Endgame

Chapter 1: The First night

Tiptoeing across the room, Rachel Berry holds up the white sheet of the hotel room bedspread to her chest. She wraps it around her body as she goes, picking up the remnants of her party outfit from the night before spread out across the floor. Mr. Schue's wedding had become a bad cliche before it had even started. A Valentine's Day wedding was bad enough but adding in the feature of a last-minute runaway bride? Thinking about it now, it sounds more like something you'd see only on TV: a romcom starring the likes of Julia Roberts or maybe a tragic Broadway musical headlined by the one Ms Barbra Streisand. No wonder it had failed so miserably when taken place off screen. And then there was the other predictable plot twist: a kiss shared between the bride and the best man...

Rachel tosses her hot pink minidress over her arm and quietly scurries the rest of the way to the bathroom. Turning on the lights, she avoids looking herself in the mirror as she drops the bed sheet to the floor and slides her slip over her head to cover the rest of her body. As she steps back into her lace dress, the memories from this time last year flooded back to her in a rush: singing love songs in the choir room, joining her friends in celebration at Sugar Motta's party held at Breadstix, planning her audition song for NYADA, preparing for Regionals, breaking the news to everyone about the engagement...

She reaches back to finish zipping up the rest of her outfit when she catches sight of her reflection in the white linoleum tiles of the hotel shower-- flushed cheeks, wild bedhead, lips bruised from hard, desperate kisses of unspoken I miss you's and I love you's. Before heading out the door, she decides to take a clearer look and steps forward into the direct spotlight of the stage in front of the bathroom mirror and looks up and out into the audience.

Rachel hadn't looked at the world this way for quite sometime- the world as a stage. She no longer had to create a world within her own, to escape the hell that was high school in small town Lima, Ohio by spending her time dreaming of the future. The future was here, now. She had finally started living her dream, or at least building the foundation to which she could use to climb towards it. She was taking classes to perfect her skill as a performer, as an actor, a dancer, and she was no longer alone in her ambition, there were others in it with her. Most importantly, they were taking her and her talent seriously. Rachel Berry always had the voice and the potential but now she had the opportunity and, most recently, the look.

She has finally become accustomed to her new look: her dark skin from frequent spray tans, the blonde highlights, the definitive smoky eye. The new New York Rachel Berry. That is the Rachel she sees staring back at her in the mirror, even now being back in her hometown.

However, that is not all she sees but the one thing she was trying to avoid during this whole trip and now couldn't help but face in the late hours of the evening after a night full of nostalgia and romance. Behind this new face, she still caught glimpses of the old: the big nosed, starry eyed, lovestruck Rachel Berry. Even now as she flips back her blown out curls, reapplies black mascara to her fake lashes, and adjusts her dress to show the perfect amount of cleavage, she can hear the music starting in the background. She almost finds herself reaching for a hairbrush to use as a mock microphone.

Above all, she has to stop herself from doing the one thing she felt the old Rachel instinctively reaching to do-- running out of this bathroom and jumping back into bed to be in the arms of the man she loves and by doing that, throwing away her Broadway dreams to be in the arms of the man she loves.

That's the one thing she just can't do.

We are endgame.

Rachel picks up her clutch from where it sat on the edge of the sink and flicks off the light, silently shuffling out into the quiet stillness of the room.