As promised, tonight Glee's Renaissance Season begins so... this is the last chapter of To Move On. It's the closure of this amazing month and a half, that's why it's a little bit longer. Enjoy it:


29. Rachel (II)

"This is your day. It has finally arrived. You deserved it, Tina Cohen-Chang," she said to herself before walking out of the ladies room. "So yes, the moment is perfect. Your voice range couldn't sound brighter, your bangs are longer than ever and the solo swallower monster is on a plane back to her hole in New York waiting for a gang of multicultural rapists to make her day."

In her eyes, "superiority" could be read clearly as she walked down the hallways. "I will give you another national championship, my people. My three solos will be on constant replay during the next decade till another start as shiny as I am performs a rendition to my heroic deed in her Nationals. Yes, I'll invent the recipe for infallible victory."

"Shut up, you crazy pest!" Becky said as she threw a slushie at her face.


She had to retrace her steps to the bathroom and clean herself, but she made it on time to the Glee Club. "Your captain is here, my fellas!" Tina said while walking into the classroom with her arms in the air.

"Of course I am," Rachel answered. "Is it everybody here?"

Tina's face turned into a cold sneer. "You were going to New York with Finn. You were going to New York with Finn!" she yelled. That day, the highest pitch a human being could reach was called after her once she tore down the walls of the physics of the sound.

Rachel looked down. "When you kissed him the other day… he told me that he'd need more time to think and rearrange his feelings." She raised her head and put her hands on her hips. "So I'm staying for six months more," she said cheerfully.

Does anyone know when a tantrum is more life-threatening? When it's all about cursing and breaking things or when you have a Berry-wannabe with an eye twitching and her face looks like she's about to explode into a bloodbath? Tina grabbed a blunt pen and took it to her neck. "Tell my family I love them."

When she was ready to cut her throat, Rachel stopped her. "Oh my God. I was kidding. I don't know what's more disturbing: that you tried to kill yourself just because of my presence in here or that you thought that my Finny could fall for you. Have you considered the chance of seeing a shrink?" She made a pause. "Anyway, my flight takes off tonight, so… this is my goodbye."

Though they all had witnessed Finn's proposal, no one thought about Rachel leaving that early. But it was Finn Hudson, a man who had sent wedding invitations twice in less than half a year and who still had to think of a postman not to come too quickly in bed or in any other place the hunger appeared; you know what I mean.

"I came back for one reason and now… well, my reason has come back to me, so there's nothing holding me anymore."

Once Tina calmed down, she sat next to Rachel and held her hand. "You don't know how happy I am for you, and I really hope you don't get hit by a taxi. Seriously, I say it from the bottom of my heart. God forbid you don't have to do some recovery at home because your head got that smashed against a windshield that you don't even remember how to dress yourself." Tina's face was between eternal happiness and orgasm climax.

"Doesn't she already?" Sugar asked.

For once, everything was happiness, dreams getting made true, expected departures and a trophy shining on the top of the piano. It felt like nothing could go wrong.

Will took her soon-to-be-again-former student to the center of the classroom. "Well, Rachel, I think I speak on behalf of all of us when I say that we thank you so much that you've stayed with us during these hard months and that you've helped us through Sectionals."

Tina fake-coughed. "Nothing we hadn't done before."

Rachel chuckled. "Anyway, I'm not pulling back my tuition. So in case you run out of people again, give me a call. I promise I will only do back-ups." Then she coughed like her nemesis/clone did. "In case you wanna throw the championship."

Everyone laughed, included Tina. "That means that we have to reelect a co-captain, right, Mr. Shue?" she asked.

"As my last will, I give the throne to Santana with the only condition that she stops doing The Lord of the Rings references about Blaine. Do not kill each other," Rachel said to her best friends with a big smile.

"What the hell do you think this is? Europe?! You can't establish a monarchy just to fuck me up, you bitch!" Rachel stood up in the precise moment, so Tina's fist didn't hit her face. The raging girl left the choir room scratching the walls with an oboe she took from one of the guys of the band. "A coup d'état is what we need here," she said to herself on her way to Sue's office.

Rachel took one last look at her favorite classroom in the world. The couples… how Blaine finally found someone with a little morale in Sebastian; how Santana could save her Brittana; how Artie was breathing more relieved with Tina in the distance and…

"Yes, I've realized that a polyamorous relationship is what works best for me," Sugar said when Rachel fixed her eyes on Rory and Joe holding Lady Motta's hands. "Samuel! My hair!"

Obviously, Trouty moved a few seats further from Sugar as the other two boys tried to pull their hands away from the girl's claws.

"Anyway… what about a goodbye song?" Rachel said, not overthinking what she was staring at. "You know what I want," she told Brad as she winked an eye. "Oh, I'm gonna miss my piano man so much. Next time I come we'll do a tribute to him, okay?"

[Memory – Barbra Streisand]

Rachel:
Midnight, not a sound from the pavement.
Has the moon lost her memory?
She is smiling alone.

In the lamplight the withered leaves collect at my feet
and the wind begins to moan.

Memory, all alone in the moonlight.
I can smile at the old days.
Life was beautiful then.

I remember the time I knew what happiness was.
Let the memory live again.

Every street lamp seems to beat
a fatalistic warning.
Someone mutters
and the street lamp gutters.
And soon it will be morning.

Daylight, I must wait for the sunrise.
I must think of a new life
and I mustn't give in.

When the dawn comes tonight will be a memory too.
And a new day will begin.

Standing in the middle of the choir room, she smiled at every single one of her friends as a tear ran down her cheek.

Rachel:
Burnt out ends of smoky days.
The still cold smell of morning.
A street lamp dies, another night is over.
Another day is dawning.

Rachel held both Blaine's and Santana's hands, squeezing them in the climax of the song.

Rachel:
Touch me, it's so easy to leave me
all alone with the memory
of my days in the sun.

If you touch me, you'll understand what happiness is.
Look, a new day has begun.

"The one and only Rachel Barbra Berry!" she said as she took a bow, walking backwards to the middle of the classroom.


"Yeah, yeah, lots and lots of hugging and kissing and singing and whining like we were all PMSing; but nobody is going to say it?" Santana said while throwing Rachel's clothes into the dustbin. Note needed: the third dustbin of not-to-take clothes. "Rachel, again?"

"Wasn't that the whole purpose of your magnificent plan to restore the natural order of cosmos in Lima?" Blaine asked.

"You were more helpful when you were all Cheryl trying to fight for this love," the muse of Lima Heights replied.

The tree of them kept discussing Rachel's clichesque destiny with Finn until they finished packing her suitcase. And yes, her pink case was not even nearly enough.

"I'm going back to New York, Finn is not with Quinn, Blaine keeps rocking his solos in Glee with a gay partner by his side…"

"Let's not question my sexuality, next year maybe, but this one we have had more than enough of the what-do-I-like shit, right, boy-formerly-known-as-Frodo?" Santana punched Blaine's shoulder playfully.

Rachel opened her drawer and pulled out an envelope that she handed to her friend. "I wasn't talking about you."

Santana read the content of the envelope carefully. "You want me to escort you to JFK?" She frowned as she kept looking at the plane ticket.

"It's my 'thank-you' present." Blaine turned into his puppy eyes mode at Rachel's words. "Yours is a VIP audition for NYADA and a seat next to me for the next four years," she said as she cupped his face.

Then the puppy eyes evolved into the foolish smile. The facial expression courses of NYADA would definitely make some serious good on this boy.

"I still don't get it," Santana replied.

"I called Shelby after the whole Jesse debacle and… good news, you get the female lead on her musical. Bad news: you two are gonna have to learn how to put up with each other. At least on stage."

Santana wrapped her arms around Rachel's neck and hugged her to the point of almost breaking the diva's C2 and C3.

"Then what's the use of us getting aimed with a gunshot this morning?" Blaine asked from his spot on Rachel's bed. This would be a good moment for a flashback of what happened when Tina came back from Sue's office, but there's no need to involve the police in this story.

Rachel gave Blaine another envelope once she got rid of Santana's deadly embrace. "I just wanted to mess up with her a little. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, and that táser didn't kill her, so… she's so welcome. And that's a cession of powers. Text me your first duet if you survive." She laughed.

"And do you want me to pack, go to the airport and break up with Brittany in less than two hours?!" she joked. "Whatever, see you on the plane." She turned around before walking out of Rachel's room. "Oh, and…" it was something hard to say, but Santana finally made it, "…Blaine, if I find out that you and that boyfriend of yours with the sexual activity of a ghost of American Horror Story try to pervert my sweet sweet Brit, I'll set your head on fire just to see how inflammable your hair is because I've spent the last two years wondering if I can find petrol in your comb."

Once Santana left, Blaine and Rachel sat on her bed, in silence for a while. "Brief but intense, huh?" he asked, breaking the ice that had formed between them during those minutes.

Rachel leant her head on his shoulder. "Promise me you'll come to see me," they said in unison before bursting into laughter.

"I'm gonna miss you so much," Rachel pouted.

Blaine held her in his arms. "I love you so much."

"Hearing it feels better when I'm not thinking of kissing you."

For a second, they looked into each other's eyes. Watching the whole world in those pupils. Feeling too many things during that instant. So they stood up and started wandering up and down the room, trying not to think about any resurrected flame.

"Let's not get melodramatic and just say goodbye, okay? I'll go to NY next month, I don't want to miss Broadway season."

"Yeah, it's not a forever goodbye or anything," Rachel replied with her head down.

Blaine raised her chin. "See you later?"

"Later."

And the smile faded from the boy's face as he walked out of Rachel's room. "Later," he said to himself.


Santana opened the door of her old apartment in the city. "Oh my God, home sweet home!" She let herself fall on the miserable couch she and Kurt had.

Rachel walked in shyly and closed the door while dropping her bags and suitcase on the floor, breaking one of the old floorboards full of termites. She hurried up to hug her boyfriend when he came out of one of the rooms of the flat. "I was worried that you weren't here."

"You don't want to face the beast by yourself, right?" Kurt said, leaning on the doorframe of the same room Finn had come from.

"Oh! The only gay in this world that I'm not afraid of! Tell me you're not in the lady business too, please." Santana hugged Kurt as she chuckled in his ear.

"Glad to see you too, girlfriend," he answered. "And you," Kurt said after letting go of Santana's hug. "Come here."

Rachel stepped forward. The good thing about New York is that you don't have to walk a lot in cheap apartments. "Fresh new start?" she asked Kurt while standing opposite his once-BFF.

Kurt hugged her, putting behind all the things that had happened between them and trying to forget about the curses he had asked a gypsy lady in Central Park to put on Rachel.

"If you expect me to hug you, I think I'd rather kill the moment. Or myself," Santana told Finn.

The tall boy chuckled. "She doesn't know that the number of lines of her character on Shelby's play depends on me, does she?"

"What?! Are you telling me that I'm going to be bossed around by 'this', besides the huge pleasure that brings me the fact of the shared bathroom?" Santana asked Rachel with bloodshot eyes.

Rachel sat on the couch with a big smile on her face. "Female lead," she pointed at her friend, "meet your head scriptwriter," she moved her hand to Finn's belly before patting it twice. "And you are joining the gym downstairs right now."

Kurt stood there, silent, watching some movement in his house for the first time since… a RuPaul's mentee passed by to… let's say to take the five-o'clock tea during Kurt's English week.

"Okay, but let's put it plain and simple from here. There are two beds and one shitty couch, and there's no way I'm gonna hear my dear head scriptwriter's heavenly moans during that thing you two call 'make love' and I define as 'interspecies matching'. Am I understood? I'm sleeping with Berry and if you need to vent, use the subway as every single teenage couple in this city."

"Tell me you've already found a place." Rachel smiled at her man.

Santana kept bitching for a while until she locked herself into her room. "Yes, I've survived the flight and no, I love you, but we don't have enough oxygen in here for you to bring Lord Tubbington next weekend."

"And that's why you shouldn't get intimate if you're not alone in the house," Kurt explained as they heard Santana's conversation on the phone. "But let's not talk about the structural deficiencies of my humble abode. You and I have some serious catch-up to do." He squeezed Rachel's leg as he sat next to the diva.

"You don't really want to know it and I don't really want to talk about it either." She looked at Finn, standing in front of her with their fingers intertwined. Finally. In The City. Together. "I want to leave all the bad things of these months and… Well, just… To move on."


[Some nights – fun.]

New Directions:
Some nights I stay up cashing in my bad luck.
Some nights I call it a draw.
Some nights I wish that my lips could build a castle.
Some nights I wish they'd just fall off.

But I still wake up, I still see your ghost.
Oh Lord, I'm still not sure what I stand for. Oh.

Artie, Blaine, Brittany and Tina with Joe, Rory, Sam, Sebastian and Sugar harmonizing:
What do I stand for?
What do I stand for?

Blaine and Tina:
Most nights, I don't know

Blaine and Tina with New Directions:
anymore...

New Directions:
Oh, oh, oh, oh.
Oh, oh, oh, oh.

Finn:
This is it, boys, this is war
What are we waiting for?
Why don't we break the rules already?

Santana:
I was never one to believe the hype.
Save that for the black and white.
I try twice as hard and I'm half as liked.
But here they come again to jack my style.

Puck:
That's alright. (Quinn: that's alright)
I found a martyr in my bed tonight.
She stops my bones from wondering just who I am, who I am, who I am

Puck and Quinn:
And… Oh, who am I?
Oh. Oh.

Artie:
Well.

New Directions:
Some nights I wish that this all would end,
'Cause I could use some friends for a change.
And some nights I'm scared you'll forget me again.
Some nights I always win.

Brittany:
I always win...

New Directions:
But I still wake up, I still see your ghost.
Oh Lord, I'm still not sure what I stand for. Oh.

Artie, Blaine, Brittany and Tina with Joe, Rory, Sam, Sebastian and Sugar harmonizing:
What do I stand for?
What do I stand for?

Artie and Brittany:
Most nights, I don't know.

Kurt:
Oh, come on.

Mike:
So this is it? I sold my soul for this?
Washed my hands of that for this?
I miss my mom and dad for this?

Kurt:
Oh, come on.

Mike:
No. When I see stars, when I see…
When I see stars that's all they are.
When I hear songs…

Rachel:
They sound like this one, so come on.

Quinn:
Oh, come on.

Tina:
Oh, come on.

Mercedes:
Oh, come on!

Blaine with New Directions harmonizing:
Well, that is it guys, that is all.
Five minutes in and I'm bored again.
Ten years of this, I'm not sure if anybody understands.

Sebastian with New Directions harmonizing:
This one is not for the folks at home.
Sorry to leave, mom, I had to go.
Who the fuck wants to die alone all dried up in the desert sun?

Rachel and Santana:
My heart is breaking for my sister

and the con that she call love.
When I look into my nephew's eyes...
Man, you wouldn't believe
the most amazing things
that can come from...

Some terrible nights... ah, ah, ah.
Ah, ah, ah.

New Directions:
Oh, oh, oh, oh.
Oh, oh, oh, oh.

Artie:
The other night, you wouldn't believe the dream I just had about you and me.
I called you up, but we'd both agree.

Brittany and Santana:
It's for the best you didn't listen.

Finn and Quinn:
It's for the best we get our distance... Oh...

Artie and Tina:
It's for the best you didn't listen.

Blaine and Rachel:
It's for the best we get our distance... Oh...


It's feels so weird but this is the end. I really really reeeally hope that you've liked this, my first fic of what I'm sure will be lots. I had an amazing and rewarding experience that has filled my summer and my heart but I had to move on too. It's sad for me to say goodbye, but let's follow Blaichel's advice: "later." Following another TMO's example, thank-yous time: thank you all for the follows, the reviews and the visits. Thank you all for the support and for reading this little piece of gleekism. And another huge thank-you to my dear personal beta, Aiwendil94.

That's all for now. Literally, for now, because I don't know when but... I'll definitely come back To Keep Moving On.