These strange steps

27

The lack of a clear routine is a little strange, the next day.

She wakes up, rejoices in being able to make herself coffee, and then sits and reads the Times and the Lima Gazette just for the hell of it. Her fathers kiss her on the top of her head, like she's fifteen again and about to head off to a day of-well, nevermind, that's not what she wants to dwell on right now.

After that, it's just her, in the house, and even after three hours of lying on her bed and listening to some record by some band called Lamb playing, she realizes she's going to actually lose her mind if she doesn't find something to occupy her time that she cares about.

Lists used to be the thing, that kept her together, and so she grabs a notepad and writes down What I Want to Be When I Grow Up.

At the top of the list, it says happy.

After that, the pencil hesitates for a long time, and she ends up just pulling up her resume on her laptop and realizing that short of being a musical theater actress, she really hasn't left all that many avenues open in life. It's been everything. Everything she's done, starting from her tap lessons at the JCC and that first performance at a talent contest when she could barely stand on her own, has just been in pursuit of one singular goal.

So what can she do?

She can sing.

She can act.

She can dance, though not spectacularly well by anyone's measure.

What else?

...

When her fathers come back, she's baked a cake.

Sort of.

"I thought I'd branch out from cookies," she says, when they stare with some horror at what she's both done to the kitchen and to one of the pie tins.

Her dad opens his mouth, then carefully closes it again, and finally says, "Rachel, would you maybe like to bake a cake together?"

"No," she says, with a small sigh. "Baking is not for me. Cookies aside."

"Well, your cookies are delicious?" her daddy says, gently, and she leans into his side as he squeezes her hip.

He's not wrong. She can sing, act, dance, and bake excellent cookies.

What do people who aren't Rachel Berry do with that combination of skills?

...

"You're not going to figure it out in a day. It took me the better part of twenty years to figure out what I wanted to do," Quinn tells her, a few nights later, when she's spent a few more days puzzling over what career paths remain open to her.

On screen, Buffy faces yet another challenge about something or other. Her friends are hyenas, or think they are, or something. It's absolutely ludicrous, but vaguely entertaining; and there are hints of there being something about this show. The aspect of the main setup that fascinates Rachel a little is that everyone seems to be in categorical denial about what is going on with Buffy, aside from her two friends, who reluctantly are on board with her-vampire killing ... thing.

The show is intensely stupid, but somehow not, and Rachel has to actually think to remember what Quinn was saying.

"I know that, but it'd be great if I had some starting point. My only real interest in life has been fame, and now that I have it ... well, it's kind of off-putting," she says, taking a sip of her cocoa. By mutual agreement, they've added some marshmallows tonight, and all in all this is the sleepover she never got to have when she was a teenager.