Trigger warning. By the way, for later reference, italics are Kurt singing, bold, Rachel.
After their talk in the classroom, Finn and Rachel fell back into the comfortable friendship they'd had before they began dating. The sort that was slightly awkward from time to time when the feelings that were so obviously there made themselves apparent, but it was stable and as long as they ignored the feelings, uncomplicated. Finn fell into a threesome with her and Kurt, and they began to hang around with one another more and more, except for Friday nights. That was still date night, something that Finn had found very strange at first, and if he hadn't known of his brother's sexuality, he would have been sure of a deeper meaning.
Spending time with both Finn and Kurt had been awkward at first. Things with Finn were only just beginning to change from crumbled almost beyond repair to gentle friendship, and as much as she didn't want to be, Rachel found she was still so irrationally angry with Kurt. The part of her that believed he had only told because he didn't want to deal with the burden she came with wouldn't shut up, and the anger slowly turned into hurt. But he was trying so hard now, and being so kind that Rachel couldn't help but return it. She didn't want to fight with him, but the feelings were still there, simmering under the surface and she only hoped they would evaporate before they could explode.
Since her secret had become popular knowledge around the school, Rachel found she could not go anywhere without at least one member of the glee club accompanying her, not even to the bathroom. Although she hated the reasons behind it, the arrangement made her finally feel as if she had friends. It was wonderful to have someone to help her wash the slushie from her her and face, a job that she had grown so used to doing alone unless Kurt happened to be walking by just as it was flung, ready to step in and escort her.
Rachel also found it was impossible for her to find a free evening. Her friends knew her dads worked late and made it their mission for at least one of them to be with her until they came home. Sometimes, she would be dragged around Kurt and Finn's house, other days, Mercedes and Sam would come to her, or the entire group, minus the cheerleaders, would go to Breadsticks, or for a milkshake together.
It was a nice gesture, and a part of Rachel loved the fact that she seemed to really and truly have friends. Friends who actually cared about her, friends who would go out of their way for her, friends who she could laugh with, friends who made her forget. But at the same time, it was suffocating. Between them and her dads, it was almost impossible for Rachel to be able to get away and do what she most craved. She missed her blade like a child might miss their favourite toy, the bear they rocked themselves to sleep at night with.
It was a Wednesday night, and Kurt and Finn had kidnapped her immediately after school and bundled her into Finn's truck. Rachel tutted and sighed and demanded to know where they were going, but the two boys merely exchanged smirks and Finn carried on driving, ignoring her protests. Eventually, Rachel sighed dramatically one last time and threw herself back in her seat, disgruntled. Her skin itched to hurt, and being in a crammed car with her best friend and ex boyfriend was not top on her desired 'to do' list. She just wanted to get home and-
"Cat!" screamed Kurt, startling Rachel out of her thoughts and almost right out of her seat, and in the next second the car squealed to a sudden halt and she was thrown forwards, her seatbelt catching her and flinging her back again, violently. She screamed, partly because that seemed like the right thing to do, and partly because Finn's arm had shot out, pressing like a bar around her middle to stop her from hurtling forwards into the dashboard at the same time as her seatbelt had attempted the same job and the combination of the two made her stomach feel like it was being torn apart.
"Are you guys okay?" Finn panicked, but his eyes were fixed on Rachel, hearing the scream that had issued from her mouth.
"I'm fine," Kurt assured him, "I just pray I can say the same thing for my outfit." Rachel nodded, her hand over her stomach and she bit into the corner of her mouth to stop herself making another sound. They knew it was there, but she was so used to hiding that pain from them, that it came without her thinking about it.
"Stupid cat," Finn muttered, angrily as the culprit made a dash for the other side of the pavement, turning to hiss at the car that had almost flattened it before its paws disappeared into the deep snow. Rachel sighed as Finn began to drive again, more slowly that time, shooting her odd glances each time he felt it was safe to take his eyes off the road.
"Will you look at the road Finn!" Rachel snapped as his eyes travelled to her a fifth time. "We almost got killed back there, unless you wish to have a more long lasting accident than I suggest you stop glancing at me as if I'm about to spontaneously combust and focus on driving!"
It was Finn's turn to sigh as he returned his gaze to the road. Rachel was doing that a a lot lately. Snapping at him like Quinn used to, and it wasn't like her. She didn't get angry with people, unless they were trying to take the solos, she was patient and kind and that was part of the reason he fell in love with her in the first place. But something had happened to her, and she wasn't his Rachel anymore. Finn wanted to find the person he had fallen in love with, but he didn't know where to look. He didn't know where she had gone.
…
Twelve minutes later, Rachel stood between Kurt and Finn gazing down a huge snow covered hill with a large plank of wood in her hand that was apparently used for getting down. Finn had said it was like a ride at a theme park, only you didn't have to pay and it was funner (until Rachel had pointed out to him that funner wasn't a word). Even Kurt swore by it, although he disapproved of the snow that sprayed around him and sprinkled his clothes as the sledge flew down the hill.
Personally, Rachel thought she was more likely to end up with a broken neck before she could worry about dirtying her coat, but Finn looked so eager, like he was expecting the activity to immediately pull her out of whatever it was she had fallen into, that Rachel didn't have the heart to refuse. She gripped the wooden board in her gloved hands, reluctant to let it drop into the soft snow, because then she would be expected to get on it and plunge to her certain death. But perhaps that would not be such a bad thing.
What was wrong with her? She was out with her friends, she should be enjoying herself, not thinking about what it would be like if she really were to break her neck. Who would come to her funeral? Would it be big, or kept as a small event with just close friends and family? Who would cry? Finn maybe. And Kurt. Her dads, or at least one of them would. No one else though. The glee club would be there, and they would act as they should, but they'd be more focused on how they were going to divide the solos now that she was gone.
Immediately, Rachel felt a rush of guilt for that thought. They had been so kind to her over the past few days, and she repayed them by believing them to be so shallow? Of course they wouldn't be thinking about things like that at her funeral. They were her friends, they cared about her. Although Rachel told herself that firmly, in a voice that could not be argued with, there was still a small murmur in the back of her head that told her she was simply deluding herself by thinking that anyone, anywhere, would care.
"Hop on Princess!" A voice called to her from her feet and Rachel snapped her eyes to the ground to see Kurt grinning up at her from his own sledge. She forced a return smile and dropped her 'sledge' into the snow, reluctantly sitting down on it, slowly, as if it were a Hippogriff that would attack her if she did not wait for its permission. The sledge tottered on the edge of the hill as Rachel sat down, threatening to drop and throw her to her doom.
Then, before she knew what was happening, she felt and push and she was hurtling down the hill, a shriek filling the snow sprayed air around her. Rachel squeezed her eyes shut and gripped the turned up edges of her sledge for life, she was certain she had left her stomach somewhere at the top of the hill, but her heart was making itself known by banging hard in her mouth. Her scream was cut off suddenly as the breath left her, and she was flying so fast she couldn't catch it again.
Almost as quickly as it had began, it was over, but no one had told her about the violent jerk at the bottom of the hill, and without having time to prepare for it, Rachel was thrown from her sledge and landed in a messy heap of snow and brambles several feet away. She waited for the world to stop spinning before carefully pushing herself into a sitting position just as Kurt and Finn reached the bottom of the hill and leapt of their sledges to see if she was okay.
Before they could even ask, however, Rachel sprung to her feet, a fistful of snow already gathered in her hand. Angrily, she flung it into Finn's face, just as he opened his mouth to talk to her. He spluttered, spitting out a mouthful of snow and wiping chunks from his eyes and from beside her, Rachel heard Kurt laugh. His laughter was soon stopped as his feet suddenly vanished from under him, courtesy of Rachel's foot finding its way to his ankles, and he tumbled down into the snow, drenching his coat in white flakes.
"If either of you ever do that to me again I will personally track down your-" before she could go any further, her words were stopped by a mouthful of snow. It instantly numbed the inside of her mouth, burning it with its cold even as she spat it out. Snow fell from her hair and stuck to her cheeks, falling under the material of her coat, freezing the rest of her body.
It was the start of a full scale snowball fight. Finn and Kurt ganged up on her, laughing, their cheeks flushed with the cold. Rachel laughed too, because it was the appropriate thing to do, but inside she was furious. She was angry that they had dragged her out when she longed to be at home in the warm with her blade and no one to answer to, but then Finn had almost crashed the car, they had sent her hurtling down a hill and crashing into the snow, and then thought it hilarious to begin this childish snow fight like they were six years old. Trust Finn to be so childlike and naive, he was going to college in little over a year, and yet he still behaved as if he were six.
Rachel knew she was being irrational. She knew her anger was uncalled for, and tried to keep it under wraps, relieving her frustration by flinging the snowballs with all of her strength, but the smile was hard to keep on. She was going through the motions of being an ordinary, happy teenager, out to have fun with her friends and muck around in the snow, like anyone else might do, but inside she felt as though she were screaming. Screaming in both fury and anguish, yet the smiles were not once wiped from Kurt and Finn's faces as they remained oblivious to the scream mounting in her head, growing louder and louder until she could hear nothing else.
…
She turned around too late to dodge out of the way of the drink flying at her face. She saw the hand just in time to close her eyes and wait for it to hit target, and although she heard a gasp and the collective laughter of everyone gathered in the corridor, she did not feel the slushie hit her. Wondering if she had finally had so many she was completely immune to the feeling, Rachel opened her eyes. They didn't sting.
Rachel blinked in surprise, but the mystery was soon solved by the sight of the slushie soaked blonde rooted to the spot, directly in front of her. From the back, it looked like Quinn, but that was insane, Quinn would never take a slushie for her. She was more often than not the one giving them out and it was from the very same person that Rachel had received her first one. But the image was not going away, and Karofsky's laugh was directed right at the person in front of her.
"Look Berry," he cackled. "You've got yourself a girlfriend." Rachel scowled at him, opening her mouth to respond, but her voice stuck in her throat when the person turned around, and Rachel saw there was a reason she looked so much like Quinn.
For a long while, she could do nothing but stare. Everyone else began to trail to their next class, losing interest in the scene they had seen so many times before, but Rachel was still transfixed, staring at Quinn as if she had grown an arm from her stomach.
"What?" Snapped the slushie coated cheerleader eventually, growing sick of the stare. It was almost as bad as having the rest of the school laugh at her. Rachel's shock that she had done something like that for her just reminded her she could take all the slushies in the world and they would never be even.
Finally, Rachel seemed to come to herself and snapped out of her shock. She smiled weakly at Quinn and when the cheerio began to storm towards the bathroom to clean up, Rachel followed, intending to help her wipe the ice away. Before she could go anymore than a few steps, however, Quinn turned on her, for some reason, looking furious.
"Don't!" She snapped, and Rachel wondered if she had meant to save her from the slushie attack or simply had been in the wrong spot at the wrong second. "Don't help me. I've never helped you, and I was the cause of most of them, so just don't, okay? For once in your life, be mean back and leave me. Then we'll be even."
It wasn't true. One slushie did not make up for all the scars that Rachel had made in Quinn's name, it did not make up for the slushie a day she had become used to since she had started the tradition three years ago, it did not make her words any less harsh, or her hatred any easier to take. They were no where near to being even, whether Rachel helped her or not, but Rachel did not argue. It was obvious that Quinn knew that, but that didn't mean she was going to extend her kindness.
But perhaps it was better that way. Quinn would ignore her, and they would have an unspoken truce. They'd stay out of each other's way and she needn't be the cause of any future scars, even if she couldn't erase the ones she had already marked. Rachel nodded, and without arguing further, or pointing out that they would never be even, she walked away, but knew in her heart she had made the right choice.
Quinn would never make up for what she had done, but she would live with the guilt long enough to be well punished.
...
The ice hit her face before she could even see the hand shoot out. Someone, she didn't know who, chucked the empty cup at her so the remains splashed over the part of her top that was not already ruined and she heard the scream of laughter from all around as every witness delighted in her pain. Some actually pointed, like she was some exhibit in a zoo, nothing more than an animal. That was what it felt like. As if she were trapped in a cage, watching life go on around her whilst not having a part in it herself.
"What you gonna do Rupaul?" Someone called out. "Cut yourself?" Rachel ran from the second round of laughter that followed that statement, ignoring Kurt's voice as he called after her. She didn't want to talk to him, she didn't want to talk to anyone. The tears threatened behind her eyes, stinging, and she just wanted to be alone and let them out.
The doors to the auditorium crashed against the wall as Rachel flung them open, rushing inside as if a pack of wild dogs were at her feet. As soon as they swung shut behind her, she felt instantly calmer. Just being there, away from everyone's staring eyes, jeering laughter, and the odd concerned glance made her feel safe and protected. No one could get to her in there, only the glee kids ever entered the auditorium, and even that was on the rare assignment practice.
Slushy dripped from her face as sat on the piano stall and pressed a few keys, experimentally. A chunk of ice fell from her hair and onto the white key, staining it red, but Rachel didn't care. She continued to play an unknown tune, as if she couldn't feel the cold drink running underneath her bra and leaking down her neck. She played anything that came into her head, any small tune she had ever learned, just something to listen to other than the cruel laughter that rang in her ears, until she eventually settled on a song she knew well.
What is it Lord that you want,
That I am not seeing?
What in my innocent prayers,
Am I failing to say?
Never before have I questioned the truth of your being
Never once have I dared
Never until today
Now that I need more than ever my guard to be near me
Do you hear when I call?
Are you there after all?
You have to be there, you have to
My life I have placed in thy keep
And without you I am drifting
On a dark and rising sea
You have to be there, you have to
Without you I drown in the deep
Too far, too far from land
The waters drag me down, I reach for your hand.
Rachel was so absorbed in the music, she didn't notice the doors inch open, much more slowly and carefully than she had in her desperation to be away. She didn't notice Kurt slip into the room and stand behind her, listening to her play. She didn't notice him come closer and closer until he could reach out and touch her shoulder until he did, and she jumped, violently. She swung around, her hands flying from the piano like she was a child caught in the cookie jar.
At seeing Kurt, she felt immediately uncomfortable. Not because she was still covered in slushie, or because she had not yet told him her real feelings surrounding what had happened the day her secret had poured over the rest of the school, but because of her faith. Rachel knew Kurt did not share her beliefs, although he had started to come around since his father's heart attack, and she was afraid he would think her stupid for singing to a God he didn't believe in.
But Kurt wasn't looking at her with an expression of mockery, but gazing down at her, sadly. There were tears in his eyes that he wouldn't shed, and he looked almost guilty, as if he were sorry for interrupting her. His hand was gentle on her shoulder and she could feel the warmth radiating from it, making her realise how cold she was from the ice that soaked her.
Kurt sat down slowly on the discarded chair beside Rachel's stool, his hand not leaving her shoulder and eyes remaining fixed on hers. "You're going to stop running from me," he told her, without leaving room for her argument. "And you're going to tell me what's been bothering you. You've been treating me like I'm going to pass on some horrible disease for the past four and a half days." He didn't speak unkindly, but Rachel knew there would be little point in protest. She sighed, softly.
"It was not my intention to hurt you. By staying quiet, I was attempting to avoid an unnecessary argument," she paused, searching for new ways to ramble so she could avoid getting to the point. "The last thing I want it to fall out with you, Kurt, on top of everything else that has fallen apart in my life within the recent days. But I can't help but feel-I often wonder if you-if you forced me to go to Mr Schuster because you didn't want to deal with the burden that my friendship brings yourself."
For a long while, Kurt was silent. Rachel dropped her eyes from his and stared instead at the piano keys. Regionals had passed. From what she had heard, the New Directions had won, although it had been a close call. They had not done original songs like she had suggested so long ago, but instead something by My Chemical Romance, and some other number that Kurt had sung with Mercedes. Santana had sung the solo. It was a good selection, one that Rachel would have picked out herself if she could not be lead vocalist.
Lost in thought, it took her a while to realise Kurt was speaking. "...ridiculous Rachel." Ridiculous. That was what so many thought of her. The way she spoke, the way she dressed, her eagerness to be in school, to learn, to be in the spotlight, all of it was ridiculous. The target of so much bullying. "I went to Mr Schue because I didn't know what to do. It wasn't because I didn't want to help you, but because I couldn't. You need something that is far beyond what I can do. Beyond what any of us can do."
Rachel was barely listening. She registered somewhere that he was telling her what she had wanted to hear for days, that she wasn't a burden, and he loved her despite what she had done, but she couldn't find it in herself to care. Another drop of ice rolled down her cheek and dripped from her chin. And another. It wasn't until the fourth drop fell from her face that Rachel realised it was not slushy, but her tears.
A gentle hand caught the next one before it could fall. "I wish you had told me sooner," Kurt said, simply, but it was all Rachel needed to hear. It meant he didn't want to ignore what he now knew and go back to the easy friendship they'd had before. He was glad to know, to be able to help. Rachel still didn't know if she could believe him or bring herself to care, because she was so used to being alone it wouldn't matter if she had to walk this path with only her shadow too, but it was a comfort all the same.
I can show you the world,
Shining, shimmering, splendid,
Tell me, Princess,
Now when did you last let your heart decide?
I can open your eyes,
Take you wonder by wonder,
Over sideways and under on a magic carpet ride.
Rachel smiled softly at the familiar song. She wished such a thing as a magic carpet were real, something that could whisk her away from all the hurt and taunts.
A whole new world,
A new fantastic point of view
No one to tell us no, or where to go, or say we're only dreaming.
Rachel closed her eyes as the music washed over her, and allowed herself to imagine the world Kurt wanted. The world free from everything that was hurting her, and in turn, him too. A world where no one would drag them down, or whisk their magic carpet from under them so they plummeted back down to earth, falling through endless space. A world where finally, she could be happy. Without even being aware of deciding to join in, Rachel was singing the next verse, allowing the words to carry her away to the world they were singing.
A whole new world,
A dazzling place I never knew
But when I'm way up here,
It's crystal clear,
That now I'm in a whole new world with you.
Now I'm in a whole new world with you
Kurt took Rachel's hand, spinning her around as if they really were riding through the skies, soaring together through weightless clouds and sparkling diamond stars.
Unbelievable sights, indescribable feeling,
Soaring, tumbling, free wheeling,
Through an endless diamond sky.
A whole new world,
The auditorium no longer existed. It was just the two of them and the words of the song, a private world the music had carried them to, something only they could be a part of.
Don't you dare close your eyes
A hundred thousand things to see
Hold your breath it gets better
I'm like a shooting star, I've come so far,
I can't go back to where I used to be
It had been so long since she had tried anything else, that Rachel had forgotten that cutting was not her only escape. It did not last as long, but all the time she was singing, she was free. Especially singing with Kurt, with his promise to be by her side throughout whatever her future held.
A whole new world
I'll chase them anywhere,
There's time to spare,
Let me share this whole new world with you.
A whole new world (A whole new world)
That's where we'll be (That's where we'll be)
A thrilling chase
A wondrous place
For you and me.
The last note of the song trailed away into the empty room, disappearing amongst the dust that coated the piano and the murmuring voices from beyond the door, but the world did not fall away. It stood, shining, shimmering, splendid, entwining their lives together as Rachel left behind the separate, cold world she had fallen into and joined Kurt on the magic carpet ride.
Don't worry, Rachel isn't cured just like that. I'm not thick, I know it's going to take more than a song, but it's a step. Reviews are still much loved and I really appreciate all the ones I have so far :)