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Who: Rachel Berry and Finn Hudson
When: 3/17
Where: Rachel and Kurt's apartment
Summary: Rachel's going to stop being a coward and talk to Finn about her death.
Warnings: Talking about death here.

So maybe Rachel had been avoiding Finn a little bit since the day after she'd come back. It wasn't that she was a coward (or, well, maybe she was a little bit of a coward), it was more that she just... didn't want to talk. Maybe that was a little unusual for her (or a lot unusual, since she usually took a great deal of pleasure from having people pay attention to the things that she says), but she wasn't sure what else to do. It was hard to see Finn in this place looking the same as he had the last time she'd been there, when she could see him-- heard him asking her to marry him every time that she closed her eyes or stopped thinking for a moment.

She hadn't even been able to give Finn any kind of answer back home. To be completely honest, that was a little bit of a relief. She had no idea what to say, not when he was looking at her with those... Finn eyes. She loved him... she didn't doubt that, but she wasn't sure if that meant she was ready to be married.

Regardless, it wasn't the reason that she'd been avoiding him. Or... it was a little bit, but it wasn't the only reason she'd been avoiding him. No, that had a lot more to do with the fact that for some reason-- some reason that she didn't know or understand, Finn had no idea that she'd died. It was weird, because when she'd asked Kurt, he'd told her that him and Finn had had a whole conversation about it. Or something like that. She didn't really know how people had conversations like that. In fact, the whole idea of people talking about her being dead was pretty creepy.

Kind of nice to know that they did miss her, just like she'd always thought that they would, but still... yeah, pretty much creepy. She didn't have anymore plans to die until she had written a dozen books and had starred in as many performances as he body would let her. She didn't see anything glamourous or cool in dying as a boring teenager again. Rachel really didn't even see anything good about dying ever. It might be good for her career back home, but she could still feel how searingly hot and then painfully cold she'd been when she had been killed that first time.

It didn't take more than a half a second of thinking about it for Rachel to remember how afraid she'd been. How hard it had been to breathe, she'd been so scared. It wasn't like anything she'd ever seen in the movies, not when she'd frozen in place and not even understood what had happened to her. She hasn't sure that she would have ever wanted to know what was happening. Not even when that sick feeling of surprise and fear and just knowing crept up on her.

Rachel didn't really want to know any of the details, but Finn-- Finn should have been asking her about it, and maybe... it was so hard to sleep now, alone in her bed when everything was dark and it had been so dark then, too, and she wanted more than anything to talk to Finn, to ask him to stay with her, if they can still move in together so that she doesn't have to be alone.

She hadn't ever been really good at being brave for the sake of being brave, had never really needed do that, and she wasn't sure that she wanted to do it now. Finn had to want to know, didn't he? It only made sense, he was a curious kind of guy. That's one of about a million reasons that she was so in love with him.

There really hadn't been any other option than to invite Finn over for the night, too. She knew that she wasn't sleeping very well and that it was obvious on her face and her voice had cracked a couple of times at work and that was something that she had to fix.

She had to talk to Finn, and that's why she was sitting on the couch waiting for him, experiencing again that sense of deja vu. This time she had a hot cup of tea, and hot water on the stove if Finn wanted some, too.

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Ever since she'd mentioned dying, Finn hadn't been able to stop thinking about it. Better yet, why had Kurt kept it from him? Blaine? Santana or Quinn? The others didn't necessarily know about it, though he was sure that Kurt would have mentioned it to them. So why not him? Okay maybe he could figure that out too. He wouldn't have reacted well to the news that his girlfriend had been killed.

But finding out after the fact? Well, it was like being the last to find out that Beth wasn't his all over again, being the last to find out that Quinn was cheating on him. She'd gone home. That was all that Finn knew. Yet everyone else knew that she'd been killed and no one told him. Dammit, why didn't people ever tell him anything?

The whole situation hadn't really been doing much for Finn's sleeping habits either, not that he really slept all that great in the first place. It was the same at home, though. There were too many things to do after school and glee and football and basketball. It usually meant staying up too late and getting too little sleep. Here, his sleeping issues were for entirely different reasons. There was worrying about Rachel, worrying about his brother and the rest of his friends (be they from back home or otherwise), worrying that the building wasn't quite as Darkness proofed as it should be.

He did somehow manage to sleep better when Rachel was with him, though, despite his other worries.

So why was he simply pacing outside of the door to Rachel and Kurt's apartment instead of knocking on the door? Finn shoved his hands into the pockets of his sweater and looked down at his feet as he paced.

Rachel had apparently died and he didn't even know it. How was he supposed to deal with that? He stopped his pacing, turned toward the door, tried the knob to see if it was open. That was how he was supposed to deal with it.

Finn stepped inside, closing the door. He looked down, picking at the zipper on his sweater before finally approaching the family room. He wasn't sure he'd felt quite this awkward around Rachel since that first time in the auditorium, when he first realized that he really had feelings for her. He knew it was partly due to the fact that she'd been avoiding him. That? Well that was bothersome. He didn't like it. It made him feel like he'd done something wrong.

When he sat down, he sat with his leg pressed against the arm of the couch, basically to put as much room between himself and Rachel as possible. He rubbed the palms of his hands on his knees, watching Rachel out of the corner of his eye. "Why've you been avoiding me?" There was no point in beating around the bush. He turned to face her abruptly. Honestly, he hadn't meant to start with that, but it was all that was on his mind. It was hard to keep himself from simply blurting it out.

The moment that she saw Finn, Rachel felt that same warmth that always settled in her chest whenever they were together. It wasn't even voluntary, and until that moment she'd had no idea how much she'd missed it. She thought she'd just have to get used to the cold again.

It was hard, though, seeing Finn and sitting so far away from him... but she didn't move closer, didn't want to let herself get so wrapped up in the moment with him that she forgot what she wanted to say or do (and so what if that happened more times than it was supposed to, both here and back home? There was nothing wrong with living in the moment when the situation called for it- of course, this one did not).

The worry of wondering whether she was doing the right thing in telling him all of this, settled deep in her stomach as she toyed with the hem of her dress a little, her feet tucked tightly under her. She had to do this-- she had to. She'd done a lot of growing up back home, learning the right and wrong ways to do things and she'd had more than enough time to know that lying to Finn-- keeping things from him that were important? Never turned out right for her. She was seventeen years old; she could deal with this like an adult. If she was going to be attending NYADA next year and living in New York without her dads... doing all of those adult things, she could do this.

It was all a learning experience. She could use it to draw emotion from in the future when she was acting, or something (completely ignoring the fact that she was aware that she couldn't actually bring these memories home-- it wasn't important).

"I was afraid to tell you-- I didn't know why anyone else didn't do it already, Finn. I didn't know how you couldn't already know what had happened to me. I... almost wasn't going to tell you at all."

Having said all of that, Rachel almost wished that she hadn't said anything at all. How was she going to explain what had happened to her? That she'd gone out into the Darkness when she'd promised she wouldn't?

How was she going to explain that she was afraid of the dark now, something that Finn would notice sooner of later.

"It doesn't matter that no one else told me." Actually, it did but he would address that later. He'd talk to Kurt about it the next chance he got. But that would come later. "So, if I didn't ask about it, you probably wouldn't have told me about it? Is that it? Is that the only reason why you told me about-- You died Rachel. How could you not tell me about that?" He didn't want to think that of Rachel, that she would keep something like that from him, but past experiences, unfortunately, told him otherwise. Rachel wasn't Quinn but it just felt too similar to keep him from comparing the two.

"Don't you think that I deserve to know that the girl I love died? Shouldn't I get to know what happened too?" Finn got to his feet, started to pace in front of Rachel. He looked down at his feet, balling his hands into fists at his sides. "I don't need to be protected from this place, or whatever the hell this whole keeping things from me is supposed to be."

A glance back at Rachel softened the angry expression that had settled over his features. Knowing now that she'd died, he couldn't quite find the will to stay so mad at her. It sort of reminded him that this place was all real, and their time together was potentially short. What if the next time, she didn't return? Sure, she would just be home, but he wasn't home. He was still in Siren's Port.

The anger, though, just wouldn't go away completely. "The fact that you didn't want to tell me kinda hurt, Rachel."

Biting down on her bottom lip, Rachel watched Finn as he paced back and fourth. She knew he was angry (though maybe she didn't understand completely why he was so angry with her), she could see it just as much as he was telling her that he was. It was hard to figure out what to say-- she'd usually just let whatever first popped into her mind slip out her mouth, because it was the easiest and being honest seemed really important here, at this moment, but... she couldn't let it happen like this.

Not when it felt like so many things were resting on her ability to explain things to Finn properly-- never a good thing to bet on, really.

"I didn't know that nobody had told you at first!" she insisted, shaking her head as she tightened her fingers on the hem of her dress, swallowing hard. She wanted him to know how she felt-- how she hadn't wanted to hurt him, but he just seemed so angry. He thought she'd betrayed him. He always seemed to think that she was doing that, but it had been a long time since she had.

"I was going to tell you, I was always going to tell you," a half truth, really, but it was close enough. "I just didn't know how. It's not like asking you what you want to eat for dinner, I didn't want you to feel bad, Finn. I didn't want you to think that it was your fault and I didn't want you to hate me for letting it happen!"

"Of course I feel bad, Rachel! And of course I feel responsible!" He felt like maybe there was something he could have done to keep it from happening (even if he wasn't entirely sure what happened, exactly), or maybe he could have at least been there with her, tried to help. Finn sighed and bit his bottom lip before sitting down next to Rachel, closer this time. Glancing at her out of the corner of his eye, he reached over to smooth down her dress.

"You're here now." He was a little quiet as he took hold of the hem of her dress, tugging on it just enough to pull the fabric straight. "That's all that should matter, right?" It wasn't all that mattered though. She died and he hadn't known about it. And that was exactly why he shouldn't be quite so angry at her. That was why he should just enjoy her company, right?

The old Rachel would have jumped at the chance to let Finn take the fall for everything-- to get out of having to explain anything to him so that they could just move on and be happy. This time, though, Rachel knew better. She knew that things weren't ever better-- had never been better when she let Finn take responsibility (or assumed that he should) for things that she'd done. She knew more than ever now that she couldn't honestly expect to sustain a relationship-- to seriously expect to spend her life with Finn (and he'd proposed to her, wanted to be with her forever. Really, truly loved her. Said she was his star.) if she was too much of a coward to be an equal part of this relationship.

She really, really loved Finn. More than anything in her entire life, aside from singing. Reaching out quickly, she grabbed his hand in hers and squeezed it tightly before he could pull it away.

"Finn-- It's just. It really was me. I went out into the Darkness by myself. I don't remember why, I just remember being out there. I'm here now, though, and I don't want to go anywhere else without you if I can't help it."

The touch of her hand granted her his complete and undivided attention. He turned toward her and looked down at their hands. The thought of pulling his hand away had never even crossed his mind. Instead, he simply moved it enough to squeeze hers in return. "I just can't stand the thought of something happening to you, especially something that serious."

Finn loved her, more than he ever loved anyone (even though he was hardly experienced in love, by any means), except maybe his mom, but that was a different kind of love. The idea of something so terrible happening to Rachel, something that he could have stopped, something that he could've... He was supposed to be able to protect her, to keep her safe. He promised her that he would look out for her, promised that nothing would happen to her. He understood that it was a bad promise to make, that it was one that he wouldn't be able to keep, but-- "Just promise that you'll stick to that, okay? Promise that you, I don't know, that you won't go anywhere without me."

Relief flooded her at Finn's response, glad that this wasn't just going to turn into a big fight over things that she had no idea to fix. It just reminded her that they were older now and they were somewhere that was way more dangerous than boring Lima, Ohio.

Feeling a little more confident, Rachel held his hand tighter and used her other to push her over so that she could rest her head against his shoulder. She wanted to let all of the words that seemed so determined to escape her spill from her mouth, but the moment seemed fragile somehow, and she didn't want to ruin it. She was sure there would be the chance for either one of them to ruin plenty of other moments in the future.

"I promise I won't go anywhere without you, Finn. It was really stupid and... I really don't want to be anywhere without you. Not after everything."

Sighing a little, she closed her eyes, realizing just how emotionally exhausting the few days had been-- more, even, than preparing the for the most trying role (and for about a half a minute, Rachel felt that little bit of irritation that she wouldn't be able to keep these experiences to draw the hardest of emotions from).

"I love you, Finn. I think even when I was back home, even though I couldn't remember anything, I missed you. This you. I don't want to go anywhere without you like that again."

Maybe she was being a little dramatic, but, well... where was the harm in that, if what she was saying was true?

There was a quick downward glance before he rested his head on top of hers, getting a little more comfortable there with her on the couch. There was so much he wanted to say to her, but it was mostly placing blame for various points in the situation as a whole. It was something that would make him feel both better and worse. It was something to keep him from feeling so damn responsible when it was all Rachel's fault for even going out in the first place. She said that she wouldn't, yet she did anyway.

But he just swallowed back his words. Words never really worked for him anyway. They always seemed to betray him, to get in the way of the things that he truly thought or felt. Sometimes, it just felt like they were out to get him or something. Actions spoke louder than words anyway, right?

"I love you too, Rachel. And I missed you too, while you were gone." He couldn't seem to recall much about while she was gone, but he knew that he missed her. That part, he remembered. Or thought he did. It didn't matter. None of that mattered. At least not right then.

"You shouldn't have gone out on your own in the first place, Rachel." It wasn't accusatory and all of the anger had drained from his voice. This time, it was no more than a simple statement.

It was easier to talk to Finn like this. Her head was still resting on his shoulder, he hadn't pulled away from her, and she didn't have to look up at his face. It was easier when she didn't have to see him. It was obvious that there was still so much for them to talk about, a lot of it she'd avoided for a whole week just by avoiding Finn (and spending all of her time in her room writing songs about... things that she wasn't even sure she knew what they were. Something the emo kids would have written-- or the goths. All of it really morbid an not at all what she was interested in, or at work, making as much money as she could) instead of coming out to talk to him about it.

But this was easier. This was good.

"I don't remember why I left," she promised, biting her bottom lip a little. She must have sounded stupid or juvenile, or like she was trying to get out of the whole situation, but there wasn't a lot she could do about that. "Trust me, after what happened, I don't think I could ever go out at night."

She couldn't even sleep in the dark anymore, but she wasn't to the point where anyone needed to know that. Even glass after glass of water didn't help her-- it just really made her have to get up a bunch of times to pee in the middle of the night. Though maybe that helped her in its own way-- it made sense to leave a light on somewhere that would reach her bedroom if she kept getting up.

"I just remember being out there and knowing that it was too late when- when everything was happening. I'm not like that anymore. The reason I went out, whatever it was, doesn't matter to me anymore."

The week that Rachel had been avoiding him, Finn spent wondering just what he'd done wrong to deserve her silence. He'd simply questioned what she said about dying, wanted to know how that applied to her. He wanted to know why she said it at all. And then she'd pretty much stopped speaking to him, started avoiding him. He considered burying himself in his work to forget that he was being ignored and avoided by his girlfriend, but he wasn't that dedicated to his job. He thought about dragging Deadpool out to a bar or a club or something, but he wasn't that dedicated to drinking, either. Honestly, he wasn't really sure he liked how alcohol made him feel, anyway.

"You're here. You're okay now. We should just-- Let's stop talking about it." Sure, he was technically the one who asked about it, the one who wanted to know about it, but talking about her death just made him understandably uneasy. They were talking about Rachel having died, after all. And not just having died, but being killed.

There was still that uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach when Finn suggested that they stop talking about her death-- like she really ought to say more, but she didn't know what to say and she had no desire to make a bad situation any worse than it already was. She wanted to find some way to make the situation better, but... well, she really didn't know what to say. In a situation like this, she would have taken the time to think of which song best conveyed the way that she felt and performed it for Finn in a way that was both romantic and that also proved to him how she felt about the situation.

For some reason, in this place, that solution didn't really seem like it would work all that well. Maybe later, when Finn was feeling a little better about everything, and she could pretend like she hadn't actually practiced a song for that very reason the night previous because she hadn't been able to sleep.

With boys it seemed like things were almost more appealing to them when they were spur of the moment instead of obsessed over. She'd never fully understand what the whole hang up with obsessing was-- it always worked well for her (or at least it did 30% of the time), but she tried to just go with it when it made Finn feel better.

"We can stop," she agreed, pressing closer to him because it felt much better-- so much safer (and like this he could probably protect her, right? Nothing could get to her if she was with him like this) when he was holding her. "I'm just glad that I'm here with you again. That we're both here, I mean. Instead of just one of us. Everything was great back home, too, but-- you're here. I wanted to be where you are."

Even if she hadn't remembered this place. It sounded good when she said it, though. Rachel imagined that it had to be true on some level-- if any part of her had remembered that she had left Finn behind, she would have wanted to come back, or at least called the police or border patrol or something.

Finn felt, too, that Rachel's death was something that they should keep talking about because, well, it was something big. It wasn't just an 'I failed another algebra test' sort of subject. Rachel had died. That wasn't something they should just leave hanging between them. But he couldn't talk about it. Not anymore. At least not right now. It was just a lot of bad news to take it all at once.

"I'm glad that you're here with me again, too." Here, in his arms where he could keep her safe. Here, inside and far enough away from the Darkness that apparently took her from him the first time. Here, in Siren's Port, so he wasn't quite so alone. Selfish maybe, but true, none the less.

"You know, technically, you were where I was." He gave her a weak smile, pressed a light kiss to the top of her head. This wasn't just about him. She was the one who died. So even if he didn't feel strong, even if he didn't feel like smiling-- Well, it wasn't about him.

"Tell me about home."

Letting her eyes close, Rachel leaned closer to Finn, just enjoying the feel of having him holding her this way. It was just how she'd always imagined they would be years and years in the future when they were married and their kids had gone off to college. Only much, much richer and with more success and also not trapped on a weird island where monsters lived in the dark and came up to kill you if you went outside for any reason.

They also wouldn't be in Canada. Nothing good ever came out of Canada.

A contented sigh left her as she mulled over all of her thoughts, wondering what to tell Finn and where to start.

"Back home everything was going pretty good. We've been together ever since you told me we had, and we got to spend all summer together, too. We were both working on West Side Story together, too, only... well. Blaine was actually Tony, but you didn't want that part anyways," she paused, biting her lip and wondering exactly how to explain the rest of the things that happened between them.

"We got, well, we got more serious, me and you. In a good way, of course." Everything to do with her in a relationship was going to be in a good way-- she'd decided that much already.

She wanted to do what she could to make Finn feel better-- maybe telling him all of the things that had happened with them that were good, well, that had to make him feel better, didn't it? At least in her mind.

"Yeah. Yeah, I remember the whole West Side Story thing." But not exactly much beyond that. There was just the fact that all of his dreams were crushed by that one person. One short talk with one man, and suddenly Finn's life had no direction. Not until he got back to Siren's Port, which just felt ... weird. The place he didn't want to be was the place he felt so much less lost. He felt like maybe he could actually make something of himself in the Port. With a little encouragement from Death, at least.

"Things got more serious? What do you mean?" He could only guess what she meant by that, but he didn't want to make any assumptions. Assumptions never really got anyone, anywhere. Well, if they were the wrong assumptions, at least. Sure, Finn's assumptions weren't always wrong, the fact that they were wrong ever was enough to keep him from any further questioning.

Rachel continued to lean into him, just taking in Finn's warmth as long as she could-- it had been a long time back home since they'd had any real problems in their relationship and... obviously there was the whole proposal thing and so she knew that Finn absolutely loved her-- but here, in this place, where she seemed way too capable of saying the wrong thing, Rachel felt a little nervous. Like she had to enjoy and catalog every moment that they had together. Even the tense ones like this.

After all... you just never knew.

"Oh, that's right. I forgot that you remembered the West Side Story stuff. But we won Sectionals! Not that I was ever worried about that," a little bit of a lie and, well, it wasn't like she was able to even compete with everyone else. "Brit is the new class president-- I mean, if Kurt hasn't told you that he lost. I don't know if he told you or what he told you..."

If she could avoid telling him that she'd stuffed the ballots to help Kurt win and had gotten caught and had been the reason Kurt hadn't been named president like he'd worked so hard for... well, she wasn't looking forward to ever telling anyone that.

Finally, she pulled away a little so that she could look up at Finn, making sure to thread their fingers together so that they weren't completely apart. These things were important. All of the little things were important-- if every single one of the mistakes that she'd made with all of the things in her life (especially in high school and especially regarding Finn) had taught her anything... it was that everything could be important, even if it didn't seem like it was at the time.

"More serious... more adult. We're adults now Finn, we're going to graduate from high school and be together forever. There was no reason not to be more serious or more..." a pause and she worries at her bottom lip a little, because it's actually a little embarrassing. "More physical, I guess. We're not kids anymore."

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