A/N: I woke up a few mornings back to find an email telling me that someone had alerted to this story, and I found myself asking why you all were still reading this, supporting this story. And I answered myself by saying "they probably want to know how it all ends." And so, I got to working on this again, because I need to know myself.

I want to thank you all so much for having such faith in this story, all the favorites and alerts mean a lot to me, and even the small of amount of reviews I'm gathered, and just, thank you so much. I love you all.

It's on the afternoon of their final performance as New Directions, on a stage in front of a crowd of one, that he realizes that he's been wasting away and she's been doing the same. But slowly, as days passed and weeks come and went and they still hadn't said a word to one another, she wasted less and less and eventually, become happy. Almost genuinely happy. And he was still stuck in the same rut he had been months before.

Everyone's happy, and singing about this happiness and their achievements and their growth as Mr. Schuester looks up at them all with proud tears threatening to fall down his cheeks. And Mike's smiling and dancing along because they won Nationals, and it feels right to finally win something after losing what feels like everything else that year. But as much as he tries, the smile doesn't quite reach his eyes and his limbs are moving and his feet are holding him up and he's popping and locking the seconds away, but as his shell does all of this, the hollowness within him chimes painfully through his ears.

He would have thought that by now, he would have given up or his heart would have given out and he wouldn't care about her any longer. Because time was supposed to heal all these fucking stupid wounds. But no, of course not. Of course he still can't tear his eyes away from the sight of her and her happiness, and he likes to think that he got her there, and he desperately wishes that he was the reason for her happiness, not just the push towards it. But he isn't.

Mike doesn't blame himself for anything but his own misery, but he can't hate the choices he made because they've been doing wonders for everyone but him. Sometimes he thinks that maybe this was always his role in the world, giving everyone else a reason to laugh and smile, his own pleasures be damned.

Tina's snagged herself a lemon-headed blonde and no one really knows how in the world that happened but no one really has any complaints because they don't have impromptu make-out sessions in the choir room and Tina doesn't break down crying tears of love as like she used to do with him, and it makes everyone feel less awkward around her. And they're both happy, so really, who cares how it happened?

And Rachel has Puck. "My Noah" she likes to call him, and all Puck does is laugh and shrug the name off because he's in love with her and she's in love with him and everything's perfect in their little bubble.

He thinks that he dug this deep hole in his heart by diverting from this circle of high school life, this is his punishment for thinking of himself and his own heart, for once.

And as he listens to her sing the last note, everyone else trying to quietly catch their breath as they listened to her stamp the ending to their high school days, he promises himself to stop hurting and burning over this. To stop caring about her in this way, and what they might have been. To stop thinking about what could have been and starting focusing and centering his world around what can be, and what is.

He accepts the hug he's given by Brittany, doesn't care about her happy tears staining the sleeve of his shirt, and closes his eyes as he twirls her around and just lets go of all the regret and the sorrow and stupid teenage angst, his choked laughter a result of his own clogged throat and the feeling of freedom.

Being free from her after so long makes him feel like he can do anything. He's going to forget how she used to make him feel that way, for the shortest time. He forgets everything and just laughs.

He cries in his car before he starts his car to go Santana's farewell party. Finn, Sam and Artie laugh because his tears are so incredibly delayed and even the girls have stopped weeping. Puck playfully hits Mike's shoulder with a fist and quietly tells him he'll probably start crying tomorrow morning when he's sober and he spots his mother looking through photo albums on the couch downstairs.

And Mike doesn't want to kill him.

He just wants to get the night over with, get the drinking out of the way, and stagger up to his room when it was all over, fall onto his bed and fall asleep so he can dream of lovely, simple dreams that are void of her laugh and don't contain any traces of her smile. Finally, after tonight, he knows he'll be healed.

Mike wakes up that Saturday morning with a splitting headache and an incessant knocking on his bedroom door. He doesn't grumble as he fights his way out from his tangled covers and sheets, scratching the back of his neck as he wobbles for a moment before getting a hold on himself and making his way to the door.

He expects his mother to be waiting with a tray of her hangover remedy tea and a slight smile on her lips as she asks him about how his night went. Or at least, the parts of it he could remember. For a brief moment he thinks maybe it's his dad knocking on the door, because he doesn't remember his mother's knocking being so loud and so persistent, but his father's at work after seven and he doesn't take days or even hours off for anything that isn't majorly important.

To his dismay, he finds her.

His hair is a little messy and his shirt and boxers are wrinkled more than usual, and he can see faint groves on his arm from the small hump on his sheet that he had been unknowingly sleeping on the night before and none of it matters because his mom's seen him like this once or twice and she does a really good job of fixing up his hair while he groans and scolds himself for having so much to drink.

Pulling the door open, he parts his lips to let out a soft whimper and pushes his bottom lip out in a pout because his mother's a sucker for those and it normally guarantees him noodles in bed after the mother and son bonding time, but instead, he finds wide brown eyes, plump and somewhat swollen pink lips and a rabbit sweater that's two sizes too large.

And is she actually wearing baggy sweatpants?

"I hope you don't mind I decided to come over. I woke up at ten, and I knew you probably wouldn't be feeling alive enough to have visitors then, so I waited a half hour before coming over. I would have waited the whole hour, but then I would be awake and my daddy told me once that sharing a hangover with a friend is better than going through it alone, so really, I'm helping the both of us by showing up now."

She's left her shoes downstairs, he knows because it's been a rule to walk around barefoot in the house since forever, and he stares down at her feet, still looking over her appearance, and he has to say, the baby pink nail polish she has on compliments er skin tone quite nicely. Shaking his head of his thoughts, Mike returns his gaze to her face and doesn't say a word.

"Oh, your mother said I should bring this up with me. She said it would help with the hangovers."

He just stands there, blinking a few more times to try and clear his vision and when he stops and stills finds her standing in front of him, silver tray in her hands and a nervous smile etched onto her lips, he registers the fact that he hasn't said anything and he probably should. He makes the sensible choice and asks one of the several questions bouncing around in his head.

"Why aren't you...?"

"With Noah?"

All he can do is nod. He still hasn't woken up fully, and he's under the impression that is some kind of dream because he can see her laughing, and there's an echo of it hitting his ears and he thinks he might need a few more hours of sleep.

"Does it matter?" She pauses, and he wants to say yes, but he can't talk or form coherent sentences or even move his head, so she sighs and carries on, her shoulders slumped a little. "I'm leaving in a few months, to get settled in New York, and I don't want to leave with us like this. And I would have brought my infamous apology cookies, but I'm still a little buzzed and I should really start having those things on standby because I–"

"Rachel?"

"Hm?"

"Shut up." He carefully takes hold of her arms and pulls her into his room, kicking the door closed and wincing as it banged shut. She's still gaping at him because he isn't really one to say such things and he knows but he takes the tray from her hands and walks back to bed, kneeling down on his carpeted floor and placing the tray down in front of him without saying another word because he knows he's just unleashed another word vomit.

Four seconds, five seconds, six, seven...

"Don't tell me to shut up! You know, I don't have to be here and–"

"Sit down, drink, and be quiet. You'll give us both headaches."

He imagined this completely differently than how it turned out. He thought the next time they'd speak, he'd be at her wedding with a mohawk-less Noah and Puckerman attached to her first name. He thought it would be awkward, and unfamiliar, and he certainly thought they'd be better dressed.

But she listens to him and sits down and says nothing because she knows he's right about the headache thing, and she never really has been the best at drinking tea and talking at the same time (she normally ends up burning her lip or her tongue because she's distracted by the conversation), and they just take each other in and mirror one another's small and tired smiles.

She's half way through her cup of tea when she decides to speak, with her legs crossed and the sleeves of her sweater coating most of her hands as she clung to the cup in her hand. Her tea has cooled down a bit, and her headache and faint hints of grogginess have long left the building, and she thinks that if she doesn't speak now, they're both going to wind up in the silence of uncomfortable awkwardness they've been in for the past five or six months.

"I don't think I want to call you Jake anymore," she starts, keeping her gaze on the carpet and trying not to let it drift to his boxers because the Pikachu-inspired pattern is all sorts of enduring and distracting and so very Mike. "I didn't know what you were then, to me. I didn't know who I was then. But now that I do, I think I have suitable ninja code names for the both of us."

He's always been a boy of few words, and lately, he's become a man of even fewer words, so all he does is raise his eyebrow as a gesture for her to carry on, taking a slurp from his cup that he knows she hates but he does it anyway because she still looks cute when she scrunches her nose up in distaste.

"Harry and Hermione."

He rolls his eyes as he places his cup back down on the silver tray, bringing his knees up to his chest as he tries to muffle his laughter because this is far too good to be true. And she panics and starts questioning why he doesn't like it, offering solutions that just don't fit and he still doesn't say a word because he realizes he missed the sound of her voice, and he missed her whining and pouting and he forget how great his name sounded on her lips.

"Michael, if you don't like them, I-"

"I approve."

"Y-You approve?"

He nods, smiling now, but it's quickly wiped off his face as he feels a pillow hit his face and he hears her shouting at him for causing her to get so frantic when there wasn't anything for her to worry about and he thinks that the remainder of their tea is going to end up on the carpet somehow or cold and forgotten, but he doesn't really care as he climbs up onto his bed and grabs a pillow to defend himself with.

They're laughing, and there's a faint ache in the corner of his heart and he wonders if she's feeling that way too (she is) but he likes it because for once, his thoughts are cleared and he's happy, genuinely happy, because he has her back (like she has him) and maybe it's not what he's wanted or what he had hoped, but in that moment it's more than he could ever ask for and he loves this feeling of being free, and flying without the thought of her holding him down.

They're happy, and free, and flying across a never-ending sky with their fingers entwined and their laughing falling down into the streets below them and this feels right. He feels right and complete for the first time since he fixed her and she broke him, and somehow, he knows she feels that way too.

And as they both fall back on his bed, breathless and tired, clutching the pillows closely to their chest as their stomach start burning from all of their laughter, they both revel in this feeling. This feeling of acceptance, and finally accepting what their lives had become, and just making the best of it, together.

We could leave this town and run forever.
I know somewhere, somehow we'll be together.
Let your waves crash down on me, and take me away.

A/N: I'm going to be honest, I don't know if I should end it here or not. It doesn't feel like the end, it just feels like an ending. I don't know, I don't know. And the song quoted at the end of this chapter is Ocean Avenue by Yellowcard. Once again, thank you for the support and thank you for reading.