'So what happened?'

It's the question Rachel's been dreading since the moment Matt picked her up from the GP. While normally a quiet person, Rachel had found herself enjoying a side of Matt that he rarely showed unless he considered you worthy. She had been there when Santana had broken his heart, clapped alongside everyone when he had walked across that stage and received his high school diploma and then college degree. Mike and him had been an integral part of her life since she was seventeen, a steady presence that she had always been able to fall back on no matter the burden.

She remembers the day they had both conferenced her in, mentioned something about opening a dance studio. The fear in their voices had been comical. Rachel had informed them in no uncertain terms that their talents were too wasted on being backup dancers. They deserved to be the next Will Schuester, the kind of teacher who would inspire you to be all you could be no matter the obstacles placed in your path. She was glad they had taken her advice, emailing her every step of the way as they got the studio off the ground.

'Rachel?'

She shakes her head, leans back in the sofa. Matt's absently thumbing a sweating can of soda in his hand, his gaze shifting from her to the television every so often. Their knees brush against one another and Rachel closes her eyes, feels her throat close up slightly when she realizes that two inches to the left is where she'd fainted into Noah Puckerman's arms.

'It's nothing,' she tries to brush off.

'Rachel, I know you think you can handle this by yourself…but sweetie, this is something you need help with,' Angela tells her. Rachel looks at the expression on her face, sees the pity reflected back there.

Quinn had had the very same one.

'I'm fine Angie,' Rachel retorts.

'I've known you since college Berry. I've seen you lose it over a script. I've seen you so happy you looked delirious,' Angela continues. Rachel fixes her head to the side, refusing to acknowledge what her friend is implying. 'And you've been anything but happy this past year since Jeremy died.'

Rachel winces at the cold, hard truth.

'I know. And I want to talk about it. But I just can't okay?'

Angela covers her hand with her own, and Rachel desperately wishes she was anywhere but inside that small room.

'Angela said-'

'Angela isn't the one who lost the man she loves, alright Matthew?' Rachel bites out abruptly and Matt blinks at her, looking at her like she's a caged animal.

'I know you miss him Rachel, but it's been a year,' Matt starts and Rachel chews down on her tongue, feels something metallic coat the inside of her mouth.

'You think a year makes everything okay?' Rachel whispers, her fingers reaching for the rings around her neck. Matt catches the movement.

'No,' he shakes his head, sucks in a breath. 'No I don't. I know how much you loved him-'

'I still do,' she reiterates stubbornly.

'-but he's gone Elle. He's not coming back. And it's killing us to see you try to hold onto something that's never going to be a probability!'

Rachel feels the anger come back, that residual burn at the pit of her stomach that Quinn had fanned before. Matt was supposed to understand, was supposed to know that this was always going to be tough.

'I moved down here because I thought you understood that I needed just to escape,' she says slowly and Matt looks contrite.

'And I do. God,' Matt responds, running a hand through his close-cropped hair. 'But this isn't an escape Rachel. This is you trying to ignore the real reason you're even here in the first place.'

'I'm not going to date other guys to make you and Mike feel better,' Rachel shoots back, darts up off the couch and heads towards the window. The people moving on the sidewalk continue on oblivious.

'We're not asking you to do that. But…you spent six months locked up in London, just…existing. And then all of a sudden you tell us you want to teach. But these kids aren't going to make you feel better about anything Rachel. Sure they'll help you forget but after they go home, you're just going to go back to your office and look at the picture Jeremy took of you,' Matt tells her in one big breath.

Rachel clenches her fists, knows that he is right. She hasn't been very good at sharing her emotions, ironic as it sounds. In high school she had been more than happy to tell anyone who would listen how she felt, almost always through song. But then she'd gotten older, realized how people didn't seem to really care out in the real world. Perhaps it was a cynical outlook on life, but Jeremy hadn't ever been bothered by her glass half-empty approach. He had always been so full of wonder at the world, she recalls, always doing something that would help capture that beauty in a tangible form.

'I just miss him Matt,' she says. Her voice is soft and she hates the way it sounds vulnerable because she never wants to be that girl, the one everyone looks at and pities because they know there is something just wrong with her that demands sympathy.

There is a warm touch at her shoulders and Rachel feels herself tense automatically in response. Jeremy's hands had been a bit cold but after a while they had been anything but. He would trace patterns onto her skin, press a kiss into her temple whenever she would laugh and tell him that he was cold-blooded.

'Cold blood means a warm heart,' he'd always say and she would smile. He had always been smiling, always. They had never been forced, or faked, or anything but genuine.

At least that was what she had thought.

'It's my fault he's gone,' she finally admits and this time her words do break, shatter like that fragile piece of glass inside her chest holding her heart upright. The fragments splinter and lodge inside, making each breath painful.

'No Elle, it isn't,' Matt tells her firmly and Rachel so desperately wants to believe him.

'I should have known that there was something wrong,' she gasps out and Matt's tugging her into his arms, presses her cheek against his chest. She scrabbles at his shirt, not even bothering to push away because she doesn't think she can stand upright on her own in any case.

Matt is whispering that she's wrong, that it isn't her fault at all.

Rachel simply burrows her face into Matt's chest, lets the tears fall down. It's like a waterfall, an avalanche of emotion.

A landslide that threatens to engulf what little sanity she has left.

'I should have known,' she mumbles into him and Matt tenses all over.

But Rachel's already too far gone in her little world, too wrapped up in the guilt that's been eating away at her since that phone call that's turned her life inside out. And what's been hovering at the edge makes itself known, what Angela was probably thinking.

What everyone is probably thinking as well.

'I killed him,' Rachel says out loud.

And knows she will always hate herself for it.

a/n:

sorry for the slow updates! I will try my best to not go so long again but it's my last semester of law school so I beg forgiveness.

Also, anyone interested in reading some Lily/Scotty if I write it? I'm just thoroughly unsatisfied by the way the series was wrapped up. WHERE was the final consummation of the flaming UST that has plagued these two smokin' individuals? Could they have AT LEAST given me that? I'm going to go watch 'The Road' now and be all shippy.