A/N Just a random thought that came to me. Please R&R.
Youth, you are not yet dead -
nor are your memories.
If you knocked on my door
my heart would open it for you.
-Marcello, La Boheme
Milk. Bread. Cereal.
The little blonde girl reaches hopefully for the lucky charms but Quinn bats her away with a playful 'Can't have Auntie Britt accusing you of eating Ruriadh's cousins again, can we?'
The girl pouts – Beth's pout and her mother blinks in shock. There are moments when Issy appears the clone of Beth and it's... unsettling. Makes her miss her first daughter with fresh rawness, like peeling off tender new skin.
She hastily pushes the trolley on, squeezing her eyes together firmly. Issy mustn't see her like this.
Her daughter thankfully doesn't notice the change and instead tries to not-so-sneakily slip the gigantic box of marshmallow cereal into the cart. Quinn tries to put on a stern face but catches Issy's eye out of the corner of her own and the two burst into giggles.
Quinn sighs before sweeping up the five-year-old and rubbing their noses together so Issy crinkles her face and giggles again. 'Mommy!' she reprimands, having hit the age where she tries to pretend all these games are beneath her full five-year-old dignity.
Quinn growls, baring her teeth and pretending to bite the girl's nose before gently kissing it instead as she squirms to be put down. 'C'mon, little lion cub', she says, releasing her to replace the stolen lucky charms. She battles with herself for a moment before picking up a chocolate cereal as a compromise. Hell, if Issy got fat she'd take her to the damn park.
She turns around to find the girl had disappeared. There's the obligatory second of totally irrational panic before she spots her daughter crouched behind the trolley, clearly thinking herself invisible.
She suppresses a smile and plays along. 'Gee, where could my naughty lion cub have got to?' she ponders aloud. Her façade of ignorance nearly crumbles when her daughter giggles uncontrollably.
'What was that?' she asks, rolling her eyes at herself even as she does so. What was this, a freakin' panto?
Another giggle, then Issy leaps out from behind the trolley and throws herself at her mother's legs. 'RAWR! I'm a hungry lion cub', she squeals.
Quinn clutches her heart and pretends to fall to the ground, laughing happily even as she thinks the lord that no one else she knows would frequent the grocery-store at this insanely early hour of the morning.
This happy thought is shattered by an amused chuckle and a warm voice exclaiming 'Not TWO lions! We're all doomed!'
She looks up, but she already knows who it is. That voice...
Brown eyes smile down at her. 'Rachel' she breathes.
'Hello Quinn'.
Quinn scrambles to her feet, pulling her daughter up with her and self-consciously running her hands through her tousled locks.
There is a moment of simply looking at one another – taking in the newly forming creases around Quinn's eyes and the covered-over bags under Rachel's.
Issy takes a bold step towards the stranger and sticks her hand out. 'I'm Issy', she informs, primly; a little stand-offish with this intruder of their game.
Rachel swallows a laugh and sees Quinn fondly roll her eyes at her daughter's antics. At times like this Quinn can really see her husband's inheritance in the girl.
Rachel solemnly shakes the offered hand before looking round, faux-covertly, and stage-whispering 'I think you lions should get a secret hand-shake, like, with paws', she suggests seriously.
The girl's eyes light up instantly and she looks at her hand, forming a funny crooked shape with her 5 fingers before offering it again.
Rachel imitates her and the two share the weirdest darn hand-shake Quinn has ever seen. And she was in some weird college-groups...
'I'm Rachel Berry', the woman tells the little lion cub. 'I knew your mum in...'
'High School', Issy finishes, matter-of-factly. 'I know. She tells me every time you're on TV. And when we listen to your CDs, and when...'
'Okay honey', Quinn says, grimacing, embarrassed.
Rachel looks back up at her. 'Does she?'
'Yes', Beth continues blithely. She told me all about how you helped her with her singing and how she taught you piano. She's teaching me now, I can play three blind mice!' Issy announces with pride. Rachel makes the appropriate impressed noise. 'Actually, I always wanted to meet you. She talks about you a lot', she says, as if she's only just noticed.
Rachel reaches desperately again for Quinn's eyes but the blonde looks determinedly away. 'I talk about her a lot too', she says quietly, looking back to Issy, though now she can feel Quinn examining her face.
Issy just nods as if to say 'duh- my mum is the most important person ever'. A sentiment with which Rachel would have to agree.
Quinn seems to come to her senses in the momentary silence and turns to her daughter. 'Honey, can you run and get me those chocolate chips? I think we will make those cookies after all'.
Issy nods and does that half-run, half-skip kids do when the bubbliness comes bursting out of them.
'You look as beautiful as ever, my lovely lion', Rachel tells her, softly; half-teasing, half-serious. 'And you're daughter's heading the same way'.
Quinn flushes a little and scuffs her trainers together.
'So, New York City, huh?' Rachel continues.
'Yeah, John got a transfer so...'
'I heard'.
'Oh'.
'Must be odd, living with your old professor', Rachel remarks desperately, before a silence can fall and drag out of her everything she doesn't want to say.
Quinn sticks her hands in her back-pockets and rocks on her feet for a moment, pursing her lips. 'Guess it was at first. Almost like someone else's life. But he's working or out most of the time anyway'. She shrugs.
Rachel gives a twitch of her lips in sad understanding. Even after everything, Quinn Fabray ended up settling. For the house, from fear, for her daughter.
Clearing her throat, the blonde finally allows her eyes to meet Rachel's. 'I...' she begins, creasing her brow in frustration at her own inexpression. 'I wish it could have gone differently'.
Rachel nodded, and, looking away to break the oppressively intense moment, shrugs; though every fibre in her being strains for her to grab the girl and show her how much she wishes that too. 'You wanted to protect Issy', she says simply. Swallow. Eyes meet again. 'I love you more for it'.
Quinn feels the salt nudging the corners of her eyes, asking permission to wash away the five Rachel-less years. The afternoon in Yale when she had had to tell Rachel she was pregnant, again, the girl had offered her everything. Broadway, her degree, her future. To quit everything for their fledgeling relationship and a child that wasn't even hers.
Quinn couldn't, wouldn't take it. Had refused, and instead taken John – her psych professor. She could not help but think his name with bitterness. Despite every almost-escape her upbringing won and she had given up her life at twenty-two.
And Rachel?
She'd taken Broadway by storm as Quinn had always known she would. The youngest EGOT winner in history, performing to sold-out audiences wherever she went.
Quinn hadn't seen her in person since she'd got tickets for Rachel's début, she seven-months pregnant.
By the time she left, she knew she'd made the right decision in releasing Rachel for this.
And now here she was. Beautiful and blooming as ever while Quinn was... well, a fast-aging mother and wife.
'Rachel, I...' she tries once more, but what can she say. What can anyone say to the one they love when that is the one thing they cannot allow to pass their lips. It overtakes every other thought, every word, 'til the only possible thing left to tumble out is the simple confession: I love you.
Rachel takes her hand. 'You looked after me, Quinn' she says. 'Now let me look after you'.
Quinn hardly dares to look up, disbelieving.
She opens her mouth but nothing comes out.
Rachel takes the other hand and they stand, face to face, in the cereal-aisle at 6am on a Saturday; a little brave, a lot scared.
'Come back', Rachel asks.
The words leave her mouth and skip lightly across the dust-particles in the air until Quinn feels dizzy. She thinks of John, but as Rachel continues to look, steadily, pleadingly at her; she sees herself in a few months time in a different apartment, frying pancakes while Rachel and Issy giggle madly at some silly dinner-table game they've made up.
Because Rachel has always been the 'absent-father' in Issy's life, the parent the girl longs to meet. It wouldn't be breaking a family so much as reuniting one that should never, ever have separated.
'Come back', Rachel repeats.
It won't click instantly, they're both old enough to know that. In fact, it's going to be a little messy at first. And weird to find themselves such strangers to each other again. And yet somehow knowing, as they always had done, everything important.
But it is an offer to start again and this time make a go of it. An offer of grocery-shopping together every Saturday and of arguing over whose turn it is to pick the music in the car on the way. An offer of a life.
With one impossibly hesitant meeting of lips, Quinn accepts.
She is home.
A/N Review?