Rachel lasts a full week before finding her in a bathroom—and oh, God, why is it always bathrooms and bleachers and empty auditoriums for them? Rachel never has the upper hand when they're in public, but she somehow seems to tower over Quinn when they're alone—and confronting her.

"You came back to glee," she notes, arms crossed and brow furrowed as she watches from across the room. Quinn stays silent, perfecting her reflection in the mirror, and offers nothing more than a quirk of an eyebrow in acknowledgment because they've done this and she'd believed it when Rachel said whenever you're ready.

"I thought you said you weren't going to come back," Rachel continues. Her tone is neutral but her eyes, just barely visible in the mirror over Quinn's shoulder, are wide and uncertain.

"And I thought that you were going to let it go," Quinn says. Her eyes flick momentarily to the side, catching Rachel's in the mirror for a split second. She rocks back on her heels before turning slowly, careful to keep her shoulders back and chin lifted—it worked so much better when she had the protection of a Cheerios uniform, but Rachel still shrinks the tiniest bit back into the door. "Anyways, isn't it what you wanted? For me to come back and round out the numbers in your merry band of misfits so we can all hold hands and compete?"

"I wanted you to not be so sad," Rachel says softly. Her words are honest and heavy, punching into Quinn's stomach like a brick.

"I never said I was sad," she manages to says, her voice wavering audibly, because somehow Rachel always seems to know and part of Quinn hates her for always being right.

"That doesn't matter," Rachel says. She's moving forward, her hands half in front of her, as if she can't decide if approaching a caged animal is a good idea, and Quinn can barely comprehend the movement through the sound of blood rushing through her veins, her body reacting suddenly and violently against her will to the feeling of being trapped. The instinct to run—one she's harnessed and honed and perfected after eighteen years of realizing that fighting never helps—leaves the muscles in her legs tight and shaking, her entire body straining to leave the claustrophobic bathroom.

"What matters is that you are, and anyone who's paying attention can see it." Rachel is still talking, her words echoing harshly against the hard walls surrounding them; through the edges of a panic attack, Quinn tries to focus on Rachel's voice as an anchor and wonders desperately if she remembered to grab her inhaler out of her gym bag this morning.

Suddenly, she's sitting on the floor, slumped in a corner with a half-frantic Rachel in front of her and gripping her shoulders. Her chest aches and even though she's sitting, her legs feel rubbery, like she just sprinted the length of a football field; the sharp feeling of Rachel's fingers digging into skin through her sweater is an almost-welcome distraction, and slowly, her breathing evens out and lungs stop burning and heart slows down.

"Are you okay?" Rachel finally ventures, frowning. Her hands are still tight on Quinn's shoulders, and Quinn can't tell if Rachel's shaking as well or if it's just her.

Her mouth is dry and her stomach aches, like it had when she spent a weekend in July trying to inoculate herself against the reek of cigarettes and chainsmoked an entire carton with the skanks on an empty stomach. She opens her mouth to respond, but nothing comes out, and suddenly Rachel is on the other side of the bathroom—it feels so much less constricting than it had just a moment earlier—and retrieving a shockingly pink reusable water bottle. Quinn watches, her head falling back tiredly against the wall, as Rachel fills the bottle at the sink, and wonders if she'll spend the rest of her life confronting Rachel Berry in a bathroom.

When the water bottle is offered to her, she halfheartedly considers blowing Rachel off yet again, but her throat aches and her legs feel too weak to support her storming out, so instead she just accepts the proffered drink and sips slowly from it. Rachel stands uncomfortably in front of her, fidgeting and pulling at the hem of her sweater, until Quinn finally finds it in herself to roll her eyes.

"I'm not going to slap you again," she mutters. "If you want to sit down or something."

Rachel immediately folds her legs under herself, sitting daintily directly on front of her, and stares at Quinn unabashedly. "Should I go get the nurse?"

"I'm fine," Quinn says. She focuses her gaze at the dark denim covering her knees—she spent an hour the night before searching through her closet to find outfits that would let Shelby think that she had found some happy medium between the Celibacy Club and the skanks, and jeans with no holes in them seemed like a good compromise—and tries to pretend that Rachel's stare hasn't always unnerved her.

"You're obviously not, if you're having panic attacks in the school bathrooms."

"I'm fine, Rachel." She hates how tired her voice sounds, but by the time the words are out there's nothing she can do to change it. Rachel looks at her, unwavering and so obnoxiously sympathetic, and suddenly all Quinn can think about is Rachel picking out the song Mr. Scheu took from her for the assembly, and how Rachel never picks a song without at least eighteen reasons, and how Rachel always seems to want to fix things. The thoughts rush around her head and she feels her chest starting to tighten again; she grips the water bottle tightly and hates herself for not having her inhaler.

Silence stretches between them while Quinn tries to will her body into a calmer state, until Rachel blurts out, "Noah called me."

Quinn's jaw clenches involuntarily, and before she can find it in herself to throw the water bottle at Rachel and bolt, the other girl is talking again.

"It's why I had to ask. He said that he went to see Shelby, and he saw Beth, and he wants to be a part of her life. And that you do, too, but he's scared that you're going to mess it up for both of you and—"

"Shut up," Quinn practically growls out. The loud clang of the water bottle slamming against cheap tiles echoes around the room and makes Rachel jump, and anger overrides the weakness in her body and lets Quinn scramble to her feet.

"Quinn, wait," Rachel says, leaping up behind her. "Please, I don't want you to think I agree with him, I just thought—"

"Shut up," Quinn hisses, whirling around to face her. Her hands clench into fists at her sides, her arm twitching against the instinct to smash across Rachel's face once more. "You don't know anything."

"That's a lie and you know it," Rachel says, her own stubbornness pushing through the shake in her voice. "You gave your daughter up for adoption and now you want her back, and I'm the only person you know who's actually adopted. I know almost more about it than you do because I've lived the life Beth is facing."

"It's not the same," Quinn says with a sneer. The remnants of her panic attack are gone, a thrill of adrenaline overwhelming everything else as she towers over Rachel. "Shelby didn't fight for you, Rachel. I'm nothing like her, because I actually want to get my daughter back."

Quinn's stomach twists even more than when she'd slapped Rachel at prom, and she can't tell if it's from the shock on Rachel's face or the nasty voice in the back of her head insisting that she's lying to herself. She freezes her sneer in place and spins on one heel, stalking out of the bathroom alone. The suffocating weight of guilt presses on her chest for the rest of the day, and she wonders bitterly if she's ever going to be as good a person as Rachel can be.


You're the best thing I've ever done in my life, Beth, and I need you to know that. I was sixteen when you were born and I'd already made so many huge mistakes, and I made so many more afterwards, but despite all of that, everything about you was perfect. Is. You're still perfect. No matter what happens in your life, if I'm there or not, whatever other mistakes I might make, or that you might make, I want you to know that. No matter if I'm there when you hear this or not, you have to know that if I'm not, it isn't because you don't mean everything to me.