A/N: Hey!

I've been pretty busy so I'm sorry for taking longer than expected to finish this chapter! Like I previously said, this is the Quinn-centered version of the after-fight situation. I also did a little background research on Yale (which was actually a fun thing to do), so, just to clarify: Davenport is one of the twelve residential colleges Yale students are randomly assigned to (and the one I picked for Quinn), "princess suites" are two-story penthouses a few lucky freshmen Davenport girls get to stay at (and obviously Quinn is one of them) and Welch Hall is the freshman dorm for Davenports. That isn't even necessary to know, I guess, but it'll probably just make understanding the story easier.

Also, the songs mentioned are Distance by Christina Perri, Runaway by The Audition and Little Bit by Lykke Li. I'm thinking about sharing a playlist about this story (including the songs mentioned and others) soon, so look out for that.

I hope you like it :)

Using her typical glare and eyebrow raise with the train station employees, Quinn manages to re-schedule her tickets. Her train is due a couple of hours, so she roams through Grand Central station trying to find something that distracts her from her own mind, without much success.

After devouring a cinnamon pretzel and re-reading several pages of her beloved copy of The Perks Of Being A Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky, the blonde finally heads to where she's supposed to catch her train and gets in it, yearning for a chance to make her headache go away with sleep. She soon finds her seat next to the window and, after laying her bags on the empty space by her side, settles and waits for the train to depart.

Half an hour later, Quinn still hasn't fallen asleep, so she grabs her iPod, places the headphones over her head and puts it on shuffle, trying to sit back and relax.

The sun is filling up the room

And I can hear you dreaming

Do you feel the way I do right now?

Christina Perri.

The flashing image of Rachel muttering her name in her sleep earlier this morning comes to her mind.

Her heart beats faster after the first chorus and she starts feeling quite uneasy. Some part of her is eager to skip to the next song, but the one that wants to keep listening and see how far it goes wins her over.

Please don't stand so close to me

I'm having trouble breathing

I'm afraid of what you'll see, right now

I'll give you everything I am

All my broken heartbeats

Until I know you'll understand

So painfully accurate.

So I'll make sure to keep my distance

Say I love you and you're not listening

How long can we keep this up, up, up?

Make sure to keep my distance

Say I love you and you're not listening

How long 'till we call this love, love, love?

A tear eventually slides down her cheek. She wipes it away and notices the next song is starting.

You like to drive me crazy

Admit it, baby

Don't you lie

You swore up and down

This time around you'll learn to compromise

Okay. Sounds better.

And I never thought you'd lie right through your eyes

Through your eyes

And just

You run away from everything,

It's all you've ever known about yourself

You just run away

Making the same mistakes

It's hard to love when I've been stuck in hell

And that's all I've ever known about myself

That's it. She's had enough.

Quinn switches her iPod into a sleepytime Indie playlist that is supposedly safe. Lykke Li and M83 slowly drive her into unconsciousness, her thoughts gradually being replaced by lyrics and, later, nothing but utter darkness.

Hands down

I'm too proud for love

But with eyes shut

It's you I'm thinking of

But how we move from A to B?

It can't be up to me

'Cause you don't know

Eye to eye

Thigh to thigh

I let go

Quinn opens her eyes when she feels the train lights being turned on. She's in New Haven. There's no turning back now.

The blonde checks the time while she leaves the train. It's late. As she makes her way out of the train station, she spots a little photography shop that remains open in spite of that and decides to check it out given the fact that she doesn't have places to develop her films near Yale.

She learns her photographs should take about 30 minutes to be ready and the shop isn't closing for another hour since, according to the clerk, the demand is higher than the usual because "New Yorkers are crazy about photography" and her train wasn't the only one coming from Manhattan around that time. Given that, Quinn decides to take the opportunity to develop them. Taking her camera out of her bag and placing the film on the shop counter, she receives a piece of paper from the store clerk in order to claim her photos later.

While she waits, the girl wanders around the station, watching every person that walks hurriedly past her with curiosity. At some point, she reaches for her phone in her bag, in order to call Santana and tell her what's happened, but after seeking it for minutes, she finally acknowledges it's not there.

Great. She left it at Rachel's and is definitely not going back to New York anytime soon. She sighs impatiently and later settles for the idea of using her old phone - that still works perfectly fine and that she left at Yale - for a while. But now she obviously can't call Santana, so she's basically won over by plain boredom for the next 30 minutes.

When the time comes, Quinn heads back to the photography shop. The clerk hands her an envelope with her pictures and she pays him. After that, she walks out of the station looking for a taxi, because she isn't really into the idea of having a 20-minute walk this late.

The taxi is not hard to find and once she's in it and has informed the driver of her destination, she opens the envelope carefully.

"Oh." she whispers, taking her hand to her mouth, astonished by the sight of the photos she took of Rachel earlier. They're gorgeous. They're… Rachel's essence depicted. Shine all over, pretty hair, chocolate eyes, wonderful smile. She just wants to never stop looking at them again.

That's when it hits her.

She needs this. She needs the Rachel in the pictures more than anything. She needs to be around the aura that Rachel brings more than anything. Leaving was the stupidest thing she's done.

A tiny whimper involuntarily comes out of her mouth and she holds tears back.

"You alright?" the taxi driver asks.

"I'm…" her voice falters. "Yeah, yes, I am."

When they finally reach York Street, Quinn thanks the driver and pays the ride, leaving him the change. Before she even knows, she's sliding her legs out of the car and stepping on Yale grounds. After breathing in fresh air, the blonde rushes to the Davenport College building, where her dorm is located, holding on to her purse and the photographs of Rachel, wishing she could just teleport to her Princess Suite instead of having to walk through the halls and face her fellow students.

Once Quinn finds herself inside the Welch Hall, she keeps walking until she spots the most annoying person she's met so far at Yale: Josh, a guy who doesn't ever miss the chance to embarrass her by acting as if she was his girlfriend in front of his friends. Unfortunately, she doesn't have time to hide or walk the other way before he calls her over. Ugh.

"Hey baby!"

"Hi Josh."

"Where have you been, huh? Didn't see you around this weekend."

"I was visiting a friend in New York."

"Uhh, fancy Fabray! Was it really just a friend or have you been cheating on me?"

"Yes, she's just a friend, I can assure you of that. Not that I'll ever need to, because this thing you think you and I have doesn't exist."

"I see someone's mad today. Did you and your girlfriend break up, is that why?"

"She's not my girlfriend." Quinn pauses. "Never was. Never will be."

"Alright, I'm sorry. I'll just let you have some time for yourself in your Princess Suite, since you're so upset... Unless you want me to be your prince tonight."

"Oh, believe me, that's the last thing I want."

Quinn turns her back on him and keeps walking, feeling bothered. When she finally gets to her suite, she drops her bags on the floor and collapses on to her bed, the pictures of Rachel still in her hands.

For a brief moment she stares idly at the ceiling, noticing her tiredness is gone since she slept in the train; but then she remembers what she wanted to do and couldn't at the time: call Santana. Soon, she's off her bed and seeking for her old phone in the drawers next to her bed. When she finds it, though, she learns it needs to be charged and decides to go to over to her laptop and Skype the Latina instead.

"Hi Q!" Santana smiles when she gets the video call.

"Hello baby unicorn!" Brittany waves, walking behind Santana in her usual bubbly mood. "Excuse me for a second, I'm going to feed Lord Tubbington some glitter."

Quinn can't help but smile a little.

"So, did you get my texts?" Santana asks.

"I left my phone in New York..."

"Oh. What happened, though? Why did you come back to Yale early? Does it have anything to do with the Finn thing? Did you tell Rachel?"

"Easy with the questions, you almost sound like… Rachel. Uh, yeah... I did tell her. And she got mad I hadn't done it before. So we argued and I left."

"But she didn't kick you out, did she?"

"No, I just..."

"Are you stupid?"

"Excuse me?"

"Rachel idolizes you, Quinn. Of course she would forgive you if you'd stayed. Why did you even leave?"

"She was holding it against me and I was mad and didn't want to stay around and see her crawl back to Finn. I figured she wouldn't want me there anymore either."

"Rachel will always want you there. You slapped her in the face at prom and she said it was okay, Quinn. She could've stormed outside the bathroom, she could've never talked to you again, but she said it was okay. You started smoking and hanging out with weirdos behind the bleachers and she sought you and brought you back to that because she cares enough to know your rage doesn't define who you are, and to see through that."

Quinn remains silent for a moment, taking in everything she has just heard.

"Then why didn't she fight? Why didn't she open the door and make me stay?" She frowns.

"You're not the only one who sees Berry as a seven-headed monster. Maybe she was too upset to even do that, I don't know." Santana replies. "But what makes you think she's crawling back to Finn?"

"She still loves him and he obviously didn't go there just to say 'hello'."

"Wait, you know how that girl gets crazy obsessed with her ideas. What if the thought of getting him out of her mind is so enthralled in her berry-sized brain she doesn't want him back?"

The Latina has a point. Quinn sees it, but chooses not to give in.

"I don't believe -"

"Come on, Q, give yourself some hope!"

"It doesn't make any difference! So what if she and Finn aren't together? That doesn't change the fact that we had an argument and I'm here in New Haven now."

"But it means you can do something."

"Do what?"

"Call her. Text her. Go back and get your phone. I don't know."

"Santana, I just came back, I'm not leaving. I can't show up at her apartment and be like 'excuse me, I forgot my phone, okay, bye'."

"What do you want to do, then?"

"I need to think. I just got here and I need some time to clear my head. I just felt like talking to someone."

"Okay, Q. Call me if you need any help."

"Thanks, S."

Santana blows her a kiss and the blonde smiles thinly at the now empty screen.

As soon as she leaves her desk, Quinn spots the pictures of Rachel scattered around her bed. One catches her attention - the one in which they're together - and she takes it in her hands.

Of all the photos she has ever taken, this is her favorite. Chocolate eyes shine unbelievably bright and Rachel's smile makes her want to put on one of her own in spite of their current situation. Quinn likes herself in this picture, too. Her beam clearly shows she could barely contain her happiness at that moment and there's something undeniably pretty about that. The contrast between the yellow lingering in the air and the intense green behind them is intriguing, too. It brings her heart to peace and ignites it at the same time, resurfacing her unanswered questions about her situation with Rachel.

Before she knows, she's hanging the photograph on the wall next to her bed and letting herself lean on her pillows, falling asleep sooner than expected.