Disclaimer: The characters are all property of Ryan Murphy's show "Glee" on FOX. I just add little bits.

Notes: Thank you muchly for your opinions – they're truly appreciated :) Poor Finn is in for a rough time this chapter. I'm introducing a third POV (point of view), and I hope you'll like it. I didn't think I'd have that much fun with it because I don't like the character but I've always felt at home writing the bad guys so go figure! The songs in this chapter are Broken, by Lifehouse, and of course Total Eclipse of the Heart

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Chapter 2

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He tried to leave it all behind by getting out of the building and running, as if distancing himself bodily from her would make it any better. Easier. Would make it bearable. And his feet just carried him home. Home. Where a stolen snapshot of her lay waiting next to his bed, mocking him. It was scrunched up by his hand in a second, thrown across the room at the waste paper basket. He collapsed onto the bed, stitches in his side, his chest heaving from exertion, and simply lay there, focused on the sound of his breathing as he waited for his body to calm down.

But it didn't. In his anger he'd been thoughtless - mindless. All that time he'd been running, he'd felt the pain that was building in his body, in his chest and he'd latched onto that with his thoughts. But the longer he was lying there now, the worse it got. It transformed, turned into something else. It took the anger and washed him clean of it. Left him hurting in a way that was worse than before. Being angry at her had made it bearable. But it was as if he had some kind of fail-safe inside him that stopped him from being angry at her past a certain length of time or measure of intensity and turned being angry into something unbearable. When the anger bled off, all he was left with was.... pain. He'd wanted her so much, but had tried so hard to stay away from her. He'd wanted their friendship back, that connection that he seemed to crave with his whole being, and had been – finally – given that small hope, that little bit of a break, ...and then? It'd all just been a game to her.

He just lay there, wishing it would pass. But it didn't. He went over everything again, in his mind; hoping there was still some room for a misunderstanding. But there wasn't.

When darkness settled over the house, he didn't get up to switch on a light. He tossed and turned on his bed, trying to fall asleep, to banish everything bad to the next day. Part of him hoped it had all been a bad dream and he'd wake up and the day had never happened. Or Jesse had never happened. But that just made it worse – it wouldn't have changed anything about his own stupidity at having broken up with Rachel in the first place. He'd literally driven her into the arms of Jesse. And every bit of love she'd ever felt for him had left her now, had been replaced by Jesse, while he had been turned into nothing but a pawn in her game to improve her own popularity. That connection he'd thought had been rebuilt when he'd thought she'd wanted him back in her life – it 'd been just a joke to her.

Focusing on her actions instead of his reactions brought back some of the anger he'd felt earlier, and it made it easier again. He curled up on his bed, hoping for sleep to come and take him, but it wouldn't come. Eventually he snatched his ipod from the night stand. When he plugged the earpieces in, he realised it'd been playing all this time – he must have forgot to switch it off before.

- barely holdin' on to you

The broken locks were a warning you got inside my head
I tried my best to be guarded, I'm an open book instead
I still see your reflection inside of my eyes
That are looking for a purpose, they're still looking for life

I'm falling apart, I'm barely breathing
with a broken heart that's still beating
In the pain (in the pain), is there healing
In your name (in your name) I find meaning
So I'm holdin' on, I'm holdin' on, I'm holdin' on
I'm barely holdin' on to you

I'm hangin' on another day
Just to see what you throw my way
And I'm hanging on to the words you say
You said that I will be OK

The broken lights on the freeway left me here alone
I may have lost my way now, haven't forgotten my way home

I'm falling apart, I'm barely breathing
with a broken heart that's still beating
In the pain(In the pain) there is healing
In your name I f----

He yanked out the earplugs again; he couldn't stomach listening to that now. It just made it worse. Leave it up to stupid chance to give him a song that might as well have been written about his day... the chorus kept swirling around in his head. It made him angrier still; he focused on that, because he could feel the despair underneath and he couldn't give in to that. And after a while, exhaustion finally carried him over into sleep.

Finn woke in the night, feeling clammy, his chest still hurting, his body drenched in sweat, shivering, with burning eyes and an aching head. He'd dreamed of her – of her dying, like Julie in that song, and of him trying to save her but she'd slipped from him the harder he'd tried to hang on. Panic gripped him. Blindly, he reached out to his night stand, reached for the photo lying there, until he remembered that it was no longer there. Almost frantic, he slipped out of bed, crawled over the floor to the waste basket and by the sliver of light falling into his room from the street lights outside he searched every scrap of paper until his shaking hands found the little scrunched up ball on the floor. He smoothed it out, pressed it against his chest, and took it back to bed with him. He couldn't bear to look at it, but just holding that picture there, so close to his heart, calmed him down again. Only then did he taste his own tears on his lips, and realised he'd been crying all this time.

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"You know for being a part of homo explosion you don't suck... much."

He guessed that was intended as a compliment. Life at this school was more of a challenge than he'd originally thought – no one in his old school would have dared to talk to him like this. Not that he didn't know how to handle it, but it was irksome and a waste of his time. Crossing his arms over his chest, he looked the tall, gangly lout in front of him slowly up and down, with his most condescending expression. "Thank you for your opinion. I know how hard it must be for you to form one, with a brain your size."

He grabbed the last of his books and walked off, before the jock had a chance to decipher the the insult. This kind of thing was really getting old.

If anything, Jesse St. James realised as he was strutting down the hallway to his locker, coming to this school had given him a new level of appreciation for Vocal Adrenaline. He'd come to take his status there as given; Carmel's glee club was the crème de la crème, the top of the ladder of that school – they were revered, worshipped like Gods, with him as Zeus, the greatest of them all. No one would have dared to use the auditorium without getting permission from them first, no one would have dared to call them names or throw things at them.

But McKinley wasn't Carmel, and he was becoming painfully aware of that. It would have been different if the kids in the club had a backbone, but they were all soft, sweet, confused nothings. The longer he stayed, the greater his annoyance grew – there was no point in being here, they took care of his job all by themselves by just being and doing what they were and did. He hadn't even bothered with anyone other than Rachel and Finn.

Rachel and Finn.

Those two were trouble. From all he'd heard about her, he'd expected her to fall for him at the bat of a single eyelash – and she'd complied accordingly at first. But then that harebrained oaf had entered the scene, and shown that he, too, had that effect on her. It'd made being with Rachel like walking on quicksand – whenever he'd turn around Finn was there, if not in person then certainly on her mind. The only redeeming feature about it was that while the guy had a hold on her like no other, he didn't even seem to know it. And Rachel herself was working right into Jesse's hands by stubbornly denying she felt anything for Finn. But that just wouldn't cut it.

That awful video had made it gratingly obvious that the two of them just couldn't leave each other alone. Watching them had made his insides boil – he was her boyfriend, and she not only replaced two thirds of the screen time of him with her ex-boyfriends, but also did her dying scene with Finn? He couldn't let that go. No girl had ever upstaged him like that.

He was going to make her all his. She'd be feeling so small and guilty by the time he was done with her, that it would once and for all wipe that pea-brained troll out of her mind. She had to be all his.

Dumping his books unceremoniously into his locker, he slammed the door shut on it. On the other end of the hallway, Rachel was just approaching her own locker. It was time.

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You broke mine first you broke mine first you broke mine first you broke mine first you broke -

"Rachel?"

She heard her teacher's voice calling her name, but couldn't shake the daze she was in. Opening her eyes, everything was blurred. The lighting – even dim as it was in the as yet unused choir room – made her want to close them again.

"What are you doing in here? I thought you'd have gone home by now."

She'd come in here during second period, when her headache had got too bad to stay in her Spanish class. Finn had been there, sitting in a corner by himself, with his book propped up in front of him acting like a barrier, and the message had been clear enough: leave me alone, don't look, don't talk at me. Mr Schue had let her out without asking for an explanation; sometimes the man was worth his weight in gold. She'd fled, and her feet had brought her here like an automaton.

"N-no, I need to stay here … for rehearsal..."

She heard him inhale sharply, and then release his breath after a long moment. Her head stayed down – she didn't need to look at him just then to know he didn't think that was a good idea. But she had to. There had been a reason she'd come in here, there'd been a reason she'd sat down at the piano and gone through the words.

She'd come to school this morning with a mission: having gone through everything again in her mind, she'd realised where she'd messed up. She'd used them all; she'd played them in the worst way and they'd seen right through it. In hindsight it had been a terrible idea. But at the time it'd made sense. It'd served a purpose. Seeing her name so low on that list had done something crazy to her. She'd let her craving for popularity blind her to the people who were dear to her, and now it'd cost her. It was just how Finn had said it – she'd had no right to be angry at them for their reaction. Especially not at Finn. After all those months of wishing he'd chose her over his popularity, and throwing it into his face when he'd broken up with her, she'd shown herself to be no better. She'd used him; she'd deliberately lied to him again in order to get him to agree and she'd played with the feelings he'd admitted to have for her. She'd manipulated the one person whose friendship meant most to her, and he'd realised it. And she'd meant to find some means to apologize to him, as well as Puck – and Jesse. She'd picked out the song before she left her house, planning on singing it to them this afternoon.

But then Jesse had found her. Jesse – her boyfriend. While her first stunned reaction to his walking out had been fear of losing him, that had dissipated as the hours had passed until she'd been less worried about his reaction than Finn's, for some reason. Perhaps because they shared a similar outlook on life, had similar goals, she'd not considered that he might have been just as hurt as Finn had been. Angry – yes; she'd seen that in his eyes when he'd walked out, but she'd felt confident that explaining herself would get her his forgiveness.

But it hadn't. She'd broken his heart. The pain she'd seen on his face, the hurt that had bled through his words – the way he'd looked at her, reminded her that he'd given up all for her, and she'd repaid him by playing stupid games with him.... it had brought down the house of cards she'd so carefully constructed in her mind, brought it crashing down and burst her heart. It wiped every thought other than Jesse from her senses.

She was still going to do the song. She needed to do the song. That's why she'd stayed on. She had to try and look him – them - in the eye, and hope that she could make him – them – see that she knew she'd made a terrible mistake, that she was so sorry. She needed him. Both of them. She had to show him that without him she was nothing. That she'd do anything to undo the damage she'd done.

"Rachel, I don't think that's a good idea..." Mr Schue's words broke through her reverie. She looked up at him, wiping the last vestiges of her tears away with her finger.

"No, I have to – I have to make it up to... them. There's a song I need to sing."

The teacher looked at her for a long time, searching her face for something she didn't know, saying nothing. She looked right back at him, not bothering to hide the emotion on her face. Finally he nodded at her, slowly. There were no more words necessary – she knew he didn't necessarily approve, but that he wasn't going to stop her. For once, he wasn't going to ruin it for her, and she was thankful.

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By the time Glee rehearsal came around, all he wanted to do was go home. All day long he'd been pretty much out of it. If it hadn't been for his mom being home today he wouldn't have gone to school, but he wasn't ready to answer the questions yet that she would inevitably ask. It'd been bad enough to endure her puzzled looks at breakfast when he'd finally shown up with eyes that were still slightly red and puffy.

The worst thing had been seeing Rachel in Spanish class. Mr Schue had been really cool about it and let him sit by himself in the far back and pretty much ignored him for the entire class, so he'd put up his book in front of him and hidden behind it, wishing everyone would just forget he was there. The spanish teacher hadn't said anything about the way he looked so he'd hoped the zombified look had gone away by then, but he wasn't up to talking to anyone today. He'd tried to ignore the impulse to stare over the book at the back of Rachel's head, even if it had a strangely soothing effect on him. He'd done just fine, staring at the words in his book, trying to will them to make sense, when he'd heard Rachel's voice asking Mr Schue if she could leave. And then he just hadn't been able to help it – he'd looked up, followed her every move as she'd slowly packed away her stuff and got up. His eyes followed her as she got up, her head hanging low, and walked to the door, pressed down on the handle, opened it, walked out, closed the door again. And then, for the matter of a second or two, her face had appeared in the door's little window frame, and their eyes had met across the distance. They'd stared at one another, each noting the other's misery, and he'd been incapable to look away. It'd seemed like too long for him. All he'd wanted was to forget she ever existed, forget she could make him feel this way. Then the moment had been over, she was gone. And he'd continued to sit there, feeling like she'd taken a part of him away, and he was having to struggle to keep breathing without it.

He'd been glad he wasn't going to see her again that day. Mr Schue had said she'd excused herself because of a headache, so he figured she'd gone home. So by the end of lunch break the very last person he expected to find sitting on the piano chair in the choir room was Rachel. His heart skipped a beat, his entire body froze as he stood in the door frame, and panic gripped him. He couldn't deal with this now. She hadn't seen him yet – he could still turn and leave. But the others were coming up behind him, so it was either walk in with them or let them through and leave, admitting that he was chickening out of this. Taking a heavy breath, he walked into the room, all the way up to the back where he sat down and tried to play invisible again.

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He knew she wasn't singing this for him alone. He realised that. But as she stood there, so alone, misery pouring out of her eyes, he couldn't stop wishing it was. And as he stared at her, he lost himself in the sound of her voice, the words of the song, and

...Turnaround, Every now and then I get a
little bit terrified and then I see the look in your eyes
Turnaround bright eyes, Every now and
then I fall apart

… sees himself coming up behind her, slipping his hand around her waist, grabbing her hand and spinning her around to face him. As they stand there, so close he can see the trembling of her lips, he reaches down and gently pulls her chin up so he can look into her eyes. But her eyes drift off, drift away from him, look past him. She doesn't see him at all.

And I need you now tonight
And I need you more than ever
And if you'll only hold me tight
We'll be holding on forever

And we'll only be making it right
Cause we'll never be wrong together
We can take it to the end of the line
Your love is like a shadow on me all of the time
I don't know what to do and I'm always in the dark
We're living in a powder keg and giving off sparks

… and in his mind it is him singing to her, him singing with everything he's got, begging her, pleading with her to hear him, look at him, hold him – to remember what they had, remember how it felt – all those times they danced like this, looked at each other, felt that spark ignite between them. He's been so blind all that time. But he knows it now. He needs her. She's got his heart. She has to know it. If only she would look at him and see it.

I really need you tonight
Forever's gonna start tonight
Forever's gonna start tonight

...But she doesn't look at him. He feels her pull away, fight against his embrace. And he is too helpless to stop her. She takes his heart along with her as she steps out of his grasp, as she leaves him behind without a glance, turns the past to grey ash in her heart, and with every step he knows he has lost her a little more...

… the image shifted in front of his eyes. He was back in his chair - still the same chair, he'd never left it – and she was still standing there, singing. But there was no doubt now whom she was singing to.

"Once upon a time I was falling in love
But now I'm only falling apart"

It could have meant him. But she only had eyes for Jesse. He felt like he'd truly lost her now.

"There's nothing I can do
A total eclipse of the heart."

Her eyes turned to him as he couldn't help joining her. It felt like his world was ending right there and then. There truly was nothing left for him to do – he'd tried it all. Had tried to be there for her, to be understanding, to be supportive, to be a friend – had tried not to show how jealous he was, how hurt, how much he truly needed her. How much he loved her. It was all in his eyes now, for her to read there if she chose to see it. But if she did, then it scared her – she looked away. He'd lost her.

The song wasn't finished yet, but he knew he wasn't going to make it out of there in one piece if he was going to stay. He was trying to stop himself from shaking, and he had to keep his eyes open to stop them from filling up with tears again. So he got up. Not fast, not slow. Turned his back to the room, to her, and walked out before it got too much to take. But it already was.

He loved her. And he'd lost her.

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That's it for today. I hope you liked this chapter.

Things are going to take a turn for the slightly better for Finn... soon. But not for long.

Leave a review if you liked it (or not)!

Until the next chapter – adieu!