Title: Taking Chances
Characters/Pairings: Jesse/Rachel, Will/Emma, Tina/Artie; appearances by all New Directions characters, Shelby Corcoran
Rating: PG
Word Count: 3,991
Spoilers: Spoilers for 1x14 and 1x15, but nothing concrete for the rest of the back 9.
Summary: Regionals arrives. For Jesse and Rachel, this will be the culmination of everything: all they've done to each other, all they've sacrificed, and maybe, just maybe, all they might receive once again.
Disclaimer: I own nothing. If I did, Jesse would be a regular, and Jon and Lea would have a duet every single episode.
Author's Note: I've been trying for ages to write a St. Berry fic—ever since Hell-O aired—but nothing has worked. Except this fic. I like where it went with this. I'm especially proud that I gave a certain character some lines, because it seems like the writers have overlooked poor Mike. I sort of fixed that with this fic. Hope you enjoy reading, and please review when you're done? Thanks!

If there was one thing Rachel Berry hated, it was waiting. If she was honest, she thought there was nothing she hated more than waiting, and that was including those times when Mr. Schue gave someone else (namely, Tina and Mercedes) those solos she readily deserved.

Rachel paced back and forth in the small room off the auditorium, arms crossed over her chest. The skirt of her blue dress swished against her legs as she walked, counting off the seconds and the minutes until the judge would enter and tell New Directions that the results were ready.

"Rachel," Santana finally snapped. "Quit with the pacing already. You're giving me a headache."

"Really," Quinn said. "You're going to make my baby come right here if you don't quit it."

Rachel nodded and apologized, sitting down on one of the couches next to Finn. He took her hand, which caused Rachel to shoot him a smile over her curtain of dark hair lying over one shoulder. It still felt weird for Finn to be so—not intimate, exactly, but comfortable with her. It shouldn't feel weird, but it did, and it made no sense. She wanted to be with Finn (of course she did), but she wasn't. They were both single, but neither of them had made that step to be with each other. With no discernible reason why, either.

Rachel let out a tiny sigh, but no one noticed. She closed her eyes, remembering their performance just a few minutes ago, trying to pick up on any tiny flaws. Finn's voice had cracked slightly halfway through their performance, and sometimes, their movements were not perfectly synchronized, but other than that... it was good. Right?

It had to be good enough.

Finally, after what seemed like hours, the door to their room opened. Rachel sat bolt upright, wrenching her hand from Finn's.

"We're ready to announce the results," the judge said. "If you would follow me..."

Rachel was the first one out of the room.

New Directions stood in a clump on one side of the stage. Rachel was in the middle of the group, as she expected, holding the hands of Finn and Quinn on either side of her. Artie was in front of her, Tina hovering nervously beside his chair. Brittany and Santana were behind her, whispering to each other. Kurt and Mercedes had their elbows linked together, leaning close to each other. Matt and Mike were quiet as usual, hovering near the back of the pack. Puck was on his own, slightly to the left of Matt and Mike. And of course, Mr. Schue was in front of them, for once not giving them a pep talk, his eyes trained on the front row of seats, where Miss P was giving him a reassuring smile.

Rachel couldn't help it. Her eyes strayed from her teammates to the center of the stage, where Vocal Adrenaline was congregated. She spotted him at the front of the group, looking confident, speaking quietly to Shelby Corcoran.

Just like that, her chest tightened.

Five weeks later, and she still hadn't gotten over his betrayal.

I trusted him. And he went and—

Rachel shut off that thought. No. Berry, don't even think about it.

There was no use thinking about the past, not when she had come back from his betrayal—spying, lying, that phone call—and made sure New Directions was stronger for all that they had gone through. She had made sure that they didn't let Jesse St. James stop them from being the best they could be.

Now she just had to wait and hope it had been enough, that the judges weren't sucked in by Vocal Adrenaline's far superior moves, and instead focused on their heart and their spirit and—

Rachel closed her eyes.

"Hey," Finn muttered in her ear. "Calm down, all right? We've got this."

Rachel nodded and looked over to the judges. The first, a man with thick, dark hair, stepped forward, brandishing a small envelope in his hands.

"Each performing group tonight exceeded our expectations," he began. "We were all impressed with the progress each group made over the past few months since Sectionals. This progress made it difficult to choose the top three groups, including the first place winner that would advance to Nationals. The competition was stiffer than ever."

Mr. Schue smiled at New Directions and Rachel smiled back. She knew that her vocals certainly carried New Directions to the top. She was one of the main reasons the competition was so stiff this year, and she knew it.

"We will announce the third place winner first," the judge said. "Carrie, if you would."

Carrie, a blonde-haired woman with wide-set blue eyes, stepped forward with a small envelope. She slit it open and read the results.

"And the third place goes to—" Rachel gripped Finn and Quinn's hands tightly—"St. Mary's School for Girls."

A group of schoolgirls—not Catholic, she thought, but some other Christian denomination—stepped forward, squealing, and accepted the small third-place trophy. Their director, a puffy-looking woman dressed in a calf-length red dress, hugged Carrie and then stepped back with her students.

Rachel tried not to grip Finn and Quinn's hands even tighter, clenching her teeth together. This was it. They either had to nab first or second.

If they didn't, Glee club was over.

And she could not entertain that possibility.

"You're cutting off the circulation in my hand," Quinn snapped quietly. "Lighten up, would you?"

Rachel loosened the pressure she was exerting in her grip slightly as another judge, a willowy brunette, stepped forward with another envelope.

"It was difficult to come up with these results," Kathleen began. "We were between two absolutely marvelous groups, but in the end, it was only one vote that pushed this group to second place."

Rachel could hardly dare to hope, but... We have to win. We have to.

We've got this.

She repeated those words in her head like a mantra as Kathleen slit the envelope open and shook the paper out. Kathleen took a breath, licked her lips, and paused.

Finally, she spoke.

"And second place goes to—"

Rachel held her breath. She forgot about her promise not to squeeze Finn and Quinn's hands as she tightened her grip. But this time, Finn and Quinn were both as nervous: they increased their own pressure as they all stared at Kathleen.

This was it. They had to win.

They had to.

"—McKinley High School's New Directions!"

Rachel started to breathe again. It wasn't first place—and she was disappointed, more disappointed that she could say, because that meant that they won—but she would take it. For their first year, and for only having twelve members, they had gone pretty far.

She stepped forward to accept the trophy in front of everyone else in her group. Mr. Schue shook hands with Kathleen, then they stepped back and waited for the announcement they knew was coming. She couldn't deny the rush of satisfaction when the audience failed to quiet for several minutes, screaming and applauding.

The first judge stepped forward with the first envelope when the applause quieted. Rachel saw the members of Vocal Adrenaline shoot each other a triumphant glance.

They knew they were going to win. There was no doubt about it.

"And first place goes to last year's National champions, Vocal Adrenaline!"

Yeah, she expected that. But the sting was still there as Jesse and Shelby stepped forward to accept their first-place trophies and cushy check for the flight to Nationals in Houston. She dropped her eyes as Jesse turned back around and nearly met her gaze.

If only I hadn't let him in, if he hadn't joined New Directions, we might have won.

"Don't let him get to you," Mr. Schue said, putting a hand on Rachel's shoulder. "We did as best as we could. We should be proud."

Rachel smiled. "I am proud."

And she wasn't lying.

Rachel leaned against the wall hours later, sipping a soda through a straw. She stared at the party around her, at all of the glee clubs mingling together. She almost didn't want to come (the chances of running into Jesse were quite strong) but Finn practically begged her to and—well, she couldn't resist those puppy dog eyes.

So here she was, leaning against a wall, as the Regionals party continued. She swirled her straw through her soda, staring into its dark depths.

"Hey," a voice greeted.

Rachel's head snapped up. Her expression hardened as she realized who it was.

"Jesse."

"Rachel," Jesse said. He looked happy, glowing, almost, but there was almost a hesitance in his posture. Something that she had hardly ever seen in him while they were dating. "Um... how are you?"

"I'm fine," Rachel said.

"Good," Jesse said. There was a pause; Rachel turned her head and focused on Tina, sitting in Artie's lap. "Congratulations on second place."

"Thanks," Rachel said. "Congratulations on first. Again."

Rachel saw Jesse nod in her peripheral vision. She didn't say anything more, and neither did Jesse. She watched as Artie wheeled himself and Tina out onto the dance floor, slowly revolving his chair around in circles. Tina laughed, throwing her head back. She kissed Artie on the lips, putting her hands on his shoulders as she leaned in. She glanced around the rest of the room, at Finn talking to Brittany, Quinn scolding Puck for something, and Mr. Schue and Miss P sitting quietly together, holding hands.

She was so engrossed in watching everyone else that she didn't even notice Jesse was still standing there until he spoke again.

"Listen," Jesse suddenly said. Rachel jumped and turned to look at him. "About what happened a few weeks ago..."

"I don't want to hear it," Rachel snapped.

"You don't even know what I'm going to say," Jesse responded.

"I think I can guess," Rachel said. "You're going to say you're sorry. You're going to say that you originally set out to hurt me, but then you started to have feelings for me. You're going to say that you didn't expect for me to have such a pull over you, but you also wanted to win. You were going to tell Shelby that you didn't want to be her pawn anymore, but I listened in at the wrong part of the conversation."

Jesse nodded. "But it's true, Rach."

"I find that hard to believe," Rachel said.

"You shouldn't." Jesse took a step forward, looking down at her, trying to meet her gaze. Rachel kept her focus about an inch over Jesse's left shoulder. "There's no benefit to lying anymore. I've already won Regionals. I'm free."

"So?" Rachel put her soda down on the table beside her. "You'd only be honest with me if you won Regionals? Is that it?"

"No." Jesse sighed. "That's not what I meant."

"That's sure what you said," Rachel shot back. "Listen, Jesse. Just give it up, okay? You chose winning over me. That's fine, I probably would have done the same thing. But don't try winning me back, because it's not going to work."

Rachel didn't give Jesse a chance to respond. She simply turned and walked away. She only stopped long enough to tell Finn she was leaving and not to worry, then stepped out of the party and into the cool air. She took a deep breath and leaned against the side of the building, trying to hold back the something—anger? Sadness?—that coursed through her due to her conversation with Jesse.

She thought she was alone, but it turns out, she wasn't.

"Mike?" Rachel asked, peering at the figure a few feet away from her, leaning against the side of the building. She wondered if she wasn't seeing things. Why wasn't he at the party?

But she definitely wasn't seeing things as Mike looked around and saw her.

"Rachel?" he asked. "What are you doing here?"

"I could ask you the same thing," Rachel said.

Mike shrugged and moved a little closer to her, leaning against the building. "I don't know," he said. "I guess I didn't want to see Vocal Adrenaline preening their feathers. Or those girls from that Catholic school shooting me nasty looks."

"I actually think those girls are Protestant," Rachel couldn't help saying.

Mike glanced at Rachel. "Um, okay," he said. "Why are you here?"

"Same reason," Rachel said. "I had an unfortunate altercation with Jesse St. James, my traitor ex-boyfriend, and I needed to get some air."

Mike nodded. "He was a douche." He paused. "Sorry."

"No, he was." Rachel didn't even bother denying it. "He only got close to me and joined New Directions to get the insider's view on our routines." She couldn't help being bitter as she continued. "He never really cared for me at all, just cared about winning."

"That's got to suck," Mike said.

"It did." Rachel sighed. "I just wonder sometimes. Why people don't seem to like me for me."

"I don't know," Mike said. "I guess... sometimes, you tend to come on a little strong. And Jesse should never have used you like he did. You don't deserve that."

Rachel glanced at Mike. "Thanks."

"You're welcome."

They fell silent, and then Mike pushed himself off the wall. He extended a hand out to Rachel.

"Here, I'll take you back to the hotel," Mike said. "Neither of us really want to stay, and I don't think we'd be missed too much."

Rachel nodded. "We have to tell Mr. Schue we're leaving first."

"Okay."

And Rachel took Mike's hand with a smile.

The rest of the night passed by comfortably. Rachel spent the rest of the evening in the room she shared with Quinn, Santana, and Brittany, reading sheet music and reflecting on their performance at Regionals. She refused to think about Jesse. She refused to think about the expression on his face as he won Regionals for the fourth time in a row or the expression on his face as she walked away.

She had to get over him. He had used her, and for that, she could not forgive him.

But that little voice wouldn't shut up: But you forgave Finn. He used you too. In the bowling alley, in the auditorium... you got over that. Why can't you get over what Jesse did?

"Because what he did was so much worse," Rachel whispered.

She couldn't think about it anymore. She had a long day. That was probably why she was so worked up about Jesse—because she hadn't gotten enough sleep. She was stressed and needed to relax, sleep it off. In the morning, she was sure she'd be fine.

Rachel smiled to herself and reached over to turn out the light. She would think of what to do about Jesse in the morning (as well as celebrate their second-place win).

For now, she needed to get her sleep.

The next morning, Rachel woke up promptly at 7:30 and slipped into a pair of sweats. She grabbed an elastic to hold her hair back, then silently slipped out of her hotel room, and down to the gym on the ground floor. Just because she was technically on break didn't mean she could forsake her strict exercise regime, nor did winning second place excuse her from her thirty minutes on the elliptical.

She had just entered the gym when she ran smack into someone else, causing her to stumble backward. Strong hands steadied her.

"Sorry," Rachel muttered.

"Rachel?"

"Jesse?"

Rachel stepped out of Jesse's hold, wondering when exactly her life had turned into one of those cliched movies where the girl runs into the guy she's been trying so desperately to avoid. She was tempted to keep her eyes trained on the ground, but she wouldn't do that.

She was stronger than that.

"Hey," she said. "What are you doing here?"

"Putting in my three miles on the treadmill," Jesse responded. "You?"

"Thirty minutes on the elliptical." She stepped to the side. "But you're blocking the entrance, so if you could please move, I'd appreciate it."

"I can't," Jesse said.

Rachel sighed. "Can't or won't?"

"Won't," Jesse corrected. He sighed, putting a hand on Rachel's arm. She shrugged it away, ignoring the way his hand felt warm and comforting against her bare skin. "Rachel, we need to talk. Why did you leave the party last night?"

"That answer is quite obvious," Rachel said stiffly. "I felt like you would have tried to get me to forgive you if I stayed. I don't want to forgive you, so I left."

"You don't know the whole story," Jesse said.

"I don't need to know the whole story, Jesse," Rachel said. "I know all I need."

Jesse leaned against the threshold of the gym at this, raising an eyebrow. "I thought I knew a lot about you, Rachel, but I never thought you'd be close-minded," he responded. He tried to meet Rachel's eyes, but Rachel kept her eyes as far away from his own as possible. "Come on, Rachel. I'm not asking you to forgive me. I'm just asking you to hear me out. You listened to that Finn when he begged for your forgiveness, didn't you?" He sighed. "I'm just asking you for the same courtesy."

He had her there.

She did forgive Finn, even though—for all extents and purposes—she shouldn't have. She forgave him for it all, even though he didn't deserve it. She prided herself on her ability to overlook faults in anyone but herself and found it admirable that she was able to forgive those who had hurt her in the past (Finn, Kurt, Mercedes, and Quinn immediately come to mind, along with Santana).

She wondered: If she could forgive all of them, didn't she at least owe Jesse a chance to explain himself?

Rachel sighed and Jesse smiled. He knew he'd won.

"Okay," she said. "I'll give you five minutes to explain yourself. If you cannot explain your motivations in that amount of time, I reserve the right to walk away, and I must demand that you never speak to me again."

Jesse nodded. "Sounds good to me."

He extended a hand out to Rachel—just like Mike did the previous evening—and Rachel hesitated slightly before taking it.

Jesse drove her to a secluded park at the corner of two streets, parking his expensive car by the side of the road. They walked together, silent, before settling together on a bench. Rachel crossed her legs, turned to Jesse, and spoke.

"Your five minutes start now."

"I did start out playing you," Jesse began. "I can't deny that. All I can say is that I didn't expect to fall for you, but I did. It started to get harder to tell Shelby all that I had learned from you." Rachel opened her mouth to speak. "I know, you didn't say anything about the numbers themselves, at least not before I joined New Directions. You did tell me about Finn, though, and you told me that our relationship had to be kept a secret. That told me a multitude of things, not just the obvious."

Rachel nodded. "What else?"

"After that, things started to change," Jesse said. "I did start to fall for you. I knew that you would be something like me, which is why I agreed to Shelby's plan in the first place. I thought that it would be easy to distract you, but I didn't count on you being quite so driven and... dedicated to your team." He smiled, only the slightest quirk of his lips. "So Shelby told me to join New Directions."

"I already know this," Rachel said. She really didn't want to hear the whole story again—how he had just joined New Directions to see their routines, how he had gone up to Carmel every single night and told Shelby what he had learned, and how she had, in the end, overheard him spilling their progress of "Like a Prayer" to the female lead of Vocal Adrenaline six weeks after they started dating. "Your time is running out and I have to say, you're not making it any easier to forgive you."

"That day, you didn't hear the whole story," Jesse said. "You heard me telling Lori about 'Like a Prayer,' but that was the only true thing I had told her. I started to realize that I didn't need to spy on you in order to get ahead. If Vocal Adrenaline, three-time National champion, couldn't beat a twelve-member glee club without cheating, I figured we didn't deserve to win."

Jesse sighed. He reached his hand out, almost as if he wanted to take hers, but Rachel pulled hers away at the last second.

"Look, Rachel," he said. "I've told you all I can. All I can really say now is that we didn't use anything of what you told me in order to win. I'm sorry for what happened, and I hope that you can forgive me."

"You liked me," she breathed.

Jesse couldn't help it, it seemed, as he let out a laugh. "That's what I just got done saying," he said. "I couldn't help but like you."

"I couldn't help but like you either, and that's what got us into this unfortunate predicament," Rachel said.

She almost continued—I want to forgive you—but she paused. It wasn't a lie, she did want to, but it wasn't as simple as that anymore. Everyone knew about Jesse-gate, as they called it, and she knew that no one would forgive her if she took Jesse back.

"I want to forgive you," she finally did say, "but it's not that simple."

"It can be."

"For you, maybe," Rachel said. "You're leaving Vocal Adrenaline this year anyway for UCLA." And there was a completely different issue. "Vocal Adrenaline would forgive you for fraternizing with the enemy because you won Regionals, but everyone on my team wouldn't." She tried not to meet his eyes, but she did anyway. "Everyone on my team still thinks of you as a traitor. If I got back together with you, I would be ostracized more than I already am."

"Maybe we could cross that bridge when we come to it," Jesse offered. This time, Rachel let him take her hand. "For now, maybe we could just try."

Rachel knew that he was winning her over again with his charm. She already felt more comfortable with him than she had ever felt with Finn, or even with Puck the brief time they dated. She did not want to sacrifice her hopes of being a star to be with Jesse, but he wasn't asking her for that.

He was just asking for a second chance.

And she wouldn't be Rachel Berry if she didn't just go for it.

"We can try again," Rachel said. "We'll see what happens when I tell my teammates but for now, I'm giving you a second chance."

Jesse smiled. "That's all I'm asking for."

In response, Rachel just smiled, threaded her free hand through his curly dark hair, and brought his lips down to hers.

(She hoped that she didn't end up regretting this, but deep down, she knew she wouldn't. Not this time.)