I'm working on my backwards walk

walking with no shoes or socks

and the time rewinds to the end of may

I wish we'd never met then met today

...

It takes all the willpower he has not to stop and turn around. It's the image of Puck and Rachel together that keeps him walking.

He had to leave. If he'd stayed with her any longer, and she'd continued to look at him in that way of hers, he wouldn't have been able to resist her. Just being that close to her again was torturous, having her there, right in front of him, but not being able to reach out to her and touch her.

That had been the best part about being Rachel Berry's boyfriend. That he could touch her and kiss her whenever he wanted to.

Kissing her. He shouldn't have responded to her kiss. He needs to kick his Rachel Berry habit, and giving into her kiss was not the way to go about that.

That kiss. It was unreal. Why does their have to be such damn high voltage between them? It's gonna make this all so much harder.

He gets into his car and drops his head onto the steering wheel. It hits it with a thump, and a searing pain shoots up his brain.

"Fuck," he curses, as he lifts his head. He wearily shoves the key into the ignition and drives away, refusing to check for her in his rearview mirror.

…

I'm working on my faults and cracks

filling in the blanks and gaps

and when I write them out they don't make sense

I need you to pencil in the rest

...

Her face scrunches up in grief as Finn's silhouette retreats through the labyrinth of Christmas trees. She wants to run after him, to hold onto him until he forgives her.

She folds her arms into her chest as she realizes what a crazy thought that is. Maybe everyone else is right. Maybe she really is crazy.

Because Finn's right. She has no one to blame but herself. She ruined everything by letting her own temperamental emotions direct her actions instead of stopping to listen to her head. It's her stupid heart that gets in the way of everything. It's so unstable, so sensitive, it makes her do all these crazy things.

It's like that song she sang in the auditorium after that whole Sunshine debacle (one of her darkest hours). It's what she does for love.

A single tear falls down her cheek as she remembers how not even Finn believed that she had done what she did in a tempestuous, heat of the moment wish to preserve the Glee club. Even he couldn't see that her love of the spotlight came second to her love for him, her love for Glee.

What they had was really special, the twelve of them, and she'd honestly, when push came to shove, been terribly frightened of that being compromised. Yes more background singers would have been fine, but another lead? It would have completely thrown off the dynamic of the team. Matt's leaving hadn't really changed anything. Kurt's leaving had. That proved it. There were certain core personalities and talents within the club that gave it its special voice. And any additional stars wouldn't have been beneficial.

But she should have known that nothing lasts forever. Sam came and added another popular, generic blonde element to the group (further undermining the whole underdog thing they had going), and then Kurt had left, taking a little bit of New Directions' uniqueness with him.

Nothing lasts forever. The phrase echoes in her skull. Not even her and Finn.

But maybe she's not the only one at fault. Maybe they weren't right for each other after all. She always believed in him more than anyone else did, more than anyone else ever could.

No one will ever love him as much as she does. She's given him a thousand second chances, forgiven him for a million mistakes, and he can't find it in his heart to forgive her this once? Maybe she needs someone who'll believe in her when no one else does. Who'll love her for everything that she is no matter what.

She shivers as a chill breeze blows through. She looks around and wonders how long she's been standing there.

She slowly walks out, and into the parking lot. She stands next to her car for a long time, staring at the empty space that Finn's car had previously occupied.

She doesn't know what to do anymore.

…

A/N:

So I just read a rumor about the possibility of (stop reading if you don't want to be spoiled) ... Finn and Quinn. I swear my world got a little bit dimmer. This has always been the ugliest ship to me (even worse than Rachel and Jesse). I might incorporate this new rumor into this fic, if only to use it as a catalyst to transform this into a 'Rachel stops acting desperate and shows the rest of the glee club how much they need her and how badly they've been treating her and taking her for granted' fic, because frankly that's the direction in which I feel the show needs to go. In which case this will, as I somewhat predicted, end up being longer than just a few chapters.

Oh and the song lyrics are from the Frightened Rabbit song: Backwards Walk (from which I will be lifting passages of for many of the following chapters).