Author's Note: I've been banging my head against a wall with my other projects recently, so I gave one of those iTunes-shuffle-five-songs things a try. Two things happened: 1) I realized I need less angsty music (I added a sixth one at the end simply because I finally hit a somewhat happy song, and felt the need to write some pure fluff), and 2) I actually dug myself deeper into my frustrations with my other work. So, that backfired monumentally. Whee for that.

Elliot Smith-- Twilight

i'm nice to you/i could make it through/but you're already somebody's baby

Rachel doesn't want to call it a spiral—because that's a cliché—but she watches Quinn spin out of control after her daughter is handed over to the adopting couple, and she wishes so hard that it hurts that she could step in and stop it. But she sits on the sidelines of Quinn's life, her fingers twined unthinkingly with Finn's and the comforting weight of his presence at her side, and continues on with the unwavering progression of time, and only acknowledged her growing desire to save Quinn from herself when Finn was asleep and she was alone in the dark.

Quinn has Puck now, Rachel reasons. She's equivocating, rationalizing, justifying, trying to explain to herself why she squashes down her growing need to reach out and grab onto Quinn, to shake the other girl until the backbone and cynicism and sarcasm snap back into eyes that are now constantly dulled by tears or fatigue or drugs. Quinn has Puck and Rachel has Finn and they're all trying to be friends now, and Rachel sees the tremors in Quinn's fingers, the way she subtly digs her nails into her own arms when she thinks no one is looking, the almost-perfectly hidden dots and lines of broken skin and ruptured veins that mar her skin, and the brunette tries with everything she has to find a way to fix her without capsizing the barely-stabilized friendship.

The moments she has alone with Quinn are, in the end, how she always convinces herself that perhaps the blonde is getting better. It's as if Quinn tries doubly hard to be okay when it's just the two of them, and a nagging voice that lingers in the depths of Rachel's mind—the same one that says she should find a contingency plan in case Broadway doesn't work out, that suggests just giving up her pride and letting her fathers pay for her to go to a private school the next town over where she wouldn't get slushied every day—tells her that it must be because Quinn knows that Rachel is onto her, has realized where the twitches in her fingers and the red rimming her eyes comes from, and she needs to work harder to hide it. But when it's just them, Quinn is quietly funny and snarky, and Rachel laughs harder than she means to and loses herself in the comfortable feeling of their friendship. Every time before she sees Quinn, she tells herself that this will be the time she confronts the other girl about it all; every time, she loses sight of her infamous obstinacy when she sees Quinn with her wavy golden hair flashing in sunlight and a bounce in her step. Her fear for both her friend and her friendship, ever present when she isn't facing Quinn alone, blinds her to the fact that Quinn's hair used to be thicker, fuller, shinier; that the bounce in her step is a little too exaggerated; that her smile is a little too wide.

Rachel spends every night laying in bed, eyes locked on the faintly visible outline of her phone in the darkness, and tells herself that she's going to grow up and call Quinn and confront her about it all—the pain, the lies, the drugs, all of it. Every night, the numbers click by slowly on her digital clock and count down to sunrise, and Rachel never works up the nerve to even pick up the phone.

She tells herself that Quinn has Puck, that Puck really does love her, that if anyone can help the blonde it'll be him. She tells herself that even if they're friends now, it's not her place to invite herself into Quinn's pain. She tells herself that she has Finn and Quinn has Puck and things are almost looking like they may possibly one day be almost-okay between all of them, and the prospect of them all being friendly is so welcoming that she revels in it and tells herself that it'll all continue to work itself out.

The day that Puck finds Quinn melting like a puddle on the floor of the bathroom at school, a needle on the floor next to her as she sank into her high, Rachel, for the first time, understands what self-loathing really feels like.

Cat Stevens—Sad Lisa

she walks alone from wall to wall/lost in a hall, she can't hear me

She opens the door to her dorm room sleepily, torn between dropping back onto her bed and cursing at the fact that someone has the nerve to wake her up in the middle of the night. The last thing she expects is to see Quinn Fabray standing in the hallway of her Julliard dorm room, extremely far away from her own dorm at Georgetown, chin drooping to the floor and hair tumbling down to hide her face.

None of her words—not those of surprise, nor questions, nor cajoling, prodding, poking for information—seem to reach the blonde. She sits silently on Rachel's bed, hands in her lap and fingers wrapped around one another, her shoulders slumped almost painfully. Rachel remembers the day Quinn gave birth, sweat matting blonde hair down and green eyes filled with tears as her daughters was carried out of the room and out of her life; she remembers the six days, fourteen hours, and nine minutes of silence before Quinn had spoken a word to anyone after the child was handed over to her adoptive parents; Rachel remembers the slump in Quinn's normally impeccable posture, and watches her sit on the bed looking all but broken, and wonders what happened now.

It's only when she's taken a seat next to Quinn, a hesitant arm rising to wrap around her shoulders, that she notices the calendar on her desk. Four years and three days since Quinn gave birth. For the first two years, Rachel had gone far, far out of her way to make sure that Quinn wouldn't be alone on her daughter's birthday, but college and distance and the unbelievable stress and demand of Julliard had worn away at a friendship that had developed initially out of necessity and proximity more than anything, and Rachel had completely forgotten about the upcoming birthday of a child she'd never actually met.

Rachel curses herself for forgetting and wishes she could think of something brilliant to say that would make Quinn feel better. She hated seeing Quinn so brokenhearted after giving birth, and she hates it even more so now, when Quinn is sitting so brokenhearted and silent beside her. Quinn had been almost unnervingly stoic and dispassionate after giving birth. Once she had found it in herself to speak and return to her life, she had so meticulously bottled up her emotions that Rachel had watched with something akin to wonder as the other girl moved through the motions of school and glee and life without a single flicker of emotion.

When Quinn droops into her side tiredly, Rachel tucks her arm tighter around the other girl and murmurs something that even she can't make out into the blonde's ear. Quinn's only response is to finally start crying, the tears that had been shining in her eyes when Rachel opened the door finally pushing through and rolling down her face. She buries her face into Rachel's shoulder as she cries, quiet aching sobs that bring tears that soak into the t-shirt Rachel had worn to bed. It's the first time Rachel's seen Quinn cry without the prodding of pregnancy hormones, and it feels strangely like witnessing a miracle.

Rachel holds her up until she falls asleep, moving only when Quinn's breathing has evened out, her tears slowing to a stop, her fingers relaxing and falling away from Rachel's shirt. Laying her down and tucking a blanket over her, Rachel stands and spends long minutes staring down at a wholly broken girl asleep in her bed. She finally uproots her feet from the floor and, succumbing to her own obsessively organized nature, sits at her desk until sunrise and scratches out a finalized game plan on How to Fix Quinn Fabray.

Editors—When Anger Shows

these thoughts i must not think of/dreams i can't make sense of

Quinn has dreams. Nightmares, really. She supposes that most of them are standard fare for any mother—Caroline disappears from the playground; Caroline runs away; Caroline gets hit by a car; Caroline has an unhealthy attraction to bad boys with mohawks and unfairly toned upper arms. But some of them aren't, and those are the ones she buries in the most distant recesses of her mind. Those are the ones where Quinn is sitting alone, hands folded patiently in her lap as she waits for something she can't identify, and then Rachel Berry appears with a hand wrapping around Quinn's own, pulling it up to press a soft kiss to her palm before offering her a far too serious look the promises the world and everything in it for Quinn, if Quinn should ever even think to ask.

Those are the dreams that terrify Quinn. She took enough psychology classes in college to know that dreams are most often a manifestation of subconscious thoughts. The idea that she wants—needs?—Rachel Berry to be the one who Quinn's been waiting so patiently for is harder to swallow than a brick. They're barely friends anymore, after all, and Rachel is with Finn, anyways. The two of them had been together since just after Caroline was born, and living together in New York since Rachel's second year at NYU.

The first of Quinn's dreams had appeared when Caroline was two months old, and Quinn had buried it deep and away, alongside the miniscule part of her that wished desperately that she had never gotten pregnant, that still wanted to be with Finn, that wanted her old life back. Sometime after graduation and Rachel fluttering off to Tisch with Finn in tow, Quinn had woken in her tiny apartment just outside of the Ohio State campus to Caroline crying from a nightmare and her own dream echoing around in her skull. Since that second time, the dreams had come with increasing frequency, to the point where Quinn woke up surprised if she hadn't dreamt of Rachel Berry appearing back in her life and promising her the world on a silver platter with a Broadway chorus singing back-up.

The more common her dreams came, the harder she tried to ignore them. Quinn is a single mother with a third grader and student loans she'll be paying off for another ten years, and Rachel is in New York City with a devoted boyfriend and a part in an off-Broadway show that everyone knows is about to make the jump to Broadway. Quinn's dreams are the very kind she shouldn't be having, she tells herself, because they'll never amount to anything. But even as she tells herself as much, she can't keep herself from wishing fervently that Rachel would swoop into her life and make everything okay.

She wakes up from every dream with a lump in her throat that she shoves away, and then makes her way to the kitchen to make breakfast for Caroline. Because, as she tells herself sarcastically, of course the dreams of Rachel will go away if she ignores them long enough; after all, that's exactly what Rachel did.

Sum 41—Best of Me

i will break your heart, i will bring you down/but i will have to say/i'm sorry, it's all that i can say

Rachel won't look at her. She studiously ignores Quinn, bypassing her in the hallways and talking around her in glee and politely exiting any conversation that Quinn gets roped into. Santana threatens to beat the brunette into submission on Quinn's behalf, but Quinn simply shakes her head sadly and whispers a weak thanks anyways. Brittany tries to play mediator, but is stonewalled by Rachel's unbelievable obstinacy.

Quinn is silent through it all, with the exception of her like-clockwork apology that she offers softly and precisely at 3:00 every afternoon before glee rehearsal starts. She wants to yell and scream and cry, to grab Rachel by the shoulders and shake her and say I told you so over and over until the brunette acknowledges it. Quinn knows that she isn't easy to be with, that she's a bitch with a cruel streak a mile wide and unbearably stubborn to boot; she has the baggage of a child given up for adoption and parents who disowned her and an unpalatable salivation for control. Rachel had been the one who pursued Quinn, who doggedly batted away Quinn's fears of her own difficulties, who had stated over and over that your faults are part of what make me care for you so much and I don't care how bad you can be because I know how wonderful you really are at heart. Quinn had spent weeks begging and pleading and bartering with Rachel to get her to give up her ridiculous notions of romance blooming in the face of adversity, but even her famous stubbornness had been defeated by Rachel's, her fear and apprehension and determination to be a better person after giving up her daughter broken down piece by piece at the hands of a petite brunette with a Barbara Streisand obsession.

I'll break your heart Quinn had whispered, struggling to hold back tears of defeat, when she had crumpled into a chair in the auditorium the day she finally broke down and gave in; I'm not good enough for someone like you, she had said. Rachel had scoffed and kissed Quinn through her tears and said you're worth the risk to me.

Rachel won't look at her. It's been two weeks, four days, and sixteen hours since Rachel last spoke to Quinn, and Quinn sits dejected and alone in the rehearsal room. It's 2:57 and eighteen minutes before glee will start, thirteen minutes before the rest of the club will appear, and three minutes before Rachel will walk in. She counts the seconds silently in her head, watching dispassionately as the hands on her watch click along.

Rachel walks in with six seconds left before 3:00. Quinn doesn't look up from where she stares at her watch until it's exactly 3:00.

"I'm sorry," she says. Rachel stays unmoving, halfway between the door and the piano. She looks down at the floor, the piano, the stack of sheet music sitting on one of the music stands; anywhere but Quinn.

Quinn lets her eyes fall back down to her lap, fingers twined together and shoulders slumping. She wants to cry and shout and force Rachel to understand that she never wanted to hurt the other girl, that she's seventeen years old and young and stupid and monumentally screwed up after the last year, that when she makes mistakes she really makes mistakes and that all she can ever do when that happens is apologize and try to fix it. But she can't do anything if Rachel won't look at her.

When she looks back up, Rachel is standing barely three feet away, staring down at her with eyes brimming with frustration and anger and sadness and pain and sympathy.

"I know."

Neko Case—This Tornado Loves You

climb the boxcar to the engine through the smoke in to the sky/your rails have always outrun mine, so i/pick them up and smash them down in a moment close to now

It's like time has jumped back eighteen months. Quinn Fabray dropped out of glee and bulldogged her way back into her position atop the cheerleading pyramid. The glee club is no longer safe from slushy attacks and dumpster tosses. Finn and the other football players are once again stuck atop the fence, facing pressure from the reinstated high school hierarchy to get in line or get slushied. Only Santana and Brittany, by virtue of being Quinn's best friends since the first grade, are spared. And it's all because of Rachel Berry.

Rachel Berry, who had inadvertently made the school safer for the uncool by way of taming Quinn Fabray, who had somehow wound up in a tumultuous by overpoweringly romantic relationship with the blonde, who had blown away every single students' conception of social hierarchy by coming under the fierce and ruthless protection of the always-feared Quinn Fabray.

Then she had to go and screw it all up for everyone by breaking her girlfriend's heart. In the matter of a weekend, the icy and ruthless head Cheerio that had once ruled the school with an iron fist reemerged, in all of her ponytailed cartwheeling glory, and had laughed cruelly when the hockey Neanderthal Karofsky—who was surprisingly quick to realize the things were back where they once had been—hurled a cherry slushy into the unsuspecting face of a tired looking Rachel Berry.

The glee club members had taken to wearing raincoats in the hallways. Puck and Finn and Matt and Mike spent an inordinate amount of time in detention for getting into fights with whoever thought it was a good idea to try slushying them. Brittany and a previously-unseen softer Santana did what they could to help their fellow glee clubbers avoid the slushy attacks, but were unwilling to jeopardize a lifelong friendship with an already-heartbroken Quinn. After all, there was little doubt that things would get triply worse for everyone if Quinn, after losing the girl she loved, also lost her oldest and closest friends.

Rachel finally give in to the pleas of her fellow glee members and tries to approach Quinn. She corners the blonde in the locker room after cheerleading practice, tipped off to the blonde being alone by way of a text from Brittany.

"Quinn, please," she says again. "Can't we talk about this civilly? You're the only one who can put a stop to all of this. This entire school will do whatever you say."

Quinn ignores her, tossing her ponytail over her shoulder and continuing to pack her things into her gym bag.

"Please," Rachel repeats. She steps forward, daring to reach out and lay her hand on Quinn's shoulder.

Quinn practically growls, spinning around and ripping Rachel's hand from her shoulder. She advances on the smaller girl with all the determination and predatory grace of a jaguar, stalking forward until Rachel's back slams against the opposite row of lockers.

"Quinn," Rachel whispers fearfully. Quinn slams her hands against the lockers on either side of Rachel's head, smirking when the echoing crash makes Rachel jump and shut her eyes.

"You did this," Quinn whispers, her breath hot across Rachel's face. "Remember that."

Rachel remains where she is, pressed back against the lockers, long after Quinn saunters out of the room.

The Who—Magic Bus

every day you'll see the dust/as i drive my baby in the magic bus

Rachel hates buses and wishes for the thousandth time that she could afford a car, regardless of how impractical a car in New York City is. Every single time she forks of forty bucks to get onto an unhygienic bus at midnight after a show, she wishes she had a car. She doesn't care that she wouldn't be able to sleep if she was driving, or that when she can't sleep she can even use her laptop and get on the internet because for some reason buses these days have wireless access. She just really hates buses.

All that said, though, three nights a week, she leaves from the back entrance of the theater off-off-Broadway, ducking out from the rest of the cast and their parties, and catches a cab to the bus station, and takes the four hour bus ride to Boston. And every time, waiting alone at the bus station in Boston, is Quinn Fabray, her hair in a messy bun and eyes sleepy behind the glasses she never wears in public unless she's exhausted. Three nights—mornings, really—a week, Rachel shuffles off the bus at four in the morning in Boston, a small overnight bag slung over one shoulder, and makes her way to where Quinn is waiting to greet her with a tight hug and a brief kiss, and together they walk out to Quinn's car, leaning on one another all the way, and make the drive to Quinn's apartment just outside of the Tufts University campus.

Eight years later—after Quinn has earned her law degree and a spot as in-house counsel at IBM, after Rachel's show transitioned from off-off-Broadway to off-Broadway to Broadway and her career has picked up, after Quinn's moved to New York and they've broken up and gotten back together three times, after they went to Finn's wedding in Roanoke and Rachel had a breakdown in the bathroom at the reception because the bride was just so beautiful and they look so happy—Quinn takes a blindfolded Rachel to Boston at four in the morning and gets down on one knee on the extremely disgusting floor of the bus station and offers her a ring.

Rachel thinks, while dragging Quinn up to kiss her breathless, that maybe she doesn't hate buses all that much.