CHAPTER THIRTEEN |
forever and always
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RACHEL BERRY KNEW from the second she heard Kayla's mezzo-soprano tone that she was going to be someone important to her. Granted, at the time she thought she would be her enemy and for a time, she was. But then she slowly became an acquaintance and then a friend and then something a little more than that but a little less than a girlfriend.
Rachel's heart skipped a beat the first time Kayla ran to her aid after she'd embarrassed herself in front of Finn. Before that moment, with Kayla's arms wrapped around her tightly, she'd never felt anything romantic towards another woman, but there was something about Kayla that she just seemed to be enthralled in. She was safe. Warm. She kept Rachel on her toes and it wasn't long before her eyes were drifting down to Kayla's lips while she was waxing poetic about something Puck told her earlier in the day.
She couldn't exactly pinpoint the moment that she fell in love with Kayla. Mostly it was just a bunch of little moments to make up her big feelings. It was waking up next to her the morning after a sleepover. It was seeing her jumping around in her room to the High School Musical soundtrack and eating lunch with her. It was hearing her laugh and seeing her cry. It was the way Kayla took care of her when Finn died. It was the way she made her believe in love again. And after all the pain Rachel had gone through to finally keep Kayla, they were finally here at their wedding day.
Mostly Rachel was a mess. As her man of honor, Kurt was running around the place trying to square away the last minute details. She was sitting at her vanity with Dalton on her lap as she played with the curly cues of his hair. He was almost two now and he loved his Aunt Rachel.
Lately she'd been thinking about babies a lot. Having Dalton was the worst pain she'd ever felt, but her mind kept going back to Kayla squeezing her hand before she went in for her C-section—and then Kayla hugging her after her surgery—and feeling more safe than she had in her whole life. She remembered Blaine crowding around Kurt after he picked up Dalton and watching their smiles as they cood at their newborn son and she wanted that for her and Kayla too. She knew Kayla would just be the best mom. She'd taken care of all of them for so long and given them more love and support than some of them deserved. There was no way Rachel could have a baby with anybody else.
"Who that?" Dalton's chubby little finger pointed at the photograph of Finn that stayed on her bedroom vanity.
It was the picture of him playing Brad during Rocky Horror, pulling a funny face. It was probably her favorite picture of him in existence and of course Dalton knew that Finn was his uncle in some odd way that a child knows that someone is family, but Finn passed long before Dalton was even thought of and he never knew him. He didn't really recognize him because Kurt still had problems with talking about his brother. Mostly everything their son knew about Finn came from either Rachel or Blaine.
There was still a sadness to thinking about Finn. She loved him with all her heart at one point and in high school she had always imagined that this day would end with her walking down the aisle to him. But fate was a funny thing. No matter how much she loved Finn, a little bit of her heart had always beat just a bit more for Kayla. In her senior year, she managed to mostly divest her feelings for Kayla, but that had more to do with not wanting to hurt her again. Kayla was with Ollie and things with her and Finn were finally working out, so she just let it go. She never forgot, but she tried to move on as best as she could. It was harder to ignore when she realized that as much as leaving Finn at that train station hurt her, it was leaving Kayla behind that was liable to kill her.
"That's your Uncle Finny," she smiles, kissing the child's forehead as she waits for Kurt to return with her wedding dress.
Despite it all, she's been surprisingly calm throughout the whole wedding planning process. She always assumed that she would be a bridezilla. After all, she already started that streak when she was planning her and Finn's wedding, but with this wedding, there was no anxiety. She knew rain or shine, she was going to be Mrs. Garrett-Berry at the end of the day and she couldn't wait for that.
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new directions | glee
Fanfiction"As much as you try to deny it, you know I'm just as talented as you and that scares you." - Kayla Garrett has always been known as the pop singer and Rachel Berry's top competition. Kayla loved music, but she never loved fighting for the spotlight...
