RACHEL

August 31

Rachel never thought she'd live to be eighteen.

It wasn't supposed to happen. And now that she actually reached this milestone, she has no idea what to do with it. She shouldn't be here, whole and unharmed and free to have a life at last, to make her own choices without fear or limitations. She shouldn't be able to walk the streets of New York and see future before her – years, probably decades to fill with dreams and plans and life. She'd never been prepared for that.

It took weeks before the thought alone stopped giving her panic attacks.

Walking the busy streets in the heat of late summer, she forces herself to look around and see opportunities, not threats. The anonymity of the crowd where she can hide if needed. The dozens of theaters just waiting for her audition. The men looking at her with interest, with smiles, men that she'd be allowed to date now, if she wanted to.

It's still overwhelming. She has no idea where to start figuring out her life, and there's no one to do that for her, no adult to tell her what to do and help out when she fails. It's scary and messy, but it's inescapable.

She's on her own.

It doesn't help that Kurt is no longer hers, either. Oh, he's still here, living with her, loving her – he probably always will, just like she won't ever be able to stop loving him – but he's not hers. They haven't been together for over a year now; no touching, no kissing, none of the closeness that had been expected of them for so long that it had become second nature. They hadn't even slept in the same bed for months. There was no formal talk, no breaking up, if something like that can even exist in their particular reality, but she knows. They both know.

Kurt loves someone else; he's loved him patiently and stubbornly since well before they left Ohio. He doesn't need her anymore, doesn't want the weird safety net they've woven for themselves since they were nine and first became family. And it feels so terribly lonely with all this empty space around her, after all those years when they were the two halves of a whole, mismatched and forced together, but somehow making it work anyway.

Not dying changed everything. Ironically, it killed something in Rachel even as it brought Kurt to life.

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Rachel's theme song – Teen Idle by Marina and The Diamonds

Creators: anxioussquirrel (text) & headbandxbowties (art)