Looking in the mirror has always been a painful experience for me.

You wouldn't think so. I'm Quinn Fabray, head cheerleader, a shoe-in for prom queen. I used to date the high school quarterback. My life was every little girl's dream. But no, it wasn't childish desires that brought me to where I was now. It wasn't my dream. For a while, I'd convinced myself it was.

It was my father's dream.

Since before I could talk, he was training me how to be a cold-hearted bitch, the future Ice Queen of McKinley. When I was a toddler, he told me to never share my toys unless an adult was watching. When I went to kindergarten, he told me to make sure I did better than everyone else in class and look out for people who were different than me. When I moved on to first and second grade, he taught me how to ostracize someone, to keep a core group of friends close to me. By fifth grade, I was following his instructions on how to make sure I asserted myself to all of the lesser girls in my grade. He told me I was beautiful, yes, and that was as far as the normal fatherly instinct went. He told me that I was beautiful, and as such, deserved to be on top.

When I played sports as a child, second place was never an option. He'd berate coaches to get me a better spot on a team.

When I got to middle school, he started talking about boys. He taught me how to pick out the best kind, the one that was bound to get noticed. If I attached myself to one, he could take me up the social ladder.

My beauty was a weapon, and he taught me how to load it, aim it, and fire it. I could empty a full cartridge out into an unsuspecting crowd without so much as blinking. In other words, I used my gifts of physical beauty and inner intelligence to fight my way tooth and nail to the top, to be in the spotlight.

When I got to high school, I immediately scouted out my surroundings and sorted the people around me into different categories- the ones that could be competition, the kind that I should associate with, the kind I would step on to easily assert myself, the ones I would dissociate with. I could use all of them to bring me higher.

I picked Finn out of the crowd easily- star quarterback- that would be someone to attach myself to, to bring myself up the ladder. I had absolutely no attraction to him, but rather to the idea of him, the idea that he could be a stepping stone to my notoriety. Then there was Santana. She could easily be competition, but she also fit solidly into the kind I would associate with. She flip-flopped categories depending on the day. Or the hour. I handpicked a few more girls, for the majority cheerleaders, to use as a buffer of popularity around me.

I was so good at sorting people, and I knew exactly what to do with them. That is, until I noticed someone on the periphery, someone who started encroaching on my boyfriend's time.

Rachel Berry. She refused to be sorted by my mind. I instinctively put her in the "do not associate" category because, really, argyle? And the Glee club? Two gay dads? And her constant rambling? That was my father's training, an easy placement. But I almost just as quickly filed her under competition. Why? Because she was a diva- amazing voice, intelligent, and, though I didn't dare admit it, gorgeous. And a small part of me, the part that my father had been attempting to squash since my potty training days, wanted to place her in the "associate with" category. Because I was inexplicably drawn to her.

So I had a dilemma. Rachel Berry floated between all three of those categories, though even in my own mind I rarely admitted the last one, and refused to settle down. So instead of forcing a square peg into a round hole, as it were, I drilled a new hole. I created a category just for her.

I singled her out, made her the sole focus of my days at high school. I made her my target, the object of my detestation. She symbolized the exact opposite of me- someone who was self-driven instead of daddy-driven, someone with natural talent instead of carefully planned mediocrity, someone with the freedom to not care what people thought of her.

And she made my job so easy. I ordered slushie facials, stalked her online, left up degrading drawn pictures, had her threatened. I so much as said that she was a freak, and everyone believed me.

If I'm being honest with myself, I knew I wouldn't have to lift a finger to make her life a living hell. Everyone else was already doing that now that I had instigated it. But I continued. I liked thinking of ways to bring her down. Or maybe I was just infuriated that she refused to be placed in a normal category.

On more than one occasion, Santana, my co-bitch sometimes-friend sometimes-rival, would point out that under just slightly different circumstances, it would appear that I was obsessed with Rachel. But she always would snicker immediately after and help me come up with some new assault or insult me anew.

So I continued, and everything was fine until the unsortable girl decided to steal my quarterback boyfriend. I was furious, shaking furious. The nerve she had! I should have instantly created a back-up plan, a plan to get someone better than Finn. After all, he was falling down the social ladder by being in the Glee club and associating with Rachel. I should have, I could have, and if I was the perfectly trained daughter my father thought he'd raise, I would have. But instead, I focused my energy on trying to tear the two of them apart.

I told myself it was to ruin Rachel's life and to win back Finn. I told myself it was all part of the plan. Hell, I told myself those things enough times that I started to believe them. And then their relationship really did go on the rocks, causing him to hurt her. And I was enraged. No one orchestrated any move to hurt Rachel Berry but me.

And so that's how I ended up where I was, staring at my own reflection and wishing I didn't see this icy exterior. Ice was beautiful, but cold and removed, destined to melt after only a short-lived glory. I was afraid that was exactly who I was- a carefully crafted ice sculpture that would melt when really compared to true beauty like a burning star. Like Rachel Berry.

My father may have spent years chiseling me into his perfect Ice Queen, but even he didn't have the strength to melt me into a puddle. That honor belonged only to the infuriating Rachel Berry.

I hated looking at my reflection because my beauty wasn't something I'd been taught was treasured, it was just something to be used. I hated looking at my reflection because I was only what I'd been molded to be, not what I chose to be. I hated looking at my reflection because it reminded me how my heart would never thaw.

I climbed into bed, staring up at the ceiling and wishing the answers to my nebulous questions were written there. I hadn't asked any questions, true, but maybe that's because I was afraid of the answers.

Before falling asleep, I thought of Rachel Berry.

I relinquished myself to dreams, and in my worst of nightmares, I stayed just the same as in my waking hours. In the best of my dreams, we tolerated each other. In my darkest fantasies, we are friends. But never, not in any part of my imagination, are we anything more. I can't afford to let that thought enter even my deepest of secrets because that might lead to hope.

And hope was, accordingly to my father, laughable next to working your ass off for success.


A/N: This was not planned. I am supposed to be working on "Playing the Game" and "Fireworks" and my Lost Girl fic. I am not supposed to be writing for yet another fandom. But, as most writers know, sometimes an idea will NOT leave you alone until it's on paper (or screen, in this case). This isn't set in any particular episode or anything (I don't think I'm known for sticking to cannon plot lines).

I don't know about continuing. Oneshot? For now?