Trigger warning. That is the last time I am going to write that (for this fic). I will miss this story. I am going to put all author's notes up here so not to ruin the ending with an interruption about something entirely random (although no rant today).

I really really love getting all your reviews and feedback, it literally gets me out of bed in the morning. I post the night before so I can wake up to emails on my phone, and it's reading them that wakes me up enough to drag myself out of bed and to school. Otherwise I'd just fall asleep again and never make it in. Thanks so much for all the alerts, reviews etc throughout this story, one more for the end of the road?

Special thanks to noro, theluckyclover, umpadee, sparkleinthesun, Angel Eyed Vampire, Dimondeyes, laylita83, cutelikemomiji, facingfuture, Taralynnn and gleek30 for reviewing on several occasions, and anyone else who has read, reviewed, favourited and read this story until the end. Writing is my crack and you guys are my dealers.

Oh, and try not to kill me too much.

A year is long enough have a baby and fall into motherhood, it is long enough to get a divorce and end up with kids on weekends, it's long enough to drop out of school and find a job working at a fast food restaurant to make ends meet, it's long enough to have someone else's baby for them and face the heart breaking process of giving up the child that has gone with you everywhere for nine months, it is long enough to discover your illness and have it take you to an early grave, it's long enough to move out, get a job and start to make your own way in life. But for Rachel, it was not long enough to escape from the cage.

One month after she had been set up with a therapist she did not want, she had her diagnosis. Atypical depression, characterised by the ability to feel a positive mood, differentiating it from major depression. It had all made sense then, and in some ways, she had been relieved. Having an actual medical problem had meant she wasn't just the weak, pathetic girl unwanted by her own mother. She had a reason for being the way she was, and somehow, it eased off her self hatred by the smallest fraction.

But even doctors did not have a magical cure. Her case was not severe enough for medication, they said, she ought to just continue with her therapy and ensure she had a strong support system to get her through the worst moods. After hearing that, Rachel began to believe it would be okay. She knew she had that, she had Kurt, Finn and the rest of the glee club. She even had Miss Pillsbury if she really needed someone more knowledgeable to talk to during the day. Her fathers, when they were in the right mood.

After having an actual official diagnosis, they had started to avoid her less and less. Hiram was relieved there was something that could be done, and once he knew he wasn't going to have to deal with her all alone, he was willing to occasionally breach a topic more heavy that her class work assignments. Leroy reluctantly admitted that perhaps it had not been a reckless attention stunt and had started to ask her how her day went, come and visit Rachel in her room to see if she needed any help with homework, or sometimes, just for a chat.

Perhaps most surprisingly of all, for the first time in her life, Rachel had her mother. Not just on a loan for a day or two before she decided she'd had enough and a relationship with her teenage daughter was too much effort to bother with, but a real, lasting relationship. Admittedly, it was not everything Rachel had dreamed of. It didn't make all the hurt go away, or fill up the emptiness inside as she had once told Jesse was what having a mother would mean to her. Nothing could truly do that, but Shelby helped.

Shelby helped probably more than she would ever know, because it was the reluctant, not thought over promise that Rachel had agreed to only to prevent another argument that was stopping her doing what she most wanted to do. The promise had been vague and unsure, she had known, even as she was agreeing to it, that she was going to live to regret it, but she had made it all the same, and one thing she had never done was go back on a promise.

Even in the months she had hid her unhappiness from the world, she had never once made any promises. She hadn't told Kurt the stitches were needed because of an accident with a fan, but she had never promised. She had told whoever asked that she was fine, happy even, but she had never promised. She had said she didn't care about what Neanderthal bullies thought of her talent, personality or looks, but she had never promised. Never once in her life had Rachel made a promise she did not keep, and she did not intend for a broken one to be her last act.

That wasn't to say she didn't try and find her way around it as best as she could. She did not deliberately step out in front of cars, but she didn't always look either. She didn't climb to the top of a multi story building and threaten to throw herself off, but she wasn't always cautious of the edge. She didn't swallow a handful of pills from the cupboard in the kitchen, but she wasn't careful with her dosage. She did not intentionally walk alone in the dead of night, but she no longer carried a rape whistle everywhere she ventured. She didn't want to kill herself, but that didn't mean Rachel didn't want to die.

It was not like she hadn't tried. In the first few months, she had been hopeful. She had, for the first time in her life, both friends and family by her side. All the friends and family she could have ever hoped for and more, she had Finn, who was something less than a lover, but something more than a friend. She had her dreams, which the closer she got to college, didn't seem so far off and impossible after all. She had everything she had ever wanted, except happiness.

No matter how hard she tried, no matter how many times she smiled or how long she laughed for, no matter how many date nights she went on with Kurt and performing competitions she won or solos she earned, the darkness just wouldn't shift. It didn't go away the first time she called Shelby 'mom' and had the name accepted rather than told that wasn't the relationship they had. It had not shifted when she had shared a kiss with Finn when he had come knocking on her door late at night and dragged her outside to watch the snow, because, in his words, it was 'like all big, but slow and stuff.' It had not even shifted when the glee club had banded together and sung a group number of Mariah Carey's 'Hero', dedicated to her.

Those things had been sweet, they had lifted her mood for hours, days even. They had given her a reason to smile on the bad days, but what she dreaded was that the bad days still came. No matter how much sweet and how many happy moments she had in her life, the cage was still there, and it was growing smaller and smaller with each day. It had not been long before the sweet moments stopped coming, not because everyone had given up, but because she could no longer recognise them. They no longer burned bright enough through the blackness.

Everyone was trying so hard, even Quinn and Santana had grudingly joined her 'army', although that was as far as their olive branch stretched. The others were so kind to her, so supportive and willing to have a phone conversation until two in the morning if she was feeling dangerously low, that Rachel did not have the heart to tell them. The weeks had turned into months, and eventually, she had stopped doing those things. She no longer called Kurt for an extra 'date night' when she felt the clouds beginning to creep over her shoulders, she no longer talked Mercedes ear off until past midnight and watched Funny Girl with Shelby so many times they could recite the script without the movie running in the background.

Rachel had stopped doing those things, and after a while, they had stopped offering. All she had to do was smile and put on her 'good day' face, and they eventually stopped asking her if it was fake. People had began to let their guard down, they stopped treating her as if she were a rag doll, shabby and falling apart at the seams. Soon, a 'good day' became what was expected of her, and she did not have the energy, or the heart, to correct them.

It had taken a while for her to trust her friends. She had always had Kurt, but the others had shunned her, they had pulled her down and almost every member of the Glee Club was a mark on her skin. She could tell by the guilt pressed deeply into their eyes that they knew. They remembered every name they had ever called her, every time they'd told her to keep her overly large mouth shut, every time they had tore the one thing she believed in to shreds. They remembered, and they did everything they could to make up for them.

Even with the support of more friends than she'd had in her life, the cuts had began to collect again. More carefully that time around. They knew to check her legs now, and her stomach. Her arms were too hard to hide, so she had stared on her hips instead. Just one at a time, no words, often having to cross over old scars because there was little fresh canvas to paint on. Those would be hidden by her underwear, and no one ever went as far as asking her to take that off.

It meant they were happy again. The people who had tried so hard to make her happy could smile as they woke up in the morning without the burden of what mood she was going to be in that day, and she couldn't take that away from them, not again. Rachel felt so guilty for lying to the people who had shown they cared about her, but she would feel even worse to drag them down again, because she knew that time, they would not be so willing. They'd be tired, bored, fed up. Sick of her. They'd never say so of course, but they'd be wishing she would just get out of their lives. So she tried to. She tried to leave them without hurting them, but that was going to be impossible.

Rachel already knew she could not break her promise, however unenthusiastically she had agreed. So she had to carry on. She had to go through her day to day life, turn her assignments in on time, accept solos, stand at the front and sing rather than sway in the background, she had to smile at jokes, go along with outings and engage in conversation, but they did not act as distractions. Those things just made everything so hard, because all she wanted to do was stay in her bedroom, alone and without a thing to face in the world.

Sometimes, Rachel would plug her i-pod into her ears to block out the world, it was the perfect excuse not to talk to anyone without them guessing something was wrong. Sometimes, she would take all of her piled up homework and spend one evening completing every piece she could scrounge, just so there was something to fill her up other than the agonising emptiness that resided inside her most of every day. She also took to teaching herself to play the piano. She'd stay for an hour after school every day and use Brad's, something she gathered he wasn't very happy with, but could do little about. She also sensed that a part of him didn't want to stop her. He sometimes gave Rachel the faint impression that he knew just why she was there.

Few people noticed Rachel's deterioration. If she snapped back at them, was a little too quiet or didn't fight quite as hard for a solo as the Rachel they knew would have done, they would sidle up to her as soon as the opportunity arose and insist on a spontaneous outing. They would assume it was just part of her depression, because they all knew it was something that would never completely go away. She'd told them that from the start, but the carefully crafted mask that she had acquired through years of practice did its job well enough. They had no idea just how much her illness still lingered, the words it whispered.

But sometimes, in fleeting moments, Rachel was sure her mother knew. The parting hugs they shared grew longer, Shelby's arms growing tighter around her each time as if it was the last time they were going to meet. Other times, she would catch Shelby looking at her. Not saying anything, just looking, curiously, as if she were trying to figure out her smile. Rachel was always careful to continue with what she was doing, just as she had been doing it, but something in her mother's stare told her she knew more than Rachel was letting on to.

It was during one night when the hurt was at its most soul consuming that Rachel decided to go for a walk. She had no particular destination, and neither did she care that it was 12.30 in the morning, she just needed to be somewhere than laying in her bed, feeling the pain press so heavily upon everything in her body that it felt as if she were quite literally breaking. It hurt so much she could barely breathe, and she was sure if it did not go away soon, she would die. Right there and then. So she left the warm comfort of her bed and ventured into the biting winter weather.

The cold hit her as soon as she stepped outside, and she wished she had cared enough to bring a jacket. Not that it really mattered, even the icy snowflakes could not hurt as much as the glass lodged in her chest. She trudged through the snow, realising too late she was still wearing her slippers. Snow worked its way into them, soaking through her socks and between her toes, onto the souls of her feet, almost freezing them in place. But determined to rid herself of the tearing agony writhing through her, Rachel carried on walking.

She did not notice where she was walking, just that no matter how far she went, she did not get any warmer. Rachel plunged her hands into her dressing gown pockets and felt something cold and heavy resting in the bottom. Curious, she pulled it out and a sudden light shone through the darkness from the screen of her phone. She had dropped it in there after she had text Kurt goodnight. The screen flashed with an unread message, which Rachel soon saw was from Brittany. Curious, she pressed read. They had not spoken a lot in the past year, but the few exchanges that had happened had been pleasant. Brittany's childish innocence softened the hurt around the edges.

Kurt says your a princess, and princess should smile even when theyre sad.

Despite the snow, Rachel felt a warm glow radiate inside her as the smile Brittany wanted danced across her lips without being forced. The hurt had not gone, but just for a moment, it subsided enough so she could stop shivering, she could stand still in the cold country road that she had ended up in and just look forward to the next moment in time when she could feel like not all was wrong with the world. It was strange how something so small from someone she barely spoke to could help in a way even those closest to her could not, but in that moment Rachel felt a bead of love attach itself to Brittany from her, and she knew it would never go away.

Rachel did not see the car that hit her, but when it did, speeding down the apparently deserted road in the small hours of the morning, it was not how she may have expected. If she had ever thought about it, she would have come to the conclusion that it would hurt, but she didn't feel anything other than her body rolling onto the bonnet and then a soft thump as she fell again into the snow several feet away. She would have thought the driver would screech to a halt and run to see if she was okay, but she lay there in the snow and no one came. It didn't hurt, but Rachel knew she was dying.

She knew because it didn't hurt. The glass was no longer lodged in her heart, the pain no longer twisted her insides, the cold weight had fallen from her shoulders and the smile still lingered on her lips. She was going to die, but she didn't want die alone. Rachel reached for her phone that had fallen not far from herself. She had automatically wrapped her fingers all the more tightly around it when the car had hit, if just for something to hold on to.

The movement was painless, but her breath was coming out shorter, less evenly. She didn't want to die alone. There were so many people she could share her last moments with. Far more than she would ever have hoped for. Her dads, Mercedes, Brittany, Noah, Shelby, Kurt, Finn. Even Tina, Mike or Sam. At a time when she had been at her worst, all of her friends had taken to leaving their phones on at night and by their bedside. She just hoped it wasn't a habit they had fallen out of.

With a quick decision, Rachel pressed call, and held the phone loosely to her ear. Her arm didn't seem to be working properly. She wasn't in any pain, but it was weak, it wouldn't do what she wanted it to. But she didn't want to die alone.

Kurt picked up on the seventh ring, just as Rachel was thinking she may have to die alone after all. His voice crackled over the phone, perhaps because her phone was damp from the snow, perhaps because she was in the middle of nowhere, or maybe it was just because it was early in the morning.

"Rachel?" He croaked, the worry clear in his voice from the use of her real name. It wasn't surprising, it was past one in the morning. "What's wrong?" Rachel relaxed, even thought she knew she was dying. She wasn't going to die alone.

"I-I just didn't want to be alone," she admitted, and when Kurt next spoke, it was with a mixture of relief that nothing serious seemed to have happened, but worry because she was hurting.

"You'll never be alone Princess." Rachel smiled at the nickname, the words of Brittany's text still drifting around her mind. It wasn't so bad really, to die. There was no pain in death, and she could close her eyes knowing she had not broken her promise to her mom.

"Kurt?"

"Yes sweetie?"

"Do you think Finn knows I came alive again when he kissed me?"

Finn had been hurt when she broke away, Rachel had seen it in his eyes, felt it in his posture. She had felt him almost like their hearts were connected, and it had broken hers too when she whispered goodnight and went back inside, but kissing him had been too much too soon. She wasn't ready to go back there with him, not when she was still lying every day. But it had been one of the best moments in all she could remember. Her illness crippled her, it made the world so dark and twisted, but kissing Finn had made her feel so normal again, complete. It had filled up the emptiness inside and made all the hurt go away. Rachel just hoped he knew that.

"I'm sure he does."

"Do you think you could tell him for me?"

"Tell him yourself."

"Please?"

Rachel heard the hitch of fear in Kurt's voice when he said that. It was full of unspoken questions. Why is it so important that he knows? Why can't you tell him yourself? But he didn't ask any of that.

"I love you."

"You too, Princess."

That time, there was no mistaking Kurt's fear. His voice shook as he replied, but Rachel was so calm, so soft, that it was near impossible to think the worst. That was the best bit about dying. The peace. It wasn't hectic and agonising like it always was in movies. It was just there, a part of life that she had to face.

"Stay on the phone," Rachel whispered, before letting her arm drop, the phone falling away from where it was pressed to her ear. But it was still close enough so she could hear the sound of Kurt's breathing, she could hear the soft tone of his reply, even if she couldn't make out what he said, and she knew she was not going to die alone.

One last coherent thought floated through Rachel's head as she lay in the soft, undamaged snow and gazed up at the stars.

Princesses should smile.