Triumph.

Frustration.

Need, agony of longing.

Conflicting fragments swamped Finn's mind: emotions, thoughts, images. All around that scrap of song.

Conflicting, too, were his reactions to this. He knew he had to hold onto as much of it as he could, consciously grasping at the shards, trying to override his reflex to push it all away to protect himself from the overwhelming confusion.

Dimly he sensed he was still on his feet, slowly walking off stage to a chair, Puck at his elbow. He sat down roughly and closed his eyes, trying to pull all of it back, sift through it and make some sense of it.

Frustration. Words scrawled on a page, some scratched out, some marks and words scattered around. How can I make her listen?

YES! Singing with more power, different energy, exploding with a million watts of joy and triumph.

Longing. Writing, thinking, singing, those words over and over, pushing out his sheer want. Tell me why we've gotta stop... Making his argument, a plea to be heard and to be answered.

Please, Rachel. I know you feel it too, we belong together, we're so good together. That's the power of you and me, why are you pulling away from that?

She wouldn't give up before, why now? Is it him?

Some self-blame, too, amid the want: I took too long to figure it out, I hurt her too much. She can't trust me. But I'm trying, I know she can feel it too, she always knows me.

Just tell me why.

Other than Puck, the others around him had left quietly, Brittany giving him a light one-armed hug. Finn opened his eyes, his expression set. He slowly raised his head, sensing his friend sitting at the table with him. The pieces stayed with him, no longer threatening to slip away, but it was just so hard to make sense of any of it.

"Hey," Finn said quietly, still staring off, just wanting to let Puck know he was managing, sort of.

"Sorry," Puck responded. "We had no idea it could do this."

"No way you could," Finn breathed, his mind still holding onto those shards of sight and sound and emotion. What was it that brought up all this? "There's a lot, but it's all bits and it doesn't fit together, and I don't even know the song... I mean I did, when we were singing... argh." Finn groaned in frustration. "I do and I don't, and there's just so much in my head suddenly, all mixed together, a room and a stage and words on paper, and frustration and mindblowing happiness and want and pushing it and everything."

"I don't know what I should tell you, dude," Puck said after a moment. "I don't want to screw it up by telling you what to think."

Finn frowned, trying to get a single thing that might help him make sense of everything that was scrambling together in his mind. He exhaled. "Where's the song from?" he asked finally.

"Nationals. New York."

"Other than that? I've never heard it before, who's it even by?"

"Us," Puck stated. Finn turned to stare at him, dumbfounded. "We wrote our own songs that year. That's why we went for it, we knew you couldn't remember it from anywhere else."

Shit. The words on the page, floating before his eyes, scrawled in his own writing. Finn swallowed, trying to clear his throat, still feeling a residue of the emotional pain that had been brought back. "Those words I sang – I wrote them?"

"Yep."

Finn sat there staring at the table, letting that sink in. Eventually Puck spoke again.

"You in there?"

"Uh, yeah, just trying to make sense of it all. Thanks, I... thanks." Finn blinked, coming back to reality a bit more. "I should get home. Thanks."

"Thank me after I drive you home," Puck said flatly. He held his hand out, palm up. "Keys. I'll come back for mine, it's not far."

Finn frowned, but handed over the keys to Burt's truck.

As Puck drove him home, Finn turned the thoughts over in his head again, trying to get the disparate pieces to fit. They were all just so different. One impression stuck to all of them, though: Rachel. RachelRachelRachel Rachel RachelRachelRachel. 'You and me' – Rachel and me. Wanting Rachel, needing Rachel, frustrated about Rachel. But triumph, too – having Rachel? What had been going on that included all this?

"Puck?" Finn broke the silence as they got close to his place. "When was Nationals in New York?"

"May last year," Puck answered. "About a week before the end of classes." He pulled into the Hudson-Hummel driveway and parked Burt's pickup. "Two weeks after junior prom."


Finn lay on his bed, tired but afraid to go to sleep. He didn't want to risk losing any of those pieces in his head.

He held on to the mental shards tightly, even though some of them felt like they cut like real ones, all that frustration and want eating at him, sucking him into the pain they held. Please, Rachel, take a chance on me. Don't turn away. Please, Rachel, take a chance on me. Don't turn away... it tore through his mind, going around and around, squeezing him inside with remembered agony.

Stop, he finally yelled at himself. It's all done. Something worked and later she agreed to marry me. So calm the fuck down. He sat up and forced himself to take a few deep breaths, pulling away a little from the fragments. I just gotta get this straight.

Happy. Sad. Angry. And not a little bit, all furious and frustrated and in despair and on top of the world. Intense. How can all that be one memory?

He stared at the picture on his wall of the New York City skyline for a few moments. He must have wanted to remember New York, but most of those pieces, even different, they were all so painful. Different... then the realization hit him. It's not pieces of one memory. It's many.

But they're all about that song, those lines I wrote. Why did I write them?

He got up and started to pace around his room, pulling the pieces apart in his head.

Frustration. Words on a page. Tell me why we've gotta stop...

Please, Rachel, take a chance on me. Don't turn away, don't say you can't. At least tell me why.

We're so right together, I know it and you know it, and we're past all the other stuff now so why can't we...? He'd done everything he could, they'd had such a good time going around New York, it all felt so right and he knew she felt it too. So why, Rachel, why? Scrawling words on the page, tears blurring his vision. Feeling torn up inside. I love you and I know you love me too, not him, please, it can't be too late for us...

Frustrated that Rachel was turning away just when he was laying it all on the line for her. That some other guy might be coming between them. Writing those words, expressing that.

Then what?

Then, rehearsal. Expressing his frustration, but also pushing out the question. Wanting her to have to answer, singing more for her to hear him than actually caring about winning. Screw the competition, a trophy's temporary but we can be forever. We have to be, we're tethered, we belong together.

Tell me why, Rachel.

But then singing it, on stage, with the audience... triumph. Joy. Exhilaration, but more than performing. A big screaming YES! in his head, his body ablaze, soaring, feeling like he'd won the one thing that mattered. The person that mattered. She'd heard him and he knew she was his. Turn it up ten thousand watts, baby, that's us, we're on fire, perfect together, and the whole world's gonna know it. You and me, Rach, we can do anything together. Even win this thing.

All that, about two lines of a song. But it did seem to be making some sense now, and he felt less overwhelmed.

He'd better write this down so he wouldn't forget. Finn sat up and reached for the pad of paper and pencil that sat on his desk. Look at me, mister studious. He quickly wrote down what he figured was the sequence: needing Rachel and thinking about it, afraid that he was losing her, frustrated that she wasn't listening and writing those words, pushing it out at rehearsal trying to get her to listen and answer, then finally singing triumphantly on stage at the competition itself.

Then Finn was finally able to let himself go to sleep, with one final thought to himself: Hey subconscious, I know you want out, so do your thing and help me make sense of this.


Finn slept late the next morning, mentally and emotionally exhausted. He'd expected to be out late anyway and didn't have class or work, so his alarm was turned off. As he awoke he groaned and turned to look at Rachel's picture, then slowly remembered what had happened the night before.

Maybe not being entirely awake could help this too, he thought sleepily, and picked up his notes. He scanned his apparent order, yawning, trying to let the matching thoughts come out.

Wanting her, being blocked.

Frustration, writing the words, seeing them on the page.

Rehearsing the song, pushing the argument out, wanting her to answer.

And performing, on top of the world, the words not an argument now, more like bragging.

Okay so far, it seemed right. But there was an important gap. Sometime in there, between rehearsal and performance, he'd won her over. Hadn't he?

It made sense. But the shrink had warned him from day one about the dangers of making stuff up for himself, that he could convince himself of something that wasn't true and think he remembered it.

But by the pictures on his wall, he must've been happy thinking about New York, picture of the skyline, even that bridge in Central Park. That one wasn't really his sort of thing to put up at all, it must be special.

We'd had such a good time going around New York... the memory came out to him.

He'd taken her out. They must have gone to that place. But it hadn't worked, he'd pulled out all the stops but she'd still pulled away and he'd felt he was losing her. If that version was real, why did he have that picture on his wall, want to remember somewhere that he'd failed at something so important? And why had he thought he was losing her?

When was this? Two weeks after junior prom, Puck said.

Junior prom. I went with Quinn, I saw the picture. We looked great together. But she also said it wasn't a good night. And a week later we broke up... that's how she put it. Puck said I dumped her for someone else.

And that was Rachel. Rachel said we got back together when we got past our problems and realized we still loved each other. And Quinn said I was back with Rachel, for good, a little over a week after I broke up with Quinn.

That's what this is, Finn realized. This is me getting back together with Rachel. Wanting Rachel and getting her back. I wasn't afraid I was losing her, I was afraid I wasn't getting her back after being with Quinn. Losing my chance with her.

Why'd I wait, once I broke up with Quinn for Rachel? Rachel must have made me wait, that's why I was frustrated. But why did I think there was some other guy? And when did we actually get back together, somewhere in the middle of this? God, I should just ask someone, they'd know. This is freaking hard.

But he knew it was better to get this stuff on his own. He could check, before he made himself too sure about it. Finn groaned in exasperation and went to take a shower.

He tried to put it all away as he washed, letting the sound of the shower and the feel of the water running over him take himself out of his head. And it worked, the memories were still there in the sort-of sense he'd figured out for the pieces, but he didn't have to keep thinking about them. Finn felt good, getting clean, feeling more like himself rather than a jumble of thoughts. He brushed his teeth and returned to his room to get dressed.

After pulling a shirt over his head, he caught sight of the bridge again. And suddenly he could feel himself on it, standing there in his suit, seeing Rachel in a blue dress coming towards him with a shy smile on her face. Felt the love, and need, and anticipation.

It did work, he thought. I went all romantic to sweep her off her feet, and it worked. Just not right away. It was just a flash of memory, but he could see her, smell the flowers in his hand, and feel his heart warm and swell as she walked to him. 'I love you,' he thought, remembering. 'This is the way it should be, us.'

The intensity of the memory faded, and with it the feeling, but it was still in his head somewhere. He really had loved her.


Finn went down to the kitchen to have breakfast, finding his mom there cleaning up after hers, though after a night shift the name of her meal was a bit vague.

"You should get some sleep, Mom," he told her. "I can clean up."

"In a bit," she said, giving him a smile in thanks as he went to the fridge for milk. "I need to unwind a bit more first."

"Mom..." Finn frowned a little, thinking, attracting her attention. He looked back at her. "When Rachel and I got back together, that was when we went to New York, right? For Nationals?"

His mother looked at him appraisingly and gave him a strange smile. "You're remembering this?"

"Yeah. Well, stuff around it. Wanting to get her back, and then being really happy about it. Something came up last night that triggered it, just pieces but I think that's what it is."

Carole's smile widened as she relaxed. "That's great, Finn. And yes, that was when the two of you got back together. It was a little complicated – seems everything about you two is, though that's not a bad thing – but that's the basics."

Finn smiled, nodding. "Great."

"Things are really starting to come back, huh?"

"Seems that way. Just pieces so far but maybe it's getting easier to remember. It's really hard work putting them together, but it's worth it if it's coming back right." He took a deep breath, relaxing, feeling like he'd really managed to accomplish something.

"I'm proud of you, Finn," Carole said, giving him a hug. "Of course it's hard, but you're not giving up."

"No."

She smiled up at him. "Sounds like you had a good birthday."

"Yeah, a little like I'm being born again," Finn joked, then was hit by another 'this is familiar' feeling at those words. Born again... I don't know. But something to do with Rachel, singing with Rachel. Kinda like everything else.

And later, after all that, it was good to go into the shop and work on cars for a while, not thinking.