I feel as though this goes without saying, but in case you have not yet caught on, I shall repeat my shpeel. I OWN NOTHING! I DO NOT OWN GLEE! I OF COURSE, DO NOT OWN POISON AND WINE BY THE CIVIL WARS! IF YOU HAVE NOT HEARD THAT SONG YOU ARE LAME AND I SUGGEST YOU LISTEN TO IT! IT'S ONE OF MY FAVORITES!
Okay, before I can get down to business, I have some distressing news. I am about to go back to school, which means fewer updates. Regular dance also begins for me next week and I dance for an hour and half at least every week night and Saturday. On Thursdays and Tuesdays I am at the studio from four until nine. I will also have to start working at the studio because I am broke and have to pay for gas money. Yet another reason that this fic will likely go on HIATUS starting the twentieth. I am horribly sorry for anyone who is reading this, if there is anyone who is actually reading this. I wouldn't know, I have been receiving all kinds of radio silence from you guys. Despite the lack of time that I will have, I am determined to finish this fic.

Alexa walked up the aisle looking down at her feet. She didn't want to look at any of them, didn't want to see the questions that were sure to be written all over their faces. When she got to the stage, guitar held in her shaky grasp, she saw Chris smiling at her. It was like this gigantic 'welcome back' smile that spread into his sparkly blue eyes.

Chris couldn't help the glee that filled his body. Alexa, well a hybrid of both girls. She had on the cute red sundress that Matthew had forced her into, black ankle boots with spunky silver studs and a denim vest. Her makeup, though it highlighted her features, was far less severe and menacing than it had been in the previous weeks. And to top it all off, her hair was the unwavering blonde waves that was solely old Alexa.

"You look good," he whispered in her ear as they settled into their stools. She laid her guitar over her lap and took a long shaky breath.

"Thanks," she whispered back. How was she this nervous? She never got nervous on stage.

"Hey," Chris said, squeezing her shoulder. "I'm going to be sitting right here the whole time and you'll do amazing. You're Alexa Puckerman, you can blow the socks off of any audience."

Alexa chuckled, looking down at her instrument. She honed her focus in on the instrument, taking her mind off of the audience. Her glance clashing with Chris' for a fraction of a second, she began to pull at the strings, her eyes fluttering closed.

"You only know what I want you to," Chris started. When Alexa looked up at him, his eyes were closed and his hands were straining against his jeans, his knuckles turning white.

"I know everything you don't want me to," Alexa added, her tongue sliding over the words. The people watching must've seen something, must have seen the change in dynamic between them. They looked so comfortable with each other, like they were communicating in a language that no one else could begin to understand.

Alexa appeared to be open to him all the while remaining completely walled off to anyone who was watching. Something had to have happened while they were rehearsing the night before, the two could hardly stand to be in the same room yesterday and now? Now, they were up on that stage singing like they were freshman again. Like they did before Chris started dating Ally. Before Alexa went dark.

"Oh your mouth is poison, your mouth is wine," Chris sang, his eyes fluttering open. Their gazes were glued together, unceasingly locked on each other.

"You think your dreams are the same as mine," Alexa continued.

"Oh I don't love you, but I always will," they began together. It was the first time in a long time that they had really been this intimate with each other. This was far more intimate than talking about the rape or suicide. This was real communication, far deeper than anything simple words could express. This was them, this was how it was supposed to be. Just like at the farewell party, Alexa and Chris' chemistry was undeniable. They were inevitable, maybe. A match made in heaven, even if they weren't. a couple. Soulmates, even, in the most innocent sense of the word. "Oh I don't love you, but I always will. Oh I don't love you, but I always will, I always will."

"I wish you'd hold me when I turn my back," Alexa sang. Were those tears in her eyes?

"The less I give the more I get back," Chris added. He felt tears identical to hers spilling down his cheeks too.

"Oh your hands can heal, your hands can bruise," Alexa belted out.

"I don't have a choice, but I'd still choose you," Chris cried, Alexa's voice growing to mix with his.

"Oh I don't love you, but I always will," they sang. "I don't love you, but I always will. I don't love you, but I always will. I don't love you, but I always will. I don't love you, but I always will. I don't love you, but I always will. I don't love you, but I always will. I always will."

"I always will. I always will. I always will," they finished. "I always will."

The minute the strings of her guitar stood still, they both clambered from their stools and attached themselves to each other. She cried into his shoulder, her whole body shaking against him. Chris' hand found the back of her head, cradling it in that way that had always calmed her down. Chris dug his nose into her hair, inhaling the familiar scent of her that he had believed was long gone. The deep vanilla of her perfume, the tropical shampoo. It was all her and it was there. How had he ever not realized how lost he was without her sarcasm and smile?

They couldn't hear the applause, but it rippled through the auditorium. Maybe they were cheering for the performance, because God knows that was breathtaking. Or maybe they were clapping for the bond that had been healed.

"It's about damn time," Finn shouted. Alexa giggled, pulling away from Chris. He never wanted to let go of her out of fear that she would disappear again. She allowed him to put an arm around her shoulder, her body fitting into his side like they were puzzle pieces. He felt his fingers dance up her hands and to her wrist, where he felt the raised scars that were just another reminder of how much she had needed him.

"It's good to have you two back," Sam smiled from his seat at the director's table in the middle of the auditorium.

Chris kissed Alexa on the head before stepping away from her and allowing her to step down the stairs. She picked a row toward the front of the auditorium, plopping down in the seat and resting her guitar on the floor.

"I was pregnant," Alexa blurted out.

Chris, who had formerly been laying on the floor, his feet propped up on the base of her bed, twisted to look up at her. She was still sitting cross-legged on top of her bed, a guitar in her lap and her hair pulled back into a bun on her head. Her fingers had stopped mid-strum and her eyes were sort of glazed over, like she wasn't entirely in that moment.

"What?" Chris asked.

"I was pregnant," she repeated, snapping back into reality. "I had hated the idea at first, was so disgusted that I had to carry my rapist's baby for all that time. But after a while, I started to warm up to the idea. It wasn't the kid's fault that their father was a low-life."

"What happened?" Chris asked.

"I miscarried," she stated so horrifyingly emotionless. "I would have loved the kid, protected it, you now. It's kind of funny actually, the kid lived through me nearly bleeding out on my bathroom floor, but just died one day. Life is such a fickle thing, it's fucking pathetic."

"Why are you telling me this?" Chris asked.

"Matthew told me about Ally's abortion," Alexa replied, looking down at him. He could see the tears streaming down her cheeks now. "And I think it's selfish, you know."

She was full out sobbing now. Chris moved to sit next to her on the bed.

"She killed a baby that someone out there would have loved to have," Alexa said, her voice muffled by his shirt. "And I mean I'm not out to make Ally a bad guy, she had her reasons. But who is she to throw away a life?"

"I spent so much time hating her," Chris admitted. "I wasn't ready to be a father, but it was my kid too. That should have at least meant something, right?"

It was silent for a minute, neither really knew what to say to break the quiet.

"What would you have named them?" Chris asked. "Your kid, I mean."

"If it was a girl, Lydia Ann," Alexa said. "A boy would have been Gabriel Daniel. What about you?"

"Well, I didn't know about the baby until it didn't matter anymore, but if it was a boy Jude Micheal and if it was a girl, Julia Esther."

"Esther?" Alexa chuckled. "Were you planning on having an eighty year old woman?"

"What? I like the name?" Chris said.

"Or is because that's what your mother would have named you if you were a girl?" Alexa teased.

"How did you know that?" Chris asked.

"I have my sources," Alexa joked.

"Is one a fourteen year old girl?"

"I'll never release the identities of my agents," Alexa said crossing her arms, the tears long forgotten. "It's in the spy-code."

"I guess I'll have to resort to torture," Chris said, his hands pinching and prodding over all the sensitive skin exposed on her body. Alexa's fatal flaw, all joking aside, was how ticklish she was. She could never withstand an interrogation from the tickle monster. When they were kids that was how Chris got all the juicy secrets. Even found out what his parents were getting him for his twelfth birthday from a giggling Alexa that was so out of breath that it was hard to make out the words 'tickets to Fall Out Boy'.

Like always, Alexa squirmed and fought against him, but he had her beat. He was straddling her, keeping her from moving and she was pathetically outnumbered. Even in the old days, she hadn't been strong enough to put up much of fight. That didn't mean she didn't try.

"Alexa," Quinn called from the bottom of the stairs. "Is Chris staying for dinner?"

Chris had momentarily stopped the torture, but hadn't removed himself from her body. A fact that had not gone unnoticed by either of them. "You want to stay for dinner? I think its taco night," she asked, still trying to catch her breath.

"Sounds better than whatever vegan crap my mom is gonna make," Chris smiled.

"Yeah," Alexa called back to her mother.

"Can Mallory stay for dinner too?" Finn called. Alexa hadn't even realized that her brother's girlfriend was even over.

"Yes, sweetie," Quinn called. Alexa could hear the clack of her mother's heels against the hardwood kitchen floor.

"Settle down in there, would ya?" Finn shouted, pounding on the wall with his fist. "It's ruining the mood."

"Be safe," Alexa hollered back. "I think there are still condemns in the bathroom drawer."

"Screw you," Finn shouted. Alexa giggled, pushing Chris off of her. He flopped flat on his back on the bed next to her.