Author's Note: You might be somewhat surprised to see that I still exist. I assure you – I do, I just haven't really had the creative spark to do anything. I know I've left my other stories wide open and in dire need for updates (and they will come, eventually) but sometimes – sometimes I just sit here and nothing comes. It just doesn't flow. I'm hoping it will soon - I still have a need to tell those stories, I just need to get them out of my head somehow (and trust me, you have no idea how much of a horrible ordeal that is sometimes).
Sometime back in November or so I had a short spurt of creativity and started writing a few drabbles for my tumblr (you can find them on there – link's on my profile). But I also signed up for the Christmas Secret Santa project, and this is my contribution. So Maggie (akisswithacape) – this is for you. I tried to comply with your wish for a revisit of what Finn and Rachel were thinking during and after the Kiss that Missed – unfortunately, when I sat down to write this, my mind decided to start a bit before that. This is a multi-chapter in probably 4 parts – two of which are written. You have my permission to bug me every day until I have this done (I'll try to have it by the end of the month, tho). I hope you'll like it.

Carry the Weight of Love and Loss

I.

There's this song running on and on in his head and he doesn't even know how it got there. It's just there. It just came to him, out of the utter misery that had been the night after their date. He had no idea he knew how to do that – or how he did it. Doesn't really remember writing down the notes – did he do that or did Kurt do it for him? – or the words, but it's his barely legible scrawl that's staring back at him now. And the words should mean something to him, they do mean something, but the place they came from in his head is tied to his heart and that's just a mess – as is his head. He stares at the words and they stare back at him, and it feels like they're mocking him now.

Why did he write a song about wanting to stop pretending they don't have feelings for each other, when all he wants to do now is to forget he ever felt anything? The last thing he wants to do now is to knock on the door of the girls' room and ask her to practice this song with him now. It's literally like walking his heart to the butcher's block.

But they have to sing something. It was him who suggested a duet between Rachel and himself, so –

His feet carry him to that door, and they're a million times more interesting to look at than her face – because of course it's her who answers the door, an eager "yes?" on her lips that kind of turns into a barely audible gulp at seeing him. He thrusts the song sheet at her, his eyes fixed on the view out of their window, and he misses and hears the rustle of paper as she tries to catch the falling sheets. "Wegottapractisethis," he mumbles while she's bent over the floor, picking up the music he wrote.

If he looked at her, he'd see her stare at the sheet in her hand, stare at the words "stop pretending", at the complicated harmonies, all written in a hand she thinks she knows so well that it makes her heart beat too fast for her chest to contain. He'd see the look of disbelief turn into certainty as she reads on, pride slowly pouring out of her heart with every note she reads.

He doesn't look at her until it's too late. Until she's guarded her heart again, steadfastly sticking to the resolution she came to on the Wicked stage. And all he sees in her eyes is something he can't read – but he's almost certain it's pity, and he can't deal with that.

He wants to rip the paper from her grip. It's a stupid song written by a stupid guy. Stupid to think she'd forget everything once she'd see it, and change her mind. Stupid to think there's hope yet just because of a bit of music.

"Give me an hour," she finally says in a voice that sounds totally business-like. "I need to prepare."

"Sure," he says, equally business-like; and he feels like there's something constricting his throat at the thought of having to be near her again so soon.

"We'll practice in here, then? If you won't mind the others," she volunteers when he stays quiet.

He stares at her hands twisting the edge of his music sheets for a second before replying, "Sure."

"See you then," she says after another little silence and two more twists of the paper.

For a moment he's conflicted by the sudden pangs of both panic and anger in his heart at her eagerness to see him gone. "Fine," he chokes out, anger winning.

"Fine!" she says, and there's pain laced in amongst her growing irritation with this whole situation.

But she shuts the door into his face before he can hear any more trace of it, and leaves him even more confused and hurt and angry. It feels like they just had an argument of some sort, but he doesn't know how – wasn't she the one who said she needed an hour? Then why would she be annoyed when he'd agreed to it? Or had he just totally misread that?

He doesn't pay attention to where he's going, and ends up sitting on the steps of the hotel's unused stairwell for an hour, his anger dissipating as quickly as his heartache and nervousness take over at the thought of what's to come. And that's really all he can do: think, and feel, and wish he could just stop doing either.

He doesn't really have time to think once they get to practicing. Or feel anything but growing annoyance with the other four girls in the room who all seem to have their view on how the number should be choreographed and what words should be emphasized by some gesture or another, while Rachel's only input so far has been opening her mouth to sing her part. When she'd stayed passive, Brittany and Santana had pretty much taken over; he's beginning to feel like a puppet doing their bidding as their commands are pulling at his strings, telling him walk in this way and go that way, and back, and forth.

The moment the image of himself as a puppet on strings appears in his mind, he stumbles, almost losing his balance as he's "strutting" along the line of towels marking the center of their makeshift stage in the middle of the girls' room.

He barely hears Santana's hissed curses at his clumsiness as he's filled with the memory of the funeral: of his realization that there was a string pulling him towards Rachel. He'd been so certain of it at that moment. But now he's just a mess of thoughts.

"Santana, enough!" Rachel's voice cuts through Santana's cursing and his confusion, and again he thinks he can hear pity lacing her words.

It makes him forget everything else and glare at her. She looks away after a moment that feels entirely too long and just makes him angrier at everything.

"You know what?" he says, his annoyance rising with every second he thinks about it. While he hadn't thought he could get through it because of the awkwardness of being around her, all he can really feel now is how stupid all of this is. It's his stupid song that created this situation – like his mind has some perverted need to torture his heart some more – and made her think she'd need to pity him because of what he wrote in it. So maybe he set himself up for that one, but he sure as hell doesn't need her pity now! "Enough of this shit! Go practice the damn song with Mercedes or Santana, you don't need me for that. I sure as hell know my part!"

Rachel snaps her head around to look at him in surprise, and after a moment the worried look in her eyes turns into a glare equally angry to his own. "Well! Fine then! I'll hold up my end if you'll do the same. Since this is your song, I trust you know what you're doing."

He turns to go, pivoting on the spot with his head held high – Brittany should be proud of him for that – when he hears Rachel add in a softer tone: "Better get Mr Schue to go over the choreography with you again, though."

He's so close to exploding with anger that all he can do is snap over his shoulder: "Fuck the damn choreography – stick to walking away from me, and don't forget to throw in one of those circles for effect; that's all the moves we ever make!"

"Are you completely nuts?" Santana screeches after him. "This is Nationals, you moron, you can't just wing the chor—" But then the door shuts after him and her last words cut off. He doesn't need to hear them to know what she was going to say anyway.

He's probably nuts, yes. But right now he doesn't give a damn about winning or losing – he just wants to get it over with.

Halfway to his room, his own parting words still echoing through his head, it occurs to him that even though he truly only meant their choreography, walking away from each other and circling each other is pretty much all they'd ever been good at doing this past year (okay, half a year). And that just makes him even more pissed off.

He ends up spending the rest of the night sitting in "his" spot in the stairwell, singing the song over and over again, and occasionally pressing the ignore button on his cellphone. He doesn't feel like talking to anyone, least of all Kurt.

By breakfast time – several hours only until Nationals is on – he's dead tired, extremely sore and he has a headache. He's not sure how many times he's sung the song, but he's pretty sure he's got it close to perfect – he's so familiar with it that he could probably sing it backwards in his sleep.

He has this dread sitting in the pit of his stomach, that he'll need to be able to sing it without needing to think about the next words or rise or fall or whatever other pitch change – that he'll need his wits to get through the song with Rachel there with him. There's a part of him that wishes he'd have no voice left after all this practicing, so that he'd have an excuse to simply not go, but even if he couldn't sing – he wouldn't just leave them hanging like that. Somehow. If that makes sense.

Or maybe he just really dreads being around her, after everything.

His anger's no longer there. He doesn't even know why he got so angry to begin with: he doesn't think he can be angry at her for pitying him, when he let her turn him into such a mess with just a few words and no explanation.

An explanation is really what he needs, and the longer he thinks about it all, the more it becomes inevitable. Because - if there's a tether that connects them, then why is she pulling away from it? Has she broken her end of the string somehow, that she can just walk away from it now? She'd wanted him back before, but now… even with Jesse hovering over her again, he'd been somehow so sure he would get her back – so sure she felt that tether, too. She'd told him it killed her inside to watch him with Quinn – and he'd stopped pretending not to care and let himself feel that pain for a moment after she'd walked away from that conversation, and it'd kind of made him turn into the jealous mess he'd been at the prom and all. It'd all been so very much there between them then, and he doesn't understand how it's just gone now. How can it be gone? How can she just not want to be with him anymore? Even on their date-that-wasn't-supposed-to-be-one-but-felt-like-one-anyway she'd seemed like she was really really happy to be with him. Up until he'd tried to kiss her. Up until he'd asked her to take a chance on him. So really – how could he have got it all wrong after all?

He really really needs an explanation for all this. Sometime. When he's done being afraid of the answer.