Started my daily ficlets to make the hiatus pass, then decided to keep going with a 2nd cycle, and then a 3rd, 4th, etc through 67th cycle. Now cycle 68!

"Follow the Lights"
Quinn, Rachel, Puck, Finn, Nora (AU!Beth) - Rachel/Puck, Quinn/Finn
Sunshine Girls series
(all series now listed under the communities tab in my profile)

Sitting in that hospital waiting room, Puck knew that there was very little left for him to tell his captive audience about this story they'd been told throughout the day. Certainly, there wasn't much to tell in the next little while. So he decided they should jump ahead, to when things picked up again. The story was picked up, nearly two years later, as he and Rachel and Quinn and Finn were all about to graduate.

X

Quinn would always say how impressed she was about how Nora dealt with this routine of theirs, even more than her four parents did. Her daughter was two years old already, and the 'already' was very important, because it didn't seem possible at all. As far as living went, she would share her time between Quinn's house and Puck's house, with their respective mothers. But then she had her other mother and father. She did not live with them, but it didn't change the fact that, when she went to her mother's house, her other father, Finn, would be there a lot of the time, just as her other mother, Rachel, would be there when she was at her father's house. Even they got confused sometimes, but not Nora; this was perfectly natural to her.

It had taken the four of them much more time to figure things out, to get to a place where everything worked. They weren't sure whether Nora would ever grasp, when she was a baby, that they were all there in her life, as they intended to be, and that they would all be, by blood or by heart, her parents. That was quickly proven wrong, when they'd see how torn up she'd get about any of them leaving her. None of them was spared in caving to stay with her just a little while longer; they couldn't bear to see her cry.

After losing so much sleep over juggling who had Nora when, they had all been summoned and been presented with a schedule Rachel had organized. They had to hold to that schedule, if they expected to give Nora the structure she needed. All three of the others had provided some tweaks here and there, but finally they had agreed, and the schedule had been implemented, with great success. In time, they could even make some changes without so much as batting an eye. They were a well-oiled parenting machine, the four of them together.

Now things were about to change though, as they were bound to. They would all graduate, and before long they would have more than a short drive separating them. Both Quinn and Finn had decided to stay in Lima, the better to look toward making a home together, for Nora, something even more stable than she'd already had. But then Rachel was going to New York, and Puck was going with her. This could pose a problem. They were still working out the details, but it didn't take much for them to already know this was going to get complicated; neither pair was going to want to be apart from their daughter, but they would have to, at least part of the time.

Nora at two years old was as vibrant of a personality as they could expect her to be, being raised as she was by the four of them. She commanded attention like the best of them, just as she gave affection. She was not unfamiliar to a solid tantrum or two, but she did her time, and for the most part she could be said to be a well-behaved child. Others might say she knew how cute she was and that it could get her things, but this was usually said with a smirk.

The time had not been smooth-sailing for any of them, and where it came to Quinn and Finn as a couple, and Rachel and Puck as a couple, there would be some arguments here and there along the way, but they never lasted. They had never been so strong, and they knew at heart they were 'in it for the long haul.'

So it came as no surprise, the day Finn came to drop Nora off at Puck's, when he let it slip that he planned to propose to Quinn. He would never have dreamed about doing this before graduation, but he figured if they were going to be living together soon, maybe this would be the time.

The class of 2012 had graduated, some in a closer call than others, and it was around that time that Will Schuester had come to Quinn and Finn, mentioning that an apartment had opened out in his building, that he'd put in a good word for them, and that if they were serious about moving forward together, then he would do everything he could to help them get that apartment and keep it as long as they needed the help. They were shy to accept it at first, but he wouldn't take no for an answer.

They had gone to visit it, just the two of them, while Nora was with Puck, and when they'd come back to get her, there was a ring on Quinn's finger and a smile on both her face and Finn's.

It was all happening, life, real life in their hands. They'd had some taste of it, they'd had to, as they cared for Nora, but there was always that maternal safety net under them. Before long, they wouldn't have that anymore, it'd just be them. They could believe all they wanted that they were ready and this would not be that big of an adjustment, but deep down they knew exactly what they were getting into. It was the unknown, the unknowable. But they would go, they had to. They'd get knee deep in it and they'd do just as they'd had to do when they'd had to figure out how to be parents. They would lean on each other, remember that they weren't alone, and they would power through. More than anything, they would remember that in the end, they were doing it for that little girl.

THE END

A/N: This is a one-shot ficlet, which means that signing up for story alert will not bring you any alerts.
In the event of a sequel, the story will be separate from this one. And as chapter stories go, they are
always clearly indicated as such [ex: "Days 204-210" in the summary] Thank you!