, she had done her research on the topic of multiple personalities. Rachel Berry was nothing if not extremely organised. She loved plans and schedules, and attacked this new quirk with the same dedication she gave to all her school assignments, dance lessons, vocal lessons, etc. After all, there was no telling what effect (if any) this could have on her future as a Broadway star. The psychology section of Lima's library had lead to the bigger collections in Columbus and Toledo, and she'd even browsed through the stacks in Cincinnati a time or twenty. She found that while her condition was rather obscure, it was also rather different.
Most of the recorded cases, when not revealed to have been hoaxes, were rather vague, for lack of a better term. For one, it was apparently a total body invasion. An entire consciousness, that the host usually had no idea was even there. No recollection of any actions of the alternate personality either. More like a dream-state than anything else.
Rachel concluded in highschool that she was always going to be that else. The exception to just about every rule of Disassociative Identity Disorder.
She knew her alters; had since she (and they) were kids. Their names, their faces. They grew up with her, but they also grew up with her, if that made any sense. She knew Puck was eight, that first Thursday at the park. And while she didn't always remember all of what they did once they took over her body and her consciousness, she could ask and they would elaborate. In vulgar detail if she caught Puck post-conquest.
Yet, for some reason she had never shared that part of her situation with anyone else. It would only do one of two things, she'd reasoned back in middle-school, when she figured it all out in preparation of surviving highschool, and the pitfalls of being popular. She would be treated as an insane person, who made up unbelievable lies to gain friends, and belonged in a nuthouse. Or she would be an even bigger freakshow than the girl with two gay dads, open to constant ridicule and humiliation by her peers. Silence, she'd decided, was better. Let's not give them any more to judge.
"His name is Noah Puckerman," Santana was saying when Rachel opened her eyes. She was holding up her cellphone, waiting for Rachel's acknowledgement.
"Actually, it's Noah Elijah Puckerman," she corrected automatically. She blinked once, then leaned in to get a better look at the piccture on Santana's phone. On-screen, a michievous looking guy, sporting an honest-to-goodness mohawk, had his arms around who she knew was Lauren Zizes, Santana's psychotic best friend.
Santana kept quiet, watching as Rachel studied the onscreen image intently. Puck had only stayed for ten minutes, if that; and while Santana always felt a little on edge whenever Rachel returned after being away, somehow this time that familiar tension was different. Like brace-yourself-because-something-weird-is-gonna-ha ppen different.
"He calls himself Puck, too," Santana eventually said. She was watching her roommate's reactions carefully, unsure how Rachel would take the news. She didn't even fully believe in the alters' existence half the time, and she'd known Rachel since highschool, but this was something else. Shit just got real.
Sure, Santana knew stuff about these other personalities Rachel whipped out. Things like how Puck and Sam played the guitar while Finn prefered the drums (as proven by those instruments having places of honour in the tiny study that Rachel commandeered when they moved in). And Rachel's fathers were the ones who had paid for their music lessons. But she also knew that Rachel couldn't play either instrument to save her life, and not for a lack of trying. But that was just in an abstract kinda way, like knowing the earth was round. It didn't require proof; like real in-your-face in front of your very eyes proof.
This Puck-thing though?
Deep down, Santana knew that this boy, Lauren's Noah Puckerman was Rachel's Puck. Was one of her alternate personalities in the actual flesh. She just didn't know how. And holy shit if he was real -was out there in the world- did that mean the rest were out there too?
Rachel was still unable to look away from her alter-ego and his new girlfriend, smiling at her from Santana's iPhone. She was lightly biting her bottom lip, evidently deep in thought. Then she took a deep breath, before finally looking Santana right in the eye.
"I don't know what this means," she began quietly. "I don't know how to explain it either, but I'll try. I'll tell you everything I know about... them. Okay?"
Rachel could feel herself on the verge of crying, but she didn't let the tears fall. She couldn't reveal the extent of her association with the voices in her head before. Couldn't tell anyone about how she even sometimes dreamed as her alters. After fruitless explanations and demands of How is that even possible? it had ended up being one more thing she just didn't talk about or acknowledge aloud, at all.
How can you play the guitar one minute, and not the next? How can you reach the top shelf one day, and need the step-stool every other day? Her knowledge of Super Mario Kart and Call of Duty would waver from one weekend to the next. She was vegan but her alters weren't. And so on, and on and on.
In the end, everything different and inexplicable was lumped in with all the things Rachel's fathers and her friends and her psychiatrists and her roommate had never known about her condition. Because Rachel had prefered it that way, at the time. Nobody else could understand it, since nobody else was in her position. And the silence kept anyone from trying.
But maybe, it was time for her silence to be broken. If only she knew where to start.
"Do you think..." Rachel trailed off uncertainly.
"What? You wanna meet him or somethin'?" The Latina retorted lightly. No, she didn't think that's what Rachel was gonna suggest, but it was the only thing she could come up with to cut the heavy tension a little. Her tone clearly indicated that that notion would be just plain crazy. She might not do feelings if she could help it, and really, after the revelations between her and Rachel, she kinda just wanted to get super drunk, pass out, and wake up in the morning like nothing's changed; but she would try to be there for her friend.
Even if she decided a face-to-face meeting is exactly what she wanted after all.
"No!" Rachel was staring at Santana in confusion and horror. "No, I don't want to meet him!" She seemed almost offended at the suggestion, and Santana only shrugged in response. "That would be sheer lunacy, and while I am many things, Santana Maria Lopez," Rachel bit out, "I am not insane."
Frankly, Santana thought that was debatable, but whatever. "Then what? What were you gonna say?" she asked, folding her arms and pursing her lips. She absolutely hated it when Rachel whipped out her middle name like that, and the diva knew it.
"Well?" she gestured impatiently when her roommate didn't answer.
Rachel fixed her with a withering stare, before exhaling loudly. "What I was going to say, Santana, before you so rudely interrupted me," she frowned at seeing the other girl roll her eyes in exasperation. Shaking off the juvenile behaviour, she asked, "Do you think the others could be real people too?"
Crap, Santana internally face-palmed. Of fucking course! "We are so screwed."