Past Mistake

*Chapter 8*: Why Me, Why Now

"Hello, Noah," Rachel greeted as soon as she spotted him in the coffee shop.

She was forgoing the actual coffee since she was already a jittery mess. She had been unable to sleep for the better part of the weekend and didn't want caffeine exacerbating the problem.

"You look like crap," Puck said when he looked at 11her.

"Are you okay?"

Rachel shook her head. "I haven't been sleeping well."

"Why not?" Puck asked.

Rachel shrugged even though she knew why. It really hit her Friday night that everything she was doing seemed to be for nothing. She had tried so hard to make everything better, but everything was still falling apart.

"Why are we here?" Rachel suddenly asked. "I mean, there has to be a reason, doesn't there? We didn't just magically end up in the past for no reason."

"I don't know," Puck said, shrugging. "I guess."

"What was the last thing you remember before you woke up here?" Rachel asked.

"I was in my apartment, and before I went to bed, I made a wish," Puck said, shrugging. Rachel nodded.

"What day was it?"

"November 29, 2023," Puck replied.

"Same day," Rachel said.

"Yeah, but I came here at an earlier time than you," Puck replied. "When I woke up, it was at the end of our junior year; it was the morning before Nationals. I even tried to stop Finn from kissing you, since I knew the problems it was going to cause, but the ass didn't listen to me."

Rachel frowned. "Why would you get here months before me?"

Puck shrugged. "Who knows; I don't even know why I'm here. At first it freaked me out, but then I realized that I wasn't going anywhere and it's kind of cool to get a second chance, you know?"

"I thought I was here to change everything—to make it better," Rachel said. "But nothing mattered; everything went back to the way it was before. What if—" Rachel wiped the tear that was trailing down her cheek. "What if everything that happened is just fate and nothing I do is going to make a difference. What if the universe is going to correct itself no matter what I do? I thought I could save Quinn, but what if I can't? I can't go through that again."

"We will change that," Puck insisted. "If we have to throw her in a padded room for the rest of her life, she is not going to die, and I'll do everything I can to be sure of that."

Rachel sighed. "I just don't get the point in all of this; if nothing is going to change, then what are we doing here? Why us, why now?"

"You, Rachel Berry, the girl that has lists for everything, are just now thinking of this?" Puck asked, smirking.

"It's not that I haven't been thinking about it, it's that I've been so busy planning how to change everything that I really haven't had time to dwell on the why," Rachel said. "For a long time I thought I would go back at any moment so I didn't worry about why I was here; I was just trying to make the most of my time."

"And now?" Puck asked.

"And now I don't know, but I feel like I have time," Rachel replied. "And now I'm starting to think more about the why."

Puck shrugged. "Personally, I don't care why we're here, just that we are. I fucked up big time, and if I get a chance to change that, then I don't care why or how it happened."

"How are you doing? Umm, you know—in the future?" Rachel asked. Puck shrugged.

"Kind of hard to find a job with my record."