A/N: I do not own Glee. Special thanks to my beta, Casper (With Good Grace). She's awesome. Go love her :)

"WHAT THE HELL, HUMMEL? Why didn't you tell me Rachel Berry was coming over?"

Rachel is in the shower, so Quinn takes the opportunity to figure out why her friends had not shared this vital piece of information with her.

"Well, you are stressed enough as it is, and I remember how you felt in high school about our close friend, so why make you stress more? I honestly forgot about your cheerleading practice. I figured we could ghost over the subject since you hole up in your room and do work until your 8am library shift. Then you tend to be out the rest of the day on Saturday after work because you volunteer at that animal shelter, then go work at that restaurant on 5th avenue until 10pm. I figured you wouldn't even see Rachel."

"Besides, Q, it's really not a big deal. We don't expect you to hang with all of us when she is around anyway," Mercedes adds, flitting her hand around as if Quinn shouldn't be having an issue with her friends not telling her about their guest.

Quinn glares at Blaine to hear his excuse since she heard from everyone else in the room.

"You know Kurt makes the final decisions here. I told him to tell you but he felt his plan was fool proof."

"Traitor," Kurt playfully slaps Blaine's shoulder as Quinn rolls her eyes.

"Obviously it wasn't fool proof."

"I feel as if that was a snide remark against my intelligence, Quinn. I will ignore it though and blame it on your foul mood." Kurt says.

"Yeah, whatever. I'm going to get ready for when Berry is finished hoarding my shower."

After grabbing her bag, Quinn walks off in the direction of her side of the apartment.

She and Mercedes share the bathroom, which is perfectly alright with her, but sharing a bedroom that is as tiny as a walk in closet would have been a bit uncomfortable. She jimmies open the drawers of her wardrobe/side table to grab some random sleeping clothes and tosses them onto the twin-sized bed. She then walks over to her desk and starts putting the books from her bag into their correct cubby slots. As she finishes up, she hears a crash in the bathroom. She walks over to the bathroom and knocks gently on the slightly ajar door to warn Rachel before she barges in. What if something horrible happened? What if Berry fell and was knocked out in a puddle of water slowly drowning? Or worse, what if Berry found her secret collection of lucky Pokémon cards in the bottom drawer underneath the sink counter?

"Berry?"

Whenever she opens the door she notices Rachel wincing at her image in the mirror with blood slowly oozing out of the side of her head.

"I was just looking for some Neosporin or something… I mean, he hit my head on the wall pretty hard and I know that I said not to talk about it, but the walls of the city are pretty grungy. I mean, what if he had done the same thing to someone with AIDS in the exact same spot on the wall? Could I have AIDS? I should get checked for AIDS. I'll have to clear my schedule tomorrow…"

Quinn walks into the room, closes the door gently behind her and carefully guides Rachel away from the mirror. She pulls out the Neosporin hidden behind the mirror. On her way over to Rachel, she closes the drawers underneath the sink that Rachel must have previously been looking through. Her Pokémon drawer is not open though so her prized possessions must be safe.

"Relax, little one." Quinn says, wincing at the old term sliding from her mouth so easily. "It's right here. If you keep spouting out word vomit at me I might actually vomit all over your squeaky clean body."

"Thanks." Rachel says as she tries to take the medicine away from her, but Quinn has other plans.

"Sit," she orders.

"I'm not a dog, Quinn."

"Berry. I'm trying to help you. Just pop a squat on the toilet seat already."

Rachel complies; clutching her towel like it is her only lifeline and shield in case Quinn decides to go horror movie on her.

Quinn kneels down to Rachel's now even shorter level and holds her face with her hand. "Let me take care of you, ok?"

Rachel sits in a daze as Quinn smiles in response, stroking her cheek with her thumb before standing up and examining Rachel's cut.

"It's not deep. Head wounds bleed easily," Quinn says aloud for her own comfort.

"I know. Thank you," Rachel says quietly.

"Mhmm," Quinn says while gently applying Neosporin to the wound.

Once she is finished, Quinn gets lost in Rachel's soft hair, combing it with her fingers. Before she notices it, Rachel shoves a brush at her, causing the blonde to smile.

"Since you're up there you might as well make yourself useful," Rachel says quietly.

Quinn obeys and combs Rachel's hair for a while like her mom used to do for her, being careful not to let the hair pull too hard around the cut or have the brush graze the cut's sensitive surface.

"This is nice. My Dads never really took the time to brush my hair whenever I got older. They kind of just left me on my own to get ready for school once I learned what to do."

"My mom combed my hair up until I…" Quinn pauses for a moment, remembering the day that her family had decided she didn't belong anymore, "…stayed at Mercedes' house. It's a nice feeling, isn't it? My sister would take over her job if mom was too busy to do it."

By busy she meant intoxicated or beaten down. So most of the time it would be her and her sister holed up in the bathroom trying to stay quiet, but Rachel didn't need to know that.

"Thank you. I seem to be thanking you a lot recently."

"There is never any reason to thank me. Think of it as payment for my past deeds."

Rachel furrows her brow and bites her lip in an endearing manner which causes Quinn to crack another smile. "What's wrong?"

"I'm trying to decide if I want to keep letting you do this or if I should let you shower. I feel as if the latter may win out. I will vacate the area and get changed so you can warm yourself up."

"Oh. Right. Ok. Thanks."

"Consider it payment for my deeds aimed at you in the past."

Quinn looks at Rachel questioningly but only gets a timid smile for an answer.

"See you when you're out." Rachel says with a wink.

"Huh?"

"Of the shower Quinn. I'll see you when you are out of the shower…" Rachel gives her one of those are-you-feeling-ok looks. Quinn just looks away and goes back to her room to get her clothing.


"Ok. You can change in my room. It's this one," Quinn gestures around her tiny tasteless room with few decorations, grabs her clothing, and leaves for the shower.

Rachel turns toward the bed where the dry clothing is neatly spread out for her.

She slides the warm sweatpants on. The sweatpants can't possibly compensate for the cold, though, so she scopes the room for a hoodie. The hoodie would also conveniently cover up her new bruises forming from the incident earlier on. As she sifts through the wardrobe of Quinn Fabray it finally hits her exactly what she was doing. This is Quinn Fabray's room. This is Quinn Fabray's wardrobe she is sifting through. She is wearing Quinn Fabray's clothes.

Hell has officially frozen over.

After thoroughly searching through the girl's wardrobe, quickly glancing at certain drawers that she feels she should not be looking in, she turns her attention to the desk at the foot of the bed. On top of the desk is her salvation, an oversized hoodie. The brunette yanks it over her head and looks down. The familiar Julliard script smiles back at her which confuses her. Did Quinn look into Julliard at one point? Why didn't she go there? Did her auditions not make the cut?

Rachel could feel herself getting angry at such an absurd thought. How could Quinn not make the cut? And why do I feel a pang in my chest at not being able to go to school with my enemy? Maybe I miss the competition?

Maybe Quinn has some obscure cousin that goes there? Or worse, some obscure boyfriend?

Why would that be worse?

Rachel turns her attention to the desk where she had found the large sweater. She expects to see books, hoping to see what Quinn's electives are in school, but instead she finds a keyboard.

A keyboard? Rachel ghosts her fingers gently over the keys that are in pristine condition with no dust to be found. Why would Quinn keep a keyboard on her desk? Rachel looks about the desk, at the cubby holes at the top. Books for various classes are tottering haphazardly in the left cubby with their corresponding binders and notebooks on the right. Introduction books to medicine, social psychology, photography, environmental science, music, and film are displayed. She must have been excused from all of her English, biology, chemistry and psychology intro classes due to her AP scores. The woman must be a genius. No wonder she was so crabby in high school. Rachel would be too if she had to be perfect academically.

Rachel looks at the walls to try to collect her thoughts from all of the overwhelming information, or lack thereof. The walls are a soft yellow with various pictures plastered hastily on the wall. Some are pictures of Quinn from high school. The girl smiles back at Rachel from various positions with Santana and Brittany, Kurt and Mercedes. She even sees one where Quinn is dancing with Blaine during a party at Noah's. There are various pictures of the Glee club performing as well as the Cheerios.

One framed picture catches her eye. In the picture, the club is having their "circle" time to get pumped up before a big performance. Everyone has their hands clasped and connected to symbolize the family connection. Quinn has her hands interlocked with Mercedes and, well, Rachel. They are sneaking a peek at each other, giggling as the rest of the club collects themselves in the silence before the big moment. The memory of that moment makes Rachel feel flushed so she pushes the feeling down into her gut and forces her eyes to skim over these photos to look at others more sporadically strewn across the walls.

These pictures are not of Quinn. They are of other people. Some people she knows, such as Mercedes, and others she does not. These pictures project feeling. Not that the others didn't, but these pictures do not need the memory she has of the event to enhance their meaning. One is a black and white picture of Noah cradling Beth in his arms. Noah holds so much emotion in his eyes that Rachel can feel tears coming to her own as she watches him cradle the sleeping baby in his arms.

"She's fantastic isn't she?" Mercedes walks into the room quietly putting her hand on the shorter girl's shoulder.

"Who is?"

"The photographer."

"The best I have ever seen! I have never viewed pictures so full of meaning before in my life! How did Quinn obtain these pictures? Do you think that they would like to take pictures for my first Broadway performance? I will have to ask Quinn for their contact number…"

"You may want to keep your monologues to a minimum if you want Quinn to give out her number. She wouldn't want you to abuse the privilege of obtaining a way to contact her."

"Well I would only call the photographer whenever I need, her you said? I will have to learn of her name though. She might already be hitting it big with a solo career by the time I am in my first musical…" Rachel wondered aloud.

"Cool it before you have an aneurism, Rach. The photographer is Quinn. You won't have to worry about all of that because I am pretty positive that she would be fine doing you a favor. She's changed and matured a lot since you last had a legitimate conversation with her. She'd jump at any opportunity to make it up to you for high school. Just don't abuse that privilege." Mercedes' tone ended with a menacing edge to it in warning.

Obviously Mercedes had missed Rachel, but she wasn't looking for Quinn to be used by Rachel either.

Haha. Quinn. Used by me. I wonder if there are snowball fights in hell at the moment. Or even better, could they be making snow angels?

"Anyway, I just came in here to see what you would like to eat. There's a pizza place that delivers that has vegan pizza on the menu, so there's that…"

"That would be lovely, thank you," Rachel says warmly with a thousand watt smile flashing in the larger woman's direction. "How much is it? I insist on contributing to the payment."

At that moment Quinn walks into her room with a towel in hand trying to dry out the remainder of the water in her hair. She had grabbed her Columbia University Sweatpants, shirt, and has her sweatshirt in her other hand. She's like a walking billboard for the school.

"No. I'll pay for everyone, my trea- is that my sweater?"

"Uhh. I was cold?"

Quinn laughs her sweet laugh that she used to hide in high school. She really is a different person than the one she used to be in high school.

"It's fine. I was just curious as to where you got it since you left your other clothes in the a-"

Mercedes gives a confused look toward Quinn.

"The dryer. You left all your clothes in the dryer and I don't know. I'll tell Kurt to call in the pizzas now." Quinn walks away awkwardly as Mercedes tugs the brunette with her into the living room to socialize with everyone else.