Hi everybody! First and foremost, I wanted to thank everybody for all of the positive feedback to this story, it means the world really! So, with being said, I stepped out of my comfort zone a bit with this chapter and wrote in Shelby where I normally wouldn't have mainly because I'm trying to test the waters with this story (but also because I have a huge lesbian crush on Idina Menzel haha) so I hope its tolerable.
And although this is an ensemble fic, I know the first couple of chapters are mostly just character profiles and things of that nature and are very individualist based so I figured I'd give everybody a bit of a preview and tell you the order of the focus characters for the next couple of chapters which are (in order) - Finn, Will, Artie, Mercedes, Kurt, Brittney/Santana, Quinn, Puck, Sue, Tina. That's all I've got for right now but there will be more, I promise!
Chapter 3
My Final Failure
(Shelby Corcoran)
It was Friday, June 4th, 2010 when Shelby Corcoran decided that she had finally gathered enough courage and strength to confront her daughter.
It had been one week following Regionals; one painfully long, breathtakingly slow week in which Shelby had spent the majority of her time sitting on her couch, coddling her brand new daughter between her surprisingly gentle arms as she flashed periodically blank glances upwards towards the towering trophy, still presented proudly in the center of her living room…
The statue was supposed to bring her pride, it was supposed to bring her joy, but she couldn't help but notice that every time she looked at it, the only thing that it actually gave her was an overpowering twinge of pain originating deep within her very gut.
The fucking thing gave her nothing but guilt.
Shelby Corcoran had gone her entire life thinking of herself as nothing above a complete and utter failure, and although she'd chosen to use her roomfuls of choir trophies and a small group of enormously talented teenagers as decoys to present herself with confidence, the fact of the matter was that she had nothing even close to it.
It had taken her adoption of Beth to jumpstart that natural surge of maternal instinct that she'd always known to have had inside of her, and despite already being one child deep in a situation that she still couldn't say that she was completely prepared for, Shelby suddenly felt something inside of her that she couldn't quite pinpoint, something that she had never actually felt before.
She used to use this lack of empathy, this emptiness inside of her heart to justify the idea that she would have just made a lousy mom anyway…
She used to repeat the same story to herself over and over again, the one where she'd tell herself that wherever in this world that her child was right now, she was happy, and that happiness had absolutely nothing to do with her…
Yes, any and every demoralizing, critical excuse that you could ever possibly come up with to try and convince yourself that your child was better off without you, Shelby Corcoran had definitely used.
And for a little while, that would actually work.
But eventually, like most aspects of life, even that became too much to handle, and now that Shelby had finally found herself graced with the blessings of a new daughter and a second chance, it became more and more obvious to her that she didn't want Beth to have a mother too cowardly to rectify a mistake that had sixteen years worth of opportunities to be fixed.
And that was exactly how Shelby Corcoran had found herself inside of William McKinley High School's nearly empty auditorium on a beautiful Friday morning in June.
She had gone into her day expecting the worst while simultaneously hoping for the best; her only voice of confidence being the idea that she had already waited this long to start feeling good about her life again, so if things didn't quite go as planned today, well than what was the harm in waiting a little bit longer?
But she had gotten lucky, because thirty minutes into her conversation, as she watched her daughter saunter out of a vast, empty auditorium with her head held high and a new-found swagger behind her step, Shelby couldn't help but feel a sense of wonderment over the fact that she had helped to create not only that beautiful human being in front of her, but that sense of pride, of happiness as well.
So with Rachel safely out of view behind the oversized oak auditorium doors, Shelby took her daughter's staggered lead, walking back out the way she had just come in, but this time with her own head held up high and a new-found swagger behind her own steps as she carried herself confidently straight out of William McKinley High School's main doors with a distinct impression in mind that maybe, just maybe today could be a turning point in her life.
Shelby entered the welcoming warmth of the late morning air with eyes squinted up towards the overpowering sunlight and a deep breath before taking a quick right-hand turn towards the visitor's parking lot and her awaiting car.
The morning had undoubtedly proven to be a beautiful one; uncharacteristically warm, even for an early June morning in northwestern Ohio.
Shelby's mother, a pessimistic Italian New Yorker who had moved to Lima, Ohio from Brooklyn after the death of her second husband in an effort to be closer to her two daughters called days like today September 11th days; perfect in every sense of the word, but lingering with an undercurrent of a hidden tragedy yet to be unfolded in the air above, a hidden tragedy who's magnitude could never be truly comprehended by anybody around it.
In the distance, she spotted her car in the furthest space from her current position, and before that very moment, she'd had absolutely every intention of getting inside of it and driving off, really she had, but before she'd had the opportunity to exact a motion upon her plans, something suddenly stopped her…
Maybe it was the aura of this new and improved Shelby Corcoran that was slowly taking over her body, filling it to the brim with this welcomingly new can-do attitude, or maybe it was that creeping desire to complete this steadily budding family that she'd been working so hard now to piece together one by one, but before she'd even become aware of what it was that she was actually doing, Shelby Corcoran had found herself performing a complete about face, pumping her feet mechanically until she'd found herself directly in front of the semi-closed wooden door of William Schuester's closet-sized office – arriving so quickly, that she didn't even know exactly how she had gotten there…
If you'd asked, she wouldn't be able to tell you exactly why she had done it, why her feet would ever choose to betray her in such an obscenely cruel manner, but whatever the reason, the fact of the matter was that it had happened, and whether she wanted to do it or not, she didn't really have a choice in the matter as her obviously malfunctioning control center trapped within the depths of her brain practically forced her to lift her hand and rap her knuckles against the wooden door of the first man that had ever really meant anything to her in a very, very long time.
"Shelby," His eyes glanced upwards in response to her knock, the slight inclination behind his voice as he breathed her name enough to tell her just how shocked he was to see her… but then again, she couldn't really blame him.
"Will," She nodded her head slightly, her spine straightening and her chin rising in an effort to present to him in a confident fashion, "Can I come in?"
"Uh… yeah, of course," He nodded, jumping up from behind his desk in an effort to clear away the cluttered mess scattering unceremoniously across the wooden panel, desperate to do anything in his power to make his office seem more presentable under such last-minute circumstances than it actually was.
"Have a seat." He extended the offer, but Shelby merely shook her head against it, instead choosing to plant herself at the head of his desk, assuring her dominance by forcing Will to mimic her movements as he maneuvered himself strategically into a standing position so that he could make perfect eye contact with her.
"I just wanted to stop by and congratulate you on Regionals." She told him, her words forcing his eyes to break away from hers, pain seeping through his pupils at the mere memory of the defeat still lingering relentlessly in the back of his mind.
"We lost to you…"
"Yeah well…" Shelby allowed her voice to die away into nothingness, recognizing the fact that that had been a stupid means by which to strike up conversation.
"So… is this what you came all the way down here for; to gloat?" Will's eyes narrowed accusingly, glaring a hole through Shelby who couldn't seem to come up with a less accusing explanation for her own presence quickly enough to save herself.
"No, actually… I came down here to… to see Rachel." Shelby explained her motivations carefully, deciding to be blunt in her explanation, recognizing the fact that Will had been less than enthusiastic about Shelby's last attempts towards reconnecting herself with her daughter…
And that was before she had managed to break his lead singer's heart into a million fragmented pieces.
Peering up carefully towards Will, she watched as his facial expression shifted dramatically; his eyebrows raised and his pupils widening as his muscles contracted into a stern look that he accentuated by crossing his arms tightly over his chest, just to ensure that Shelby knew exactly how much he disapproved of her decision to put the poor girl through any more pain than what she had already been through.
Frankly, it offended her.
"Listen Shelby…" Will began, but Shelby stopped him before he could continue, thrusting her palm forward towards him so that she cut off Will's words before he truly had the opportunity to speak.
"I know what you're thinking Will," She informed him, trying to sound convincing in her tone when in reality, she had absolutely no idea what the hell it was that he was thinking. "I'm not here to try and take her away, I'm not here to hurt her anymore… I've asked her to try and establish a relationship with me, and she's agreed. That's it."
Will sighed so that it became instantly obvious to Shelby that her small speech had not managed to convince him, and Shelby could appreciate that, really she could; it was nice to know that there was somebody out there who cared that much about her daughter, somebody who would look out for her when she couldn't, somebody who was always willing to keep her best interests first…
But it was time for her to become that somebody now.
"I understand your concern, Will, but we're taking it slowly, and hopefully… with time, we'll be able to work something out and then…" Shelby's voice was suddenly cut short. Before she had the opportunity to allow so much as another syllable escape her mouth, she was silenced by Will as his face crashed forward, locking in a tight junction formed between their lips, forcing her words to dissipate into a long, drawn out kiss.
She opened her eyes wide in her shock; her vision focusing on Will's closed eyelids, affixed firmly shut in a combination of passion as well as the fact that he was probably too afraid to see what Shelby's reaction to his unexpected come on would be to actually look…
Her mind began to race, screaming at her to put an end to this nonsense at once… So of course, naturally, she latched onto his shoulders even tighter, threw him against his cluttered desk, and followed suite in an effort to return the favor that he'd initiated.
The scattered contents of his desktop took flight; a million paper airplanes floating strategically through the air before landing smoothly against the carpet as Shelby took advantage of their additional space to catch herself up in the heated fervor…
She had just begun struggling to loosen his tie when she was stopped abruptly.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
Her lips parted with his so suddenly that she'd accidentally bit him
Feeling the dull metallic clang of Will's blood entering her mouth, she snapped her head upwards, clearing her brain from its passionate fog as she leapt to her feet, unconsciously strengthening the vice grip that she still possessed around Will's tie so that she nearly strangled the poor man in the process.
"What was that?"
"It was probably nothing." Will told her, ignoring the sound completely as he tugged desperately at her hips in an attempt to return her to where it was they had left off, but Shelby wasn't complying with his lack of concern. Instead, she walked further from him, inching slowly towards the door as the familiar sensation of burning maternal instinct flared into the pit of her stomach, an intuitive notion creeping into her brain telling her that something had just gone terribly, terribly wrong within the walls of William McKinley High School.
She opened the door of Will's office a mere crack, listening all the while as Will struggled to right himself upwards, afraid that a curious, unsuspecting bystander might walk past the open door only to get a glimpse of their frazzled selves and get the wrong idea…
But the second that either of them caught a glimpse into the hallway, it became instantly obvious to the both of them that their escapades behind closed doors was possibly the least of these students' worries right now.
Screams filled their ears the second that Shelby had lifted the barrier of the wooden door; teenagers darting like mad-men up and down the length of the hallways in a wild stampede of flailing bodies, all screaming, crying, and fighting their way towards the first escape route that they could manage to find.
Will was on his feet and besides Shelby in a matter of seconds, the two of them standing and watching - as if it were a movie before them - from within the comfort of the doorframe as a second series of overwhelming banging filled their ears, causing each to simultaneously jump against each other.
They locked eyes briefly, the fear profoundly evident behind the wide globes; the looks in their faces saying everything that they were thinking… everything that they did not want to believe… everything that couldn't be possible.
It couldn't be, no, it just couldn't. This had to be some kind of a sick joke, there was no other explanation, because there was absolutely no possible way that what they had just heard erupting through the walls of William McKinley High School had been the sound of gunfire…
There was a moment in which Shelby stood frozen, taking deep, steady breaths as the adrenaline began filtering through her brain, charging her body for the inevitable task that she was about to be forced to perform.
The transition had been so quick that Will hadn't even noticed it at first, but in a flash, the black and white checkered flag wove in its symbolic start somewhere within the depths of Shelby's head, and with that… she was off.
"Shelby, no," She only vaguely registered Will's cry, but she was running faster than an Olympian sprinting the 100m track race, and if a three inch, painfully binding set of heels wasn't going to stop her, then Will expressing his distaste for her actions certainly wasn't going to either.
"Shelby!" He called again, making Shelby very aware of the fact that he had begun following her, very aware of the fact that he was willing to place his own life at risk merely to rectify her voluntary decision to throw herself straight into the cross fire.
He tried to keep up but even the full grown man with an impressive cross country background struggled to maintain a steady pace alongside Shelby Corcoran right now…
Her concern had been elevated too profoundly, her brain too pre-occupied with the screaming of a single thought, looping repetitively across her mind…
She had to find Rachel.
She fell into a distinct moment in which her world began moving so slowly that she could literally feel her bones shifting around her burning muscles, her mind tumbling in circles trying desperately to think of an empty solution to an impossible problem…
Her feet skidded to an abrupt halt across the tile ground below her as she rounded a corner, trying desperately to slow her body so that her momentum wouldn't knock her flat on her face as directly underneath her, she felt as the heel snapped clearly off of the bottom of her right shoe so that she couldn't help but think about how lucky she had been that she hadn't just snapped her entire ankle along with it…
She stopped running only upon approaching a sharp fork in the hallway, calculating this moment as not only an excellent time to lose the restrictive footwear that she was currently sporting, but also to gain a sense of her bearings as well…
It was in that moment that Shelby was suddenly made painfully aware of the fact that her knowledge of William McKinley High School's interior was strictly limited to the locations of the choir room, the auditorium, and Will Schuester's office…
In her moment of concentration, she could hear Will approaching behind her, panting and out of breath as he slowed his jog into a complete halt directly next to her, grabbing onto his knees and hunching forward in an effort to clear his ailing lungs… That man needed a gym membership and he needed one fast.
"Shelby, what the hell are you… oh my God…" His voice faltered very suddenly, becoming laced with a much deeper concern than that which had plagued him from his unexpected work out, and Shelby had the vaguest sense of an idea as to the exact origin of that concern…
Shelby Corcoran had never exactly been to hell before, but in the last few seconds of her scouring through the halls of Lima, Ohio's latest warzone, she'd gotten a fairly good sense of what it might be like.
Backpacks, textbooks, cell phones, iPods, laptops… any kind of personal belonging that you could imagine really, belonging to a student was strewn across the linoleum hallway floors, carelessly left abandoned by the students in the spots where they had been standing at the precise moment that they'd decided they valued their own lives much more heavily than they valued those material items that might have only weighed them down in their bid to escape.
The floor was littered with a trail of a thick, viscous red liquid that Shelby and Will both desperately wanted to believe was the by-product of a passing Slushee attack… even if said attack had been aimed at one of their poor, defenseless glee kids, but both adults knew better than to think that.
Two sets of eyes followed the crumb trail of blood down the length of the hallway, their pupils constricting and squinting painfully in an effort to focus on its source resting at the opposite end of the hall… two bodies lying tangled within one another, motionless from the spot where they had fallen…
And suddenly, this really was happening.
Kevin Ryan and Josh Feingold were both best friends as well as reining members of the 2010 senior class. Will managed to recognize them both immediately due to the fact that they had been in his same remedial Spanish class ever since they were freshman.
They were the type of friends that never did one thing without the other, and apparently, today that included getting shot.
Simultaneously, they jumped at the sound of an echoing gunshot – this time originating dangerously close from the adjacent staircase – served to them a stark reminder of the fact that they didn't have the time to linger on either the dead or the wounded.
For the quickest fraction of a second, the two merely stared at each other, both wide eyed and frozen stiff with fear until Shelby ultimately managed to shake herself back into initiative, darting a stiff hand outwards where she wrapped her long, slender fingers around Will's scrawny bicep, tugging him down the length of the abandoned hallway, further from the source of the ominous noise beside them.
"Will, come on, we have to find Rachel!"
Will shuddered nervously; offering the slightest sense of initial resistance towards Shelby's constant insistency, afraid that her tunnel vision towards finding her daughter was ultimately just going to get them both killed…
But Will knew that Shelby had been placed on a self-proclaimed mission, and he also knew from experience that once Shelby Corcoran had her mind set on idea, she wasn't about to give up on it all too easily… So he found himself with two options; either he could follow her, or he could save his own ass while simultaneously leaving the woman he cared so deeply about, as well as half of his students wandering alone inside of a school beside a crazed gunman…
So with that thought in mind, Will Schuester gave a tremendous sigh and muttered the briefest of prayers as he took his tremendous leap of faith and relaxed into Shelby's guiding.
They tiptoed as quickly as their feet would possibly allow them, their heads held high and ears poised for any signs of the hidden dangers potentially lurking around the corners as they stepped delicately over the prone bodies of Kevin Ryan and Josh Feingold.
Shelby allowed her eyes to linger on the ailing teens only briefly, watching as the blood casually pooled underneath them, collecting and combining, shining so brightly underneath the florescent lighting that Shelby could make out the reflection of her own face, her guilty expression towards leaving these two boys – who had just as much of a right to be rescued as her daughter did – behind.
They continued to move with slow, evenly-paced footsteps; chartering carefully their every move until another tremendous bang, one that sounded dangerously close, caused Shelby and Will to stop dead in their tracks, completely frozen with fear.
"Come on," Will whispered harshly, grabbing a handful of the sleeve of Shelby's shirt so that he could drag her around the corner to safety, only waiting until they were certain that they were completely out of sight before they stopped.
Shelby had never imagined that the sound of approaching footsteps could be so ominous, so loud, so utterly terrifying…
In the silence of the abandoned halls, every step of a boot against the tile sounded magnified a thousand times, in her heightened sense of alertness, she perceived every noise as a threat, every person as an enemy…
Trembling underneath all of the adrenaline teeming through her veins, Shelby brought her shaking hands up over her mouth, using her palms to muffle the sound of her panting breaths, praying to God that her heartbeat, currently performing a fantastic drum solo against her ribcage, wasn't loud enough to reach the ears of somebody that she didn't want to be able to find them…
Two sets of footsteps progressed closer and closer; each step took an hour, each inch they'd advanced felt like a mile…
"Do you see all of that blood?"
Shelby could never in her wildest of imaginations possibly remember ever hearing a voice sound so cool, so callous before in her life… They were so close that Shelby could hear as a gentle wisp of air emitted from between the teeth of one of the individuals besides them as he leaned closely into the two bodies, inspecting the damage that he himself had inflicted with an eerie sense of pride behind his actions.
"We should keep going, Jacob…" Around the corner, a shadow grew against the wall opposing Will and Shelby, the transparent black outline expanding larger and larger with each step forward the female assassin took towards their hiding place.
With silent tears streaming down her face and her breath stuck somewhere within the very center of her throat, Shelby pressed her body as tightly upwards against the wall as she could possibly manage, silently begging her body to simply disappear from the spot as her mind raced to tell her that this was it, that she was about to positively die.
She thought of Beth, the child that had already lost her first mother only to lose the second as well. She thought of Rachel, the girl who'd deserved a lifetime of affection from her only to be granted with none…
"Wait!" The advancing footsteps paused abruptly, the sudden silence forcing a small rush of the air previously caught in Shelby's lungs out of her mouth so that it emitted in the form of the slightest of squeals, one which she thanked God was overshadowed by the sound of the shooter's shoes squeaking to a halt mere inches away from the two hiding teachers, "I think I saw something over there."
There was a flash, the briefest of seconds stuck inside of time, and then, just as quickly as they had begun their descent upon Will and Shelby, they were gone; running backwards and travelling in the same direction that they had just came from, far away from them.
Still tense with fear, Shelby jumped so high, her bare feet lost contact with the ground below her as she felt a hand clasp firmly around her shoulder causing her to release an involuntary strangled cry, muffled only by Will's free hand slapping itself quickly up and over her mouth in a natural reaction towards trying to prevent Shelby from calling attention to them…
They had gotten lucky once before, but neither one was willing to bet that their luck would take them through another altercation such as the one they had just experienced.
"Come on," Will directed her, slowly removing the hand from her mouth as he pulled her by the elbow further down the length of the hallway, "There's another staircase over here, we'll just go hide.
"Will," Tears brimmed the undersides of Shelby's eyes as her voice trailed outwards into a desperate plea, "We have to find Rachel."
"We will Shelby. I promise we will." He spoke firmly, the guarantee that not even he was so sure he'd be able follow through as he continued to drag Shelby quickly through the back staircase, eager to locate his students but at the same time, hesitant of the potential state of which he would find them in once he did.
They walked on tip-toes through the open halls, sneaking around corners, standing as close to the walls as they could possibly manage, recognizing that as their only possible source of coverage… And like a slap delivered clear across her face, Shelby found herself painfully aware of the fact that both her and Will suddenly bore a striking resemblance to a pair of sitting ducks sitting in an open pond during hunting season.
"Oh God…" Will allowed the murmur to escape his lips but, as quiet as it presented, Shelby had still managed to have somehow heard it anyway – the greeting that had lead her across the cusp of the stairwell where she was met immediately by yet two more prone bodies, crumpled an arm's length apart from each other at the end of the hallway.
Shelby felt her eyes squint naturally into tiny slits, straining her vision and cursing her near-sightedness as she both tried and failed in her attempt at identifying the two still figures silhouetted against the hard tile floor underneath them.
They were just too far away, and at this point, the familiar scenes seemed to all merely blend together… They all looked the same, they all were the same; no more than a group of pint-sized teenagers – kids…
They were all just kids.
She took a tentative step forwards, desperate, yet simultaneously terrified to see whether or not one of those "just kids" was actually her kid.
Beside her, she could feel Will shuffle uncomfortably before falling still, his eyes closed firmly with the idea in mind that maybe, just maybe if he shut them tightly enough, this would all just go away… This entire thing, this entire scene after all, was truly impossible.
Denial rang rampant between Shelby's ears as she began taking slow, tentative steps forward…
She was asleep; it was the only justifiable explanation that she could come up with to explain this surreal nightmare; she was sleeping, and she was trapped in this terrifying unconscious…
This was the kind of thing that you only read about in the newspapers, the kind of thing that only happened in some foreign country or some small town that nobody's ever heard about in a state that you could barely remember the name of…
No, whatever this was, it was definitely not the kind of thing that happened at their little known high school, named after a little known president, located in a little known town in the middle of nowhere, Ohio… It just wasn't.
Her brain was screaming at her, buzzing with orders and suggestions streaming from every direction so that she couldn't think, she couldn't formulate a single, coherent thought until eventually; she was forced to hold her hands tightly over her ears, just to get rid of the persistent hum lingering in the back of her head…
But even those efforts proved to be futile as she was brought firmly back into reality by an eruption of noise, a heavy array of successive gunfire that made it sound as if they'd just entered the grand finale of a fourth of July fireworks show rather than a high school hallway.
"Shelby…" It was the first time that Will had spoken for several minutes, but his words emitted in such a hushed whisper that he was forced to swallow and cough in his hesitation before ultimately trying again, "Shelby we have to get out of here!"
He raised his voice over the sound of gunfire as the noise below grew steadily louder and more prominent, showing no signs of stopping, or even of slowing down.
Will watched as his world transformed into slow motion, Shelby's head turning over her left shoulder towards him at a heart-stoppingly slow pace so that he could visualize her every muscle flexing as her eyes widened with fear, her face paled with panic, and, despite the cascade of gunfire stinging at Will's ears, her mouth opened into a distinct scream that rang loud and clear straight through his very head.
The thing was, once he'd heard it, he couldn't help but wish that he hadn't.
"Oh my God, Will! It's Rachel!"
Within his veins, his blood ran frozen, replaced with pure ice that solidified his entire body numb… It was the only response that he could manage, the only motion his body could perform as his chest constricted impossibly tight, deeming it unfeasible for him to suck in so much as the smallest of breaths.
He watched motionless as the older woman exploded into an awkward run down the remainder of the length of the hallway, sprinting and flailing uncontrollably so that the scene would have been humorous if the situation hadn't been so dire…
But that grim outcome pounded itself relentlessly into Will's brain, growing in its blatancy as he watched Shelby finally arrive besides her estranged daughter's side, where she dropped to her knees so hard that Will could actually hear the splashing of Shelby's kneecaps colliding with the bloodied floor surrounding Rachel's body, could see the tears formulating underneath her eyelids from all the way across the hallway.
Only twice before in the entirety of Shelby Corcoran's lifetime had she allowed herself to lose her cool.
The first time, it had been December 18th, 1994 where, after nine painful months of strict diets, countless doctor's appointments, two gay men following her every move and thirteen excruciating hours of labor, Shelby had finally given birth to the most beautiful baby girl that she had ever seen in her entire life…
And she hadn't even gotten the opportunity to hold her.
It was on that night as she sat alone in a dark hospital room, while two men nurtured and loved the child that she would never know that Shelby first allowed herself to breakdown and cry.
More than fifteen years later, it had happened again.
She had been parked illegally within William McKinley High School's senior parking lot one pathetically rainy day in late November, her car parked strategically besides the choir room door where she'd waited several long, agonizing hours just to catch a glimpse of the child that she finally knew to be her own.
And when she had finally seen her, she'd known in an instant that she'd had the right girl…
Rachel Barbra Berry was attached arm-in-arm with a boy that Shelby had easily identified as New Directions' male lead judging by his characteristically defining features, a smile on her face and the hint of a laugh echoing off of her gentle frame.
She only saw her for a second, running towards an old Chevy parked across the street with a book bag held high above her head in the form of a makeshift umbrella before she ducked down into the passenger's seat of the truck, disappearing for good.
Six seconds. She had waited inside of this parking lot for three hours only to see the girl for six seconds… but it had been the most meaningful six seconds of her entire life.
Rachel had looked good, she had looked healthy; she was talented, and she was beautiful, and absolutely none of that had had anything to do with her.
So it was on that afternoon as she sat alone in a rainy parking lot while a teenage boy nurtured and loved the child that she so desperately wanted to call her own that Shelby, once again, allowed herself to breakdown and cry.
And now, late in the morning hours on a bright, spotless morning of early June, deep within the countryside suburbs of northwestern Ohio, Shelby had found herself teetering across the brink of emotional stability once more, standing frozen within the hallways of William McKinley High School, hovering before the prone form of the child that she had finally received, that Shelby, for the third time in her entire life, allowed herself to breakdown and positively sob.
And Shelby knew what they said about third strikes.
But she needed to do something… her daughter needed her to do something, so she ran.
And for the first time in her entire life, Shelby found herself running headfirst directly into the problem rather than cowardly away from it.
"Rachel?" Shelby dropped to her knees besides the younger girl, her balance faltering as her feet slid across the surprisingly slick pool of blood formulating steadily across the ground beneath Rachel's back…
The problem was that Shelby Corcoran had never learned how to swim before, so when she finally could no longer find it in her to remain upright, and she found herself falling face forward, dousing her entire front in a pool of blood that contained half of her DNA, she felt certain that she was about to positively drown.
"Will, help me please! She's not moving! Please!" Shelby struggled to lift herself as panic rose from the very depths of her throat, her voice carrying down the hallway with an eerily high pitch behind it and a volume so elevated in its frenzy that it even overpowered the sound of the gunmen's siege, still starkly prevalent one floor below their feet.
Will wasn't particularly certain how he'd managed to do so, but somehow, he found himself forcing his legs forward, snapping upwards in his recognition of Shelby's desperate need for assistance, darting forward before dropping to his knees besides Rachel, opposite of Shelby so that he could scan her prone form in an effort to do what he could in his bid to identify the origin of the bleeding swelling rapidly underneath his young star.
But there was just so much… Will's brain scrambled, his mind unable to process anything beyond his silent questioning of just how much blood was too much blood, because he knew that Rachel Berry was a small girl, but it had become quite apparent to him in this moment that as small as she was, she had an awful lot of blood inside of her – obvious now that all of that blood was pooling gracefully around her on the outside.
He spotted a frayed bullet hole in the shoulder of her t-shirt, matted down with blood and residual gunpowder… Directly underneath that, an identical puncture wound was embedded within the center of her chest; next to that another one, and next to that, one more…
Trying desperately not o think of the implications of being shot four times in the chest, Will lifted his hands and pressed the balls of his palms firmly against Rachel's wounds, concentrating desperately on his efforts to staunch the bleeding…
"Will is she breathing? Will is she alive? Will is she okay? Please tell me that she's okay Will, please!" Will shook his head, mouth wide as a steady stream of tears subconsciously formed at the base of each one of his eyes, struggling to process, let alone answer Shelby's questions…
But the truth was, he had absolutely no idea if Rachel was breathing, he didn't even know if she was still alive… but if there was one thing that he did know for sure, it was that Rachel was definitely not okay…
"I don't…I… I…" He stuttered over his words but stopped without even bothering to complete the sentence that he knew he would never have been able to actually finish anyway.
But Shelby merely took his hesitancy as an extra source of motivation… Turning back towards her daughter, she resorted to her own method of attack in her plan to rouse the girl – grab her by the shoulders and shake her as hard as she possibly could…
"Rachel!" She screamed her plea, her voice foreign in its panic, directly into her child's ear, "Rachel please wake up! Come on, look at me, please!"
It wasn't perhaps, the most orthodox method that either would have chosen to take, but still, Will and Shelby couldn't help but direct their attention towards Rachel, desperate for any sort of response from the younger girl…
She was dead… Shelby just knew it, she knew it deep within her very heart of hearts that her girl, that her baby, that the one thing that she had ever done truly right in her life, was dead…
But then, just as she began preparing herself emotionally to halt in all of her efforts to rouse the girl, just as she began to struggling with the notion that she was giving up on the daughter that she loved once again, she moved…
It had been the slightest of twitches, the simplest of motions, but still, she'd moved…
And as Rachel Berry slowly opened her eyes into a half-lidded expression of pure agony, Shelby couldn't help but think that that motion had been the most beautiful thing that she had ever seen in her entire life.
"Ahh…" Rachel managed no more than the lowest of mumbles as she attempted to focus her eyes on the intruders that had just dared rouse her from her blissful, painless unconscious.
"That's it Rachel, come on look at me." Shelby coached the younger girl relentlessly, watching as her face, so pale, so chalky in blood loss that it blended almost perfectly with the opaque floor tiles below her, turned so that she managed to lock eyes with those so identical to her own; responding obediently to her mother's beckoning her to hold on for just a little while longer.
"Shelby…" Her voice echoed across the empty hallway as her lips quickly transitioned from a stark white to a deep blue, seeping artistically with color, directly in time with her ragged breathing growing more labored with every exhale that she took.
"Yeah honey, it's me… You do me a favor and stay right here with me, okay? It's just gonna be a little while longer, Rachel… You'll be okay, you're gonna be just fine… I promise." Desperation laced each syllable of every word as Shelby watched helplessly as her daughter entered a vicious battle against her own failing body, lingering much too closely against that fine line between life and death for Shelby's liking.
"It… hurts…" Rachel pushed the two brief words from her rapidly deteriorating lungs as her body continued to revolt viciously against her, sending her into a series of mini-convulsions as a direct response to the rapidly developing shock; the overwhelming blood loss plummeting her blood pressure into dangerously undetectable territories.
"I know it does Rachel, I know…" Shelby muttered, sweeping a stray strand of hair lightly behind the younger girl's ears in an effort to instill a sense of comfort into the both of them, "It's just gonna be a little while longer though, so you're gonna have to hold on for me." Rachel nodded feebly, a single jerk of her head as she leaned unconsciously closer into her mother's touch.
"You're safe now honey," Shelby promised, desperate to instill a sense of comfort into the daughter that she barely knew, hoping and praying that she wouldn't be coherent, or at the very least, understanding enough in her weakened state to register just how much of a lie her words actually reflected. "I'm gonna get you out of here Rachel… You're gonna be fine."
Will's eyes darted upwards in response to Shelby's words, flashing her a look of skepticism regarding the fact that she was currently dishing out promises that they both knew she wasn't necessarily sure that she could keep.
"Shelby…" Will warned her gently…
"I've got this Will, okay!" She snapped unexpectedly back at him, unusually defensive in her tone, allowing Will to understand the threat in his questioning of her, forcing him to back slowly away, his hands held upwards in an expression of surrender.
"Okay Shelby, okay… listen, I'm gonna go check on him real quick," Will nodded towards the unconscious boy beside them, "While I'm gone, I need you to try and stop this bleeding for me okay?" He directed her with a careful precision, guiding his hands upwards from Rachel's wounded chest to around Shelby's own, guiding her flattened palms firmly against the bleeding lesions before pressing firmly downwards.
She shuddered openly towards the texture of the skin underneath her touch; singed and flayed in its damage as an ever-increasing amount of blood slickened her palms raw…
But if Rachel could hold on, than so could she, so she directed absolutely every ounce of energy that her body still had inside of her into the muscles of her arms, and she planted her palms even further downward, effectively staunching the free-sweeping blood, while simultaneously causing Rachel to release a guttural cry of pure agony.
The muscles of the slim girl's chest wall contracted and tensed underneath the pressure, her soft whimpers of pain cleaving Shelby's heart into two distinct pieces, but still, she refused to let up.
She couldn't loosen her grip, she couldn't let go, she couldn't let her daughter down… not again.
"Shh Rachel, I know it hurts honey, I know, but it's going to be okay, you're going to be okay…" She tried desperately to calm Rachel through the comfort of her words, begging the girl silently to quiet before her vocals attracted one of the gunmen towards them where they would undoubtedly be finished off for good this time…
Watching Rachel carefully, Shelby's eyes followed Rachel's own as she silenced and relaxed into a distinct look of relaxation so that for a split second; Shelby believed that her words had actually worked… It was only until Rachel's eyes slowly began to roll backwards into her skull, the lids closing slowly around themselves that Shelby released that they hadn't; in fact, they hadn't even come close.
"No, Rachel come on, stay with me here, please!" She begged, retreating back to old tendencies of attempting to literally shake the girl back into consciousness, because Shelby didn't know very much about medicine… or about any kind of science for that matter, but she did know that keeping Rachel awake was without a doubt, a critical move; if not for Rachel's physical health, at the very least for Shelby's mental health.
"Please don't do this to me Rachel…" Tears cascaded freely down each cheek, creating miniature waterfalls that would drip from her chin and gather at her hands, combining and diluting the blood so that the skin turned from a sharp red to an angry pink.
Eyes opened into slits, Rachel nodded compliantly towards her mother's desperate request before, using all of the strength that she had left inside of her, and Shelby was certain of that much, Rachel lifted a feeble arm upwards, allowing it to linger above her chest for only the briefest of seconds before bringing it to a freefall; her hand dropping directly on top of Shelby's so that they intertwined perfectly, glued together by the sticky traces of blood still seeping relentlessly through the spaces between Shelby's fingers, her muscles tensing briefly, before relaxing into complete flaccidity.
"No, no… Rachel! Come on Rachel, wake up for me!" Shelby screamed, she cried, she threw a genuine temper tantrum, but her pleas fell upon deaf ears; Rachel was beyond the point of conscious response, Shelby knew that much, and her only source of comfort rested in the fact that the woman could still feel the shallow motions of Rachel's chest rising and falling against her trembling hands.
"Shelby, what is it! What happened?" Will's voice called to her from across the width of the hallway, his tone panicked and desperate, leading Shelby to believe that her visible panic had rendered Will with the false notion that Rachel had just lost her battle against life and death from under their watch.
"Nothing Will," Shelby sighed, trying quickly to correct the error in his assumption, "She's just… she's… she's out, Will, she's just out." Shelby stumbled across an accurate expression of her wording, finally formulating the most comprehensive sentence that she could manage, looking upwards and towards Will, away from Rachel for the first time since she'd found the girl what seemed like hours ago.
For a brief second, she just stared; watching Will as he kneeled against the second unconscious teenager within the hall, his hands pressed firmly up against the boy's profusely bleeding neck so that the skin of his hands was now decorated with a mosaic-like combination of both his blood as well as Rachel's, linking the two in a permanent bond of blood ties.
"Mr. Schue!"
The sudden presence of an unexpected fifth party shocked the stunned duo in frozen terror as they jumped simultaneously upwards, a foot each into the air.
Landing back downward against her knees with a small scream, Shelby tensed naturally in response to the impending threat, throwing her body forwards against Rachel's in an effort to protect her from the mysterious source of danger.
It was only after she hadn't instantaneously felt a bullet rip through her body that she chanced a peak upwards towards the culprit, her muscles relaxing only upon realizing that she recognized the body before her.
Shelby knew Finn Hudson's name from her budding collection of programs and Play Bills of all of New Directions' performances, she knew his face from sheer experience.
"What…" His eyes locked with his teacher's, desperate for answers, but confused as to where it was exactly that he should be looking with all of the muddled pandemonium circling around him.
But he never did get the opportunity to complete his sentence, because as his eyes drifted subconsciously over towards Shelby, kneeling alongside his unconscious girlfriend on the ground, he was silenced with realization, his eyes widening within their sockets, expanding to the point that Shelby believed them to be just on the threshold of positively bursting in response to the shocking scene in front of him.
"What the hell is going on?" His voice quivered underneath a thin layer of teetering composition as he dropped his volume and spoke with the pitch of his female soprano lead…
"Finn, somebody has a gun in the school," Will explained slowly with an eerie calm, although Shelby was more than certain that that idea had already slipped across Finn's mind at some point throughout his journey, "We have to get out of here… We have to get Rachel out of here."
"Where are we gonna go, Mr. Schue?" Finn nodded alongside the recognition that despite the grim prospects of their situation, they needed to get themselves out of this school as quickly as humanly possible, "They're everywhere…"
Will and Shelby exchanged fearful glances in a direct response towards Finn's words, each instantly recognizing the supposed impossibility of what was probably the most important tasks that their lives had ever depended on; getting outside to safety.
All at once, their worst fears were streaming into light all around them… The threat was everywhere, the danger too broad for them to so much as imagine let alone comprehend, and suddenly, the idea that probability was screaming at them that they weren't going to be making it out of this building alive struck them like a slap across the face.
"Okay… okay…" Will paused so that Shelby was practically able to see the gears churning inside of his head as he searched for the answers only to get nothing, "It'll be okay, we'll just… we'll just hide for now."
"Will…" Shelby voiced her distaste towards the idea without hesitation. She knew… hell they all knew that Rachel didn't have the time to simply just hide… She needed help, and she needed help quickly.
"I know, I know!" Will shouted, his elevated volume directed not towards her, but towards the helplessness of their situation as a whole… but as his voice faded into silence, exposing the notion that none had any better solutions to express, realization towards the fact that Will was right, that there wasn't much else that they could actually do, settled, stark against the sound of bullets flying continuously right underneath their feet.
"Listen Shelby, we'll… we'll wave down the police from a classroom, okay? We'll get her out of a window or something. It will be okay. She is going to be okay."
Shelby didn't say a single word. In her heart of hearts she knew that it was their best option… she knew that it was her only option, and she didn't have the time to sit up here and think of something better… So with a grimace, and a nod of understanding, she expressed her comprehension towards the fact that hiding within a small classroom from a group of gun-wielding lunatics as she lowered her dying daughter out of a second story window towards safety was just something that they would all have to settle with…
So instead of wasting any more precious time, she stood, sliding her arms underneath Rachel's limp body, hoisting the girl impressively high into the air.
Will nodded gently in response towards Shelby's directive impulse, a silent appreciation towards her cooperation as he grabbed the second, anonymous teenager, hoisting him under his own wing in a similar manner as Shelby had taken with Rachel, both following Finn into the abandoned classroom across the hall.
Book bags littered the otherwise spotless floor, text books and notepads laying opened on each desk, remnants of the class that had occupied their crude hiding place before all hell had broken loose…
The second that they were all safely inside, Finn slammed the door shut firmly behind him, the residual bang causing each member of the room to grimace despite themselves.
Shelby's head spun in circles, searching desperately for the best spot to deposit her precious load as Will lowered his student to the floor where he stood and Finn busied himself with pushing a large bookshelf in front of the door; extra protection, just for good measure.
With quivering steps, Shelby carefully settled Rachel down against the rattling air conditioning unit in her effort to keep the girl as comfortable as possible while meanwhile, the lights above her blinked into darkness; Will taking the initiative to flip the switch in an effort to make the room appear to be as unoccupied as possible should anybody come peering through the tiny window embedded traitorously into the doorway.
Through the corners of her eyes, Shelby watched as Finn moved swiftly and immediately towards the windows, taking initiative in their desperate final escape attempt by heaving the glass open wide enough to pass themselves through.
"These stupid windows…" He grunted in the exhaustion rendered by his futile attempts towards pushing against the frames as hard as his broad muscles would possibly allow him to… But even then, the glass barely extended a crack; no way near wide enough to pass so much as a baby through, let alone the full grown, albeit petite body of Rachel, "They don't open all the way."
Shelby watched him in his efforts, chewing desperately at her fingernails as he shifted the entirety of his body weight into his front leg and rammed his shoulder against the thick glass, ready to open it, shatter it, do anything else that he could possibly think to do, only to be met with disappointment.
Turning back towards her ailing daughter, she squeezed the girl's hand tightly as a single residual tear cascaded down her prominent cheekbones, and suddenly, for the first time in a very, very long time, Shelby found herself doing something practically unheard of for her; she began to pray, begging absolutely anybody who would possibly listen to her for a miracle…
Because it was Friday, June 4th, 2010 when Shelby Corcoran decided that she had finally gathered enough courage and strength to confront her daughter…
But – as Shelby slowly began to realize – by then, it may have already been too late.