Authors Note: Thank you all for the great reviews you've been leaving, I'm glad your all enjoying this story and the prequal. And yes, I'm sorry the week wait between chapters is hard for some of you, but trust me it's much better for the story this way.

I want to address a couple of things that have come up in reviews. First off, Quinn isn't "packing" as PezberryFaberryLuvr postulates. I'm not sure if it is actually true or not but statistics I've heard about suggests the teenage pregnancy rate for girls confused about their sexuality is higher than average, so Sue's advice is for any point where Quinn might have a bit of a panic and end up sleeping with a boy. That advice might be a little late though...

Second, Rachel hasn't been hiding the fact she's pregnant from Santana yet. Chapters 2 and 3 were only a week at most after New Year and she doesn't know herself yet, that changes in this chapter.

At the start of this chapter we've skipped a few weeks into the year, hopefully that will be clear from the text.


Quinn had been right, try outs were a nightmare. Santana and Quinn had put the signup sheets up pretty much as soon as they had come out of the copier and it didn't take very long for them to fill up, and up, and up. By Monday of the next week it had become obvious that one try-out wasn't going to be enough, so reluctantly they scheduled sessions pretty much every day of the week, sometimes just one hour squeezed between classes when they could, but mostly two hour sessions. Except for Friday's session, this session in fact, this one was going to last as long as took.

Santana was sitting with her feet up on the desk that had been placed at one side of the gym and was paying more attention to filling her nails than to the current wannabe prancing about in front of herself and Quinn. It had taken all of about ten seconds for Santana to write off this particular person and frankly she was wondering why Quinn was allowing it to go on for as long as she had, apparently they had been kicking out people so quickly that it had become a boasting point just to have completed a routine, even if they weren't selected for the squad.

But glancing up at Quinn, Santana could see the twinkle of amusement in the blonde's eye and the Latina glances over at the performer wondering for a moment if she'd missed something that Quinn had seen, just in time to see the girl loose her balance and crash face-first to the gym floor.

Quinn erupts in laughter before leaning towards Santana, "I was waiting for that to happen."

Santana snorts and shakes her head as Quinn verbally chases the girl out of the gym.

"How many more of these do we have to do?" Santana demands of the baby Cheerio that had been manning the door.

She sticks her head outside and shouts back "One more."

"Thank fuck" Santana mutters, her attention back on her nails.

Santana makes a show of ignoring whoever it is that she can hear walking across the gym right until Quinn nudges her.

"Your secret crush is here." The blonde whispers to her.

The Latina's head shoots up and sure enough she finds Berry standing in the middle of the gym looking at them expectantly. It takes a moment for Santana to pull herself together because, along with a red fitted t-shirt, the diva is wearing a pair of black shorts that she's pretty sure should be illegal in all fifty states and has the result of showing off so much leg that Santana wonders for a moment where the girl keeps it all. She's even gotten rid of her knee socks for this event and that just makes things so much worse.

Santana manages to finally drag her eyes away from those legs and those shorts and that's when she realizes that the diva has her hair up in a high pony, just like all the other Cheerios wear it, and for a fleeting moment the image of the girl in uniform doing all sorts of bends and stretches pops unwanted into the Latina's mind. She's suddenly very glad she's wearing her compression shorts underneath her spankies.

"Oh no" Santana says, finally getting hold of herself, "You are not trying out Hobbit!"

"I don't think you have the right to refuse me Santana" Rachel says holding her chin high and meeting Santana's gaze, "The sign-up sheet said anyone could try out."

"The midget has a point." Quinn comments apparently absently, but Santana can hear the amusement in her voice.

Santana grabs the sheets that have been scattered over the table, examines them then smirks in victory, "I don't see your name on the list. If you haven't signed up, you can't try out."

The diva doesn't look phased, "I'm on the back of the last page with the last five girls that have been in here. There wasn't enough space."

Santana turns over the specified sheet and sure enough finds six names on the back, five of which they'd already allowed to try out, so she couldn't even refuse on that basis. So she tries another tactic.

"Fine Hobbit, go ahead. But on your own head be it."

"W-What do you mean?" For the first time the diva doesn't sound so sure of herself.

"We're looking for a base and two flyers and you are too small to be a base." Santana observes trying for an appearance of indifference as she examines her nails again, "So you'd be a flyer. Right Quinn."

"Probably, Jennifer would be first choice for a base anyway." Quinn observes.

Santana looks up at Rachel as if genuinely curious "So do you think a broken nose would affect your voice any?"

Rachel takes an involuntary step back, her hands coming up to her nose and her eyes wide, "You wouldn't!"

Santana shrugs, "Accidents do happen. Why do you think we're holding try-outs?"

Rachel glances to Quinn who just nods. It takes Rachel all of five second to adjust her priorities.

"I think I'll just…" she starts before turning and heading for the door.

Santana watches the diva depart, her eyes drawn to that ass in those tiny shorts until the door closes after them and then sighs in relief.

"So" Quinn says, taking her turn to casually examine her nails, "Why exactly didn't you want Yentl to try out?"


Honestly Rachel was thankful that Santana had pointed out the folly of joining the Cheerio's. She had been very much in two minds about the whole thing, weighing the increase in popularity to "ignored" status against being under Coach Sue's thumb had been a close call and the only real reason she's went was because she had this nagging feeling that she was forgetting something. She assumed it was the try-outs, but now that was done and dealt with, the feeling hadn't gone away. If she had even thought about the chance of injury and what it could do to her performance ability, she'd never have went in the first place.

She'd changed out of her gym clothes in the locker room and was now heading to her locker to collect her books when she turns a corner and then suddenly backtracks. She peaks around the corner and confirms that, yes; Finn is standing at her locker. Again.

And that's how Santana finds her five minutes later.

"What are you doing Hobbit?"

"Shhhh!" Rachel says pulling back from the corner, "Avoiding Finn."

Santana steps out into the corridor and see Finn standing by the diva's locker, "And why exactly are you hiding from your boyfriend? Well apart from the fact he's a giant idiot, in more ways than one, and has weird puffy pyramid nipples."

"He's not my boyfriend" Rachel hisses, "We broke up before Christmas when he decided playing some stupid computer game was more important that spending time with me. He just doesn't seem to have gotten the message yet."

Santana really doesn't understand why that little piece of information makes her heart thump a little harder in her chest. What does she care if the diva has broken up with the oaf? But it does so she goes with it. Without another word she marches down the corridor and, with very few words and a few threatening hand gestures, chases Finn away.

"You can come out now, he's gone." She calls back to Rachel once she's sure he has indeed gone.

"Thank you Santana, I appreciate it." Rachel tries to thank the Latina but she's gone as well.


The feeling of having missed something important had been annoying Rachel for the last week. It had started off as a minor niggle but had grown to be almost all encompassing so that when Rachel returned home from school she headed straight up to her room, dug out her planner and started flipping through it.

It was only the third week of January, none of her relatives or friends had birthdays that early in the year and she couldn't have forgotten any assignments already. She flips back a few pages noting nothing out of the ordinary until she got to the new year break which causes her to frown. She wasn't exactly sure what to think of the events of that night and Santana hadn't said anything to her at school or to anyone else as far as Rachel could tell and Rachel wasn't entirely sure that approaching the Latina about it was a good idea. It may be best to let sleeping giants rest.

She flips back a week to the Christmas holidays with a frown, anything this far back probably isn't going to be the problem but she idly flips back one more week and then another. Her eyes land on the red ink marked by one particular day and her stomach drops. She flips forward quickly, three weeks, four weeks, five weeks, six weeks but nothing. Part of her mind says she just forgot to write it down but in her heart she knows that isn't true and that means she's late, two weeks late.

And that means…

She doesn't remember leaving the house but within minutes she's driving to the Wal-Mart on the other side of town, it wasn't a conscious decision but she knows she can't use the drug store nearby because her father's go there all the time and they know the owner. She can be anonymous at the Wall-Mart though, it will be packed with people just wanting to get what they need and get home, which is exactly what Rachel needs.

She's just about to climb out of her car and head in to the store when she realizes just where she's parked. The store has some reserved slots near the main door specifically for expectant mothers and parents with very young children and she has unconsciously parked in one of those very spots. Rachel can almost feel the blood draining from her face and, heart racing, she puts her car in to reverse and pulls out of the bay, eventually finding a spot well away from the front door and leaving her with a long walk to get to the store.

She grabs a basket at the entrance and wanders around the store collecting some odds and ends, a notepad, some pens, a few herbs and spices she thinks they may be running short of, some deodorant, a new lipstick, a few gossip magazines and two women's magazines that happen to have articles on pregnancy in them. All this shopping accomplishes two tasks, first its camouflage for the real reason she's here and second, it allows her to put off visiting a certain aisle until she really needs to.

She's been down the aisle before obviously, it has all the feminine hygiene products in it, but she's never really paid attention to the pregnancy test section and now she's here she's starting to wonder if she should have done some research before coming over. There turns out to be plenty of different types of test to choose from and for the first time she can remember, the diva is feeling totally unprepared. She's standing with a different test in each hand and staring at even more on the shelves before her when a hand appears in her line of sight pointing to one of the boxes in her hands and the owner speaks.

"That one is the most reliable."

It's almost like Rachel's brain throws up a list of people she wouldn't want to see right now, Santana at the top (beating her fathers only because she might remember the events of new years and put two and two together) followed by her fathers (second equal of course) and circles third place, Quinn.

"It's not for me" she blurts shoving the other packages back on the shelf, "it's for…" she begins before tailing off, unable to come up with someone it could be for.

"One of your Dads?" Quinn asks with an arched eyebrow. "Or maybe Santana's right and the nickname Lady Hummel is appropriate?"

"Quinn… please…"

"So who's the lucky guy that got between your thighs Berry?" Quinn says with a smirk, "Not Finn I guess, rumor has it he has an early arrival problem."

Quinn crosses her arms across her chest and leans against the shelving unit in front of the diva and appraises her closely. Rachel has screwed her eyes closed, her arms wrapped around her body crushing the two tests she was holding in the process and it takes a moment for Quinn to realize that the other girl is actually physically shaking and for some reason the single tear that rolls down the diva's cheek makes Quinn's own eyes burn. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that the diva is absolutely terrified.

Quinn sighs and reaches out to places a hand on Rachel's arm which causes the other girl to jump. "What are you scared of Berry, the result or people finding out?"

"Both" Rachel manages to squeak out, "It's bad enough my life may well change… totally." she gasps out between shudders, "Now everyone's going to know before I even have a chance to take the test."

For some reason the smallness of Rachel's voice actually made Quinn's chest ache. She'd never really hated the girl but she'd never really liked her either. She'd bullied, teased and tortured Rachel for years and now, just when she'd been given the ammunition of a life time, some part of her knew she'd never be able to use it.

"Don't worry" she sighs shaking her head a little, "I'm not going to tell anyone."

"Why?" the word came out of Rachel's mouth almost instantaneously and was more of a demand than a question.

Quinn pulls the two now crushed test boxes out of Rachel's hands and discards them onto the shelf before picking up and undamaged test and examining it. "Last year I spent an oh-so regrettable and very forgettable night with Puck and a few weeks later I was standing right where you are standing, hoping I wouldn't see anyone I knew."

"But you're…" Rachel blurts and then slams her mouth shut.

"I'm what?" Quinn demands, her face going icy for a moment.

Rachel looks away from the blonde shaking her head, "Nothing."

There's a long pause then Quinn sighs. "People do a lot of things they regret, especially when their trying to figure out… things about themselves." She pushes herself up off the shelf and drops the box into Rachel's basket, "I was lucky and it was negative. But whatever the result of that test Rachel, it's up to you who finds out about it. I may not like you Berry, but even I wouldn't do that to you."

Rachel visibly relaxes as Quinn walks behind her as if about to walk away but then she reappears right next to the diva and whispers in her ear "But I will still find out who got between your legs."

Rachel spins round but Quinn is already strutting away along the aisle.

She doesn't meet anyone else she knows on the way to the checkouts and the girl on the till doesn't even blink as she scans the barcode on the test box. Rachel makes it back to her car and once she gets home she's relieved to find that her father's still aren't back yet, so she heads up to her room and collapses onto her bed still shaking slightly from her encounter with Quinn. She knows a huge collection of exercises that are supposed to help her calm down before she goes on stage, not that she's ever been nervous of performing but its best to be prepared, but the only thing that seems to be helping is time.

Rachel rolls onto her side and the bag containing the test comes into view sitting where she had tossed it onto the bed. She pulls out the test and reads the instructions before grabbing her phone and heading to her bathroom, she needed to pee anyway and she might as well get the whole thing over with so she knows where she stands.

She starts the timer on her phone when she's done and leaves the test readout down on the counter while she paces back and forward in her room, arms wrapped around her body as if to hold herself together. As the second tick past her anxiety grows, until now she's not really had the time to even consider the effect that becoming pregnant would have on her life and she really doesn't know where to start.

She knew she could handle school; she'd have to if she was pregnant since an abortion was not even an option as far as Rachel was concerned. No matter how many slushies she received or how people talked about her behind her back, the names she would be called or the looks she would receive, she would hold her head up and get through it for the sake of the baby.

But what about after the birth? She would have to choose between her child and her dream of Broadway and even though she didn't actually know if she was pregnant yet, just the thought of giving up her child made her feel sick. Many people would probably tell her that adoption was a sensible and reasonable answer to the issue, a proper family would be able to look after and provide for the child better then she herself could even with her fathers' help, but that didn't stop just thinking about it make her feel like someone was tearing out her heart.

She couldn't go to NYADA on her own with a child, she'd be lucky if she could make it to Ohio State or even the Lima community college. The thought of giving up her dreams of New York and Broadway felt just as bad as the thought of giving up her child and for a moment Rachel hates herself for even feeling that way and she wonders if she is even fit to be a mother.

And Santana was another problem. If Rachel was pregnant she'd have to tell the Latina since she was technically the father. Would the Latina believe her? The diva doesn't know if she even remembers the events of the party never mind the events afterwards in Puck's guest room. Rachel doesn't remember it all and at least she had the benefit of waking up in bed with the other girl to jog her memory.

The alarm on her phone goes off which causes her to stop in her tracks and derails her train of thought. She stands for a few moments staring at the door to the bathroom before she final gathers the courage to step into the smaller room. Her hand is shaking as she reaches out to pick up the stick, she pauses to take a breath, then for the moment of truth, she turns the test over.

Pregnant.

Conjecture becomes reality it feels like the bottom has fallen out of her stomach and her world. Her free hand goes straight to her stomach as if she can already feel the baby growing inside her and unseeing, she manages to take the few steps to her bed before collapsing on it and curling into a ball with the test still gripped tightly in her hands and held close to her heart. It doesn't take long for the tears to start.


She doesn't know how longs it has been but at some point she must have dozed off since the new text alert on her phone wakes her up.

Noah: Ur l8. R U comin Ovr 4 gAms night?

Rachel sighs and rolls her eyes, Puck knows how much she hates text speak but he will insist on using it when he texts her. Puck and Rachel had started hanging out together many years before when they met at temple. There weren't many Jewish families in Lima and even fewer had children her age, so it had become sort of inevitable that the two of them would end up hanging out and they had managed to keep their friendship even after Puck started acting like… well, Puck.

It had been Puck not Finn that had introduced Rachel to computer games and while they weren't something she dedicated a lot of time to playing, she did enjoy playing with Puck. At least he treated her like an equal, working with her when they played online unlike Finn who had, the few times they played, told her what to do all the time. So once a week they got together after school and alternated between playing computer games, watching movies, playing board games or numerous other pastimes that they both enjoyed. This week was the turn of the computer games.

Rachel: I am sorry, I dozed off. I will be there shortly.

She didn't feel much like going but she knows Puck will probably come over anyway if she tries to blow him off so she sits up and discovers the test still sitting on the bed where she had been lying and the slightly nauseated feeling returned. She figured she'd probably have to get used to that, Rachel didn't know much about how pregnancy had affected her mother but she did know that some amount of morning sickness was pretty much universal.

The test is pushed into her purse since Rachel didn't want to leave it lying around her room, before the diva heads out to Puck's.


"Okay, what the fuck is wrong Rachel?"

Puck hit pause and the game froze after achieving a headshot against Rachel's character that he would never usually have been able to make, the diva might not rate computer games highly in her list of go-to recreational activities, but that didn't mean she was bad at them either.

"Nothing is wrong Noah" Rachel says as her hands and the controller she's holding drop into her lap, "I just have a few things on my mind."

"Want to talk about it?" Puck wasn't usually one for talk, but when something was bothering his best friend, he'd do anything for her.

"No" Rachel shakes her head.

Puck looks at her for a moment before accepting her statement and turning back to the game and unpausing it. It's less than five minutes before the game is paused again, this time by Rachel's hand, and Puck is looking at her just waiting.

Rachel returns his gaze for a long moment trying to decide if she can trust him. They've been friends almost for as long as she can remember and she knows he'd do whatever he could for her but he's never been a great one to keep secrets, though he never gave them away deliberately. And right now she really needs someone she can tell, someone she can talk to.

Like a mother.

But she doesn't have one of those. Oh sure there's Shelby but she pretty much ran away when she realised that Rachel wasn't the cute little baby girl that she had always dreamed about but a mature young woman. A mature young woman who right now wants nothing more than a mother hold her and tell her everything's going to be alright.

And for the first time it hits her. Shelby had no choice but to give her up, she'd signed a contract, known it was coming from the start and still hadn't been able to detach herself from her daughter. And now Rachel was going to have to make the choice, keep her child or give it away. A wave of nausea kit her and the diva, the mother-to-be, wasn't sure she how she could live with either choice.

"Have you ever done something… something so small and insignificant that you didn't really think about it, only to find later that it's changing the path for your whole life?"

She looks up from where her eyes had fallen to her hands hoping to see understanding in Puck's features, but he just looks confused.

"No" she sighs, "Of course not."

She doesn't know why, but she reaches for her purse and extracts the test before handing to Puck. He takes it automatically and his confused expression deepens until he realizes what he's holding and what it means.

"Finn?" he asks. Rachel just shakes her head so he adds "Who?" When Rachel says nothing Puck looks at her with a worried expression, "Rachel, did someone force you…"

"No!" she cuts him off quickly then sighs, "We were both rather intoxicated but it was consensual on both sides."

"Who was it Rachel?"

"It doesn't matter."

"Of course it matters!" Puck exclaims, "Someone is going to be a father and he needs to man up and face his responsibilities!" He takes a breath and asks more calmly, "Have you even told him?"

Rachel shakes her head, "No, I only just took the test."

"Wait, you just peed on this?" Puck says dropping the stick, "Ewwww."

Rachel can't help but giggle at Pucks reaction as she retrieves the test and places it back into her purse and she wonders if that was exactly the reaction Puck was looking for.

"It's Santana." Rachel says quietly.

"What?"

"The father, its Santana."

Puck sighs and throws himself back onto his bed, "If you don't want to tell me that's fine, but don't lie to me Rach. I may not have a 4.0 GPA but I know it takes at least one dude to make a baby."

Rachel makes Puck swear an oath of secrecy then tells him the rough details about the New Year party and explains Santana's condition, which leaves him wide eyed and speechless. For a while they both just lay there on Puck's bed staring up at the ceiling until Rachel breaks the silence.

"I don't know what to do."

Puck considers this for a while, "Have you told your fathers?" he asks.

"Not yet, I'm not sure how to tell them. They'll be so disappointed."

"The longer you wait, the harder it will be to tell them Rach and it'll hurt them to know you felt you had to hide it from them. They'll stick by you even if they are a little disappointed, you know that right? You mean everything to them. Treat it like ripping off a plaster, get it out there and get it over with. That's my advice anyway."

Rachel nods, pushing herself up from the bed, "Okay, I guess that makes sense."

"And Rach, you know I'm here for you, whatever you need."