So, let me start off by saying how much of an idiot I am. Basically, long story short I learned the hard way that having my 16 month old niece on my lap and a full cup of tea directly next to my laptop is a terrible combination… I was literally just about finished with this chapter when my computer got fried so after raging for a couple of days, I had to start this guy over from scratch.

Basically, I decided to split the Epilogue into two parts because I felt badly about having ot make everybody wait for so long and also, this was typed out on my Kindle (which I didn't even know you could do until recently haha) so I apologize if there is an excess of spelling/grammatically errors. I'll edit it and repost when I get my computer back from being fixed.

Also, the next chapter is the last! Crazy how fast it came up, and I'm trying to squeeze in a little something for everybody, but this is your last chance, so if you're really itching to see something particular let me know and I'll try and squeeze it in.

Thank you so much for your patience! Hope you enjoy!


Epilogue – June 2013
(Part I)


There is a bizarre sense of being that a person is granted in a direct response towards being given a second chance at life.

It is waking up to see the sun shining just a little bit brighter. It is appreciating every last breath of air, every single interaction with every single person that you love – even the most miniscule…

Every single day for the last six months, Rachel Corcoran has learned not to allow so much as a single second to slip out from beyond her fingertips. She is determined to feel nothing but relief, and on the days that she struggles to keep up with her newly found role of hopeless optimist, she just reminds herself that she should have been buried inside of a hole in the ground five months ago and the endeavor latches onto her with ease.

If things had gone any differently, she would have been a skeleton by now.

Today, Rachel is grateful to be home.

Her body has been dragged through the gutter. She has been beaten, battered, bruised and destroyed with the hopes of reemerging anew. Ultimately, they had hit the virtual reset button somewhere inside of her, and after a lengthy decline followed immediately by a steady period of stagnance, she was finally starting to get better again.

Rachel had spent more of the days following her transplant inside of the hospital than she has out, but she can only assume that could be expected for somebody in her condition…

Chemotherapy had drained her, and still continues to do so. Three days awake, she is still forced to go, although for the most part, she receives her treatment on an outpatient basis unless of course, something goes terribly wrong which Rachel has all but come to expect… On the days that she is not in chemotherapy, she is receiving radiation; high doses of poisonous rays, determined to destroy what little of her body had actually managed to retain a sense of normalcy throughout this process.

But today, she stands amidst a mere array of medications sprawled strategically about her vanity.

Her bony hip bone grazes delicately against its wooden corner, arms fixed firmly at her side, body poised stiff and straight like a soldier standing rigidly at attention as she stares straight ahead, her wide, sunken eyes determinedly fixated upon the full-length mirror dangling from the closet door before her, taking in and evaluating each and every miniscule detail, overanalyzing her own appearance to the point of physical exhaustion.

Standing in nothing more than a bra and an old, ratty pair of over-sized sweatpants, Rachel finally gets to see, for the first time the full extent to which her own body has betrayed her.

Her cheekbones protrude prominently against her thin face, highlighted by the grey hue that her skin has since taken. The bags around her eyes can be seen from a mile away, exemplified only by the prominent absence of eyebrows. In fact, the only thing that Rachel does have going for her, it seems is the small sprouting of light brown hair that had begun springing up in intermittent intervals across her scalp a couple of weeks after the intensity of her chemotherapy treatments began to dwindle…

Reaching upwards, Rachel places her palm flat against the top of her head, rubbing it quickly – back and forth and back and forth – as she has been so prone to doing lately… It feels like a shag rug has taken residence on top of her head. The thin and scarce hairs follow the movement of her hand above it, stretching as tall as they possibly can with static, trying desperately to pretend as though they have more to show for her than what they actually do.

Dropping her hand, Rachel senses only disappointment. Her shoulders slump, the bones of her ribcage follow. She can literally see each one droop, contracting forward so that the catheter still protruding directly from the center of her chest appears to be three dimensional against the flat surface of the mirror.

Her body is starting to retreat inwards on itself once more. Rachel uses her right index finger to poke at her concave stomach. Her hip bones make crevices that look like craters against her skin… A week ago, had she have done the same thing, her finger would have been lost inside of her body, which had blown up like an overinflated balloon. For weeks, Rachel had refused to leave the house, claiming – to her utter embarrassment – that she resembled an undercooked soufflé rising inside of an oven.

That was the steroids.

Out of all of the medications that Rachel has ever been forced to take throughout the entirety of her life, the steroids had been the ones that she had despised the most.

They were necessary, the doctor's would explain to her, to counter the inflammation left in the wake of an infection that she had developed immediately followed her kidney transplant, an infection that had nearly killed her… They were necessary to prevent the organ that she still struggled to call her own from being rejected by her body, which has already betrayed her so much that it was difficult to believe that it wouldn't do so again. They were necessary to help her body heal after spending the last several months being ravaged by cytotoxic chemicals and high-intensity gamma rays.

But still, they made her swell up like a balloon, and Rachel may be a sick teenage girl, but she was still a teenage girl none-the-less… For a long time, she was too embarrassed to let anybody save for her mother and a select team of doctors see her. Worst of all, they left her temperamental, her mood able to shift at the snap of a finger. She could be fine one moment and angry and bitter the next, shouting at anybody that got too close to her…

Since she has stopped taking them, Rachel does not miss the bipolar tendencies and she sure as hell does not miss roughly resembling the Pillsbury Dough Boy.

But the one benefit that she had managed to find through the course of her steroid treatment was that her stomach had bloated to the point that the large scar, curving like the letter L across the track of her hip and directly underneath her belly button had suddenly become barely visible…

That angry, light pink line, she would carry for the rest of her life. It is a physical reminder of the fact that she remains amidst their ranks while still, one remains permanently missing…

Santana is still gone.

With each passing day and each tide of overwhelming change amidst their rarely consistent lives, this at least is guaranteed to stay the same. Santana is gone, but she was never supposed to be and Rachel cannot help but to think that had fate not served them such a cruel hand, had Rachel never gotten sick in the first place, maybe she wouldn't be.

Guilt follows Rachel everywhere that she goes.

It is a feeling that she cannot seem to escape. Santana didn't deserve what had happened to her. No, Santana deserved to graduate high school with all of her family and her closest of family watching on proudly. Santana deserved be the first person in her family to actually get out of Lima, striving to become the absolute best of herself, out from beneath the lock and key of her notoriously strict parents…

Rachel on the other hand, well she had been dying since the day that she was born. Rachel was experienced, Rachel was prepared, some might argue that she was ready… And while Santana was just getting ready to truly live, Rachel was just getting ready to die until a complete turn around and all knocked them flat on their asses.

And Rachel hates surprises.

"Noah, will you please just cooperate with me already!"

Her mother's voice rings out from beyond the hallway and straight into her ears… Shelby's actions have been accompanied with an extra tone of cheeriness and appreciation ever since Rachel's transplant. She can't even scold Noah without sounding exceptionally happy about it.

It makes Rachel cringe.

"Come on mom, this thing is strangling me!" Noah is putting up a fight because he knows that Shelby is frazzled and frantic in her rush to get out of the house. Their family – already notorious for tardiness – is just about ready to claim their latest victim; Noah's high school graduation.

"It's a tie, Noah it's supposed to go around your neck. Maybe if you sat still for a minute and let me do this, I wouldn't be strangling you…" Tying a tie was an art that Shelby had never truly mastered, but in this house, she played the role of both father and mother and ever since Noah began to outgrow the novelty of clip-on's this was just a skill that she had just been forced into.

"Whatever, I'm just gonna go naked under that robe."

"Noah Eifah Corcoran!" Rachel can't help but to force a small smile as her eyes fade down away from reflection and onto her bare feet beneath her… Just when she thinks that the guilt can't fester any deeper than it already is inside of her stomach, Rachel lingers just too long against a moment that she is so grateful for – the opportunity to hear her family laughing and joking amongst each other – and it explodes even further. "You will wear what is suggested on the sheet they gave you and you will like it! Now hurry up, you have fifteen minutes until we're out the door and we're leaving with or without you."

"What would be the point of that?"

"Go!" There is a hurried scuffle. Noah's cheek is met with a harsh command that has him shuffling once more. Rachel tries to adhere to the instruction, but she can't seem to will her feet to move as her hands raise upwards once more, a single finger reaching to trace the fully-healed scar against her front, outlining it with the pad of her index finger, feeling the harsh tissue directly beneath her touch as she attempts to remember the transition, the moment that she went from dying, to being alive once again.

The lines are blurred. Since the moment she had woken up from surgery, her body has actually started to heal itself.

Rachel didn't even know that it still knew how to do that.

Choking slightly, Rachel is forced to hold back the tears. Everything about this feels wrong. Her own body feels foreign. It is almost as though she is a stranger on her own planet and she is certain beyond any reasonable doubt that despite any optimism or good fortune or inspiration of any sorts, things will never possibly be able to go back to being normal ever again.


When she wakes up, she recognizes immediately and beyond any form of reasonable doubt that she is inside of a hospital. But beyond that, things are fuzzy and Rachel can't, for the life of her seem to remember how it is that she got here.

For a long time, she is left distinctly terrified. Her body lay paralyzed. She can't speak, she can't move, she can't feel…

She can't – it seems – do much of anything.

Her eyes widen instinctively, pupils constricting into pinpoints beneath the glare of the blaring fluorescents hovering above her. The light pierces directly through them, blaring a hole against the back of her skull but she can't seem to find the energy that is necessary to move her head away.

Rachel attempts to open her mouth, she attempts to call out in search for the answers that she needs, but instead, she merely chokes on the dryness of her own tongue, causing her chest to heave violently in protest… The oxygen gets stuck somewhere deep inside of her core where it lingers until her lungs begin to burn with desperation. Her body is left shuddering violently until she finally remembers how to breathe again with a burst of lightning that takes form in a deep, ragged cough that originates in the pit of her stomach and flies without warning upwards and out of her mouth.

She is immediately reminded of all of the times she had been forced to watch her brother angrily attempt to jumpstart his ratty old Honda… With a sudden flash, at the flip of the ignition, Rachel lights the fuse that she'd needed all along to remind her body of how to perform its most basic of functions once more.

It is met with a burst of pain that erupts inside of her, travels through her every vein and artery, moving from her head down to the very tips of her toes…

"Rachel… Rachel honey, calm down. You're okay."

The voice sounds very far away and as though whoever it is that is speaking, is doing so in slow motion. Vaguely, she recognizes as a pair of hands presses gently down against her shoulders, pinning her frail body back against the mattress with ease, attempting to control her movements for her seeing how she has obviously forgotten how to do so herself.

"You need to relax, Rach," she is instructed carefully. "You're gonna hurt yourself."

It seems impossible that she can be in any more pain than that which she is already feeling. Rachel hears the instruction. She comprehends it easily and somewhere in the back of mind, she recognizes the fact that it is her mother that is speaking with her, but her brain and the rest of her body do not seem to want to cooperate with one another, as though their connections have been permanently detached.

Nothing that she can think to do seems to want to translate onto her traitorous body, which doesn't seem to want to cooperate with her no matter how hard she tries.

"Open your eyes, Rachel…"

Rachel doesn't even remember closing her eyes, but slowly, she manages to follow Shelby's instruction and like magic, the world opens up from the black surroundings that she doesn't even remember falling into in the first place.

"Mom…?"

Rachel doesn't even recognize her own voice. It sounds distant as the feeling slowly seeps back inside of her limbs, emulating in a warming sensation that spreads from the tips of her fingers and toes inwards towards her core.

"Yeah sweetie, I'm right here." Shelby's face is gentle, but even from her position stuck inside of this thick fog, Rachel can sense the exhaustion that borders across her delicate features, the familiar worry being only dully shadowed by temporary relief. "How are you feeling?"

Rachel pauses to consider her mother's question briefly, her eyes scrunching with thought as she pours the entirety of her concentration into formulating an appropriate response… As her body slowly begins to become more and more aware of itself once more, her answer begins to piece itself together even slower.

From within these tight sheets, Rachel feels as though she is being suffocated, like she is completely trapped without so much as a chance of escape. She fights briefly against it, but the pain is immediate and explosive. She regrets her actions instantly.

"Ouch…" She inadvertently procures the exact response that she had been searching for.

"I know…" Shelby's lips purse sympathetically as though she has been expecting this answer, but is still deeply anguished by the mere idea alone, this feeling exemplified by the fact that there is absolutely nothing that she can possibly do to ease her daughter's pain.

The feeling of pure agony erupts through a flash of bright light that is littered with much darker spots. When she looks up towards her mother, she is forced to squint. Shelby's face is obscured by a shadow. There is a halo of light surrounding the crown of her skull. Rachel, in the midst of all her confusion, is practically forced to jump to an immediate and profound conclusion.

"Am I dead?"

Rachel has to ask because the last thing that she can actually remember, she hadn't been dead, but she had been damn close to it… It is starting to seem impossible, the idea that she is still alive after all of that.

Maybe she is at her crossroads. Maybe the angels or whatever have chosen to lead her through heaven's gates transfigured into the form a familiar comfort figure in order to make the transition a little bit easier…

Maybe…

"No Rachel, you're not dead." There is the glint of a laugh behind Shelby' voice as Rachel struggles to open her eyes wider in an attempt to gather the evidence that she needs in order to support what it is that her mother is telling her.

She watches as Shelby flashes a quick, bemused glance to her right. There is somebody else here with her. The closer that she looks, the easier she manages to make out her brother's darkened form, lingering determinedly against the corner.

"Are you dead?" Rachel refuses to give up on this theory.

"Maybe we're all dead…" She knows that things are a little bit foggy to her at the moment but that was definitely not her mother's voice. Instead, she identifies Noah's alerted presence as he attempts to place an ill-conceived joke while at the same time, struggling with the full potential that this comment brings. "Maybe we're trapped inside of some weird purgatory, like a kind of 'Lost' scenario and –"

"Noah…"

"Sorry…" At Shelby's stern warning, Noah sinks once more; an effective reminder that this situation was already hard enough without his added attempts towards trying to mess with his sister's head.

"You had surgery Rachel, do you remember?" Shelby turns the entirety of her attention fully back onto Rachel once more as the girl squints desperately, indicative of just how hard she is trying to jog her memory.

"No…" Eventually, Rachel is forced to admit defeat with a meek sense of disappointment towards what frustratingly little control she has over her mind and body right now, terrified that the absence of her normally sharp poise will become a permanent change.

"It's okay… that's okay, Rachel." Shelby soothes her comfortingly, forcing Rachel to bite back against her desire to tell her mother no, it isn't. "The doctor's said that things may be a little bit fuzzy for you for a little while after you woke up. That's just the anesthesia doing its job, but don't worry, Rachel. It will go away soon."

"The doctors?" Rachel's questions piece together slowly… Of course, surgery would imply doctors, but Rachel doesn't remember them… She doesn't remember any of them.

"Wow, they really do have her loaded up, don't they?" Noah's comment is whispered with the directive pointed towards Shelby, but just because the world around her remains existent inside of a blur, doesn't mean that her hearing is not still perfectly acute. She hears him anyway.

Rachel waits. She waits for her mother to scold Noah for his abrasiveness as she so often does, but when Shelby's response is translated only into silence, Rachel can't help but to grow suspicious.

Something strange is happening around here. Rachel does not need complete coherence to figure this much out.

"Rachel honey, you were very sick, do you remember?" Shelby moves slowly, attempting to jog Rachel's memory along in the hopes that eventually, she can take over in the relaying of this story for her.

"My… my kidneys…" The pieces come together slowly. They are splotchy at best and not quite present in their entirety just yet, but suddenly, Rachel can remember being sick, she can remember being told that she has just days to live, she remembers being prepared to be sent home to die…

Everything after that remains hazy. Is she still dying? Rachel can't be entirely certain, but this overwhelming pain tells her yes.

"There you go…" Shelby encourages her thought process, "Your kidneys stopped working, Rachel. The doctor's said that you needed a new one and they… well they found one for you, just in time. Now you're all ready to start getting better again. You will be good as new in now time. You'll see."

Rachel's eyebrows arch suspiciously. There is a pained expression written across Shelby's face. Her lips are folded into a straight line, pursed as though there is more that she would like to tell Rachel although she is not entirely certain how she could go about doing so…

Her first instinct tells her that her mother is lying to her about being alright, about getting better again. It makes perfect sense inside of her head anyway… If Rachel is really getting better, than would she be in this much pain right now? Would her body be protesting this violently, rioting so harshly against her? Would her mother and her brother look so downright sad; a deep, emotional outcry that is centered right inside of the pit of their very eyes?

Dimly, Rachel's future begins to flash before her very eyes. She is only vaguely aware of the idea that it should be the other way around - that it should be her past that she is seeing instead… That's how things always worked on TV anyway.

But there are still so many things left that she has not had the opportunity to do that it is overwhelming her. Her body must understand that this may very well be her one and only chance to watch her dreams unfold.

She hasn't made it onto Broadway. She hasn't held her acceptance letter into NYADA or even been to New York since those first three years of her life before her parents had moved her to Lima; three years that Rachel can't even remember, they don't count.

Hell, she hasn't even graduated high school yet, or watched her award-winning glee club hoist a national championship trophy bigger than her into the choir room… She was still a virgin for Christ's sake. She's never driven a car before…

"I have to go."

Her announcement is abrupt and met with an immediate surprise. She thrashes violently against her bed in an effort to escape the tangled web of blankets draped across her, keeping her inside…

There is so much left still for her to do and such little time now to actually do it.

"No, Rachel. You have to stay right here." Shelby extinguishes Rachel's bid for escape easily before it can even truly begin. Rachel struggles to distinguish whether it is her mother that is moving particularly fast, or her that is moving particularly slow, because in the blink of an eye, Shelby's arm is draped tight across her front, pinning her easily back down against the mattress and eliminating any hope Rachel had ever had of ever slipping away.

Her touch is gentle, yet it still feels as though there is a cinderblock resting against Rachel's chest. She is being crushed by imprisonment, trapped and without a single chance in hell of getting anywhere anytime soon.

"But I have to…" Rachel whines, hoping that her mere voice alone will be enough to allow Shelby to sympathize with her, to convince her to allow Rachel to go her own way, dart across the country and achieve all of her wildest dreams.

If everything goes as planned, Rachel is certain that she will be back before sun rise.

"No." Shelby's tone is flat and final. Rachel's body relaxes miserably beneath the restraint now that it is obvious that it will not be lifted. "Rachel, you still need to give your body a chance to recover. You're starting to get better now, but it is still going to take some time for you to be yourself again and the doctor's need to keep you right here the entire time so that they can watch you and make sure that everything is going the way that it should be."

Rachel gawks upwards towards her mother who appears to be missing the entire point that she is trying to convey here.

Doesn't Shelby understand that time is the exact thing that she is currently fighting against?

Apparently not.

"But I have to go to New York! I have to make it onto Broadway. I have to become famous and marry my male lead and start a family with him and I have to do it all tonight."

Rachel pleads her case, placing an emphasis on the time restraints that she is so certain Shelby can't possibly understand.

"There will be time for that, Rae…" Shelby inadvertently confirms what in Rachel's mind, translates into a foolish naivety, cultivating inside of a distinct lack of realistic expectations towards the outcome of things here inside of this hospital.

"We're going to have three kids…" Rachel all but ignores her mother's comment, hoping to get through to her via the art of detail.

"Oh really?" Shelby's eyebrows arch briefly, thoroughly amazed by the detailed thought processes currently firing without preamble inside of her daughter's muddled mind. It is the drugs – Shelby can't help but to think. Her mouth contorts upwards into a curious grin. She eggs Rachel on easily. "And you have to do all of this by tonight?"

"Yes!" Rachel emphasizes. She is finally starting to get through to Shelby all though to her, this is a fact that has been obvious all along. "There will be Barbra first, than Bernadette, and Patty will be the youngest."

"They will be just like their mother… God help them." The way that Shelby laughs, Rachel can tell that she is not taking this situation nearly as seriously as Rachel is. Shelby cannot seem to understand the magnitude of what it is that Rachel is trying to convey, and for somebody as normally articulate as Rachel Corcoran, this inability to get through to so much as the woman that knows her the best in this world is relentlessly frustrating.

"No they won't." Rachel shakes her head adamantly, determined in her profession, desperate to convey the stern message to Shelby despite the overwhelming display of dizziness that the action ultimately produces.

"Oh, no?" Shelby asks, keeping the conversation flowing simply to humor Rachel… It is profoundly difficult for Shelby to believe so much as a single word that her daughter is saying, but for the time being she sees no harm in keeping that from Rachel.

"No." The younger girl reiterates. "I don't want them to be sick."

The gentle ministration that Shelby has since begun committing to, playing a simultaneous effort of keeping herself busy and Rachel comfortable halt abruptly as she stiffens, muscles tensing almost painfully. The world surrounding the three Corcoran's pauses as Noah and Shelby stare at each other, each silently wondering whether or not Rachel has any idea of what it was that she had just said…

Before this, Shelby would have to be honest in admitting that she had only been partially listening to her daughter's drug-induced ramblings, keeping a single ear open the entire time out of sheer amusement… but this… The honesty inside of her words, the revelation of a deeper idea that Rachel has clearly been holding onto for a long time now - an idea that Shelby knows, Rachel would never admit to anybody in a more conscious state of mind - it hurts her.

Shelby turns slowly back towards her daughter, praying to God that the pain inside of her eyes is masked from Rachel's sight, while simultaneously praying even harder to ensure that Rachel would never have to feel this pain as a mother, that she was currently experiencing right now.

"Me neither." Shelby whispers. "But still, they will get the very best of you, Rachel."

Rachel nods, but she miscalculates her mother's hesitation… A part of her remains unwaveringly suspicious of the front that Shelby has been putting on ever since she had woken up. Rachel's skewed thought processing automatically concludes that this is simply Shelby's means of brushing off all of this nervous energy stemming from all of this talk that eventually, the necessity will come for her to let her daughter go.

"We'll still visit you, mom…" Rachel adds this final thought quickly in an effort to include Shelby in her personal lay-out of the short future that she plans on living out in its entirety tonight. "You'll be grandma."

"Well thank you for that, Rachel…" Shelby soothes her, brushing a loving hand gently across the top of her head, trying desperately to get Rachel to settle down before the girl worked herself up into a state that not even a rush of adrenaline combined with a healthy dose of morphine could block… But still, it is hard for even her not to dwell on the drugs' effect, the way by which they have placed Rachel into such an unusually talkative mood, babbling excitedly about her future when she has spent these last several days silent, reserved and, well – dying.

"We will come visit you every day until you're ninety four." Rachel continues to ramble nonsensically, clearly missing each and every one of Shelby's subtly placed clues trying to get her to relax…

"What happens when I turn ninety four?" Curiosity gets the best of Shelby, who asks despite her previous intentions upon preventing Rachel from getting more riled up than what is for her own good right now. "Will you stop visiting me just because I'm old?"

"No, that's when you'll die…" It is the second time in a matter of moments that Rachel's words manage to take the breath straight from Shelby's throat.

Her daughter professes this sentiment so casually, with such a matter-of-fact tone behind her voice that for the briefest of moments, Shelby does not even recognize the implication behind Rachel's words.

Abruptly, she takes a sharp, sudden breath inwards. Shelby's muscles stiffen and retreat automatically. She sinks inside of herself, feeling every motion as Noah turns wide-eyed and shell shocked to stare at her. This time, Shelby can't seem to bring herself to meet her son's gaze.

"Oh…" That seems to be the only thing that Shelby can manage in her response.

"Yeah…" Rachel nods her head with a confidence in her agreement, but the motion is still remarkably casual… Too casual for Shelby's liking. "You'll die at ninety for. Before me. Just like how it's supposed to be."

"Okay Rachel, enough of all of this chatter. You need your rest now. Get some sleep." Shelby silences her daughter quickly before Rachel so much as has the opportunity to continue, partially because the mother is not particularly enjoying the direction that this conversation is steering towards and partially because Rachel really shouldn't be getting herself this worked up so quickly following major surgery.

"Promise me that we can go to New York later?"

Rachel doesn't protest. She knows that her attempts would be of no use. As it is, the exertion that she has already exhibited has proven enough to send her spiraling downwards towards the path of sheer exhaustion. Her eyes close before she can so much as finish her sentence.

"I promise…" Shelby says, careful to mask the lie inside of her voice.

"Good…" Rachel mumbles satisfied, only then allowing herself to drift completely into a peaceful oblivion.

When Rachel opens her eyes again, it is daylight.

The details of her previous bout with consciousness are fuzzy, but for some reason, she wakes up expecting to be propped up in the very heart of Times Square. She is disappointed to find only bleary white walls surrounding her.

She at least manages to recognize that she is in an entirely different place from where she had been the last time she'd been awake… The sun is actually up now, but even still, the lights inside of her room are not nearly as blinding as they had been before.

If there is one thing that she can accurately place that hasn't changed, it is that the pain is still there, radiating and today, more prominent than ever before. It burrows deep inside of her gut, forcing her to cringe violently, a sharp stinging sensation that manifests inside of an inward display of agony that just barely passes from beyond her dry, parched lips.

Nobody seems to notice.

"Her fever spiked late last night…"

A string of words materialize from out of thin air, but the sounds are meshing together and the world still looks to Rachel as though it has been draped by a dark sheet so that it is difficult for her to find the source.

"It got up to 103 before the doctors had to start packing her body with ice. They've been giving her the strongest antibiotics that they can for at least four or five hours now, but none of it seems to be making much of a difference… Her temperature is still going up. We'll just have to wait and see how this all plays out."

"Do you think that the transplant is failing?" The immediate response is frazzled and diluted with nervous energy. The thud of heavy footsteps pacing back and forth begins to thud against Rachel's temples. The gentle pulse does not provide any glimpse of comfort onto the girl, whom they are clearly discussing. "Can she be rejecting it this early?"

"Her body could have started rejecting that kidney the second that it was placed inside of her body, Noah…" Shelby's nervous form slowly begins to materialize in front of Rachel's eyes. The piercing sunlight creates a series of blind spots that bring her mother periodically into and out of focus. The dizziness that is currently overwhelming Rachel makes it so that the entire room appears to be swaying…

Noah paces in circles which does nothing for Rachel's current predicament against her own equilibrium. Shelby stands firmly in the center of his motions. Rachel is strongly reminded of an image of the Earth orbiting around the stationary sun.

Noah looks a nervous wreck. Her mother on the other hand, appears impossibly stern. Her spine is stiff, hands pressed against her hips which jut slightly outwards.

To the untrained eye, Shelby Corcoran is the portrait of absolute confidence. To Rachel, it is a front that her body performs naturally in an effort to hide just how worried she truly is.

Rachel knows the posture well, she has inherited it to the exact directly from her mother.

"She'll have to worry about the potential of rejecting it until the day she dies… That's just a reality that we're all going to have to live with from now on. But the doctor's said that an infection in Rachel's case was practically inevitable, they were prepared for it and for the time being, they have it isolated to the incision site and the underlying tissue only. The CT that they took this morning showed that the kidney hadn't been affected – yet… But if the antibiotics don't work and the infection keeps on spreading… who knows what will happen then."

"Have you told her?"

"I haven't had the chance to." Shelby sighs. She has begun spinning about in concentric circles in an attempt to maintain eye contact with Noah, who has yet to stop pacing. Rachel wonders whether or not she even realizes what it is that she is doing. "She hasn't been awake since she was in recovery last night… That was almost twenty four hours ago now, I don't know if I should start being worried or what…"

Start being worried? Rachel can't help but to think that it is much too late for that.

"Not about the infection…"

Noah's explanation cuts Shelby off quickly. He sounds terribly serious and leaves behind in his wake, a silence that has Rachel's ears perking instinctively, waiting to hear what is coming next – "I meant about where that kidney actually came from."

"Of course not, Noah, don't be ridiculous." Shelby's response is quick and articulated. In Rachel's mind, it drips with suspicion. "Look at the state that she's in. Rachel needs to be focusing on her recovery right now and nothing else. You know your sister, if she finds out it will devastate her and who knows what that will do for her recovery."

"I don't know, mom…" Noah inadvertently becomes Rachel's advocate, speaking for her when she cannot speak for herself. It is a common theme in their relationship, but the fact that even he sounds so uncertain tells Rachel that whatever it is that they are hiding from her, it is something bit…

Big enough to leave Shelby absolutely determined to keep it from Rachel at any cost, at least.

Positioning herself strategically from inside of her bed, Rachel makes every and any attempt to catch some sort of context clues that may make her a little more aware of what was going on here… She moves as subtly as possible out of fear of the understanding that Shelby and Noah will not hesitate to cut their conversation short the second that they discovered Rachel to actually be awake and listening in.

"We will tell her Noah… eventually." Shelby speaks as though she is trying to prepare herself for this moment more than her son. She does however leave the word 'eventually' lingering with a remarkable air of openness, indicating that should Shelby have anything to say about it, eventually will in fact be an incredibly long time coming. "She isn't ready, Noah. We need for her to have all of her energy focused on getting better; especially right now."

"Fine," Noah concedes much easier than Rachel would have preferred, pausing in his motions and crossing his arms firmly across his chest. "Just remember that the longer we wait the harder Rachel's gonna take it, and when she does finally find out, it's not going to be pretty."

Shelby doesn't have time to respond.

From inside of her bed, Rachel slips slightly from her position propped against her elbow and a burst of lightning explodes violently through her core, creating a sharp pain so prominent that she cannot help but to be vocal in her reaction.

She grunts in her agony. Shelby and Noah silence with an abruptness that slices through the room like a knife. For a moment, they are still and stiff, like a pair of deer in the headlights, fearfully evaluating whether or not Rachel has heard any of the conversation that they had been so desperately trying to keep from her, but the fear diminishes quickly with the obviousness of just how much pain the girl is in.

"Rachel… Rachel, are you okay?" They have been waiting for nearly an entire day for Rachel to open her eyes, but still this is not the awakening that they had envisioned… Rachel falls into a fetal position, her eyes closed and teeth clenching so tightly that her jaw aches.

Her senses quickly diminish into a rainbow of color, her mind occupied by one conscious thought and one thought only, that being just how much pain that she is currently in and what she may be able to do in order to get rid of it. All thoughts directed towards suspicion of her mother or her brother are immediately erased, replaced only by this unbearable pain.

"Rachel honey, talk to me."

They hover above her and shout orders to both her and each other, but the world has transformed into nothing beyond this dazzling light show that Rachel finds, she is more than happy to sink herself inside of, away from this heartache, away from this confusion, away from this pain…

For once in her life.

She blinks her eyes and she is wide awake once more.

Except this time, Rachel does not immediately see the faces of her mother and her brother in front of her and the room is now dark, lit only by a dull lamp that hangs directly over her own head.

She's in a different place again.

Rachel has absolutely no idea what time it is or how long it has been since she has last been conscious; one hour, two hours, twenty – who knows – and this thought alone is enough to terrify Rachel into submission.

"So what, is she like… a vegetable now?"

A voice flutters against her ears like a snow fall. It is obvious that it is not addressing her, and it is with a sense of comfort that Rachel deduces that there are at least two other people inside of this mysterious place alongside her.

Rachel attempts to place the voice. It's female, definitely female and distantly familiar but it is not her mother and beyond that, Rachel is drawing a complete blank.

"She's not a vegetable!" There is not a speck of doubt inside of Rachel's mind that this is her brother speaking. He sounds brutally exhausted and instinctively defensive. Rachel bursts automatically with pride that he would think to correct the mistake so quickly, such a stupid error as to compare Rachel to being trapped inside of some obscure vegetative state when it is obvious that she is wide awake and right here besides them. "It's just that, well… the infection is spreading so that her body's natural way of trying to ward it off is to pretty much shut down and preserve what energy she does have left into fighting it… At least… at least that's what the doctor's keep saying anyway, I don't know, I don't really understand the whole thing… It tends to get a little confusing."

"So basically, she's a vegetable." Rachel has not the slightest idea who this person talking is, but she is suddenly overcome with the desire to give whoever it is a strong piece of her mind.

Rachel's face scrunches in concentration, her lips part as if to speak and –

Nothing ever comes out.

Rachel's blood freezes in an instantaneous panic. She tries to move, she tries to shout for help but there is nothing and the harder that Rachel tries, the more futile her attempts seem to be.

She is trapped inside of the depths of her own mind, and with not very many options left, Rachel suddenly gets to thinking…

Maybe she is a vegetable.

"She's not!" Noah's voice raises, but his voice falters and this does not make Rachel feel any better about her current crisis. "She's just… she's… The doctors say that it won't last forever unless…"

Noah pauses.

He is pacing again, just like the last time and comes quickly into Rachel's view. He is still wearing the same clothes that he had been in the last time that Rachel remembers seeing him. She tries to convince herself that this is a good sign, that it means that she couldn't have been that out of it for that long, but in reality, Rachel knows that this means nothing.

"Unless what, Noah?" A blonde comes up behind him… Quinn. Rachel should have known. It always seems to be Quinn.

"Unless the infection keeps on spreading… and the antibiotics don't work." Noah reaches up. He places his clasped hands behind his head and breathes deeply in an expression of pure defeat. Rachel can tell from all the way across the room just how sad Noah's eyes are, and Rachel immediately feels terribly that she cannot seem to muster up the energy that she needs in order to comfort Noah, to tell him that she was going to be just fine. "They say that if it makes its way into her kidney and destroys it, and then if it finds its way inside of her bloodstream… well than that's it. There won't be anything that they can do. She'll basically just stay just like this until one day she just… isn't."

"Hey, Noah…"

"Yeah?" Noah responds absently to Quinn's questioning in the midst of his soliloquy. There is a distinct lack of interest inside of his voice. It is empty and so unlike her brother that at first, Rachel doesn't even recognize him.

"I think that she might be awake…" Quinn is staring directly at her now and it is making Rachel remarkably uncomfortable, the way that she is looking… Rachel attempts to shift out from underneath Quinn's intense gaze, but as expected, Rachel cannot so much as lift her pinky. She is stuck.

Noah's eyes dart quickly, exuberant with the potential of hope for but the briefest of seconds before his muscles sink once more alongside an expression that fizzles dramatically.

"No, she isn't…" Noah sighs and turns his back away from Rachel, leaving the girl wanting nothing more than to jump out of bed, shake him by the shoulders and scream, asking him what the hell is wrong with him, thinking that she isn't awake when clearly, she is right here, wide awake and fully conscious.

Of course, her body has other plans. She doesn't move.

"She does that sometimes, opens her eyes and just kind of stares. She never actually talks or moves or anything like that… They say that it is probably just a reflex."

"Can she hear me at all?" A large blonde face pops suddenly in front of her own. Rachel is startled but her expression shows no external response. "Hello?" Quinn asks her tentatively, "Are you in there?"

Rachel wants to scream. She wants to reach out, she wants to grab Quinn by the shoulders and ask her if she is actively trying to insult her or this is a habit that just comes naturally, a habit that she has improved upon, but still has yet to break completely free of.

'Of course I am in here.'

She thinks it, but this time she doesn't even bother trying. Her efforts would be futile and Rachel knows it. She is at a complete loss of control over her own body.

Rachel's lack of effort has her reconsidering her initial insistencies upon actually being in here… Maybe she isn't in here, after all.

She remembers suddenly, some of the things that the doctors told her would happen to her at the time that they still believed death to be the only plausible end point, what it might be like as she slipped away, as they so often liked to call it.

It would start with her having less and less energy with each passing day. She wouldn't want to eat very much anymore, or even at all. She would grow more tired more quickly, she would sleep more and more until one day, she would go to sleep and she wouldn't wake up. They had told her that she would soon lose her inability to speak, to move, to touch, to feel…

Her hearing would go last.

Briefly, Rachel wonders whether or not this is what is happening to her right now and she grows distinctly and suddenly terrified of the idea of having to close her eyes for fear that she will never be able to open them again.

"No. She can't hear you."

Noah falsely answers Quinn's previous testimony for her. At least this explains why him and Shelby had felt so comfortable speaking – albeit vaguely – in terms of deep secrets that they didn't want her to hear with her sitting right there… They didn't think that she could hear them when the truth was, hearing them was the only thing that she had left anymore. Some surprise they were in for when she finally did get better again.

If she ever did get better again.

"She'll be fine, Noah…" Quinn refrains from making any more light-hearted comments or quick jives about Rachel's condition at her expense. Her tune changes quickly to one of distinct comfort as she attempts to pass along a sense of support upon a grieving friend. "She hasn't made it this far to let something like this beat her. Besides… she has a guardian angel now. Santana isn't going to let anything bad happen to Rachel."

Of all the bizarre comments that Rachel has been hearing lately, this one strikes her as particularly peculiar.

After being such a prominent part of their lives for so many weeks, it is not exactly a secret that Santana had all but disappeared from their lives entirely ever since… The rough transition had not felt particularly good. Rachel knows that the abandonment had hurt her, and she is certain that it had eaten Noah up inside… She is even relatively certain that her own mother was left writhing from the blow, although Rachel knows her well enough not to expect Shelby to admit this.

But with Santana's crazy family situation – more messed up than even her own – Rachel can at least partially understand where it is that the fiery young Latina had been coming from.

Quinn's comment only further enhances Rachel's fear towards her lack of knowledge towards just how long she has been unconscious for. Just how many days of her life had she missed after all?

If Santana has managed to break free of the suffocating chains that her family has locked into place around her, not only reemerging as a prominent figure in the Corcoran's lives but also assigning herself the proclaimed post of 'guardian angel' Rachel can only assume that the answer to her own question is one that she will be better off not looking for.

"I miss her."

Now Rachel is officially confused. She has so many questions that demand so many answers, but her sedentary body does not seem to want to cooperate with her swirling brain, and it fascinates Rachel, the idea that her mind can be so coherently aware while her body is left so, well… dead.

"I know." Quinn nods in her agreement before the two silence simultaneously. Rachel knows that they are not doing this purposefully just to spite her, but still, it is almost as though Quinn and her brother are relishing boastingly upon some sort of sick, twisted inside joke that they know that Rachel is unaware, rubbing it relentlessly inside of the younger girl's face just because they know just how much Rachel can't stand being left out in the dark.

The blood begins to pound at warp speed inside of Rachel's temples. Her head is literally throbbing, she is so confused, but she embraces it. It is the first physical entity Rachel has managed to feel since she has opened her eyes.

"Did you have a chance to tell Rachel about… about… well, you know? I mean, before all of this happened?"

"No." Noah speaks firmly, and although he seems to have a perfect understanding of exactly what it is that Quinn is referring, to Rachel, the blonde might as well have just spoken in tongues. "I wanted to tell her right away but my mom was pretty against that idea… She said that it would interfere with Rachel's recovery, so much for that, huh? I guess she's right though, I mean… how the hell am I supposed to tell Rachel the truth about where her kidney came from, especially after all of that stuff that we went through about me being a possible donor…"

"Nobody said that it was gonna be easy, Noah."

"I know…" Noah turns his head slowly until his eyes lock with Rachel's although the boy makes no conscious indication towards her. It is almost as though he might as well be staring directly at the wall… Rachel tries to avoid thinking that in her current state, he might as well be. "But still, things shouldn't be this hard… How do I tell her? After everything that she's been through, how am I supposed to drop another bomb on her next?"

He pauses for an extended silence, sighing so dramatically that he could rival Rachel's self-appointed title as head diva of their family at the moment.

"How the hell am I supposed to tell her that Santana was her kidney donor… that she's… that she's dead?"


"Hey, Rachel…"

The girl's eyes dart up from the processed image of her own reflection before her. Her hands drop quickly from the outline of her smooth stomach, coming to rest at a position of attention tightly against her sides as her mother rounds the corner inside of her bedroom.

It is obvious, what Rachel had been doing before the intrusion, obvious that she had been studying and scrutinizing her own mirror image - or more profoundly, its imperfections - as she has been so prone to doing these days… But today, Rachel is granted a miraculous break from her mother's unwavering concern as the older woman's normally sharp poise is delayed by the surprise of her interfering on Rachel's partial nudity.

Reflexively, Shelby turns her eyes away immediately - before she can truly process the scene before her - in an effort to protect what little of her teenage daughter's modesty was actually left.

"Oh God, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry…" Shelby apologizes quickly, ducking back out of Rachel's room and into the hallway as Rachel's muscles, previously tense with the fear of being caught relax through a heavy sigh.

"No… no, it's alright…" Rachel quickly dismisses Shelby's words, forcing her eyes prematurely away from the mirror, before she can properly conclude yet another designation of all of her prominent faults. She turns her back upon her own reflection with a sense of relief towards the escape, so that each and every extension of her spine pops prominently down the length of the center of her back, bouncing awkwardly against the light in a manner that makes it appear as though a shadow has been cast across the entirety of the small room.

Rachel tries desperately to feign indifference. She saunters casually back towards her bed, picking quickly from the array of potential outfits that she has already laid out. She settles on a modest sun dress that does its best at hiding all of the faults that lay just beneath the fabric, throwing it over her head quickly to cover the exposed skin. When she turns back around, Shelby is staring all over again.

The mother's arms are crossed in diligent observation. Leaning slightly, she supports the majority of her body weight against the door frame. Her eyes are full with a concern that makes Rachel cringe. It doesn't take the girl very long to be all but forced to duck back towards the mirror in order to escape her mother's prying glare.

"Are you okay?" Shelby invites herself inside of Rachel's room once more, sauntering slowly towards her daughter.

Slipping behind her, Shelby's slightly taller frame appears hovered above Rachel's own. Rachel watches the motion of her mother's eyes, as Shelby meets the image of her own reflection. The younger girl is left distinctly wondering whether or not her mother thinks the same thing that she does every time she looks inside of a mirror these days, whether she wonders who this person staring back at her that she doesn't even recognize anymore is…

"I'm fine." Rachel's immediate dismissal of Shelby's concern is a natural reaction. She ducks out from beneath her mother's touch, tip-toeing slightly until she is safe to drop her body into a seated position against her own bed.

"Rachel…" Shelby sighs heavily as though in warning. They have had this conversation a million times before, a fact that Rachel knows just as much as Shelby does…

The mother places her hands firmly against her hips. Her eyes drop from the mirror, down onto the floor, closing only briefly for patience. Rachel knows that Shelby wants nothing more than for her own daughter to feel comfortable confiding in her again, and normally Rachel was willing to talk to Shelby with such ease, but the girl has just been so distant lately, everybody felt it and they would be lying if they were to say that the tendency was not starting to concern them.

"I know you, Rach, I know that look in your eyes…" Finally, Shelby turns back towards her daughter, offering her a small smile as if trying to get Rachel to mimic her, but the motion falters when Rachel's expression doesn't change. "You know that you can talk to me about anything, right?"

"Yeah…" Rachel mutters softly in her return.

"So I'm gonna ask you this one more time, and this time I'm gonna need you to be honest with me, okay?" She says, and Rachel knows what is coming but she braces herself anyway. "Are you okay?"

"I don't think that I can do this mom…" Shelby all but pulls the words out from the back of her throat with her granting Rachel permission to release everything inside of her. Admittedly, Rachel takes off with the idea without even particularly intending to. Her mouth spews confessions faster than what even she can keep up with.

But she has every reason to be nervous.

Rachel Corcoran has not stepped foot inside of William McKinley High School since November. And even before the student body had lit up with the knowledge that she had become some sort of human science experiment gone terribly awry, Rachel has always been the brunt of the worst kinds of gossip and rumor. Being that loser kid sister of the most popular kid in school, people tended to talk.

After everything that has happened in these last couple of months, the idea of thrusting herself straight into the line of fire terrifies her, especially with all of her battle scars brandished so obviously across her body.

"Don't say that, Rachel…" Shelby drops herself down inside of the bed besides her daughter. Her fingers reach up to brush along the thin wisps of hair finally beginning to sprout up across the top of Rachel's head. The action inadvertently causes a reaction that is the exact opposite of comfort in Rachel's eyes as Shelby involuntarily emphasizes all of the abnormalities that Rachel has feared to begin with by placing an exaggeration upon her appearance, an idea that she already knows, that she is a freak…

And that is putting things in the most modest terms possible.

"Why not, it's true!" Rachel argues back violently, tears springing inside of her eyes as her voice trembles in her attempt to control it, trying desperately not to call upon the attention of her brother, who does not need the biggest day of his life thus far destroyed by the emotional wreck that his sister has since become.

"Rachel…" Shelby sighs heavily, her spine stiffening as her arms droop back down to her sides. She pauses, licking her lips in a not-so-subtle attempt to convey the idea that she is taking her time in trying to figure out what it is that she can say to her clearly ailing daughter. "I know that our family's situation is… well, different and that it's not exactly a secret, everything that we've been going through… But honey hiding away like this, it isn't like you… I know that it's easy to get stuck inside of everything that you're afraid of and with all of the things that you have been through in these past couple of months, in your entire life really, it's okay to be a little bit hesitant about everything that's out there hiding in the shadows, but Rachel, you can't allow yourself to get lost inside of that fear."

"So… what you're saying is that it's okay to be a little bit scared…" Rachel paraphrases Shelby's words, interpreting them in her own manner as she hesitantly asks for permission to implement her mother's advice.

"It's okay to be a little bit scared." Shelby confirms with a confident nod of her head. "It's okay because you have me and you have Noah and you have a whole lot of other people in your life who all love you very much and who are willing to do absolutely anything to help push you past that fear and get you back on your own two feet again."

"Is it okay to be angry?" Rachel risks the question as long as her and Shelby are being honest with each other… But her voice drops nervously as though unsure as to whether or not she should be making this revelation although Rachel doubts very much that it is a secret, she can only blame her violent mood swings on the steroids so much. The rest was entirely inside of her own heart. Rachel was distant, Rachel was withdrawn. She has been so unlike herself lately and angrier than she has ever been in her entire life… so angry that it scared her.

In hindsight, Rachel is certain that her being angry and her being scared were two emotions that go hand-in-hand with each other. The truth is that it is her hanger that terrifies her the most out of anything.

"It's okay to be a little bit angry," Shelby nods but her eyes are sad, leading Rachel to believe that she is just saying this to help Rachel feel better about the plethora of emotions currently clogging her head. "But Rachel, you can't allow yourself to get stuck inside of that anger. You can't get lost inside of this feeling of being angry all the time… If you do that, then Rachel… where will you be? Who will you be?"

Shelby's hand reaches up and rests against the center of Rachel's back, directly in between her sharp shoulder blades. Rachel, in turn hangs her head as though embarrassed… She almost wishes that she had just kept her mouth shut.

But her mother is right.

Rachel is losing a piece of herself with every day that she allows to pass feeling this empty, this terribly void inside. Her life, her dreams, her focus, they are all getting harder and harder to see, such a vibrant future being skewed by something so seemingly simple as a little bit of emotion… Rachel can't understand why, for the life of her she can't just look past it all.

"I just can't stop thinking about what will happen if I can't catch up in school after all of this, if I start to fall behind… What will happen if I get pushed so far back that I don't get into NYADA or Julliard or NYU? What will happen if I don't go to New York or make it onto Broadway all because I just can't see it anymore?"

Shelby's soft smile doesn't falter but her eyes darken as they have been so prone to doing any time Rachel ever mentions going away to school in New York lately…

It is not the first time that Rachel has gotten the impression that the idea of her going as far away as to New York for college is an idea too painful for Shelby to possibly comprehend. Today, with Noah mere hours away from graduating high school, Rachel knows it hurts particularly bad.

It crosses Rachel's mind, the idea that Shelby's biggest fear is being alone.

A pang of guilt enters inside of the center of Rachel's chest. She observes her mother carefully, the lines that emphasize once youthful features and she realizes with a pang of anguish, that every single hint of premature aging that graces across Shelby's body is a direct result of her.

"You don't want me to go to New York, do you?"

Shelby laughs, but the pain is still there.

"Rachel, I want everything you could ever possibly want for yourself and beyond that…" Shelby offers Rachel a small half smile, an all-knowing grin as if to tell her that these conflicting emotions that she was currently facing was something that Rachel could never possibly understand until the day that she became a mother herself.

"For some reason, I don't believe you… about New York, anyway." Rachel quickly adds that last bit because there is not a doubt in her mind that otherwise, Shelby wants only what is for her very best interest.

The problem she faces now is that Rachel can't help but to think that her mother's opinion on what may be best for her as compared to her own may take them in two completely opposite paths.

"Rachel, I have known that Broadway was in your future since the day that you sang your first word instead of speaking it…" Shelby shakes her head through a soft, nostalgic laugh, "Trust me, this plan of yours does not exactly come across as a surprise to me… I have spent the last sixteen years preparing for the inevitability of you leaving home and finding your fame in the place that you truly belong… And now, I know that I still have two more years to figure out how it is that I'm gonna survive you leaving home, but with Noah getting ready to leave for school soon, I'm starting to realize that letting the two of you go is going to be the hardest thing that I will ever have to do, no matter how ready I think that I may be."

"Maybe you can come to New York with me… You know, for old time's sake." Rachel shrugs casually in her suggestion, half joking yet at the same time, completely serious. "Think about how much the two of us would dominate on Broadway together… We would be unstoppable."

"Yeah…" Shelby makes a short gesture of amusement, "I think that my days in New York are long behind me, Rae."

"Oh…" Rachel's shoulders sink visibly, pained by the rejection.

"Hey, but that doesn't mean that yours can't only just be starting." She smiles confidently at her daughter, her touch brushing beneath the girl's chin, using the tips of her fingers to lift her head high into the air once more…

"Do you know how I know that you're gonna be okay, Rachel?"

"How?"

"Because you have already proven to me time and time again that you can do absolutely anything that you set your mind to, no matter what the odds stacked against you may be." Her face is scrunched with a serious honesty before fading into a soft demeanor once more in an effort to thin out the thick air in between them. "You are going to be amazing, Rachel. In whatever you choose to do. I'm not worried about you making it, not at all… So while you are stuck here panicking about finishing high school or getting into NYADA, I'll be here too with you to remind you of just how good you are… and to level you out just in case I make your ego a little bit too high. Worst case scenario, I may still have a couple of connections over on the Broadway scene."

"Thanks mom…" Rachel smiles in her appreciation, reaching quickly upwards in order to wipe away at the moisture that has begun collecting against the undersides of her eyes… She takes a deep breath, grateful for the relief against the previous constriction against her lungs now that it no longer feels as though she has a hundred pound weight sitting against her chest. Mostly, she is overwhelmed with the distraction of an opportunity to have her mother help her through normal teenage girl problems for a change.

It's nice, the reminder that maybe she is not as different as she had thought after all.

"But still, I'm going to have to say no to your offer…" Rachel perks, clapping her hands together with finality as she declines Shelby's previous sentiments on her willingness to call in a couple of favors on her behalf. "I refuse to be known as that girl that made it onto Broadway based on anything other than my pure talent alone which is why I've already to decided to take my first and middle name to the stage only… I just have to drop my last name, I'm sure you can understand."

"I'm sure that I'll be able to find a way to get by." Shelby mocks offense but it is hard to conceal her joy. This is more like the Rachel that she had always known was still buried deep down inside of their somewhere.

The air between them lingers. Mother and daughter fall into silence, but it is comfortable. Shelby can only watch her daughter, wide-eyed with an astonishment that settles deep inside of the very pit of her stomach.

"How did I get so lucky?" She eventually manages words to appropriately describe what it is that she is feeling. "You know, between you and your brother I'm pretty sure that I hit the jackpot."

"Well, I don't know so much about Noah…" Rachel jokes, but that is only to hide the dark red flush that has begun to creep its way inside of her cheeks… She just can't seem to comprehend how it is that Shelby can still consider herself lucky to have been stuck with her as a daughter after everything that Rachel had put her through.

"Yeah…" Shelby murmurs through her amazement and a lopsided smile. Pausing, she soaks the moment all in as slowly as possible. Rachel is just starting to get the sense that they are sitting side-by-side for hours when finally, with a sudden burst of energy, Shelby pushes herself sharply onto her feet once more.

"Now hurry up and get ready." She orders. "Your brother is already making us late enough for his own graduation as it is."

"Okay." Rachel nods her head and follows her mother into a standing position, the feeling of weighing profoundly less than she had the last time she had been on her feet aiding her motions with an ease of relief.

Shelby shuffles back out towards the hallway, pausing only briefly in front of Rachel's vanity, littered with a dancing array of pill bottles, vast and numerous bordered by a slew of natural remedies produced by hours of research that Shelby had practically wasted away on the computer piecing together bit by bit…

Vitamin A helps to replenish her depleted immune system; Vitamin E provides an edge to help bring her disease-ravaged body back from its state of disarray… Calcium and iron and potassium for her brittle bones, depleted muscles and weakened organ system. Some weird Indian root that Rachel can never remember the name of that Shelby read words a dual effect of both slowing the growth of cancer cells and reducing the inflammatory effects of the immune system – perfect in the case of transplant recipients…

"Hey Rachel, one more thing…" Shelby turns back around to face her daughter once more. Curious, Rachel glances up at her, silently imploring her to continue.

"I'm so proud of you." She tells the girl after a brief pause. "You remember that."


It's late in the afternoon and the sky has been grey and overcast all day, which as it turns out, ends up being a perfect indicator of the mood that Rachel is in today.

"Do you think that it's a good idea to start her back on chemotherapy so soon after everything has happened?" They talk about her as though she isn't even here, her mother asking all of the questions to her doctor on her behalf, even though Rachel is no longer nearly as incapacitated as she had been a week ago now after the kidney transplant that was supposed to save her life had nearly killed her, and still very much so could.

"Putting it off any longer wouldn't be wise, Shelby…" In equal fashion, Rachel's own doctor talks directly to everybody except for Rachel herself. His back is facing the young girl, he doesn't even face her as he speaks. "This little roadblock, it has basically pushed us straight back to square one with Rachel's treatments. I know that it was easy to get caught up in the relief of the transplant, but now we have to go back to the very beginning, the one where Rachel isn't even close to being out of the woods yet. In Rachel's case, it's safe to assume that a fast, high intensity cycle of chemotherapy followed by a long term consolidation round that will last anywhere from the next six months to the next two years will be in Rachel's best interest… It all depends on how her body responds."

Rachel swallows heavily and closes her eyes against the bad news. The idea of being stuck inside of this hospital, being shuffled into and out of treatment programs for the next six months, let alone two years is enough to make her wish that this transplant never even happened to begin with.

She would be better off dead.

"But what about her recovery from the transplant, won't that be negatively affected by pumping her with high dosage cytotoxic chemicals so soon after surgery?"

"Shelby, you have to remember that Rachel's issues with her kidneys are not the only problem that she is facing right now…" Rachel tells herself that the doctor is choosing to solely address Shelby only because he knows that this is a fact impossible for Rachel to ever forget. They are trapped inside of a vicious Catch-22. Treat Rachel's cancer, and eventually, her kidneys will end up killing her. Treat Rachel's kidneys and it is the cancer that ultimately will get her. "Now, I'm not saying that this is going to be an easy road, but Rachel's predicament is time sensitive. We've already waited much longer than what we can afford. The infection is clearing from her system better than we could have anticipated. She will remain in the hospital under vigilant observation on a healthy dose of antibiotics as well as a regimen to prevent her kidney from rejecting… The biggest concern that we have to face now is in the extent that this will suppress her immune system, but with strict precautions and a lot of extra care, there is no reason to think that Rachel can't handle this… She has already proven to us just how much of a fighter she is."

Shelby's lingering expression of uncertainty is interrupted by the door slamming open as though it had just been blown by a hurricane.

Noah barrels inside. He looks hurried and impossibly flustered. But the first thing that Rachel notices is that he is dressed up; black slacks with a thin, equally black tie pressed fresh against a white button down. He's gotten a haircut since the last time that Rachel has seen him late last night the Mohawk that he was only just starting to grow back again has vanished once more.

He looks somehow older than yesterday, aged from experience yet at the same time, frightened like a child. His clothes are disheveled, his eyes wide and aware.

To Rachel, Noah looks almost lost.

"Uh… sorry I'm late." He mutters awkwardly. Nobody bothers to point out that there was never actually a designated meeting scheduled for him to be late to.

"No, that's fine Noah…" The doctor waves off Noah's apology. In contrast, Rachel had not been planning to go so easy on him. "We were just starting to lay out a long-term treatment plan for Rachel here, it's nothing that you can't be filled in on."

"Oh…" Noah relaxes, but only minimally as his eyes dart quickly about the room, travelling from Shelby to Dr. McCarthy to the nurse absently jotting numbers against Rachel's chart and straight back to Shelby… He doesn't look at Rachel once.

Instead, they all stare as though they know something that she doesn't. It makes her distinctly fidgety and visibly uncomfortable.

It takes Noah a long time to finally make eye contact with his sister. He stares at her and in turn, she stares right back at him. He looks deep, almost serene…

But it doesn't last very long. Noah's head turns quickly away as he shoves his hands deep inside of his pockets.

It's only then that she realizes that he is trembling.

"Shelby, if you don't mind coming with me, I just have a few things for you to fill out before we can move Rachel out of ICU and back downstairs… finally." Dr. McCarthy nods his head towards Rachel's direction for the first time all morning, offering her a small smile as he plays off of the feeling of relief that she knows she should be feeling towards being deemed healthy enough to be moved out of the prison that is intensive care, but just doesn't feel it…

Rachel tries to mimic the expression in an effort to be polite, but a grimace is all that she can manage.

"Sure…" Shelby stands to her feet but she does not look particularly pleased. Three days ago when Rachel's fever had finally begun to break, after the girl had finally managed to claw her way out of that bizarre, semi-conscious dream state that she remembers so little of it might as well have lasted three minutes, forget three days, Shelby had begun to revert back to her old habits of refusing to leave Rachel's side.

She hasn't moved. Not once.

Nobody has been able to get Shelby out of this hospital. Not Noah, not Krista, not even Rachel, and while Rachel was chopping at the bit for a little bit of freedom, in Shelby's eyes, leaving for five minutes was the equivalent to leaving for five years.

But the second that it becomes no more than Rachel and Noah inside of the room, things quickly grow distinctly uncomfortable.

Noah has spent the last three days busy trying to keep the secret that he doesn't know his sister is already very much aware of. Rachel on the other hand is busy waiting for Noah to come clean with the truth that she believes she has every right be told – to actually be told – on his own accord.

It's not like him to keep things from her, especially something like this. Rachel has tried to understand, she has tried to reason that the wound is still fresh and painful, that it hurts to so much as think about let alone talk about… She even gets that her mother may be against her knowing the truth in every sense of the term, but really, when has complications such as these ever stopped Noah before?

She has since dismissed all attempts towards logic as futile. A distinct anger has begun to bubble deep inside of her gut.

It is unfair – Rachel knows this – getting mad at her brother who is still freshly immersed inside of the painful grieving process for a situation that is well beyond his control, but right now Rachel simply needs somebody to be angry with and seeing as how he is existing, and she is existing, but neither of them seem to be existing together anymore, it is very easy for Rachel to push aside the reminder that Noah is hurting just as much as she is right now.

Forget the fact that toying with an emotionally vulnerable Noah is as dangerous as poking a sleeping tiger.

"What are you all dressed up for?"

Rachel's voice is tainted with a sense of all-knowing accusation that should Noah have been in a more stable state of mind, he would have caught onto immediately.

"Uh, nothing, I um… I…" He is thrown off by her question, probably still getting used to the idea that she can actually communicate again. He stutters for a quick and believable lie although Rachel can't help but to think that he should have been better prepared for a question that should have been obvious.

He probably liked it better when she couldn't talk.

"I had a few last minute interviews this morning… college stuff, you know…" He ultimately settles on a nice story, but it would have been much more believable had he not taken so long in delivering it.

"I thought that you were all set on Wittenberg already." Rachel toys with him, but it is strictly out of maliciousness. Her frustration is rising and in that, she has made it her mission to make her brother as uncomfortable as humanly possible before dropping the bomb.

She wants him to figure out for himself everything that she knows he is hiding.

Anyway, his outfit is no way near receptive of a college interview. Rachel knows that if there is one thing in this world that her brother is good at, it is making impressions, and looking a disheveled, emotional wreck is just about the furthest from impressive as one can possibly get.

His attire, the way he is handling himself, the devastation that is written clear across his face, it screams funeral, and Rachel may be sick, and she may be recovering from a near-death experience, but she is not an idiot – Rachel knows exactly how to put two and two together.

Santana had been her kidney donor. Santana was dead. It has been exactly eight days since that day and according to both Shelby and Noah, Rachel was still much too weak to be able to tolerate the truth.

Yeah. Right.

"Yeah, I uh… I just had to do some, uh… some confirmation stuff… a follow up and…"

"Stop lying to me, Noah!" His pathetic attempts put Rachel over the edge entirely. She boils over in an explosion of energy that leaves her still-recovering, devastated body protesting violently. A wave of dizziness overwhelms her. Rachel is lucky that she had already been lying down or else, she would have fallen down.

Ironically, it wasn't the truth threatening to damage her fragile body after all, but the plethora of lies instead.

"W-what?" Noah stutters. It is clear that he is thrown aback by Rachel's outburst, but Noah is determined to keep his cover. If there is one thing that the Corcoran's are good at, it is showing face. Neither ever present their weakness as a physical entity, a trait that usually turns out to be as much as a curse as it is a blessing.

"You and mom must think that I'm some sort of moron, huh?"

Rachel's accusation silences them both. Noah's face contorts with an overwhelming array of conflicting emotion that makes Rachel's head hurt every time she attempts to stare long enough to decipher it, but still she refuses to look away.

"What are you talking about?" He is persistent. It is a characteristic that Rachel has always admired about her brother although today, it makes her want to reach out and throttle him.

"Did you really think that I couldn't hear anything that was going on around me these last couple of days just because I was a little bit out of it?" Rachel asks him, "'Oh, she does that sometimes, opens her eyes and just kind of stares… She never actually talks or moves, just kind of lays there'" Tears filter across Rachel's eyes as she mocks the words that Noah had spoken to Quinn just the other day by repeating them nearly verbatim. Noah blanches visibly, recognizing instantaneously, the direction that this conversation is about to head towards. "Come on Noah, it isn't like this is your first time around the block… I thought that you would have at least a little bit more sense than that!"

"Rachel… I…" The boy stutters blindly. His sister is being uncharacteristically blunt and harsh in her mannerisms, and he isn't entirely sure how it is that he should be handling this… Especially when he knows that she has a point.

Noah's skewed perception of the world tilts only further on its axis.

"Save it, Noah…" Rachel's tone is harsh and distant in a clear display of anger. Noah isn't so sure that he would be able to formulate a proper argument against her even if he wanted to. "I'm sick of everybody around here trying to hide the truth from me like I will break the second that I get a couple of answers! I'm not a child anymore I can handle these kinds of things!"

She is yelling now, and considering the fact that so much as talking remains an exhausting chore for Rachel these days, it doesn't take very long for her energy to begin to deplete… She quickly begins to tremble. Rachel's forehead breaks out into a cold, glistening sweat, the low-grade fever that she is still running aided involuntarily by a flurry of emotion.

Rachel sits up straight inside of her bed in an attempt to make herself appear larger. The motion sends a shockwave of dizziness crashing through her skull, but she forces herself to push through it without faltering.

"Rachel, calm down…" Noah easily senses the adverse reaction and makes the suggestion. Risking a couple of slow, steady steps forwards, he attempts to make peace through assistance, but Rachel pulls away from the range of his touch before their skin can so much as connect.

"Don't tell me to calm down!" She bellows in her refusal to back down, in her refusal to give Noah yet another excuse to use in order to try and prove his initial theory of why it had been such a good idea to "protect" her through the art of silence in the first place. "You need to start telling me the truth and you need to start telling me it now, Noah. I deserve answers. Is Santana really… is she really dead?"

"Yes."

She pulls the answer from him with a surprising ease that throws her off slightly although her body does manage to relax into a satisfied silence.

But in opposite fashion, Noah's face darkens eerily. Submissive with fear one second, at the blink of an eye he turns to stone. There is something that Rachel cannot positively identify hidden within the clouds inside of his eyes. Was it anger? Fear? Hate? Rachel can't be entirely sure, but either way it makes her terribly uncomfortable as she slowly begins to lose the edge of advantage that she had previously believed herself to have over her brother.

"And she… she was my kidney donor?" Rachel does not sound nearly as confident in her bid for answers as she had just moments before, but she can't stop now. The question resonates from her lips with a deflating confidence that she tries desperately not to let show. She can't let Noah know that she is suddenly having second thoughts. She can't let him know that maybe, he was right all along.

"Yes…"

"Jesus Christ…" Rachel mutters with a distinct air of disbelief despite the overwhelming evidence that is currently supporting the truth… Of course, deep down Rachel has known this truth all along. But before this, there was always the chance that she had heard Noah wrong the first time, that in her less than acute state of mind, she hadn't managed to interpret his words correctly…

That lingering hope was the one thing that had managed to push Rachel this far, and to lose it all in one fleeting moment…

She takes several concentrated breaths. In and out. In and out. Noah's face is neutral. He is experienced in that time has allowed him to process some of his grief. It is Rachel's turn to mourn now. Noah diligently waits for her to react.

But Rachel straightens her face, refusing to give him that satisfaction.

It scares her, the idea that she does not so much as want to cry for the loss of a friend before her brother for fear that he will mistake her anger for something much less…

She is not angry with him, Rachel is adamant on making that clear for herself, although for some reason, she is not ready for him to know this just yet. She is not angry with him but she is angry with his decision to remain silent. She is angry with his firm belief that she cannot handle these sorts of tragic situations when experience has proven time and time again that she is fit to handle absolutely anything…

She is angry with her situation. She is angry that she is alive and Santana is not when really, it is supposed to be her spending her morning being lowered inside of a hole in the ground right about now.

In fact, Rachel is angry at a lot of things, Noah just so happens to be directly in the line of fire; the focal point to which all of her frustrations are currently concentrating.

"When is the funeral? I want to go." Rachel nods towards his outfit with a stiff bob of her head and an even stiffer voice in an effort to mask the true feelings that are presenting just behind it.

"It was this morning…" He murmurs apologetically, turning his eyes away as his sister sighs openly, burying her face inside of the palms of her hands so that she misses the fact that her brother's eyes fill with tears…

It would be a long shot anyway – Rachel tries to reason – convincing the doctors to allow her out of the safety of the hospital in order to attend a funeral, but sneaking out would always be an option, Rachel already knows that she is a master at slipping away unnoticed.

"Save it." In her frustration, her voice spits more harshly than what she had intended on, but Rachel simply is not in the mood to be apologized to anymore. "I just… I need some time alone, Noah. You need to go. Tell mom she has to leave too, I just… I want to be alone right now."

"Rachel…"

"Please, Noah!" She cuts him off abruptly. Her voice is full of tears that she refuses to allow to fall through the image of her brother's body physically sinking with defeat. He knows as well as she does that any opportunity that he thought he may have had for an argument is now over.

Noah stands silently to his feet, turning his back on Rachel without another word. His shoulders slump so far forward as he walks that Rachel is not entirely certain how he it is that he is managing to move without falling face down on the floor.

He doesn't look back over his shoulder once while meanwhile Rachel, in an exact opposite fashion, doesn't take her eyes off of him.

She follows his straight path towards the door, watching as Shelby begins her approach once more, looking relatively cheery in her state of blissful oblivion, completely unaware of the storm that she has involuntarily chosen to throw herself directly into.

It is with luck that Noah manages to readily intercept her, grabbing her by the elbow where he steers her away from Rachel's room and down the hall out of sight. There is no doubt in Rachel's mind that he is briefing her on the harrowing details of Rachel discovering their not so little secret… If there is one thing that Rachel has to be grateful for, it is this. If she couldn't handle a confrontation with her brother right now, Rachel knows that there is no way in hell that a conversation with her mother would be something that she could face.

Rachel wonders if she will ever be able to look Shelby in the eye again after all this.

Crossing her arms against her chest, Rachel huffs in her silence and allows the quiet to seep slowly inside of her veins.

Gradually, she finds herself struggling more and more to place all of these conflicting emotions that she is currently experiencing, reasoning that maybe if she simply does not think about them, she can conclude that they had never happened to begin with.

She tries desperately to turn her brain off. With each futile attempt, her heart pounds faster inside of her chest until it is moving so quickly that it physically begins to hurt. It does not take very long for a loud, clearly audible sob to escape from the back of her throat. Rachel doesn't even try to hide it.

Either way, nobody comes.

Santana is dead.

The harder Rachel tries to avoid thinking about this, the more prominent the thought grows inside of the apex of her mind… Santana is dead and she is alive. It should be the other way around yet somehow, here they all are; living on without truly living.

The guilt is literally suffocating.

Tears pour from her eyes until she can no longer breathe. Her throat closes into a pinpoint that barely allows the oxygen in but nobody comes to help her because she is supposed to be long dead anyway. Rachel is completely and utterly alone.

Santana is dead.

Santana has been dead for eight days. Rachel has already pushed her family away. She has scared away the one boyfriend that she has ever had and probably will ever have, and friends… what friends?

The loneliness is devastating.

It leaves her grasping for straws as she struggles violently to decide where it is that she will go from here, what it is that she will do next and how it is that she will possibly deal with this residual sorrow continuously screaming at her that maybe she would have been better off if things had gone differently around here after all.


Perfectly ImperfectXP – Thank you so much for all of the support although I am sorry for all of the emotions! It means the world, thanks again for your kind words.

Miriami – Wow thank you so much! I truly am honored by all of your support it means more than you know! I'm glad you like little Noah and Rachel because writing them is definitely my favorite! The Corcoran's are definitely one tough family. It's makes you stop and realize that there really are families out there that have this much tragedy in their lives and haul through it so bravely. It's a bit of a motivating boost to get their stories down on paper, in a sense. I'm so glad I've helped you walk away with something to hold onto! Thanks again for all of your beautiful words.

Hazelbutton2002 – I'm glad to hear that you enjoyed (well, as much as you could anyway). It was difficult writing off Santana that's for sure. But I will say that your emotions are very reflective of Rachel's, relieved to have been given this shot but at the same time, guilty for what happened to Santana, which we'll see more of in this last part of the epilogue. Thank you for reviewing!

Gleefanficfan - I'm glad you enjoyed! I love writing for Noah, even on the show I get the impression that he is so much deeper than what he lets on so it's fun to have the chance to explore that a little bit. There will be one more chapter after this one (if it is any consolation, it will be another long one!). I gotta say that I am definitely going to miss this family too. I'm still debating a sequel but we'll see. Thank you so much!

TheCdKnight - I know, I know I'm sorry! Rachel figured things out for herself but she is not too pleased about it. It will take a little while for her to be able to trust her family again but she will… I'm actually not sure who I like to see Rachel with on the show. I was indifferent about her and Finn for a long time but kind of started to hate Finn more and more through the seasons. I love Jesse's character but it's a love to hate him sort of thing so I didn't like him with Rachel and I gave up on watching Glee half way through season 3 so I don't know much about Brody except that the guy who plays him is gorgeous so I'm rooting for anything that he is a part of haha. Honestly, if I had to pick, I think that I would say that I like Puck and Rachel together the most although that definitely can't happen in this story haha. Thanks so much for the review!

Bueller806 - Haha well I'm glad you made it through! I get what you're saying too and am gonna have to agree that I think I was a little bit bias towards keeping Rachel alive as tough as it was to write Santana's death. Thanks for the review!

Maddieluvsdanny - Wow, thank you so much! It means the world.

Stee79 – Thank you for the lovely review! It's very much appreciated.