Summary: This is the story of how Rachel, finding herself alone and unloved by her companions and recalling her mother's abandonment, decides to take matters into her own hands. Foreseeing her impending future stardom and solitude, she searches for comfort in the possibility of maternity. She desires to do what her mother never did for her and now that the woman is dead, she eagerly takes her place as Beth's mother.

A/N: What follow is both the prologue and an extended summary. Depending on what you my dear readers think I shall publish it. The browser for the first four chapters is complete. If I get enough positive reviews I shall start with the first chapter which should be posted before two weeks have passed.

To love and hate so unconditionally

Prologue

Rachel is a soon to be Nyada graduate. She has played the lead role in many Nyada plays and has already secured her first lead role in a Broadway show. Rachel knows how this is going to go. She will rise as predicted, and as foreseen she will be alone at the top. With female companions that know not the meaning of friendship and male leads that capture her eye but not her heart, Rachel makes one last attempt to obtain unconditional love; this time, in the warm embrace of a child.

Quinn often remembers Rachel's (or her father's) wisest words: "You can't make new old friends". She agreed, but she also concurred that making "new old enemies" is even harder. She left everything behind, broke every link, except a train pass to New York; she should have broken that too. Life has not been too sunny on her side. At less of a year to graduate she knows she has to work fast and find herself a job, whichever this may be. Her initial plan was to move to L.A. soon after graduation but life has turned hard and with no place to stay and no money for living expenses that's a far away dream for her at the moment. New York is a much better option. The train pass will secure her ride to New York, where her friend Rachel will accommodate her in her apartment, especially now that Kurt has moved out. Her acting training was in drama, but surely she can find some related work in the city of the Arts. Seemed like a good plan…until Rachel opened the door.

Having friends is hard, especially when you know you can't slap them to your heart's content. However, hiding her true self has never been a problem for her. Behind phony pleasantries and plastic smiles Santana keeps her job at a supposedly high ranked bar that doesn't seem to attract any music managers. It's been a few years and she's still faking her enjoyment of her companions in an effort to keep connections. They get her nowhere but she prefers them to people who actually know her. Unless they are conniving music managers that can finally get her a record deal. Santana once said she would do anything to get famous; it might be time to retake one more trait from her past.

In this day and age, life is hard for everyone. Not that Jesse St. James cares about anyone besides himself. Nyada was not good to him, they did not appreciate his talent and neither had Broadway. But he knew he was too good to play the good High School choir director assistant for too long. New York was his home. He would make it so by charisma or force. Becoming a manager had worked wonders for his list of connections. You would be surprise what kind of people were interested in the arts, especially music. Jesse certainly was, but he was even more surprise to find such an easy target for his plan. She was as beautiful as he remembered, and he could see under all the false pretense that she was still the same girl he saw that one year in Lima's McKinley High School: sassy, self-assured and overly eager. He knew what she wanted, and he would give it to her, right after he got what he wanted. Jesse had to rise after all; there was a star he needed to reach.

To forget yourself in others is easy, to forget yourself in yourself is better. But either way, how can you say that you know…anything, if you have forgotten everything? Flunking that year had repercussions in her self-steam. She tried to push it off with binge eating, blaming her ex-girlfriend turned friend, getting a new friend turned boyfriend, and that last one seemed to have worked for a while. If nothing else, it got her on track. She no longer had that boyfriend, although she more or less kept the friend, but she had her confidence back and this time it had a bonus: a focused brain. So she graduated and concentrated on herself. New York was the place to go, not for anyone, but for herself. Her dancing jumped her from her second year at Julliard to a Broadway play, not that it mattered to her. She just wanted to dance. Brittany spent her hours improving her techniques; she was the axis of her world, until a new contract reunited two forgotten friends.

He just wanted to find his place in the world, like all of his friends had. Yet, even with his current job as a New York police officer he still didn't feel like he fitted in. He often wondered if he should have accepted the offer to be Pucks' partner for his pool cleaning business. Or perhaps he could have worked for Burt as his assistant mechanic. But none of that seemed appealing to him. So after the whole fiasco with Rachel, and the disaster he made in McKinley he decided to use his military experience (as little as that may be) in a related field. Being a policeman was honorable, or so Finn thought. It also paid the rent, and maybe in a few years, Rachel would see him as a man that could take the place of whatever guy was by her side at the moment.

A/N: Thank you for reading and please review!