A/N: So this story is running away with me already. I know where I want it to go, so I hope you all like it! All will be revealed in due time. At the moment, the plan is NOT to have a lot of interaction with former Glee club members, but we'll see. Story will remain canon up to the Christmas break of senior year and diverge then. And no - Karen is NOT any kind of a love interest or foil, promise.

*tap tap* "Karen? Karen it's like almost noon, I gotta go soon," Rachel called through the door softly. She'd awoken a few moments prior when she'd gone to turn over and had fallen right off the couch. No response from behind her friend's door. "I'm gonna use your shower, stealing your towel all right?" This being one of their mutual pet peeves, she didn't actually intend to do any such thing, but Rachel knew that if her friend was actually conscious in her room, this statement would bring her barrelling out.

Nothing. Apparently, her friend was even more sacked out than she herself had been. She shrugged. Her years at WMHS had taught her (finally) that bothering people about their own personal habits, especially when they didn't actually affect her own ability to function, was both pointless and tended to put further strain on already tenuous relationships. So rather than reminding her friend that they both had a class in two hours, she sent a quick reminder text (she WAS still Rachel Berry after all) and crossed the living room to go shower. She knew where the clean towels were after all.

The water took forever to heat up in the shower, so while it ran, Rachel looked at herself in the mirror, easing each of the four hoops out of her right ear, and the three from her left. The latch on her lowest hoop on the right side always stuck, so she ended up turning sideways so she could attempt to see the back of her ear to see what was the problem. Yup, looped wrong again. She sighed and fixed the problem so she could safely remove the accessory, but before setting it down she briefly traced the star she could see inked there. She grinned. "I am a shining star!" she sang softly at her reflection, remembering the vocal warm ups she'd overheard Shelby utilizing with the TroubleTones back in high school. For some reason, the New Directions had never liked that one.

The thought of the woman who had given life to her caused her eyes to glaze over, thinking fondly back to the picture in her room. "I miss you baby girl," she whispered to the empty room. But that could be resolved later. Right now she needed to get in the shower so she could make her class on time. Stepping in and closing the glass door, she let the now warm water cover the few tears that came as well. The moment passed as the water began to work out the kinks she'd developed sleeping on the couch, and she forgot she wasn't at home and began to sing.


It wasn't that Lucy didn't like her roommate, it was that she'd put her headphones on and just get lost in studying. Or editing her photographs. Mostly her photographs. The way each image could tell a story without words, could evoke emotion without movement, all of it spoke to her. So little had spoken to her in the latter days of high school. And since graduation, she'd let only a few people in, and even then only for a day, a week, the time she spent in a city. When a project was done, the class or two she was auditing at whatever school was closest and most interesting ended, or she just couldn't take it anymore, she was gone. No emails, no forwarding address, and never a phone call.

But three months ago all of that had changed. The seemingly neverending funds that her father had been letting her use to travel the world with her camera had dried up suddenly. When she discovered this upon trying to buy a plane ticket home from Machu Picchu, she'd called him frantically. She and her father had never gotten along very well, but the cold reception she got when he answered was more akin to when she was sixteen and pregnant, not 21 and stranded. He'd bought the plane ticket, gotten her home, and promptly cancelled every card she had. He hadn't answered her calls since.

A call to her mother - now happily living in Italy of all places with an artist she'd met and married over the course of a long weekend - had done two things. It had cemented her decision to finally go to New York and finish school. It had also confirmed her worst fear. Her father had cut her off because he'd somehow seen a picture of her at Mardi Gras in Brazil. She'd later learn it had been in among a group of candid photos in a magazine spread, but it didn't matter. She was wrapped around a girl - what was her name? Tania? Tandy? Oh well, didn't matter - hands in each other's back pockets and tongues down each other's throats.

So here she was now, sharing an apartment with a girl she didn't know - Craig's List really hadn't done her a disservice though - keeping up with her personal photography projects but trying to spend most of her time studying so she could get a degree and stop using the money her mother and stepfather sent her for her education.

Frustrated at her inability to concentrate on anything but her past, Lucy pulled off her headphones and heard a startling sound. Singing. And that most definitely was NOT Karen, whose voice reminded her of Santana Lopez'. No, this singing was distinct, familiar, and growing in volume. But it couldn't be, could it? She racked her brain. Had Karen told her the name of the friend she was going out with? No, she'd been trying to finish a paper and tuned her out once she realized the conversation was going to once more consist of 'come out with me' 'no' 'come ON!' and the like.

The singing continued. She couldn't take it anymore. She got up from her chair and walked out into the common area, telling herself she was just going for a bottle of water. She saw the bathroom door shut and realized that the reason the song was muffled was that the singer was in the shower. As she bent down to pull a water from the bottom drawer of the refrigerator, the water shut off suddenly along with the voice. Startled, she spun around, managing to somehow hit her head on the refrigerator door, resulting in a muffled expletive. And then it happened.

Rachel emerged from the bathroom, one towel wrapped securely around her body, a smaller one over her head, towel drying her short hair. "K, I just realized I don't have another top to wear, can I steal one of yo- oh, hello!" She lowered the towel from her head, realizing that the long expanse of hair she was looking at definitely did NOT belong to her best friend. The girl was facing away from Rachel, apparently rubbing at a sore spot on her head. "I hope we didn't wake you up last night. I don't believe we've met yet. I'm Rachel." Forgetting her current attire, she strode right up to the young woman.

"I know," came the whispered reply. Rachel noticed thin shoulders shaking as a deep breath was taken before the person in front of her turned around. And suddenly the world went pear shaped.

"Quinn?"