Rating: T (Will change as the story develops - bit further on down the road, though)

Pairing: Quinn/Rachel, Brittany/Santana

A/N: Oh, look, I've written more femslash... Lemme know what you think?

A/N 2: Terrible title for a terrible summary. Anyway. I wrote this v. quickly, as I'm trying to perfect chapter 8 of my rather intense Pezberry fic (if anybody reading this is reading that, if chapter 8 isn't up by tonight it shall be tomorrow, I swear. I just needed a break.) If anyone here isn't reading it, it's called Makin' Music. Shamless self promotion, I know. But why the hell not. Hah.

Enjoy

"In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost..."

The priest sprinkled the water over the baby's porcelain forehead, welcoming it into God's family. One hundred people filled the pews facing the white marble font. It seemed a bit much for a christening, but this was a wealthy middle-class Christian neighbourhood. Everyone knew everyone from work, church, the country club, the grocery store. Columbus wasn't much different from Lima, after all.

The service had been lengthy, and with the aid of the priest's deep, thick voice, Quinn had zoned out for most of it; she recited vows when required, and smiled brightly as was expected of her. However, her thoughts were far from her nephew's much anticipated christening, and she was afraid it was starting to get obvious. Her face was stony and hollow as she flitted to auto-pilot when she wasn't responding to pointless questions, and her mother was noticing. She wasn't asking any questions, though, which Quinn was grateful of. All she had to do was keep each and every fibre of her being in its' perfect place before she clicked the lock shut on her bedroom door and was able to let her hair down.

Vivid streams of coloured light poured into St. Joseph's Church through the imposing stained glass windows depicting the Virgin Mary that stood tall and proud above the white marble font, around which the priest, clad in white silken robes embroidered with golden superfluities stood alongside proud parents, godparents and of course, the gurgling baby in his expensive outfit – that he would grow out of in about five minutes – fisting the air and kicking his feet against some invisible bogeyman.

And then, the baby was placed back into his parents' arms and Charles Michael Cavendish, Jr. was presented to the hundred-strong congregation. Everybody stood up and cheered in celebration of the special day, beaming proudly at the parents and their one-week old son.

One week old. Quinn clenched her jaw as she applauded lightly at the boy cradled in his mother's arms, doing her best to ignore the twinge of jealousy pulling in her chest. She kept her smile, her mask, intact, until everybody began filing out of the church.

It had been only two months since she had given up Beth – in fact, today marked the two-month anniversary exactly. Her sister had only been seven weeks behind Quinn in terms of her pregnancy, yet she never discovered that she was with child until she was already six months gone, so her mother had said. It must only have been two months after Quinn had been thrown out on her ear that Fran had dropped that bombshell.

Unsurprisingly, Quinn heard nothing of her sister's pregnancy until she had accepted her mother's offer and moved back into her 'home' after having Beth. She cried every night for that entire week after she'd heard that Fran was seven months pregnant. At least her sister was having a boy. It would have been too much if her sister was having a baby girl, too.

However, it was as if nothing had happened. As soon as Quinn stepped over the threshold at four-four-seven Dudley Road, life was as it was. Minus Russell Fabray, that was. If there was one thing that sweetened the beginning of summer for Quinn, if even a little, was that her father had been thrown out.

She could see that her mother was slightly lost without somebody guiding her every movement, as she had been for almost thirty years, but Quinn said nothing. Only time could heal a wound like that.

Of course, Judy had a grandchild to look forward to, this time. It would help her get over her husband's dalliances with tattooed junkies and it would help her bond with her youngest daughter, to repair their relationship. Oh, if only she knew how wrong she was.

Beth wasn't somebody that the two blondes talked about, and Quinn couldn't just erase her sister's pregnancy liked she wished she could have with her own. Judy did have a right to be excited. And Quinn couldn't stop her. But every time the word baby was uttered over dinner, or when they were shopping, Quinn just felt like tearing the nearest person limb from limb and mopping away the mess with her river of tears.

Quinn, however, said nothing, and just played along – as much as she hated it, her mother had been gaining in confidence and she couldn't shatter that for her mother, no matter how she felt. Russell Fabray had been a dead weight on their backs for too long, and Judy needed to get used to it.

Every Tuesday night, Judy would socialise with some friends from church – where she went, Quinn never asked – and on Thursdays each of her friends from the book club she'd recently joined would take turns hosting the weekly sessions would go to a book club with aforementioned friends. Life wasn't perfect, but it was a damn shot better than Quinn had expected.

Until, that is, one morning when Quinn returned home after spending the night at the Jones household, eating pizza and bitching about various scandals posted on Jacob Ben Israel's blog with Mercedes and Kurt, she was treated to a rather unwelcome surprise.

"Mom! I'm home!" Quinn called through the house, dumping her bag by the front door. The house was filled with the sweet aroma of Judy's famous recipe for roast ham. Quinn furrowed her brow; it was a Saturday. She didn't expect her mother to be cooking a roast lunch today. Quinn usually helped with her mother around the kitchen after they'd gotten back from church – it was somewhat a routine of theirs, nowadays – but Quinn was still stumped.

The only reason Quinn had come home at half past eleven in the morning was because her mother hand rung her and asked her to come home because she had some big news to tell her. Quinn hoped that her mother had gotten one of the secretarial jobs she'd applied for, now she was a single woman to an extent. No divorce had been filed by either Russell or Judy; her mother was always reluctant about filing for divorce and conversation never got further than a few utterances. Catholics didn't get divorced. Quinn never questioned her; it would take time for her to make that decision. She knew her father wouldn't file, because he probably didn't think he had done anything wrong and would try to wheedle his way back into his wife and daughter's lives in one way or another.

But still, Quinn thought that Judy cooking up a roast ham was a tad much for just getting a job. It was an expensive meal to cook, if anything, and she certainly wouldn't have been handed a paycheque just for acing an application form and a stringent interview.

Quinn cocked her head and edged into the living room and stopped dead still in the doorway when her eyes hit an all too familiar figure reclining in a worn leather armchair perched by the fireplace. She locked eyes with her father, who glared coldly back at his daughter with a scotch in his hand, and shut the door behind her as she stepped fully into the room.

"What are-"

"Quinnie, dear!"

"Mom," Quinn mumbled, smiling weakly at the elder blonde woman who'd just flounced in from the kitchen clad in her apron, beaming.

"I never heard you come in," she said. "Have you been in long? Oh, no matter," she waved off her question before Quinn had a chance to answer, "Well, here's your surprise. I took your father back. Isn't that wonderful? Now we can be a proper family again."

Quinn stood, her mouth hanging open as if her mother had suddenly announced they would be flying to China on a giant pig to join the circus. Her eyes flitted between her beaming mother and her father, who was now wearing a smug smirk on his face.

"Just in time for your sister's baby," Russell added, looking pointedly at his daughter. His smirk grew as he caught the minute flash of hurt dance across her hazel eyes. "Right, Judy?"

"Right, darling," she answered, grinning proudly down at the man. "Can I get you a refill?"

"That would be wonderful, darling," he replied, getting out of chair and handing her his glass and pecking her on the cheek. Russell shut the door behind his wife before turning to Quinn and ordering her to sit.

"No."

"Suit yourself," he growled. "But you'd better learn to hold your tongue while you're living here. I was disgusted with your mother when I'd heard she'd taken you back into our family that you so readily disgraced not half a year ago. But I said nothing. She realised that what I did was a mistake and found some sense. It was just last night that we decided I should move back in, actually. And you'd do your best to fall in line and remember your place in this family – the bottom."

Quinn clenched her jaw and glowered back at her father. She was about to let a snide remark slide off her tongue in reply to her father's absurd diatribe, but she kept it to herself. It wouldn't do anybody any good to cause an uproar now. Her mother was happier than she'd been in months, even if it was for the completely wrong reasons.

Russell clapped a strong hand to Quinn's shoulder as the congregation filed out of the church, and leaned down. "You keep on your best behaviour at your sister's house, got it?"

Quinn nodded, continuing to look forward as she, Judy and Russell headed to their sedan in the church parking lot. The ten minute drive to her sister's grossly oversized mansion, which rather reminded Quinn of her own, was silent. The tension in the car was tangible. It was like cords of rubber were floating through the air and beginning to wrap themselves around Quinn's limbs, slowly cutting off the blood supply to each one.

Quinn caught her mother's eyes in the rear view mirror – Judy looked away just as quickly as both sets of hazel locked – and Quinn felt her heart break again. Judy hadn't even tried to comfort her own daughter, knowing how hard it would be for Quinn today.

Quinn wasn't surprised that her mother was edging around her like this, as if ignoring the forlorn glint in Quinn's eyes meant it wasn't there anymore. And just like that, after a summer filled with progress, the Fabray family had gone back in time to twelve months ago, and instead of Quinn preparing herself for Junior year, she felt like Sophomore year was going to start all over again.

Inside Charles and Francesca Cavendish' large house, the hundred or so people from the church and some more that Quinn hadn't noticed perched on a pew, were milling around with glasses of champagne in their hand.

Their dazzling smiles of St. Joseph's congregation reminded Quinn of the dazzling smiles of the Holy Trinity Church's back in Lima. Her sister had fallen into the same trap her mother had nearly thirty years ago. The difference was, Charles Cavendish, Sr. was too simple a man to be any cause of harm to his wife – he had inherited everything from his chain of UPS stores to his political views from his father – and was too wrapped up in himself and his vast fortune to care about much else.

"Penny for your thoughts?"

Quinn looked up from the couch and saw her sister, clutching a glass of champagne, standing above her. She sat down beside Quinn in the empty room the younger blonde had hidden herself away in, and held the glass out for Quinn.

Quinn took it, and downed the contents in one go.

"Wow. You really are Dad's kid," Fran remarked, laughing drily.

Quinn scoffed, and fiddled with the glass in her hand. The bitter taste of the alcohol lingered in her mouth, the bubbles tingling against her tongue. Quinn had broken her vow never to touch alcohol again on the second Tuesday her mother had been out. She had toyed with the idea of sneaking out to the local seven-eleven and waiting for some creepy old man to score her a bottle of Grey Goose the previous week, and her conscience had gotten the better of her. The next week, however, she was out that door like a shot and within ten minutes, she was walking home with a plastic bag in her hand, heavy with the weight of not one, but two bottles of vodka clinking against one another in the calm of the night.

"Quinn, I want you to know how sorry I am," Fran finally said. She was twiddling her honey blonde curls between her fingers, looking for any distraction she could. Offspring of the Fabray gene pool weren't blessed with the ability to apologise gracefully.

"Why? None of it matters anymore," Quinn ground out. She felt tears pricking her eyes with the finality and the truth of her words. Everything Quinn had achieved recently had been torn to shreds.

"Look at me," Fran hissed, sidling closer to Quinn on the couch and placing a solid, yet comforting hand on Quinn's shoulder. "Don't blame me for having a kid. I know-"

"You don't know how I feel," Quinn spat, brushing her sister's hand off of her shoulder. "Do you know what it's like to have your baby taken from you hours after she was born?"

"Of course I don't – Quinn, I just don't know what to say." Fran moved back to the other end of the couch and placed her hands in her lap. She trained her eyes on her shining golden wedding band, as if it would offer a solution.

"I'm sorry," Quinn mumbled, after a period of silence, strangling the two girls.

"Don't be," Fran told her, smiling weakly. "I saw how sad you looked in church, and I saw how mom and dad didn't do much. I mean, dad wouldn't, but mom... I thought more of her." Fran hung her head once more, knowing that she too could have made an effort before the service, but she couldn't just hand her son to the hundred people milling around to get a look at him and to congratulate she and her husband and go and comfort her sister. She had to be a good hostess. It was a requirement of married life and motherhood. Now Fran had a taste of it, she had fallen onto a bed of cynicism. Her life had become her mother's, without a doubt. And Charles was much too boneheaded to hold a direct conversation with, as she observed in much of her friends' husbands. They had all become a new generation of their mothers and the women before them, faking their smiles and becoming bitter old hags when they had a chance and a cup of coffee.

"Yeah," Quinn scoffed. "So did I."

"Is he okay? You know, with you," Fran muttered, "Is he any different at home?"

"Nothing's changed, Fran," Quinn growled, "She just took him back at the drop of a hat, without even asking me first. It sucks."

"That's one word for it," Fran remarked, finally drawing little more than a dry chuckle out of her sister. It was like drawing blood out of a stone. "Why don't you just move back out?"

"I can't just leave mom alone with him," Quinn sighed. She clutched the glass tighter in her hand, "I don't trust him."

The two hour ride back to Lima wasn't much different to the one there – everybody was silent, apart from the radio, from which Glenn Beck's monotonous voice was booming out. Evidence for evolution, or lack thereof, was the topic for today.

Quinn listened to Glenn, unconvinced. She was flitting back to a conversation in calculus she'd had with Artie one day, when she'd said that she didn't believe that such things were true. It had been an eye-opener to say the least. Not that Quinn just took on what Artie had drummed into her blindly, like she had when her father insisted that she believe that the world was six thousand years old and fossils were placed upon the earth to test our faith, but she had thought about it, and at his insistence, read some books and articles on the subject. After mulling it over for some time, she gave in and conceded that he might just be onto something.

It didn't shake her faith in God, like a lot of her other thoughts were causing her to do of recent, but it shook whatever faith she had in her father's raising of his two daughters. It wasn't a breaking newsflash that Quinn had begun to question whatever morals her father had and it didn't cross her mind as bizarre that the Bible wasn't as clear cut as it once was, once facts were involved. But God was something that couldn't be wrong. People were wrong all the time, sure, but God; God didn't make mistakes, of that Quinn was sure.

She thanked Artie – his educating her, if you will, gave her something to think about besides various other things clogging her mind – when she was sat alone in the library, studying for upcoming tests and making sure she had her essays in on time. At least if she had little to no friends, her grades wouldn't suffer. Staying on the honour roll was all Quinn had left, if anything, and she clung onto that like it was a raft while she was stranded in the middle of the ocean, miles and miles from shore in any direction.

Most of her free periods were when other people had classes, anyway. Kurt and Mercedes were always tied up and even Puck wasn't there. Not that she craved his attention. On Thursdays, though, one other person shared a free hour with her. Rachel Berry. The girl had tried time and time again to sit with Quinn, in the hopes that she might befriend her, and Quinn let her a few times, so long as no words were exchanged between them for the duration of their time spent together.

It didn't surprise Quinn that Rachel returned week in, week out with the same unfaltering smile on her face and chipper resolve – in fact, Quinn found it rather endearing. Rachel never overstepped whatever boundaries Quinn had put in place so that her pregnancy hormones didn't overcome her and berate Rachel for little more than nothing.

It hurt Quinn a lot the last time she'd coldly declined Rachel's invitation of friendship and even if it was a poor way of making up for that, Quinn thought she'd at least let the girl sit with her. God, it was classic Quinn Fabray. As if her presence was the only thing people needed to sit in just to get themselves through the day. But for Quinn, it was the other way around. It was just Rachel's presence that lifted her spirits, if only for one hour out of Thursday's remaining – utterly depressing – twenty-three.

She helped Rachel out from time to time with her Spanish – which surprisingly, the verbose diva found inexplicably difficult – and Rachel returned the favour by reading over Quinn's English essays. Given the fact that Rachel would usually point out whatever fault she saw in anything in a flash and without restraint, Quinn thought that Rachel's lack of criticism was more of a compliment than the girl's trademark bright, toothy smile.

But that was it. The girls rarely exchanged a friendly remark, other than the customary 'thank you' after they'd helped one another out, and not a word more. Greetings and goodbyes didn't count, not really.

Quinn smiled, despite herself, as she remembered her silent hours with Rachel. Glee was something else she looked forward to, because of Rachel's exuberance, but they didn't really speak because the brunette was far more concerned with either Jesse or Finn, whom Quinn decided she loathed at that current moment.

It wasn't clear to her why she felt she should hate them both so much, but what she did know was that all they had in common was Rachel. Sure, everyone hated Jesse for the whole egging incident, but Quinn seethed with anger at the mere thought of him touching her.

And Finn? Quinn didn't know where to begin with him. He was just a jerk, plain and simple. He messed Rachel around and he messed Quinn around – even if Quinn had messed him around a hell of a lot worse, he deserved the cold shoulder from her, too. Both she and Finn were cheaters. It was why they didn't work out together. It was why, until they found somebody they cared about enough not to hurt, they would never work with anyone.

But what claim did Quinn have on the brunette? None. Not even one bit. Quinn couldn't even bring herself to speak to Rachel; it was a combination of Quinn needing to have time to herself, the fact that she didn't want to let her mouth slip and insult the poor girl and Quinn had a crush on the girl so by definition, she had no idea where to begin with her words. A weak scaffold of friendship was all she'd built up with Rachel. They had no solid foundations; only Rachel's all too forgiving nature and Quinn's apparent reluctance to accept it.

"Quinn, wake up. We're home."

Russell's voice snapped Quinn out her reverie. She had shut her eyes, pretending to sleep through the journey so that her parents wouldn't bug her for anything. Not that they were talking to each other, but she wouldn't take the chance after a day like this.

It was dark by the time their sedan pulled up in the driveway. The air wasn't as warm any more, since September had imposed upon the summer and beleaguered the bright sun's rays with a chilly breeze.

A new term was to start at William McKinley High School in two days. Monday was Quinn's final day of summer, before Tuesday brought upon her the trials and tribulations of Glee Club, and just how she was going to get herself back on the Cheerios.

It wasn't that she needed to reinstate her previous reign of terror over McKinley, because Santana had that one covered, but if Quinn was back on the squad, then she'd at least have Cheerios practice to keep her out of the house as well as Glee.

She needed something to keep her as far away from Russell Fabray as she possibly could, without resorting to drinking by herself, like she had done over the summer. It wasn't fun but it blurred the jagged edges of her reality and that was all it could do.

But what Quinn needed someone to fix her reality, to sand away the jagged edges rather than just cover them up with a false sense of bravado and a bitter aftertaste.

Rachel.