She sang to the baby, all the time, she read somewhere that she could hear her voice in the womb. Sometimes he would join in, they would sing classic Broadway duets, and rock songs, and pop songs and old standards from their years in glee club.

Have I ever told you, how good it feels to hold you, it isn't easy to explain—

"Rach," Finn said cutting off his jam session with his unborn daughter, "Did you feel that? She kicked."

"Of course I felt it, it's happening inside of me," Rachel giggled. "Somebody likes the Ronettes."

"That was the Ramones cover babe," Finn explains. "Our little girl is a rocker."

"You're a bad influence, she never kicks when I sing Rogers and Hammerstein or Sondheim," she said, pouting.

"That's just because she doesn't want to interrupt, she knows who her mommy is."

Rachel bent down to kiss him, "You're such a sweetie, not to mention a horrible liar." She kisses him again, longer and deeper than the one before.

As their lips part and he looks deep into her eyes there's only one thing he can manage to say.

"Marry me."

She smiles affectionately at him. "I told you, you don't have to marry me just because I'm pregnant. I'm a modern woman Finn, and I'm secure in my relationship with you. Besides, more and more women in showbiz are having children and maintaining long-term relationships without getting Married. There's Angelina and Brad, Goldie and Kurt, Madonna—

"Rachel," Finn says cutting her off. "I don't want to marry you because you're pregnant, I want to marry you because…"

"Because what?" she says, goading him on.

He smiles and shrugs like it's the simplest thing in the world. "Because you're you."


When he wakes up it's as if he's in a different apartment, he doesn't think it's ever been this clean before. The magazines are stacked neatly on his coffee table, his dirty clothes are nowhere to be seen, the dishes are washed and stacked, it even looks like the carpet's been vacuumed.

"Rach?" he says groggily.

"Who's Rach?" the small voice answers, pronouncing the "R" a little bit like a "W." He spots her sitting on the barstool by the kitchen counter. She's eating cereal and watching some cartoon on his TV.

"Oh hey," he says, remembering the events that brought her there.

"Good morning Dolphin," she says casually. He stands up, stretches and rubs the sleep out of his eyes. "I made you a bowl of cereal, I put the milk in a mug so it won't get soggy, soggy cereal's gross."

"Did you clean up my apartment?" he said.

She looks at him with her wide eyes and shrugs. "I didn't know where your clothes went so I putted them on your bed."

"Thanks, but you didn't have to do that." He says.

She shrugs again and turns her attention back to her cereal. He sits down too and pours the milk over the froot loops that she's made for him. In his waking he notices that she's cleaned up more than his apartment. She's undid her braids and pulled her thick bushy curls back into a barely contained ponytail, she's scrubbed the soot from her face and traded in her oversized plaid shirt and jeans for a an even more oversized, very familiar lacy dress.

"Where did you find that dress?" he asks.

"In your closet," she says casually, clearly having no qualms whatsoever with going through his things. "Why do you have a dress in your closet?"

He gives her a sad look. "It's my wife's."

"Oh," she says. "What happened to her?"

"What makes you think something happened to her?" Finn says.

"Because she's not here," Naomi explains. "Where is she?"

"Um, it's kind of a long story," he says, scratching the back of his head.

"She must have a lot of pretty dresses," she says, playing with the intricate pink lace on the one she's wearing.

"Yeah, she's a bit of a princess," Finn says affectionately. "So, what are you watching?"

"Doug," she says, "I never seened it before."

"It's kind of an old cartoon," Finn says, his memory returning. "I think I was younger than you when this got cancelled."

"It's funny, I like Skeeter, I had a dog named Skeeter but he ranned away. I don't know why the one in the show is blue though, nobody's really blue—"

"Naomi? Can I ask you something?" Finn says, interrupting her. "What happened to you? Why were you in that motel?"

"That's where I lived with my mommy," she says.

"What happened to her?"

Naomi lowers her eyes sadly. "She went to get us food and she didn't come back."

"How long ago was that?"

She shrugs. "I don't know."

"Try to think, how many days?" She begins to count on her fingers at this point.

"About this many," she says, holding up nine fingers.

Finn's heart sinks, he doesn't understand how anybody could just leave a little girl like that, something awful must have happened to her mother.

"I miss her," Naomi says, "I hope she can still find me now."

"Yeah," Finn says, snapping out of his thoughts. "I'm sure she will," he lies.

"Dolphin, since I was good and I cleaned up your house and I made you breakfast and stuff does that mean…"

"Does it mean what?" Finn says.

"Does it mean you're still going to arrest me?" she says timidly.

He's confused. "Why would you think I'd arrest you?"

"Because I set the motel on fire," she says. "I didn't mean to, I forgot to put out the candle before I went upstairs," she starts to cry a bit now, her face scared.

"Hey, hey, hey," he says gently grabbing her shoulders and making her look him in the eyes. "I'm not a cop, I can't arrest anyone, and even if I could I'd never arrest someone who made me froot loops, it's like the best cereal ever."

She smiles a bit through her tears. "Do you want some more?" she says, holding up the box.

"Absolutely," he says, deciding he kind of likes this kid.

Don't worry, I will explain what happened to Rachel and their baby and where Naomi comes in. I've never written a major child character before so I hope I don't end up making her too precocious or cutesy. And this story probably won't include too many other characters from the show, but Kurt and Blaine will come in soon and Burt and Carole should also make an appearance at some point.