AN/The reviews are very encouraging. Thank you so much! And the nature of this piece of fanfiction... some beloved characters die. While this chapter doesn't confirm much, you will find out the fates of many sooner than later.

Rachel suddenly became aware of a loud, incessant ringing. The world was shaking, or maybe it was her that was shaking? She couldn't be sure, but the movement made her head hurt. She thought to open her eyes and figure out what the ringing was, but her whole body felt incredibly tired. Her eyelids wanted to stay shut. "Rachel, Rachel. Yes, there you go. Wake up!" The quiet voice reached her through the ringing, as did many other seemingly far-away noises that confused Rachel, but the shaking ceased.

"No, I'm ti–" She wanted to say that she was tired and she wanted to go to sleep, but her throat was dry and she ended up coughing instead. As her head jilted with each cough, the ringing got louder.

"No Rachel. You have a concussion. You have to st-" A loud boom cut the voice off and thundered through Rachel's head.

"Oh my God," the voice cried, not so far away any more. "Kurt, you… you have to kee- keep her awake. Can you do that?" The voice was suddenly choked up and Rachel realized it was Coach Beiste. She was slowly becoming more and more aware of her surroundings. The ringing continued, but it was not so blaring. Shouts, screams, and cries reached her ears. She could smell and taste blood and smoke.

Confused, Rachel finally forced opened her eyes. She wanted to know what was going on. She found a crying Kurt sitting next to her, but no Coach. "What happened?" She asked and tried to sit up, but the task was impossible. The attempt brought a strong wave of dizziness over her. The idea of sleep re-entered her head and she closed her eyes.

"Rachel! No! She said you have to stay awake! Please." His plea was hysterical enough for Rachel to open her eyes again. She felt the urge to cry with Kurt, but she wasn't entirely sure why.

She shifted carefully, wanting to survey more of the scene around her. Blaine was standing next to Kurt, completely quiet. He was staring at something, but Rachel couldn't tell what from her view. His stare and his silence frightened her. "What happened?" She repeated, her eyes meeting Kurt.

Kurt tilted his head at Rachel's question. "The plane, it crashed. After you were hit in the head, the pilot tried to land the plane, but it… I don't know what happened. A lot of the plane is on fire and parts of it keep exploding and…" His voice drifted off as his tears became sobs.

"Plane," Rachel whispered, her short turn memory swimming back to her. They were flying to the Caribbean. The plane started shaking. Then people started screaming. She had grabbed Mercedes hand and then – Mercedes!

"Mercedes, Kurt. Where is she?" Rachel's head still hurt severely, but all of her confusion was being replaced with gut-wrenching fright. "Where's Finn and Noah and…" Another name came to the front of her mind and the worst fear she had ever known gripped tightly around her heart. She kept the name to herself, but reduced to sobs with Kurt. "Wh-where's everybody? Why di- why did Coach Beiste leave us?"

"A part… of the plane… it burst into f-flames," he said between sobs. "Where Mr. Shue and Mercedes… I thought they… they were right be-behind us. Th-then they weren't."

Rachel didn't know how to handle everything Kurt was telling her. Mercedes couldn't be dead. She shifted onto her side and curled herself into a ball, sobbing uncontrollably. Maybe this was only a bad dream? A really, really bad dream. She could almost believe so, but she was extremely tired. It didn't make sense to be tired in a dream.

"Rachel! Stop closing your eyes! Please!"

The sobbing teenagers and Kurt's desperate shouts attracted the attention of two nearby adults. A lady, perhaps 40 years old knelt down next to Rachel. "Does something hurt sweetie? Are you not able to walk?"

Rachel looked up at the woman and tried to talk, but ended up sobbing harder. She could hear the man with her questioning Kurt. He told them that Rachel had been hit on the head and knocked unconscious for a few minutes.

"I'm Helen. What's your name?" Rachel thought the lady spoke remarkably calm considering the situation. She managed her name through her sobs..

"Okay. Rachel, I need you to sit up for me. I'll help you. We can't have you falling asleep which is far easier to do when you are laying down in the fetal position." Rachel merely nodded and let Helen help her sit up. Her head felt so heavy and the dizziness returned, but Helen supported her for a few moments until Rachel could sit on her own. When some of the dizziness subsided, Rachel was finally able to survey the scene from an upright position.

The nose of the plane was partway into the forest far off to Rachel's right. The rest of the plane was on the beach. Half of the plane was in flames at various sections. There were small groups of people scattered about the beach. Even with the flames, it was hard to tell who anyone was due to the night sky.

Rachel's sobs lessened in intensity as she ran through a list of people in her head. Kurt and Blaine were right here with her; Mercedes and Mr. Shue were missing; Coach Beiste couldn't be too far away; the rest of the New Directions members were in the middle or on the far side of the plane, so they could have gotten off on the other side. Then there were the Warblers. Rachel didn't know any of them personally, aside from Kurt and Blaine. She was surprised that none were with Blaine and Kurt at the moment; some had been sitting in the row behind her.

The loudest boom yet went off as the rest of the first class section went up in flames. The boom pounded through Rachel's head, and a sickening feeling washed over her. That was where Jesse was sitting. He had had plenty of time though by now to get out though, Rachel told herself. She wasn't confident though. The number of people of the beach appeared so few in comparison to those who had been on the plane. She told herself again how passengers must have escaped on the other side.

Helen and the man Rachel had heard her call Ralph had Blaine sitting and Kurt semi-settled. "We'll be back to check on you. Please stay put for now. We will ask around for other members of your choirs." They had gotten a handful of details about the multiple choirs travelling together from Kurt.

Rachel wanted to ask them not to leave like Coach Beiste had, but she didn't really want them. Her hand reached out for Kurt's and he took it. She wanted her fathers. She wanted Mercedes. She wanted to know Finn, Noah, and everyone else was okay. And who she wanted most, she tried to be mad with herself for wanting him at all, but like the many past months, she could not shake the longing, the ache she felt for him. If they ever spoke again, Rachel Berry had very much intended to give him a piece of her mind. Now she needed nothing more in the world than to know he was alive and well. She would never be able to live with herself if the last look she gave him was one of anger.

For Jesse, just knowing that he would most definitely see her had a strong, unwanted effect on him.

At first, from the moment he left a humiliated and hurt Rachel Berry in the parking lot months ago, guilt took over his many other emotions, and he let it. He chose Nationals, Vocal Adrenaline, and UCLA over Rachel and he had to live with cost. For the rest of the school year he planned out elaborate apologies and plans to win Rachel back, the first one shortly after Regionals. Half of the plans he didn't follow through with because he had convinced himself he didn't deserve her after everything he did to her. The other half he threw away under the pressure of Giselle, Nationals, or senior finals. Then, not too far into the summer he found out she was dating Finn. For three days he let depression consume him until Giselle dragged him out of it. She first reminded him of their brilliant victory at Nationals and his promising future at UCLA. That wasn't enough, but she knew what would be.

"You're an idiot." Giselle had told him so many times before, but maybe now he would listen, now with Berry apparently moving on.

"Thanks G. You really know how to cheer a guy up," Jesse hissed before taking another swig from the bottle that was recently his best friend.

Giselle grabbed the bottle out of his hand and forced him to look at her. If this conversation went the way she intended it to, she wanted him to remember it. "She is a child, Jesse."

"Don't you tell me what she is," he snapped angrily.

"Listen to me," she snapped back in a raised tone, her gaze demanding. "Since Nationals you seem to have conveniently forgotten how she treated you. She triple-cast you in a music video! You, Jesse St. James! You, her boyfriend at the time! You, the guy who ditched his family and his school to be with her!" The last sentence was full of bitterness and jealousy.

For a moment Jesse only stared at Giselle, still amazed she had ever pulled so much of the story out of him. Jesse's alibi had been that he was spying for Shelby. Most of Vocal Adrenaline didn't come close to believing he would transfer to spy, but Shelby backed him up so they weren't in a position to give him a hard time about it. Giselle started to put the pieces together when Jesse rejected her advances during Vocal Adrenaline's spring break vacation. After the egging and his mood swings during Regionals, Giselle's suspicions were confirmed. She didn't confront him about it until after Nationals, but he then gave up more than half of the details of what really happened. As close as he was to Giselle, never before had he opened up to her. Jesse was an island and a proud one at that. No one else, except Shelby who knew to a short extent of his affection for her daughter, had any idea the effect Rachel had on Jesse. They demanded the egging of New Direction's lead as proof of his loyalty, only Giselle had ulterior motives during the drama. He kept up his act almost flawlessly in front of everyone until he escaped to UCLA, but couldn't deny the relief that came from sharing his story with Giselle.

Jesse played Giselle's words over in his mind a few times. With the Run Joey Run incident Rachel had disrespected his love and devotion. She had shaken his confidence, something that Jesse refused to let people do to him, yet he was vulnerable to her and could not help it. The pain he felt was like no other of his past. He was used to his parents disappointing him, to his parents being disappointed in him, but that was a dull pain he had long learned to live with. Then when it came to girls he rarely dealt with any kind of rejection, so to be made to feel as though he was not enough for the one girl he actually loved was heart-wrenching.

He didn't miss the tone of Giselle's last sentence and a ping of guilt rang through him. By family she meant Vocal Adrenaline and especially herself. Jesse and Giselle had an interesting and dynamic relationship to say the least, but at the end of the day she was the closest thing he ever had to a sibling.

"I love her," was all he could manage.

Giselle visibly bristled and called him an idiot again, handing him back his bottle and wondering why she bothered. But by the next day and for the rest of the summer Jesse was only half of a mess and rather than giving his guilt so much room, he nursed his pain and let his anger grow. Once at UCLA, Jesse loosened up a bit, but did not let go of his anger. He did however miss her more and more and eventually fell back into planning apologies or at least "accidental" run-ins with the young diva. Once during the first semester Jesse visited Ohio for a friend's wedding, but easily avoided any chance of running into Rachel. All the plans he had did not matter; she was still dating Finn as far as he knew and she had never tried to contact Jesse. Why should he bother if she was so fine without him?

When Goolsby contacted Jesse in regards to the show choir festival, under Giselle's suggestion of course, he immediately agreed to chaperone the trip that was conveniently during his winter break. After a few other calls he found out New Directions would also be attending the festival he knew it was inevitable that he would have to finally speak with Rachel. At this point he told himself to expect nothing from her, but he decided to make things right on his half and then maybe he would receive some real closure.

Still, the idea of actually seeing her made him crave so much more and nothing close to closure. This desire in him he almost hated at this point.

New Directions arrived at the gate, loudly and late. Show face, he told himself before turning around and immediately locking gazes with Rachel. First shock lined her face but it was quickly and fleetingly replaced by that look – the one she would, seemingly so long ago, greet him with whenever they had been apart for even just hours, the one that told him how much she missed him, how much she cared. Still, she was caught off guard and he expected the sad, angry expression her features settled on. He maintained his show face and granted her a small grin before she looked away. He was glad that she did, because then he didn't have to hide the aggravation he felt in reaction to her annoying, yet expected and understandable anger. What annoyed him most was that he was almost certain Rachel would not grant him the same understanding for his own anger.

Giselle knew better than to try and get Jesse to talk about it on the plane, but he imagined she was constantly rolling her eyes at him. He thought again of the conversation he planned to have with Rachel and adjusted it to fit the current frustration that beset him. He eventually managed to find temporary peace in slumber until a frightened Giselle and a failing plane woke him up.