A/N: Thank you for all your feedback, and for your trust in sticking with this story as it gets longer and longer.

Friday the Berry family rose early, moved Rachel's last boxes and suitcases into the van they'd rented, and headed to New York. Rachel sat behind whichever of her dads was driving, quiet, listening to her favorite playlist of Broadway songs, trying to embed musical theater so deeply into her mind that she'd be able to forget who she was leaving behind or at least reduce the sharp pain to a dull throb.

I can do this, she told herself. I'm Rachel Berry. I can take a faceful of sticky ice and an earful of insults and still come back at the world with my head held high and a smile on my face. NYADA is the chance of a lifetime and I'm going to grab it with both hands. She frowned as she listened to her cliché-ridden internal monologue, but it was true. She was strong, she could do this. After all, she would have gone without him if he hadn't been going before, right? If he hadn't gotten into college in New York, they would have had to be apart while she studied, was this so different? Or if she hadn't met him? This had been her lifelong dream, before she'd met Finn. But loving Finn had changed her. Now she'd been shown everything she'd ever wanted, even things she hadn't dared dream of before, just to have that crucial part ripped away. She was leaving him behind her, hurting and needing to heal, not wanting to talk to her because he was afraid to get her hopes up every time. Leaving exactly when they needed time together to rebuild their connection now that his memory of their love was gone as if it never happened.

Don't say that, she told herself. It's not as if it never happened, it was real and it still is. He feels it, I know he does and he knows it too. She pulled herself together. He just needs some time, and maybe it's better if I don't hover. One way or another I will have his heart again, and he will heal. He's Finn.

She was strong. She could do this. She had to.

And since she was going, she needed to make the best of it. She turned up the volume on her music higher and higher until she could no longer hear her thoughts.

They arrived in the city that evening, quite tired from the long drive, and all three of them went straight to their hotel. The next morning they headed to the apartment to meet Kurt and move Rachel's things in.

The apartment was rather a find, thanks to her dads' efforts. Back in June the two men had been in New York on business, and with the kids' college plans in place they had taken advantage of their local connections to find somewhere good that hadn't yet been advertised for rent. It was small, but it was also clean, well furnished, reasonably close to NYADA, and had a decent manager.

There was a lot of space in Rachel's room, by New York standards, and as she unpacked her things mechanically she did her best to ignore why. She hung her clothes to the side of the closet and used only some of the drawers, rationalizing that of course here in New York she would need a new wardrobe, and even if she didn't think so she was sure Kurt would convince her of it. And the extra floor space would be useful for yoga or perhaps practicing dance moves. Deep down she just couldn't bring herself to spread out. She mustn't take over the room, mustn't get used to using all of the space herself, that would be wrong.

Kurt suggested that just the two of them eat together that night to christen the apartment properly as students; her dads were persuaded to leave, with promises that they would all meet for brunch tomorrow, and Kurt headed off to find some takeout. He said he'd found a good place and wanted to surprise Rachel.

Rachel walked back into her new room and went to the bed. It wasn't what she was used to; she'd had a four-poster bed her whole life, short, contained. This bed was long and open-ended, and very high off the ground so her feet would dangle. Her daddy had made sure of the size when he'd looked over the place back in June, because he knew exactly what a tall man would need to be comfortable. It was touching, really, that he'd cared and done his best to get them set up together, especially considering how concerned both her dads had been about the intensity of their seventeen-year-old daughter's relationship. But now it was another reminder of what wasn't there.

This was Finn's bed, even if he never slept in it, chosen for them to share in what was supposed to be their home together. And Rachel crumpled onto it and cried, wracked by heaving sobs.

Half an hour later Kurt came back with their food and found her there, curled up in a fetal position with the bear Finn had won for her clutched to her chest. He sat down with her, putting his arm around her for comfort, letting her cry her pain out for now.

Rachel put on a brighter face for brunch the next day, as she and Kurt went to meet her dads and Burt. Burt was staying in New York for a few days to meet people, his pro-arts position and its success among people in Ohio having attracted quite a lot of interest in New York.

Her dads' hotel and its Sunday brunch were familiar, she'd been here with her dads before, so it was easier to slip into being a younger Rachel, focusing only on her family and her friend and the excitement of being in New York. Kurt chatted excitedly about the things he'd found in their neighborhood in the two days he'd been there before her, and they talked as well about some of the actors and singers who were currently artists-in-residence at NYADA. They would get to not just meet them and talk to them, but potentially work with them. Orientation started tomorrow and they couldn't wait.

Her dads were leaving first thing the next morning, so they hugged their goodbyes. Burt was staying another day, but between his meetings and their orientation schedule they might not see him again, so she gave him a small soft package to take home with him. She'd bought it the previous afternoon on impulse, and yes it was a cliché, but maybe someday Finn might feel like wearing that shirt to show that his heart really was in New York. Her own heart had cracked a little more when she'd waited in line at the souvenir shop and had her eyes fall on the snow globes.

Monday was the start of freshman orientation at NYADA, with the morning spent introducing the professors and artists-in-residence. In the afternoon the students for their program met in a small auditorium, the new students sitting in a small cluster in the front with the other members of the program sitting behind them, and they were introduced to the NYADA equivalent of a little freshman hazing.

By tradition, NYADA orientation for musical theater students included a solo from each new student, so that the rest of the program (all the professors and continuing students) could see what the new students were made of. Also by tradition, this happened in the afternoon of the first day, without warning, the code of secrecy holding even among students in different programs (who had their own activities to put their incoming students on the spot) because it was so entertaining to see what the freshmen would do when taken by surprise. There was a mixer afterwards, and the solos always worked well as an icebreaker.

Of course, as the dean explained, some did have a bit longer than others; they couldn't all sing at the same time, but all students were required to sit quietly and pay attention throughout the solos, they couldn't start preparing. And though it wasn't a requirement, it was preferred that they not reuse their audition number. The accompanist had an encyclopaedic knowledge of Broadway and pop music so they simply had to tell him what they were going to sing when they reached the stage.

Order was alphabetical. Kurt and Rachel exchanged a glance; they'd seen the list of freshmen, and they knew what that meant. Next year hopefully they'd be sitting at the back as an unwarned Blaine was put on the spot like this, but this year there were no A surnames.

First to sing: Berry, Rachel.

As Rachel slowly and surely walked to the stage, her mind raced to pick a number from her repertoire. This wasn't an assignment or an official audition, but certainly it would be a foundation for how the professors would work with them. She needed to show what she was made of, but how? She didn't feel like singing "Don't Rain on My Parade", her mood wasn't even close to the take-life-by-the-horns attitude that it needed. Her nationals solo was out as well, many of them would have heard it and the unfortunate association between its lyrics and Finn's amnesia would make it hard for her to get through. Also potentially too emotional were "My Man" and "On My Own", normally she was fabulous with numbers like those but she'd been holding herself in so much that she couldn't guarantee she'd get through either of them. The direct line into herself that performing always provided could easily pull her apart when she was already so close to dissolving into a puddle of tears. She'd managed "Far From the Home I Love" in her current situation, so that was an option, but it was from a minor role and didn't come close to stretching her and showing what she could do. She was first, she needed to set the bar high or she'd be forgotten by the end.

As she stepped onto the stage, her mind cleared and she knew what she should sing. She quietly told her selection to the accompanist and stood at center stage as the opening notes played. (*)

There's a place for us,
Somewhere a place for us.
Peace and quiet and open air
Wait for us
Somewhere.

She'd sung this with Shelby, before, and used it as her first West Side Story audition specifically because it stretched her, as Shelby had so correctly reasoned. But though back then she'd thought of her birth mother, and on stage she'd sung it to Blaine as Tony, right now the only image in front of her eyes was Finn. Her Finn, still divided from her but trying to make his way back, either by remembering or rebuilding their love. Somehow.

There's a time for us,
Some day a time for us,
Time together with time to spare,
Time to look, time to care,
Someday!
Somewhere.
We'll find a new way of living,
We'll find a way of forgiving
Somewhere.

She sang passionately, dynamically, pouring her heart and pain into the song but still keeping the hope alive that the lyrics expressed. Someday, my love. Somehow, we'll be together again.

There's a place for us,
A time and place for us.
Hold my hand and we're half way there.
Hold my hand and I'll take you there
Somehow,
Someday,
Somewhere!

And as she finished, tears streaming from her sad eyes but a hopeful smile on her face, the audience of musical theater authorities and elite students sprang to their feet and applauded loudly, impressed.

Hazing for all freshman students in performance programs continued at the mixer in the NYADA quad. Each program's seniors had prepared a new piece for a cold run-through, something deliberately difficult to sing or perform well for various reasons, generally due to the inclusion of outrageously inconsistent elements. A serious challenge for elites set by elites, and also incredibly silly. The student president had a bell that she rang at apparently (but probably not) random intervals, signalling that the piece's lone copy should be passed to the next student around the circle. Anyone who screwed up too much had to stay and take another turn later.

The drama students had a monologue, full of overdramatic and twisted prose that wouldn't have been out of place in a Bulwer-Lytton competition, and they had to present it as though they meant it, while following directions as to gestures and tone of voice. Out of the first three students, two couldn't stop themselves from giggling; the piece just got worse and worse as it went on.

The opera students were divided into low and high voices, with each group having an aria, full of changes in dynamic and pitch, progressions that lasted just long enough to give the singer a false sense of security before suddenly changing, words with accented syllables on normally unstressed beats, and changes in language. One student was laughing so hard at his predecessor's misrendering of a word (apparently interpreted as the wrong language, entirely changing both pronunciation and meaning) that he couldn't sing more than four words and had to pass it on, hoping that it wouldn't get too much harder when he had to try again (it did).

The song for the musical theater students had the worst of both worlds, within their genre: tortured lyrics which had to rhyme appropriately (despite many of them being slightly off if sung as one would speak it), unusual progressions, tempo and mood changes, every twist that could be thrown into a single midrange song in English. It was exactly what Rachel needed, the irrepressible silliness of the entire event puncturing her melancholy like a scalpel piercing a balloon, the challenge of the piece firing up her competitiveness. She laughed at the song and at the difficulties the others experienced with it while gathering her energy for when her own turn came. A few steps before her Kurt mangled a rhyme and laughed at himself. After one more singer the score was passed to her, her eyes rapidly scanning it to find her place, and she was off and singing. The life of dramatic misery that the song was alternately bemoaning and bragging about made Rachel's own troubles dwindle, years of searching for a long-lost twin only to discover that the twin had had extensive plastic surgery and had been sharing the singer's bed for years... and then Rachel turned the page and had to launch herself into an unexpected series of vocal runs celebrating the bonds formed in the womb. She hung on desperately as everyone else cracked up, and was relieved to finally hear the bell ring and pass. A moment later she felt disappointed to not get another go at it, as the exhilaration and adrenalin that flooded her was astounding.

Finally, when the last freshman passed, the song went back to its originators and they gave the ending an overdramatic flourish in harmony, causing the rest to convulse with laughter.

As the hazing finished and the drinks and nibbles came out, Rachel chatted happily to her fellow students. She felt like she was flying, soaring on all the creative energy around her and the feeling of shared enthusiasm and commitment to artistic excellence that NYADA was already starting to give her.

Then she crashed back down as a single word, a name, leaped out at her from the surrounding conversations: Finn. By reflex she jerked her head around, looking for whoever had said it. A young medium-to-tall blond man caught her eye and smiled at her. Rachel exhaled, trying to dispel her reaction and regain her happy mood, and she refocused her attention on the two girls she'd been talking to, drama freshmen both. One was comparing the intentional utter insanity of the monologue to some experimental play she'd done at home, laughing at how the deliberately over-the-top piece had been more plausible than the one intended to be serious.

A hand on her arm drew her attention away again, and she turned to find herself face-to-face with the blond man she'd seen before. He smiled down at her, his blue eyes shining.

"You're new in musical theater, right? I was impressed by how well you managed the song, even that page turn. That was crazy, they come clever wherever you're from."

"Thank you," Rachel said, giving him a friendly polished smile. "Yes, I'm in musical theater. Rachel Berry. I'm from Ohio."

"Paul Tervo, of the Minnesota Finns. I'm a sophomore in the drama program."

Rachel blinked, taken aback by the name, smiling to cover her discomfiture. "Excuse me?"

"Like the Minnesota Twins? My family is Finnish on dad's side, Tervo, and I'm from St. Paul, so that makes me a Minnesota Finn." She still stared at him, her face frozen in a fake smile, having difficulty dealing with the recurring reminder. For her 'Finn' only had one meaning. Of course he had no idea and came up with a different explanation for her reaction. "You probably don't watch baseball. The Minnesota Twins, the baseball team. Back home they're really well known even by people who aren't sports fans, it's hard for me to remember that half the NYADA students have probably never heard of them, especially when I've just come back from a visit home." Except Rachel had heard of the Twins, Finn and Burt used to mention them sometimes when discussing baseball (usually negatively as the Cleveland Indians were rivals and currently far more successful). She supposed the young man's joke could be charming if it didn't hit the one name that went straight to her heart.

Right now all she wanted to do was get away. "I hope you're doing better than they are," she said, overcompensating against her impulse to simply walk off.

He blinked. "You follow baseball?"

"No." She winced as his blue eyes kept her in their laser view. How she wished for a warm light brown instead. "Someone I know does," she explained. It should be obvious she was uncomfortable, but apparently he couldn't take the hint.

"Someone, huh?" Paul asked rhetorically. He smiled again. "Boyfriend?"

Oh I am not getting into this with a complete stranger right now, Rachel thought. "I don't date," she stated flatly. Might as well get that out there, it's true as far as anyone here goes. Anyone who isn't Finn.

"Oh?" He looked disappointed, but gave her a concerned smile. "That's a shame."

"I'm focused on my studies here. It's such an exceptional opportunity." She kept her words more formal, trying to distance herself without having to be completely cold.

"NYADA has many exceptional things. Not all of them involve study." His smile deepened, and Rachel found she had to look aside.

"I'm sure that's true, the extracurriculars should be amazing, and events like this are fabulous. Everyone's so creative. I daresay I will see you when you appear in a play of some kind." She was trying not to be rude, she didn't want to make that kind of bad first impression on the people here, but she had to push away his obvious overtures. And if word got around that she wasn't romantically available, so much the better.

"Count on it," Paul said as she turned away, and his eyes followed her speculatively as she walked off.

Meanwhile, in Lima, Finn was also getting himself organized for school. As encouraged by both his shrink and his mom, he'd decided to take two courses at Lima Community College, one on writing and one on introductory psychology. He met with the instructors there on Tuesday afternoon and explained his unusual situation; he really had no idea how much of his skills from high school would be usable, but he was going to give it a try, and they agreed to give him some consideration if it turned out he was having too much trouble.

He then worked late in the tire shop, catching up on the day's work and keeping a wider eye on how things were going in Burt's absence. Burt should get back the next day and would want to know how things were.

Finn finally arrived home just after eight, tired and hungry. His mom was in the living room watching a movie; he looked in and saw she was going in for Eighties nostalgia again, rewatching Pretty in Pink. He watched the rest of the current scene with her, and then she put it on hold.

"Dinner's warm in the oven, honey," she told him. "Lasagna."

"Thanks, Mom," Finn replied. He paused, though, before going to find it. "It's kind of quiet around here these days," he commented.

"Yes, it is," his mom agreed.

"It's funny... I thought that'd feel more normal, but it doesn't," Finn admitted. "I miss having them around."

Carole smiled. "That's good," she said. "Well not so good in that Kurt's gone to college and Burt's going to be spending a lot of his time in DC now, but good that you miss them. That it feels normal to have them around."

"Yeah." Had it really only been six weeks since he'd woken up in hospital? It seemed longer, so much had happened. Finn shook his head. "I'm just going to go eat," he told his mom, then headed for the kitchen. She went back to the movie, and he idly heard it in the background as he ate.

Once he'd finished he went back into the living room, where the movie was almost over. He'd watched it with his mom a few times before, when he was younger, and he recognized the prom scene and the song being played in the background. Almost done, the guy was apologizing to the girl for caving into his friends and dumping her. The girl's pink dress reminded him a bit of Rachel in that dress she'd worn to the fair on their last date, the way he kept seeing her coming to him in his brief fantasies. Not that it took much to make him think of her like that, he didn't usually notice clothes. And they weren't that much alike really, just the color mostly.

The music swelled as the key scene at the dance continued, and he started to softly sing along: (**)

I touch you once I touch you twice
I won't let go at any price
I need you now like I needed you then
You always said we'd meet again someday

He saw his mom smile at him, and he reddened. "You really do have a nice voice, kiddo," she said.

Finn smiled sheepishly. "Thanks." And he had sounded pretty good, guess the benefits of practice hadn't worn off even though he didn't remember doing any of it. Though like his physical conditioning, it would fade if he didn't work on it again. "Were we like that?" he asked quietly, nodding to the screen where the couple was reuniting.

"You and Rachel? A bit. You certainly had the 'popular boy, unpopular oddball girl' thing going, and it does have its problems just like in the movie." She chuckled ruefully. "John Hughes had high school pegged, there's a big 'herd' mentality that is particularly cruel to those who just can't help being different. It's hard to fight it since it fights back."

"But we did," Finn mused. He must have really loved her, to have done that. He knew he'd always gone along with the crowd before, done what Puck, Quinn, and his football buddies wanted him to do; he couldn't see himself going against that unless he'd really needed to, found he needed Rachel in his life badly enough to make the trouble worth it. And it would have been a lot of trouble, Rachel hadn't just been unpopular or from the wrong crowd, she'd been actively picked on by many of his friends.

His mom nodded. "Yes you did. Not always that successfully, but you got it in the end." She sighed. "At least you don't have to go through that high school stuff again."

Finn managed a smile. "Yeah." Though he felt adrift from all of it, everyone having moved on but him. But if Rachel had been worth fighting for against the crowd before, she would still be worth fighting for now. Even though he didn't know how, because he had to fight himself, that terrible weakness in his head. She believed in him... even if he didn't believe in himself, she believed in him.

Heaven knows what happens now... he thought, turning another of the song's lyrics over in his head.

Someday.

* "Somewhere" from West Side Story, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim.
** "If You Leave" as performed by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, written by Andy McCluskey, Paul Humphreys and Martin Cooper.