Title: If I Could Turn Back Time – Rachel Berry (1/4)
Pairings: Rachel/Quinn
Length: 1,578
Disclaimer: I don't own any of the Glee characters, sadly.
Spoilers: Front 13 just to be safe.
Author's Note: Future Fiction.
Author's Note: Not beta'd all mistakes are my own.
Rachel Berry is sat in the centre of the floor in the lounge of her apartment looking through her photo album. Some photos make her smile, some make her want to cry and some make her want to throw the album across the room in frustration. As she turns the final page her eyes linger on a certain photo. A photo taken about five and a half years ago, when Rachel was seventeen and things were good in her life.
Five years ago Rachel Berry was a sixteen year old with ambition. Apart from the slushie facials and insults that she got thrown at her almost everyday, she was rather happy with her life. She attended Glee club after school four times a week and for the first time in her life she had friends who she could depend on for anything. One of those friends was Quinn Fabray. She never though she'd call Quinn Fabray a friend again.
From the age of six until the age of twelve, basically all through Elementary School, Rachel and Quinn were quite close. That is until Santana Lopez warned Quinn that if she wanted to be popular in Middle School and High School she had to 'choose her friends wisely'. So that was the end of the Rachel/Quinn friendship and the beginning of what Rachel can only describe as hell. Quinn became connected to Santana and Brittany. In Freshman year the three of them became Cheerio's and that's when the insults started. Rachel had to pack a waterproof jacket to wear in the school corridors and on the odd occasion not even that protected her from the slushie facials.
That all changed at the beginning of Sophomore year. Glee club was started up again after the 'incident' with Mr Ryerson and Rachel's life got better by the day. She had her friend back, well kind of; they were in the same room and no insults were thrown Rachel's way and a few nice words were exchanged, even the odd smile. Santana still glared at Rachel at every chance she got and Brittany just smiled, totally oblivious to the situation. The more she thought about it, Brittany was a genuinely nice person, a little ditzy but nice all the same.
After Quinn announced she was pregnant Rachel didn't know what to do. One part of her wanted to hug Quinn and let her talk about things and another part of her just wanted to ignore what she's just found out and let Quinn cope on her own, well she had Santana and Brittany right? Rachel felt just the same when Quinn got kicked off the Cheerio's. The urge to hug her was almost too hard to suppress, but she managed it and just watched as the blonde cried into Finn's arms.
Then the bombshell was dropped, just two days before Sectionals. It split the whole Glee club in half. Noah Puckerman is the father of Quinn's baby. Not Finn! Finn understandably told Quinn to move out of his house, as she'd been staying there after her parents kicked her out of her own home. When that happened Rachel new her old friend had a place to go, but when Finn kicked her out Rachel had to do something to help Quinn.
It took Rachel two weeks to work up the courage to ask Quinn to move in with her and her two dads. The blonde turned down her offer at first, not because she wasn't grateful but because she'd already said she'd move in with Brittany and her parents. That living arrangement lasted just over two months. Rachel's heart skipped a beat when she got a message from Quinn that said:
I know that I turned you down the first time you asked but please can I take you up on that offer of a room, if it's still open? I can't deal with another night on the camp bed in Brittany's room x 3
Rachel and her fathers, Russell and Gregory, went to pick up Quinn the next morning and spent the whole of the day getting her settled in. It was awkward for all of them for the first couple of days, trying to adjust with an extra person in the house, as it's always ever been the three Berry's. It didn't take long for Rachel to get used to being with Quinn both in and out of school. They had their daily routine off too a tee within a week.
There was one night, about two months after Quinn moved in, that changed their friendship forever. Rachel remembers it like it was yesterday. It was just gone eleven and Rachel was wide awake, just lying there thinking about her new improved life and regained friendship with Quinn, when the door creaked open. Rachel was shocked at first to see Quinn standing there. It was about a minute before the blonde walked over to the bed and got in beside Rachel. No words were spoken. The two just snuggled up together and feel asleep holding each other.
That happened almost every night from then and some nights they did more than snuggling. The first time Rachel and Quinn had sex both girls were nervous, which is to be expected because, well Rachel had never slept with anyone before let alone a girl and the one time Quinn had sex she became pregnant. Rachel remembers exactly how she felt the first time Quinn was inside of her. How she was overcome by emotion and how she felt the first time she was inside of Quinn. It was weird doing things to her, knowing there was a baby growing inside of her. Quinn's smell lingered for days afterwards, even after she'd showered, all she could smell was Quinn but she didn't complain.
When people started getting suspicious about their relationship they just admitted that they were in love with each other. Much to their surprise none of their friends were, well surprised. They all kind of knew anyway, with them leaving Glee hand in hand every night. Rachel didn't think anyone had noticed the handholding but she wasn't embarrassed that they saw or even that they knew what she and Quinn were doing.
Rachel was in the room when Jessalyn Kate Fabray was born. And even though it was the grossest thing she'd ever seen she was glad she was there because as gross as it was, it was also rather magical. To see the baby that they'd both been waiting for had finally arrived, Rachel felt privileged to be there at her birth.
It took a while for the two teenagers to adjust to having a baby. They were up at all hours of the night taking it in turns feeing and changing, feeding and changing. They eventually got Jessa into a night time routine and set up a rota of who does what and when. Needless to say, for the first few months, Rachel and Quinn hardly got any time alone together and they found it hard and had many arguments, which they put down to lack of sleep. But on the off chance that Russell and Gregory were out and Jessalyn was sleeping they found time for each other.
As Jessalyn approached her second birthday, Rachel and Quinn were drifting apart and they both knew it. Quinn was spending more and more time with Noah, which she Rachel didn't mind because after all Jessa is Noah's daughter but deep down she knew something was wrong. Whenever she tried talking to Quinn about their deteriorating relationship the blonde got defensive and it ended as a shouting match. In the end, one of both of them ended up in tears. Then came the make up sex. Not the way either of them imagined their life at eighteen. Then Rachel made the decision that would change her life, again. She would always love Quinn and Jessalyn but her life wasn't going the way she'd planned and she wanted to get it back on track, even if that meant leaving the love of her life. Rachel moved away from Quinn and Jessalyn to go to college the Summer after Jessa's second birthday. As far as Rachel was concerned Quinn was part of the family and could stay at the Berry household for as long as she needed to. Her dads didn't object as Quinn and Jessa were like family to them too.
Now at twenty-one, after looking at the photo taken the day after Jessalyn was born, her eyes are filled with tears. As Rachel closes the photo album, tears falling from her eyes, she asks herself a question. A question she's been asking herself everyday since the day she left Lima. What would her life have been like if, five years ago, she had stayed with Quinn and they'd tried to work out their problems? Yes they kept in touch for a while, Quinn and Jessa visited a couple of times and it felt so nice to see them but Rachel would be the first to admit that things weren't right between them. The fourth time Quinn visited she and Rachel had a pretty large argument, which spanned two days. That, in Rachel's mind, was what ended their relationship, even friendship. Rachel did what she thought was best for her eighteen year old self. But Rachel regrets leaving them more than anything and will do anything to get them back.