Shortly after Glee practice:
"BERRY!"
Rachel jumps as she hears the commanding voice and the slam of a locker to her right. She doesn't have to look, she knows the voice all to well, but she can't seem to stay away. The brown haired girl glances to her right in time to see her addressee come to a halt right in front of her.
"Quinn, what can I do for—" she is cut off by the blonde haired cheerleader's hand in her face.
"Save it, man hands. Here is the deal, and you listen up well. You march your short statured self into Mr. Schuester's office right now and demand, in the greatest diva fit you have ever thrown, that he makes things right." Quinn is seething.
"And what exactly do you mean, makes things right?" Rachel air quotes the final words.
"You did not seriously just air quote me," she shakes her head, "you know exactly what I mean. This assignment is ridiculous. I should be paired with Sam, and you with that oaf that you picked up as my left over's." The cheerleader is now hovering over the smaller girl, with all the confidence possible in her cheerios uniform which is pressed perfectly and form fitting.
"It must flatter you greatly to think that I didn't already think of that, but here is the thing, I did. I gave it my best, and he won't budge." The brunette's confidence seems to waver, and it does not go unnoticed.
"What are you trying to get out of this?" Quinn questions and it takes Rachel by surprised. She isn't sure what she could mean by that.
"Mr. Schuester said that we need to learn about each other so we can find ourselves." She gracefully avoids the you in Quinn's previous question.
The blonde is now laughing softly, in an evil tone, and shaking her head. She takes a step back and breathes out the words in a growl of sorts, "ten weeks, Berry. Ten weeks that he has paired us up." The smaller girl looks at the floor.
"I'm well aware of the assignment, Quinn." As the sarcastic words slip from Rachel's mouth she hears a bang on the lockers and her head immediately shoot up.
"Don't play that with me, I am not in the mood, you got it?" The blonde shakes her hand as it stings up to her elbow. "We will continue this discussion tomorrow. In the mean time, try to figure out how to get us out of this."
Like clock work the cheerleader turns to find her football player boyfriend, Sam, walking up to her. She closing the distance between them, takes his hand in her non-hurt one, and walks away.
Rachel is stunned, in complete and total shock of the rage that just was displayed in front of her. It takes her own boyfriend coming up behind her to realize that she's been simply standing in the hallway.
"You okay?" The tall boy asks quietly.
Rachel turns to her locker, grabs her books, and looks up to him with a smile on her face, "yes, of course, I'm fine." She hands him the books, which he gladly takes, and they begin to walk back to the chorus room.
"Can you believe I have to sing a duet with a dude?" A clueless Finn Hudson asks as Rachel laughs at her boyfriend.
Earlier in the day:
"Mr. Schuester, I have a proposal for you." Rachel says as she enters his Spanish classroom and approaches his desk. He looks up from his papers and smiles, " before you assume this is for a solo or something of the sort, let me tell you, I'd like to work with Quinn Fabray."
The young teacher begins to choke on his spit and goes into a swirl of coughing. Shocked, the student approaches him and pats him on the back. Once he is finally composed he tries to understand, "You want to work with Quinn on what?"
"I was thinking perhaps a duet." She says matter of fact.
"Alright, ask her and we'll set something up." He looks back to the papers, as though he actually believes that would work.
"Mr. Schue, you and I both know that that will not work. So I have the following plan…" Rachel begins to recount a plan to the teacher that leaves him smiling and dumb founded.
"So let me get this straight," he begins slowly, "you feel as though Quinn has untapped potential that you would like to help release. All the while, you'd like to try and become friends with the girl because she has no true friends and neither do you? Pardon my rephrase."
The student smiles and nods as if this plan should have been around all along.
"As wonderful as that sounds, Rachel, I don't think I can force anyone to be friends to work on an assignment." He puts his best concerned teacher voice in place.
"Oh no, that will all be me. I think, perhaps, we could have it be a class wide project. It would give Finn a chance to pair up with Sam and benefit from a friendship there as well. You see, as we all know, Sam is new and all he does is follow Quinn around like a puppy dog. Finn's best friend impregnated his last girlfriend, so you can see that that is clearly an outstanding friendship. I'm just concerned about the overall appearance and feeling of the club, Mr. Schuester. We are a team and we need to start behaving like—" Rachel is mid rant when he interrupts her.
"Okay," is all he says with a nod.
"Okay?" She asks with her mouth hanging agape.
"I see that you have thought this over, and despite my better judgment, you seem as though you are doing this for the entire club. Our morale has been down since the start of the year, and since were only a few weeks in, this would be a good time to put this plan into place." He explains to her.
"Thanks, Mr. Schue. I always knew we could be a good team if we needed to be." She begins to turn around to leave the classroom when he speaks up.
"I hope you understand that I will be taking this plan very serious." He says with a stern command.
She turns and simple smiles, "I would expect nothing less."
"And this will be the last time that we discuss, from here on you know nothing of the sort, are we understood?" He asks the star student.
"Understood and appreciated." And with that she leaves the room with triumph on her breath.
Glee club later in the day:
"… Sam and Finn, which leaves Rachel and Quinn." Mr. Schuester finishes up his list of duet partners and braces himself for the backlash it surely will create. Like he anticipated the uproar of twelve voices fills the room. Each person complaining about their assigned partner, hateful glances are being thrown around from left to right. "Now you guys, everyone calm down."
Rachel continues to speak, "this is ludicrous." She flashes him a knowing smile, which he shakes his head and continues. She is left perplexed.
"This will be a ten week assignment."
"WHAT!" Rachel Berry's shriek could be heard around the world, it is assumed. She nervously laughs, "Mr. Schue, I'm sure your judgment on this assignment is in good spirits, but ten weeks seems a little long, don't you think?" She says the final three words slowly and full of meaning.
"The decision is final. As I'm sure that you are all reeling now, I'm going to dismiss meetings for the day and I will see you all tomorrow." Without another word or warning he exits the room hastily.
The entire club sits dumbfounded.
The next day:
Rachel couldn't understand what had happened. She had surely told Mr. Schuester that she thought of it as a week assignment, maybe two at best. Just something to get the team a little flustered, and make some framework to friendships. But ten weeks? Ten weeks, that's about three months. That is into Christmas and Hanukah and the holidays. It was the only thing on her mind all night, even when Finn had called her to tell her goodnight.
She was back in the hallway now, ready for the new day, and trying to clear the thought of spending all her time with Quinn Fabray until New Years out of her head. This would have been easily done had the cheerleader not appeared at her locker the first thing in the morning.
Rachel, of course, did not realize this being deep in thought. She closed her locker door to find a calm Quinn Fabray standing on the other side of the door. The brunette jumped and dropped her books.
"Surely I'm not that scary, Berry." Quinn said as she bent over and picked up the other girl's books, who stood there dumb founded by the blonde's collected behavior.
"Th-thank you." Rachel cursed at herself under her breath for showing her weakness of a stutter.
"It's no problem, really. Look, I wanted to apologize for yesterday." The cheerleader flashed her famous smile.
"Apologize? You're kidding me, right?" She questioned and then had a realization; she began to look in all the directions possible frantically.
"Um, yeah. What are you doing exactly?" The blonde haired girl quirked an eyebrow at the brunette and asked
"Well, I thought maybe you were setting me up for a slushie facial." She suddenly felt silly and dipped her head.
"I don't set those up, actually, I just laugh." Quinn giggled.
"Gee, thanks." Rachel was growing increasingly annoyed. She grabbed her books and slammed the locker shut. "Save your apology," she growled out and stomped away, surprising even herself with the bitterness in her voice.
It was Quinn's turn to stand dumb founded. She shook it off and walked off to her first class.
"Mind telling me what you were doing talking to that dwarf this morning?" Santana, her best friend and second in command, asks in their shared second period class of math.
"Well, she's my partner in that stupid assignment Schuester set us up with." She puts the emphasis on stupid hoping to get her friend off of her back.
"So what? You gonna be come friends with the mutt?" Santana laughed as if it wasn't possible.
"Well, it is a long time to hate someone's guts. I imagine the ten weeks will go by much more smoother if we're civil." The head cheerleader concluded confidently.
"You're joking right? You can't honestly want to become friends with that mutant." Santana was now leaning towards the blonde and looking at her like she had ten heads.
"Cool it with the names, alright? I don't know, San. I'm tired of being a bitch all the time; I don't know how you do it. It's exhausting."
"It's a gift, and I take that as a compliment." She grinned evilly, "look, I don't like Berry but I'll back off until you figure out what this little project of yours is about. Don't be stupid though."
"And what is that supposed to mean?" The blonde asked slowly as if she knew she wouldn't like the answer.
"She gets stomped on by everyone, don't get her hopes up for nothing." The tanned cheerleader spoke up before her friend could question, "it's not like I care about the runt. It's just that either you treat her like the dirt she is, or you become her friend. With that girl there is no in between, don't you remember how attached she got to Finn?"
Of course Quinn remembered. Finn was her boyfriend at the time, and she hated Rachel Berry for that reason. She was everywhere, every mistake she made, and Rachel was there to comfort Finn. Then there was the pregnancy, of course Finn wasn't the father, and it just ran him straight into the arms of the Glee club super star.
"I got it, okay? I just had a lot of time to think this summer. I don't want to go back to what everything was before." The blonde suddenly looked immensely sad and knew she had to get her emotions in check. She was the head cheerleader after all, no the pregnant emotional loser she was last year.
"Alright, Q. You've got it," is all her friend said and let the subject die.
"Here is how it works. The first two weeks should be spent getting to know one another. Then the next two should be spent doing separate solos for one another, this will give you a chance to express yourself to each other in song." Mr. Schuester heard Noah Puckerman make a gagging sound, "save it, Puckerman. From there you will have two weeks to prepare two duets, then the final four will be spent picking one out of the two, and then performing it for the class the week we get back from winter break."
Everyone in the classroom spent his or her time groaning and writing down each weekly assignment given.
"Okay, class. Break up into your pairs. Actually, how about this set up. Finn and Sam: you head to the locker room, Santana and Mercedes: you take the lunch room, Kurt and Puck: you can have my Spanish class room, Artie and Mike: you can have the choir room, Tina and Brittany: head out to the hall way, and lastly, Quinn and Rachel, the auditorium is all yours." Mr. Schuester smiled as the students began to walk to their respective locations.
"Just enough room to fit all of that ego and diva," was heard muttered from Mercedes as she left the classroom.
Although she had been hearing a comment like that for a very long time, it still stung Rachel a little. She sat there a little saddened and stared at the black board. It read the word UNDERSTANDING in all caps.
"Don't let her get to you, her bite isn't as bad as her bark," Quinn trailed off and then laughed, "or whatever that expression is."
The brunette snapped out of her trance and stood, "I don't." She said and got up to leave for the auditorium.
"Slow your roll, Berry." The cheerleader said as she rushed to catch up with her leaving the room.
Rachel slowed down considerably and looked at the blonde, "um, okay."
The two then walked in silence into the auditorium. Quinn opened the door for a surprised Rachel and the two entered the massive hall.
The door slammed shut behind them and echoed into the empty space. It seemed like an awful lot of room for just two girls. Quinn walked away leaving Rachel to her own thoughts and sat down at the piano. She lifted the cover off of the keys and began to lightly press the keys. She was humming the tune to the song and nodding her head.
"She spent her childhood somewhere deep in Missouri, grew up faster than heart." The sound of the blonde's sweet voice began to fill the empty space. The auditorium went from being free and open to packed with the sounds of a voice and a piano. "Mom said 'you're a child of God.' she said, 'but Mom, I'm in such a hurry.' It might be California maybe New York."
Rachel couldn't believe what she was witnessing. She'd never seen anything like it, even when she was dating someone who could perform with such conviction as the well-seasoned performer Jessie St James. Rachel thought how strange it looked to her. Quinn always seemed so big to her, her personality more than anything. But in the moment all she could see was this vulnerable girl sitting at a giant black piano in her red cheerleading uniform. The colors danced off of one another in a stunning way.
The brunette took a step forward and continued to listen. "Cause you know we're all young at heart, you've taught me so much, and brought me so far. I know you'll understand, I know you've felt like me before, cause you know we're all young at heart." Rachel listened intently at the words being sung and couldn't help but feel like maybe the young girl was reaching out to her. She sang with such conviction. "It went from love to worst with a child due in December." Was she reaching out? Wasn't the solo supposed to be after two weeks? Rachel dismissed her anal schedule following tendencies and listened again to the blonde in front of her, as she inched closer and closer.
"I thought I needed you, now I need so much more. I thought I found the truth, now it seems like it's still so far. Sold my heart for the perfect drug, it was the worst, coming down from love…" The blonde's voice cracked in a beautiful but heart wrenching way as she began more and more engrossed in the song. The piano was her pen and the words were flowing out. "We're all young at heart, you've taught me so much, and brought me so far. I know you'll understand, I know you've felt like me before, cause you know we're all young…"
The cheerleader let the notes hang in the air around them. Rachel was now standing behind her and put a single hand on the piano player's shoulder. The blonde let out a large sigh, and felt a single tear escape down her cheek. She then reached up and put her hand on top of Rachel's. The brunette was so surprised that she retracted her hand almost, and immediately felt bad. She sat down next to the blonde at the piano bench.
"That was really beautiful, Quinn." She spoke softly.
"You think so?" The blonde barely spoke over a whisper.
"I'm positive of it. I wasn't aware that you played piano so beautifully." Rachel said and looked at the other girl.
"There is a lot you don't know." She breathed out, returning the diva's glance, then she stood up and walked away.