Today Was A Fairytale

Chapter 1: Once Upon A Time

Disclaimer: I do not own the characters or the Taylor Swift song this has been named after.

Rachel Berry's day was not going well. Scratch that, Rachel Berry's life was not going well.

This wasn't the way it was supposed to be. Rachel was supposed to spend four amazing years at Juilliard making many friends, finding an awesome boyfriend who would stick with her and support her throughout her career (and with any luck be very well endowed but that wasn't a requirement) while earning the lead in every school production she'd perform in, receive glowing reviews for said performances then graduate top of her class. She would then immediately get the lead in one of the three Broadway musicals she had always dreamed of being in, receive glowing reviews for those performances as well, culminating in winning a Tony all while being happily married to her college boyfriend with the most adorable son and daughter as a product of their love.

If you hadn't guessed, none of that happened.

Rachel Berry's life had instead gone like this. Rachel blew her Juilliard audition forcing her to attend the Tisch school at NYU instead, which Rachel still thought an improvement over anything in Ohio, but it wasn't her dream school. She had arrived at NYU a starry eyed 17 year old ready to take on New York and show the world what she was made of but quickly learned that things would not be as easy as she thought. Even making friends proved difficult as no one ever wanted to talk to her. All her classmates ignored her and when they did acknowledge her regarded her with a sense of, well, honestly, outright hate. They treated her like she was a nobody and only served as a background prop. They hated working with her and laughed at her every time she performed a very heartfelt monologue or solo. They clearly didn't appreciate her talent. That was never more evident than when she auditioned for the lead of the musical her freshman year and was basically laughed off stage.

There wasn't a rule saying she couldn't audition but it seemed that Rachel hadn't heard about the unwritten rule that freshmen never did. She wouldn't let this single faux pas deter her though. Rachel could accept spending four years at school with zero friends and zero romantic prospects, after all that's what she did in high school, but she would not accept the hand she had been dealt regarding her place within the theatre school.

For four long years Rachel fought tooth and nail for everything she could at Tisch but still had been given the shaft much of the time. Her professors thought her difficult to work with and labeled her a diva and after her first lead her junior year didn't earn quite the reviews anyone was expecting she was never chosen for a lead role again.

Rachel graduated a middling student from Tisch merely because she had thought she deserved better when no one else thought the same. So maybe she was a bit controlling and liked things to be done a certain way but they weren't acting in some high school play, they were in college hoping to move up to bigger things. Was it her fault no one else seemed as determined or dedicated as her?

So now Rachel spent her days living in a tiny studio apartment in Lower Manhattan working the most mortifying and least glamorous job she could think of as a performer. She acted as a magician's assistant/clown for Rocco the Magnificent/Rocco Rainbow. They worked old folks homes, birthday parties, school events, bar and bat mitzvah's, and basically anything else someone would need a clown or magician for.

After Rachel had been turned down for yet another role and the need for food and money for rent became dire Rachel had no choice but to seek out employment in a less than desirable position. Since the only thing she was qualified for was singing, dancing and acting her options were rather limited. She scoured the jobs page for days in the paper until she saw Performer Needed. The only credentials needed for the job was a flexible schedule and some acting experience. Rachel had both so to the interview she went.