Title: Shine That Spotlight On Me
Word Count: ~400
Rating: all ages
Content Notes: no major archive warnings apply
Pairing/characters: Rachel Berry
Spoilers: Vague for the series. AU-ish.
Summary: The stage is central to Rachel’s life.
Author’s Notes: originally written for the fan_flashworks Stages challenge. Unbeta’d, all mistakes are my own.


Her first memory of the stage is hazy, more an impression than a true memory. She was about three, second from the end, in the white version, not the pink like she’d wanted. The lights were bright, she couldn’t see her dads, but she knew they were there. She did all the steps right; they scooped her up, gave her roses, and took her for ice cream. The stage is forever linked with reward and approval in her mind.

Recitals, performances, auditions, a long succession of stages follows from that initial introduction. Until she finds herself on stage in the high school auditorium with a picnic and the boy of her dreams. They kiss, he bolts; it’s the first time she ever feels alone on the stage.

Two years after their first kiss, she and that boy are alone on the stage again. He kneels, he offers a ring; she hesitates without knowing why. She wants him, she’s always wanted him; she has him, and, with the ring, she will always have him. She looks out from the stage at the dim, empty room, and tells him she needs to think.

She makes a point of getting to school very early the next day, slipping into the auditorium to perch on the edge of the stage, swinging her legs slightly as she thinks. All of her dreams involve the stage, this one as well as bigger, brighter ones. He’s in some, not all, not even most. He’s always waiting just offstage for her; even in her dreams she knows she’ll burn brighter than this town, brighter than him.

She says ‘I’m sorry.’ and offers the ring back.
He tells her to keep it and storms off.

She consoles herself with music. She leaves Ohio in August with his stepbrother; he doesn’t say a word to her directly.

She thinks about him every time she steps on a stage for the first six months she’s in New York. Then, as time, distance, and silence work their magic, she thinks about him less often, and then only as her ‘high school boyfriend.’ She moves on.

Five years later, cleaning out her childhood bedroom, she finds it again. Kurt is still one of her best friends; she could give it to him to return to Finn. She snaps the box shut and packs it with the rest of her things; it’s now a metaphor and metaphors are important, even when they no longer apply.