A/N: No, I haven't given up! This came to me out of nowhere, and it turned out a lot longer than I originally intended. I am not sure whether I like it or not. Please let me know if there are any characters you would like to see starring in my next drabbles, it'll help me get them out faster.

Disclaimed.

You're really not sure how you got here.

You know that you're overweight, and that it's really bad for you in the long run. You know. And it's not that you don't want to be thinner, because you really do. You are completely aware that if you were thinner, people (high schoolers) would probably be more accepting of you. You weren't always this way, after all. It was only a few short years ago that you began gaining so much weight.

It's just that you really are comfortable with who you are as a person, because you believe that it's more important what you are on the inside than what you look like on the outside. And after your experience as a Cheerio, you have absolutely no desire to starve yourself just to conform, and you've never been able to stick to a diet.

So you carry on, knowing that you should lose some weight, but refusing to let it rule your life. You are happy with yourself, dammit, and you don't want a number on your scale to change that for you.

And then something unexpected happens.

It's the beginning of senior year, and you know that you gained some weight over the summer, but you didn't think it was a big deal. But then Rachel Berry comes up to you, her big brown eyes serious, and says she wants to talk to you in private and could you come to her house after school?

You agree because you're curious, which is how you find yourself walking up the stairs to Rachel's bedroom that afternoon. The last thing you expect to come out of her mouth when you're settled on her bed is that she's worried about you. That she has noticed your weight gain over the years, and that she is here for you if anything is wrong.

Your initial reaction is to get angry. You yell at her, furious that she dared to bring up what you try not to think about. She just sits at her desk and takes it, letting you scream at her until you have nothing left to say. Then she reaches for a photo album on her shelf and hands it to you without saying a word.

You flip through it, shock slowly registering on your face. The album is full of pictures of Rachel, probably 10 or 11 years old. She is smiling brightly for the camera in some photos, while others are snapshots of her not even looking at the camera. She looks happy.

She looks fat.

The Rachel in the photos is recognizable based on her features, but looks like she weighs at least twice as much as the Rachel sitting in front of you now. You moved here at the beginning of high school, and the Rachel you know has always been slender and fit. The girl in these pictures is overweight in a way that you never were as a kid, in a way that makes the term childhood obesity suddenly make sense.

And just like that, your rage is replaced with overwhelming sadness, and you break down crying in Rachel Berry's bedroom. She rushes over to put her arms around you, and you are grateful that she doesn't say anything, just looks at you with understanding writ large across her features.

That afternoon marks a turning point. You start really making an effort to lose weight after that, exercising more and eating healthier foods. The pounds start coming off, and you are happy about it, ecstatic even, but you're more focused on being healthy than being thin.

By the time graduation rolls around, you've managed to lose 20 pounds, and you feel better and happier and healthier than you have in a long time. At the New Directions party that night, when Kurt talks you into belting out Beautiful, you smile and agree, and find yourself relating to the song in a completely different way from when you originally sang it as a Cheerio that afternoon so long ago. When the last chords of the song die down, you look directly over at Rachel and mouth the words thank you. She nods back and smiles before pressing herself to Mike's side, his arm automatically coming around her waist as she returns her attention to the conversation going on around her.

At the end of the night, when everyone is yawning and climbing into their sleeping bags, Kurt asks you why you thanked Rachel at the end of the song, and you falter, not knowing what to say to him. You finally decide that the truth is easiest.

It's hard to explain and you wouldn't understand, can't understand unless you go through the same thing Rachel and I did. Let's just say that the two of us had a lot more in common than I ever thought we would.