Disclaimer: Though I wish at 11:11 every day and night, I still don't own Glee =(
Noah
Matt kept him updated on how Rachel was doing. He had held on to hope for as long as she stayed in the townhouse they'd bought together and when Mike told him he was helping her move he'd gone to the dark place. It still made him laugh to call it that. It was a bitter laugh without a hint of joy but a laugh was a laugh. It was strange to move back to Lima, but New York was her city and he'd done enough damage to consider staying there. His mother hadn't spoken to him the first few weeks. He didn't blame her, he had stopped thinking because even he didn't want to speak to him.
How he'd ended up at the synagogue was a mystery. But the Rabi was sitting with the children telling them the story of Noah and the ark and he thought for the first time that he had no right to posses the name of such a man. He listened to the story of perseverance and rebirth, love, faith and healing and he prayed for the first time in months. He prayed for Rachel; that she might be healed and move on from what he'd done to her. He prayed that their friends would be there for her. He prayed that should they ever meet again he would have the strength to resist the urge to hold her and do nothing to jeopardize the life she would have made. He didn't waste his breath praying for forgiveness. He was beyond the point of no return and if he were Christian, he was sure he'd be going to hell in a hand basket.
Oddly enough his mom starts talking to him on Rachel's birthday. He's sure it has something to do with the fact that he woke up screaming with a fever and cold sweats. He stares into her eyes and sees the pain behind her tears as she holds him against her chest rocking them back and forth. He's thirty years old, his mother is holding him like a baby and all he can think of is that he seems to only bring pain to the women who love him. If he was any kind of man he would leave before he could do anymore damage, but he's not a man, not even a boy. So he stays in the warm arms that surround him, ignoring the look in his mother's eyes and wills his heart to keep beating.
Quinn shows up a few months later, says she'd been looking for him and felt like an idiot for not thinking he would be at his mother's house. He doesn't think she was an idiot. He'd come to Lima because he was sure people wouldn't think to look for him there. He wonders why she came because it's not to spend a week at his house making small talk and eating pizza. She leaves without ever telling him but she starts calling, emailing, and visiting on weekends. She's the reason he starts shaving again, the reason he started caring about more than just not dying. He needed someone's help and Quinn was the only person who wanted the job.
They never talk about Rachel, he thinks it has something to do with the fact that he punched a hole in the wall when she mentioned a date with some lawyer. A year goes by and he decides that since he isn't going to die he might as well try living again.
Rachel
They'd dragged her to the doctor's two weeks after he left. She didn't need some jackass with a PhD to tell her that she wasn't taking care of herself. She didn't need him to sit her down and tell her about all the damage she was doing to her body by keeping it all in. And she would not sit on some couch pouring her soul out to a lady that didn't know or care that her heart was in a shredder and her will to live was basically nonexistent.
He'd left a few of his clothes in the laundry room and she'd worn them until they had started to smell more like her than him. She had seriously thought about buying his cologne but that was too pathetic… plus she couldn't remember what it was called. She started eating again, wasn't much but it was a start. She'd lost too much weight and Kurt had refused to let her buy new clothes. So it was either fit into her old ones or walk around looking anorexic.
They had no idea where he was. The boys still talked to him but he won't tell them where he's been staying. She thinks it`s because he thinks she'll chase after him. She tells them to back off, if Noah wanted a clean break she'd give him one. Quinn disappears for a week, she doesn't ask her where she's been because she can smell him on her. She knows whenever she's seen him because she changes her clothes before hugging her. She wonders if he asks about her, of if he knows she's dating again. She wonders if he misses them as much as she does.
She cuts her hair, and always keeps it straight. He had loved to run his hands through her curls, and she wants that to stay between them.
It's been five years and she thinks it's too late for explanations. Quinn hands her the envelope then sits the tub of ice-cream between them and presses play on the dvd player. She reads ever word over and over again. Hears his voice in her head, and feels her heart beat erratically. Quinn holds her hand as she cries. He's met someone, and though he isn't in love with her he does love her, and she loves him. He explained everything she hadn't been able to hear that day and tells her that he's selfishly been holding on to her hoping for a second chance. His girlfriend's pregnant and he's going to be the best dad he can be and that means letting her go. When David asks her to marry him, she doesn't tell him that she only said yes because Audrey Puckerman had been born the day before. And when she says I do, she pretends not to see him in the back row and that they're not both wishing he'd asked for that second chance.