A/N: This is my new multi-chaptered story written for Gleek06216's request for a future Puckleberry story with Pezberry and Cherryford friendship. This is the story of Lima, Ohio (or Rachel's story, featuring Finn, Tina, Artie, Kurt and minor Mr. Schue and Emma), and the next chapter will be the story of New York (or Puck's, Santana's, Brittany's, Mike's and Matt's story with minor Quinn bits).

As this is AU, there are a few things you need to know. Will and Terri got divorced when he refused to take a highly paid accounting job, but he and Emma never had a relationship. Kurt never had a crush on Finn and he wasn't violently bullied. Blaine never existed, and neither did Tina's stutter. New Directions consisted of Finn, Rachel, Tina, Kurt, Artie and the members of the club before Will took over. Oh, and Burt and Carole met in a grocery store; Kurt didn't set them up.

I do not own Glee.

After all those years of slushy attacks and dumpster dives, they're finally finished with high school. After being the bottom of the food chain for so long, they're finally ready to move on to bigger and better things.

She and Finn are leaving for New York in a week and a half – she's ready for Julliard and he's received an apprenticeship with some mechanic that Burt Hummel knows from high school. Tina and Artie will be staying in Ohio, together, because Artie's too used to Lima to move anywhere else and Kurt's moving to LA to do fashion correspondence for a fancy magazine.

Tonight's their last night together as a group and it's a daunting experience. For as long as she can remember, it's been the five of them against the world, especially when Finn got kicked off the football team and was suddenly classified as a full "Gleek".

But tonight, they aren't concentrating on the future. They're concentrating on their friendship, and the music that's held them together for all these years.

The radio is turned up loud and they're all singing along, even Finn, although he's supposed to concentrating on the road. No one minds though – Lima's a quiet town and they're only taking the ten minute route to Mr. Schue's, who has kindly agreed to throw them a graduation party.

It's the kind of perfect moment that just can't be planned.

The rain starts quickly. It's not surprising; it's been raining a lot lately, so none of them think anymore of it.

Kurt does some weird dance move in the back seat, restricted by the seat belt, so she turns around to look at him, before bursting into laughter. Her laughter makes Finn turn around as well, and for a few seconds, the two of them just stare at Kurt, their hands linked over the gear stick.

His eyes are only off the road for a few seconds, but that's enough.

The car hits a puddle of water and careens out of control. She doesn't even realize what's happening until she can't hear the radio anymore. All she can hear is her friends screaming, and the horrible sound of metal tearing.

The car has gone straight into a tree, but it's not finished. The tree slices right through the car, straight down the middle, right where Tina was sitting just a second ago.

"Tina", she yells out, but the metal is still tearing and no one can hear her because they don't reply. Finn's head is slumped over the steering wheel and there's blood.

And Kurt's not singing anymore and she can't hear Artie's laughter and she can't even see Tina anymore, just a large part of tree through the middle of the car.

It gets worse though, because there's metal flying everywhere and it's just too much. There's a dripping sound too, and she realizes quickly that its petrol and oh god, the car is going to explode.

She doesn't stop to think, she just pulls herself out of the car, one agonizing inch at a time until she's away from the car.

When she looks back, she sees the most horrifying sight of her life. The car is almost torn in two with the piece of tree holding them together.

She starts to crawl back to the car because her boyfriend is in there, and her future step-brother-in-law, and her best friend and her best friends boyfriend – her entire life is in that car.

She's just a little too late though, because the car explodes in front of her eyes.

Mr. Schue is the first one on the scene. He saw the explosion from his house, and it makes her feel sick to realize that they were only a couple of hundred metres from their destination.

He wraps his arms around her and cradles her to his chest and she just wants the noise to stop because there's this loud, grating scream in her ears and it's giving her a headache.

It takes her a while to realize that the screaming is coming from her mouth.

An ambulance arrives soon after, its sirens blaring, and they strap her to a gurney. They're saying things about mild burns, and broken bones and a possibility that she may never walk again, and she wishes they'd shut up.

She wants to be back in that car, to tell Finn to keep his eyes on the road, to save them all. When she finds her voice, she orders them to go back for her friends because they are survivors. They've never given up before, and they won't give up now.

The paramedics just look at her and one of them is near tears.

This can't be good.

She's in the hospital for months. They even put her in a medically induced coma for the first few days because of her physical injuries and the emotional grief.

She misses Tina and Artie's joint funeral, and she misses Kurt's memorial service (Burt decides not to do a funeral because there's been too many of those lately).

She even misses Finn's funeral (Carole had to have one because of the amount of people that wanted to come – even the jocks who picked on Finn wanted to be there), and that fact alone makes her throw up three times that day.

And through it all, her dad's are there, promising her that it will get better, and that she'll do great things because she's doing it for all of them now.

She just wants to give up and die.

They tell her that she'll probably never walk again because she broke her back in the accident. They give her a wheelchair that's too much like Artie's, so she refuses to sit in it and spends days on end in bed, eating ice-cream and watching soap operas.

Carole visits her all the time, bringing pie and casserole and pictures and hugs and tears and she just wants Mrs. Hudson to leave because she can't cope with this, not now, not ever.

She had her life all planned out and this was never part of the plan.

She can't cope with something that wasn't part of the plan.

On her wall is a montage of photos of the five of them. There's one of them after their first national win, with their arms linked and huge smiles on their faces, and one of Finn with his arm around her – taken on their one year anniversary.

Her dads put them up while she was in the hospital and she hates it. She's not her own person anymore because Rachel Berry doesn't exist. She's lost herself but that doesn't matter because she's Finn, Kurt, Tina, Artie and she's living for all of them.

She wants to tear down the photos but she can't hurt her dad's like that.

She goes to sleep with their eyes on her, and she hears their screams in her nightmares. She wakes up and their eyes are still on her and she can't breathe with her friends staring at her like that.

She finds herself sneaking out of her bedroom at night (as soon as her dad's are asleep), creeping to the spare bedroom and sleeping in there, and sneaking back to her bedroom before her dad's wake up. (They all pretend that they don't hear the sound of her wheelchair rolling down the hallway every night)

(The nightmares don't stop).

She's so lonely all the time because no one understands. She picks up her phone to call Tina because her best friend always understood.

It rings three times before she remembers that Tina isn't going to pick up her phone. Already crying, she hangs up and dials Kurt, then Artie and finally Finn but none of them answer.

She doesn't want to be the only one left.

She considers suicide, more than once, because it's just so hard to get out of bed in the morning. She sits in the hospital issued wheelchair and stares at the wall all day because the grief is just so much.

She'd be able to cope with it if she'd just lost one person but she's lost four and she's slowly losing her mind.

But, after everything that's happened, she's afraid of blood and her dads are in charge of her medication and there's no way for her to kill herself.

And on the really bad days, she thinks of her dads and Carole and Burt, and Mr and Mrs. Abrams and Mr and Mrs. Cohen-Chang and she can't go through with it because she's all they have left.

(And on the really, really bad days, she wishes they'd just let her die with what little pride she has left).

Her dad's hire a therapist, who comes to the house on Tuesday's and Thursday's. She's a nice enough woman, who shows up on time and always wears a different perfume but she doesn't last long.

She says that she knows it's hard right now because her friends were wonderful people but that's enough for Rachel.

This woman didn't know Finn, Tina, Kurt and Artie. She didn't know that Kurt's favourite movie was "Finding Nemo" or that Finn loved her eyes more than anything else. She didn't know that she and Tina referred to each other as sister, or that Artie had an engagement ring on hold so that he could propose on Tina's birthday (which also happened to be their anniversary).

She doesn't know any of this and she doesn't see them as people. She only knows they existed because their death made national news.

For the first time in weeks, Rachel feels something other than grief. She's ridiculously angry and she orders the therapist to get out.

Her dad's hire a physiotherapist next and he says that it'll be practically impossible for her to walk again.

She looks up at the wall of photos and sees one of Finn smiling at her. She's looking at something in the distance and before the accident, she loved the photo because Finn looks so in love with her.

She vows, right then and there, that she will walk again; for all of them – especially Artie, who never had the chance to relearn how to walk because his injury was so severe.

So she asks (orders) her dad's to find her a physiotherapist who will believe in her.

They smile for the first time in months.

A year after the accident, and they think she's getting better. She's been home for about eight months now, after spending almost four months in the hospital.

Her physiotherapist is still teaching her how to walk and she can now navigate the house on crutches, which makes sneaking to the spare room a lot easier than when she used to do it in the wheelchair.

She doesn't feel better necessarily because she still hears them screaming at night, but she puts on a show for her family.

They think she's getting better until Carole pops in with a letter she'd found in Finn's room, dated a week before the accident. She doesn't want to read it but Carole insists. Finn used to write to his dad, even though he was dead, as a way to feel close to him.

"Carole, I can't do that. They're private letters"

But Carole insists, pressing the page into her hands, before flitting out of the house, instinctively knowing that Rachel will want to be alone when she reads this.

Dad,

This will probably be the last letter I ever write to you. I'm moving to New York with Rach and it feels like my life is finally starting. It's scary but at the same time, kind of perfect. Just like Rachel really.

You would have loved her dad, just like I do.

She talks too much and way too fast but she's so passionate about things that it's cute. She has the voice of an angel and when she sings, the whole world stops turning. Or at least my world does.

I don't know what's going to happen when we get to New York but I know that she'll be by my side through it all. I'm going to marry her dad, I just know it. I've had a ring on hold for months, just like Artie, and I've been paying it off, bit by bit. I won't do it just yet though. I'll wait until she's the lead on a Broadway show and propose to her on stage after the opening night is finished.

It's just so Rachel and she'll have no choice but to say yes.

Wish me luck Dad.

Love, Finn.

She takes to writing letters to her friends. They aren't deep and meaningful because she can't deal with that yet but just meaningless little anecdotes.

She'll reminisce about memories and jokes they shared, and she finds herself smiling more after writing those letters.

Her new therapist, Emma Pillsbury from McKinley High, says that she won't be able to fully move on until she's able to come to terms with the fact that her friends are gone and she's not, but she doesn't care.

She likes the carefree feeling that fills her chest when she writes the notes.

She's never felt anything more painful that trying to relearn how to walk (except, as the voice in the back of her head gleefully reminds her, pulling her body out of the car, inch by agonising inch).

She can't do it and is so close to giving up until one day she succeeds.

It's just one small shaky step, followed by another small shaky step, followed by another small shaky step, until she's made her way to the kitchen.

Her physiotherapist screams in joy and her dads come rushing in (they aren't allowed to watch her because it's too much pressure) with smiles that might just split their faces open.

She smiles too because she can see Finn, Tina, Kurt and Artie in the corner. They're looking at her and smiling and she's never felt anything as strong as this. Her dads start yelling with joy and she tears her eyes away from her friends for just a second so that she can see the excitement on her dad's faces.

The second is all it takes for her friends to disappear and then she's alone again.

(She hates being alone).

She gets the letter from Julliard on the anniversary of their death. It's been two years to the day but that pain in her heart is still there. It was Finn's birthday last week and her father's didn't remember until she threw up over the kitchen sink. They're starting to forget and it's killing her.

Her daddy hovers as she opens the envelope and her eyes fill with tears as she absorbs the words... "Sorry for your loss"... "Sympathetic to the situation"... "Unfortunately, the deferral period is over"... "Accept the position or send in a letter of decline".

Her dad holds her while she cries but neither of them offers any words of comfort. Julliard has been her dream ever since she was seven years old, and she doesn't know how to make this decision – she can barely get out of bed most mornings but she can't turn down Julliard.

(That night, her friends haunt her dreams, begging her not to leave them).

Julliard decides for her. Her parents fly her to New York for her birthday and to see the director of the school. He asks her to perform for him - a second audition of sorts - that all students must go through before enrolling.

Her voice is dull and scratchy, her vocal cords damaged from smoke inhalation. Her performance is passionless, her expression blank as she delivers her monologue. Her dance moves are slow and laborious, her legs unable to keep up with the rest of her body.

The director sits her down at the end of her audition and regretfully tells Rachel what she already knows: she's no longer Julliard material.

Her dad's tell her that everything will be okay, and this time, she thinks it might be... eventually. She flies home; her dad's sitting on either side of her, her mind made up.

She will move to New York.

She wakes up at 6am every morning to study. She reads and analyses texts, practices speaking in the mirror and writes numerous essays. She's slowly learning how to motivate herself, and she's slowly regaining the study skills she's had no need for over the last two years.

She doesn't tell her dad's about the plan until after she receives her acceptance letter. They look shell shocked and her daddy cries but she knows that they're proud of her for finally doing more than lying in bed all day.

She decides to move into the dorms at NYU to save money. Her dad's used most of her college tuition to pay off her medical bills and she knows they can't afford private housing. She's told that her roommate is a girl called Brittany Pierce, a blonde who is conveniently the same age as her.

She receives a letter from Brittany saying that she's really excited about sharing a room. The blonde explains all about her attempts to become a dancer, briefly mentioning the incident that damaged her knee, and then talks about how her best friend San encouraged her to get a degree and teach kids about dance. Brittany seems nice enough and Rachel even writes back to her, explaining that she used to be interested in dance, theatre and singing but now she wants to become a book editor.

(She doesn't mention that this is so she'll lose herself in another world).

The day before she's due to leave, she has a panic attack. She's going to miss her dad's and she won't be able to survive by herself and she's in the middle of unpacking when Carole walks into her room.

She shakes her head and embraces Rachel, who quickly breaks down in her almost-mother's arms.

"Sweetie, I know you're scared but you can do this. You are the bravest, most courageous young woman I've ever met. If anyone can survive this, it's you Rachel. And if things get really tough, we're all just a phone call away", she whispers, waiting until her 'daughter' has stopped crying before releasing her.

Together, they repack Rachel's bags, smiling at the stories Carole tells and memories that the pair discover. When all the bags are packed, Carole stands and hugs Rachel, whispering her goodbyes into the younger girls ear, before pressing a piece of cold metal into her hand.

"What is this?" Rachel asks, her voice breaking in the middle of the sentence, already have sure about what she's holding.

"I was going through Finn's bedroom on the weekend, packing up some of his clothes to donate to charity, and boxing up some of his games, when I found a letter from the jewellery store, saying that he had officially purchased an engagement ring. He wanted you to have it Rachel, so I picked it up, and brought it straight here. It's yours Rachel, and you need to have it for when you move to New York. It's a memento of your past as you move into your future. You'll be fine Rachel, I promise", she whispers, her eyes welling with tears.

(She wants more than ever to cancel her acceptance at NYU and just crawl back into her bed, but she can't because Carole believes in her).

Her flight lands late at night. Her legs are stiff from sitting for such a long time and there's a small imprint in her lip from the continuous biting. The ring swings from the chain hanging around her neck as she stands up, and she tries to ignore the burning pain it leaves on her chest.

The kind gentleman sitting next to her gently hands her her hand language from the overhead department and she makes sure she smiles at him as she walks off the plane. The cold air whips at her face as soon as she makes it out of the airport, and a small smile stretches across her face as she takes in the city lights.

She has no problem catching a taxi to the hotel her father's offered to pay for. She's already checked in over the phone so she grabs the key waiting for her in the afterhour's box and heads straight up to her room.

She falls asleep as soon as her head hits the pillow.

She checks out early the next morning, after calling her dad's and telling them that she's okay. She takes a taxi straight to the NYU campus, finding her dorm room easily, mainly because of the laughter and music drifting through the open door.

As soon as she walks in, there's a squeal before Brittany throws her arms around her for a hug.

"This is going to be so much fun! This is Mike, Santana and Matt. Mike's my boyfriend and he works in a dance studio. He's a really good dancer. Matt's his best friend and he's studying to be a layer, just like San. She's his girlfriend but most of all, she's my best friend. She may seem mean at first but she's like the Grinch. She's mean until someone loves her and then her heart unfreezes and she's really, really nice".

"Wow, easy Britt. Let the girl breath", Mike teases while Santana growls and Matt smiles at the scene in front of him.

"Okay, you look like a decent chick, or at least a lot better than some of the idiots I've seen walking around this place. Now, Britt's my best friend so we're gonna get some things straight. Don't steal her shit; don't leave the room while it looks like a complete dump; don't bring guys home without giving her a chance to make other plans and most importantly, do not let her consume Red Bull, coffee or any other energy drink", Santana explains, listing off the things she's mentioned on her fingers.

"We won't have a problem. None of those things are going to be an issue", she says softly, at the same time Matt tells Santana to give it a rest.

The fiery Latina turns to glare at her boyfriend, but soon laughs when she sees his puppy dog eyes. "Where's Puck?" she asks Matt, her eyes worried. "He said he'd be here for this"

"San, relax. He's not going to go off the rails just because Quinn called him. He's at work and he's going to be okay", Matt says soothingly, attempting to console his girlfriend before turning to face Brittany with a smile. "Let's get you settled in Britt and then we'll take you and Rachel out for celebratory drinks"

The blonde squeals again and her enthusiasm is contagious. Within seconds, Santana, Matt and Mike are all laughing with their friend, and Rachel even forces a smile as Brittany pulls all of them into a group hug.

"This is going to be an amazing year. I just know it", Brittany squeals.

(She wants to agree with Brittany but this small group is so much like her own that it terrifies her. History always repeats itself).

A/N #2: Next up - The Story of New York City