AN: I love you all! Thank you for all the reviews, including the "I was going to kill you" ones. I've got to keep you guys reading some how. But after the last two chapters and the wait I made you go through (I'm Sorry! Life got in the way) I think this chapter makes up for it. So without further adieu….and also Read and Review (yes I'm well aware that rhymed)


William McKinley High School closed its doors for exactly twelve days after one of its students held eight students hostage, and then shot on of them in the chest. It had been a week since then. All the students at WMHS were adjusting to the changed atmosphere that surrounded them. But no one was attempting to adjust quite as much as the seven members of New Directions who had returned to school after that horrible event. Mr. Shuester had cancelled glee all week with the exception of that Monday where he called a mandatory meeting. Mr. Shuester asked Ms. Pillsbury to come in and talk to the group. But by the time everyone had walked out, Mr. Shuester was almost positive that none of them were listening. It wasn't like his students were stupid, they knew all about the different people they could talk to, him included. But what these kids needed right now, wasn't to talk. It was to have their world go back to normal and that included not having the constant reminder that one of their friends was lying in a hospital bed recovering from something that none of them could have saved him from.

Lunch had been becoming increasingly awkward for the teens. No one had plans to speak of; it felt like everyone's life was on hold as one of their own was missing. But while each of them was acknowledging their missing friend internally, none of them would talk about it. Lunch instead was spent in an uneasy silence. The entire room buzzed around them, but they remained mute.

By Tuesday, Rachel had had enough. So she decided to spend her lunch hour in the library. She had been avoiding the auditorium at all costs. It just reminded her of everything and in the library she allowed herself to hide inside of her homework as much as possible. She hadn't returned to the hospital since Puck had woken up despite the pleading that came from Quinn and Finn, even Mike. No one else knew what to say to her so they spent most of their time avoiding her. Rachel wasn't offended because she knew there was nothing to say. It was like this incident had made them unable to have even the simplest of conversations.

Puck came home from the hospital the day exactly two weeks after he'd entered, though he wasn't permitted to go to school for another two weeks. The group had taken turns going to visit him once Ms. Puckerman allowed him to have visitors. So Friday after school Quinn was sitting on Rachel's bed while Rachel was searching through her closet for the skirt that Quinn wanted to borrow.

"Finn and I are going to see Puck tonight." Quinn said to Rachel who was still buried in her closet.

Rachel didn't respond.

"Come on Rachel. You haven't seen him in two weeks. You never went back to the hospital with us even when you promised him you would."

"I never promised him that," Rachel said continuing her search.

"That's not what he told us,"

"Well he was mistaken."

"He wants to see you,"

"Please stop talking about this."

"Rachel you can't avoid him forever,"

"I'm not."

"Then what are you doing because to me it looks like you're avoiding him and its not-"

"Quinn, please drop it. Or you're not getting this skirt." Rachel said emerging from the closet.

"I don't want the skirt as much as I want to know why you aren't-"

"You want to know why I don't want to see him?" Rachel yelled and Quinn nodded, "You do? I can't look at him. I can't look at him because when I think about him all I see is all the blood. It's coming from everywhere and I can't stop it and that's all I see. Blood. It haunts me in my dreams. So excuse me if it's kind of hard for me to see him right now."

Quinn was silent for a minute while she avoided Rachel's gaze that was constantly on the blond.

"I didn't know."

"I know."

"Look, you don't have to go this time. But do you really want the next time you two see each other to be in passing down the hallway?"

Rachel didn't say anything before disappearing back into the closet. When she reemerged, she was holding a denim skirt and threw it at Quinn on the bed.

"I get why you're freaking out but you can't keep doing it," Quinn said getting off the bed and walking towards the door, "Stay home and sulk today but you can't avoid him forever, no matter how much you wish you could."

As Quinn walked out the door, Rachel knew she was right. By avoiding him, the nightmares and the horrible thoughts that plagued her were not going to go away. But just like everything else lately that had to do with Puck, she chose to only ignore it until the last possible second. Rachel shook her head at the whole situation and threw herself on her bed. Checking the time, she realized that One Tree Hill is on Soapnet and while teen dramas weren't really her thing she seemed to be attracted to the love triangle between Lucas, Peyton and Brooke. Rachel had decided that Lucas and Peyton belonged together despite all of the drama that they went through. She also thought that Rachel was a horrible character, simply because she was tarnishing such a great name. Grabbing the remote she turned her television on just as the show was starting. Rachel was a bit confused but enjoying the program until she realized that one of the kids, whose name just happened to be Jimmy, had a gun. And then when he raised the gun at the doors Rachel scrambled to turn the channel. She changed the channel not bothering with what channel she was turning on. Of course she turned on Grey's Anatomy and there was suddenly a ridiculous amount of blood pouring out of this man's neck, all over some poor girl. Giving up Rachel turned the television off completely and decided it was time to look through some of the sheet music that Mr. Shuester had asked her to look through for glee. He had finally realized that her opinion was vital. And while he never promised that all her decisions would be final, as captain she was definitely going to be given her voice.

Rachel picked up the folder of music from her nightstand and began flipping through it. Since this time last year when New Directions was just forming and struggling to make it to sectionals, Mr. Shuester's taste in music had considerably improved and there wasn't much in the folder that Rachel would outright reject. But as she was flipping through some of the selections, she came across Total Eclipse of the Heart by Bonnie Tyler. Rachel loved this song and she was suddenly brought back to a memory. She and Puck had been in her room, doing homework of all things with Rachel's itunes on shuffle. When this song came on, they abandoned homework and began singing along until it was over and Rachel remembered that it was the first time that they had sung together like that. As her eyes glanced over the notes on the page, she noticed that there was a note written at the bottom. Suggested by Puck was written in Mr. Shuester's handwriting. She wondered how long Mr. Shuester had this in the folder. Maybe Quinn was right; no matter how hard Rachel tried, she wasn't going to be able to avoid Puck forever.

~~~~*~~~~

Sunday afternoon, Quinn and Rachel found themselves once again in Rachel's room. Quinn was wearing the skirt that Rachel had let her borrow and they were sitting on her bed listening to a song that Mr. Shuester had assigned for them to learn over the weekend. It ended and Quinn just rolled her eyes.

"I really hope Mr. Shuester doesn't think that every song we sing needs to be about overcoming personal demons or whatever. Because if you keep throwing this situation in our faces we will never get over it."

"While I understand Mr. Shuester's intentions, I don't want to do sad songs. While our selections at regionals last year were good, I feel that we placed as we did because our song choices were not as upbeat and positive as they could have been. So going into regionals this year with this song would be a bad idea."

Quinn nodded in agreement and sighed.

"What is it?" Rachel said.

"What?" Quinn asked innocently.

"You have that look on your face like you want to say something but you aren't sure if you should."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Quinn, you should never play poker. Now tell me."

Quinn hesitated for a moment but as she felt Rachel's eyes burn a hole into her she figured she wasn't going to get out of this, "When we went to see Puck the other day, he asked about you. He was hoping you'd be with us."

"Oh,"

"Rachel why don't you just go over there and at least talk to him. He's dying of boredom over there and I'm pretty sure you talking his ear off about something would be just what he needs right now."

"I don't think I can."

"Rachel Berry! You can't keep pushing him away. If this whole mess has taught us one thing it is that we need to stop pushing people away and being consumed with that what ifs and start living for what we have." Quinn yelled frustrated with her friend's behavior.

"I almost watched him die Quinn."

"Yeah but he didn't. And if it were Finn, I wouldn't want to wait until the next time he almost dies to tell him that I love him."

Rachel turned her head towards the window so Quinn wouldn't see the tears in her eyes. But Quinn knew Rachel just as well as Rachel knew her.

"Look, I feel guilty and now I've gone and made you cry so can I tell you one more thing and you not get mad at me?" Rachel nodded, "So remember how Mr. Shuester decided to give all the solos at sectionals to you are Puck. Well it was because Kurt and I asked him to. You guys obviously weren't, and aren't, over each other and we thought if we could make you work together you'd realize what we all did and fix it. We never expected it to come down to so much fighting and anger and sadness. We never meant for it to be like that. I just wanted to repay you for helping Finn and I get back together and it was an epic failure on our part and I'm sorry. So please don't be mad at me, or Kurt."

Rachel turned so she was looking at Quinn again, "I'm not mad. Actually, I was somewhat suspicious that there was something going on. But thank you for trying."

"Of course. If you ever need me to lock you in auditoriums or give up solos for you or bail you out of jail or something. I'm your girl. But let me make it up to you. Let's go get frozen yogurt, my treat and we can come back here and wallow."

Rachel smiled and nodded and the two girls took off in Quinn's car.

~~~~*~~~~

Rachel and Quinn enjoyed their frozen treat and as Quinn was driving them back, Rachel noticed that Quinn was taking a turn down the wrong road.

"Quinn. Don't even think about it!"

Quinn ignored Rachel and kept driving as Rachel continued to protest, getting louder when they turned onto Puck's street. Quinn pulled her car into the driveway and got out of the car walking around to the passenger's side of the car and opening the door. Rachel sat there staring forward pouting.

"Come on baby, you have to do this."

"You said auditoriums and solos and jail but you never said anything about this. Why are you doing this?"

"Because its time to get you out of this damn funk. And if you are Puck aren't okay then the rest of us get sucked in and we can't have that going into regionals, or we will lose. So do this for the group."

Rachel glared at her before unbuckling her seatbelt and getting out of the car. Quinn grabbed her hand and practically dragged her to the front door and rang the doorbell.

"I can't believe you," Rachel murmured before the door opened and Puck stood there with a look of bewilderment on his face obviously from Rachel's presence at the door.

"Okay, you two are going to stay here and talk and Rachel you can call me when you're ready but I don't plan on having my phone on me for at least an hour. So take you're time." Quinn said before sprinting back to her car.

Rachel turned to argue but she kept quiet in surrender than turned her attention back to the boy who was standing in the doorway, in his sweats and a loose fitting t-shirt. It wasn't the ones he normally wore that would show a detailed outline of all the perfect muscles underneath, but was most likely too big so it wouldn't compromise the bandage Rachel knew was underneath.

"You might as well come in," Puck said moving out of the way so that Rachel could enter. She was stuck here unless she wanted to walk home so she reluctantly crossed the threshold.

Puck motioned for Rachel to take a seat on his couch. It had been quite a while since the last time Rachel had been in the Puckerman house but for the most part, it looked like nothing had changed. Rachel became uneasy when Puck took a seat on the other side of the couch.

"I'm sorry that Quinn did this. She tries to do things that are in my best interest but doesn't seem to bother with the other people involved."

"Yeah, uh, it's cool. I was kind of getting bored since my mom had to take my sister to her friends and then run some errands. You never came back to the hospital."

Rachel should have known that Puck was going to jump right into everything. He shouldn't be worried about this stuff while he is recovering.

"I know. I'm sorry." Rachel said without offering an excuse, "How are you?"

"Been better. Been worse. How are you?"

"I'm okay."

"Jessica and I broke up."

"I'm sorry, Noah. I know you are going through a lot right now and that had to have hurt."

"It was mutual. She said something about not being able to compete."

"Why are you telling me this Noah?"

"Because I thought you might want to know."

"This isn't the time for this conversation Noah."

"When is Rachel?" Puck said standing from the couch. Rachel followed his movement but move until there was a coffee table separating them.

"When you aren't recovering from a gun shot wound."

"I can handle it."

"You might think you can Noah but you had major surgery and stress isn't good for you right now."

"Rachel, its giving me stress not to have this conversation. I can handle it. The question is can you?"

Rachel was quiet for a long time thinking over his words. She still didn't believe that this was the right time for the conversation but since she was stranded here, she might as deal, "I don't even know where to start."

"The truth would be nice."

"What do you mean?"

"The truth as to why you walked away from me that day in the choir room."

"I told you why Noah. I wasn't sure I could trust you."

"You lied."

"I most certainly did not."

"Okay fine, but that wasn't it was it?"

"What are you implying?"

"I didn't cheat on you Rachel."

"I know. But after you still went back to your old ways. You were with all those cheerios and Jessica."

"What did you expect me to do? Become celibate because we weren't together anymore? You didn't want me I wasn't going to wait around to see if you changed your mind."

"No. but it just proved to me that you weren't ready for a relationship." There is was. The thing that Rachel had never said to anyone, especially Puck.

"Neither were you,"

"Pardon me."

"What scared you most the idea of me hurting you again or the fact that I told you I loved you."

"What?"

"Don't pretend to be stupid right now Rachel. It's unbecoming," Puck knew he sounded angry, and he was. But they needed to be honest with each other if this was going to work, "I know you don't have feeling for him anymore but there was time when you were in love with Finn. Or so you thought it was love and you were so willing to follow him like a lost puppy dog. And you went back to him time after time when he hurt you. But you kept coming back and I never understood why you let him hurt you, but you won't even let me maybe hurt you."

"Noah, you're getting upset,"

"Stop avoiding the question Rachel please. What was it that let you love Finn so willingly but you can't or won't love me."

"It wasn't the same with Finn."

"What do you mean?"

She was quiet as she went over in her head the different ways that her relationship with Puck was drastically different, and better, than whatever romantic relationship she had once had with Finn, "When we broke up that day on the bleachers, I told you that our relationship was built on a fantasy. That it was you and I that weren't real when the truth was I was just blocking out the truth that Finn and I weren't real."

"Rachel what are you saying?"

Suddenly Rachel realized that she had said more than she had intended to. She was letting her feelings out in the open instead of guarding them like she had from so many people over the last few months. What he wanted her to say scared her. He wanted to hear that she loved him.

"Rach, just tell me that you love me and then I can admit that I never got over you and we can move on from this whole mess."

All Rachel wanted to do was run. But he was closer to the door and she knew that even in his condition, he would stop her. But Rachel had run from him before. When Puck had told her about Drizzle, she ran from him and she realized that she was doing the same thing now. She was in love with him. But this wasn't how love was supposed to be. When you were in love, you wanted to kiss and touch the person every second of the day and you wanted be around them and smile at them and feel their hand in yours and all these other things that Rachel had seen in the movies. When you kissed the person you love you don't want to run out of the door, you don't want to do anything but continue to kiss them until something forces you to stop after you've done all you can to fight against that force. That wasn't what was going on in her head right now. She loved Puck. She loved him so much it was killing her but she wanted to run. She wanted to run because the feeling was nothing like the movies, and it had taken her this long to realize that her life wasn't going to be a movie or a musical. Her life was her life but if she kept running from it or waiting for those perfect moments, she would be waiting forever. She loved Puck and Puck loved her and that was all that mattered. And she was going to have to deal with the bad because in it was what the road to the good stuff was paved with. She was going to have to put herself and her heart on the line if she ever was going to let anyone love her. Quinn was right. The whole situation that they found themselves in had opened her eyes. So standing in front of him, as he waited for her to say something, she took the five steps it took to close the space between the two of them and stood directly in front of him. Their bodies' only millimeters apart.

"What are you doing Rachel?"

"I'm an idiot. I'm the biggest idiot that ever lived. You told me you loved me and you almost died and I was standing around loving you but I was too afraid of getting hurt to let you close to me. And I realized sitting in that waiting room that I could have missed out on a lot of time with you. And the more important thing was that I realized that if you died, there wasn't going to be a reason for me to be scared anymore and you would have hurt me still. By dying, you would have hurt me. But I think I was just stuck in another one of my fantasies where loving someone should be easy. And maybe parts of it should, but sometimes there is a lot of nasty stuff that comes with love but in order to have loved you have to deal with the nasty. And-"

Rachel was cut off by the connection of Puck's lips to her own. She had more speech to go; including those three words that Puck had wanted to hear but he was kissing her anyway and Rachel could do nothing put melt against him as his arms wrapped around her waist pulling her close to him. She had missed this. She missed him and while he kissed her and she kissed him she couldn't remember a single reason why she was scared. It didn't make sense and she could blame it on her teenage desire but one minute she was absolutely terrified of what this boy could do to her emotionally, and then when he was kissing her, and touching her, and holding her, she felt like she was in the safest place in the world.

When Puck pulled away, he rested his forehead against Rachel's much like he had done that day in the choir room. Only this time he had every intention of never letting her go.

"I didn't get to finish," Rachel whispered.

"I know you were taking too long,"

"But I never go to say it,"

"You said you were waiting around loving me. It was as good as the real thing to me. Thank you for letting me in."

"You're welcome," Rachel said then took a deep breath, "I love you. I'm glad you're alive."

"Me too," Puck said before capturing Rachel's lips with his once more. He could feel his heart beat speeding up and he worried that he'd pop a stitch. But as he deepened the kiss, he didn't care. He could ruin a hundred shirts as long as he had Rachel with him. They had spent eight months avoiding each other and it took a lot to remember what they had but it was better late than never. And never almost came so he appreciated it just that much more. They pulled apart when they heard the front door open and Ms. Puckerman walked in with grocery bags. Puck pulled Rachel close to him relishing in her warmth and the smile coming from his mother's face.

"Oh, Rachel, hello. I didn't know we had company."

"I'm sorry Ms. Puckerman this was indeed an unplanned visit. Let me help you," Rachel said.

"No no. I've got this. Noah you should be resting," Ms. Puckerman said as she made her way into the kitchen.

"Agreed. Do you mind if Rachel and I go up to my room?" Puck said knowing that his mother knew that he was in no shape for any of the activities that she would normally have to worry about with her son.

"That's fine. Rachel you will stay for dinner won't you?"

"Of course Ms. Puckerman."

Puck removed Rachel from his grasp only to hold tightly to her hand as he led her up the stairs and into his bedroom.

"What do you want to do?" Puck asked winking at Rachel.

"You can't do any of that. And we've already overworked you for today. So lay down."

"Lay with me, please."

Rachel nodded as Puck settled on top of his bed on his back, scooting over so that Rachel could join him. When she did, she enjoyed the warmth of his body. For the first time since the shooting she was able to be near him without thinking of blood and death. She thought of life.

"You know I'm going to need you to turn into Nurse Berry for me. I'm going to need a lot of TLC, and maybe even some sponge baths."

"Don't push it Noah."

"Come on Rach, you love me. Even when I push it."

Rachel laughed and cuddled closer to Puck. She had a wonderful dinner with Ms. Puckerman and Lily and then she finally called Quinn to come and get her.

"I was about to send out the search party," Quinn said as Rachel climbed into her car. Quinn immediately noticed that Rachel's whole aura had changed since she had dropped her off, "You do know you owe me details right?"

"I do. Just drive."


AN: Yay finally! But the story is not over. There are still a lot of things that Puck and Rachel need to remember about themselves and the other people in their lives. So please read and review and I will do my best not to make this wait too long. But I feel like it might be Monday or Tuesday before I can get another chapter up. But I promise I will get it up as soon as I can!

Also, since officially Tuesday March 23...we have exactly 3 weeks till the return of Glee!