A/N: I don't do too many author notes because I figure people are here to read the story, not my thoughts on it, but I just wanted to say thank you to my fabulous reviewers. Each of you inspire me to keep cranking out this story. It's been a thought of mine for a couple of years, but I never felt this motivated towards it before.

Oh, and Caraline Fisher, despite what this chapter may imply, I am most definitely a Daria/Trent shipper and will die for my ship!

It soon became apparent that Trent was getting very into the social networking site and the updates he could get on Daria because of it, and so Quinn decided to start keeping her laptop with the wireless adapter at the Lane household so he could be on it whenever he wanted. According to Jane, Daria was as much a flustered school girl as ever when it came to Trent, especially now that they were in direct communication.

Quinn didn't know what they talked about, and she never asked. There were some things that were kept private between her and Trent. However, she did know that they stopped writing on each other's walls and opted for the private messaging route. She was definitely curious as to what they were saying to each other, now that they deemed it not worthy for the public to see.

She'd been tempted to invade his privacy, but she hadn't. Yet.

Trent's writing continued to improve, his lyrics getting edgier and more coherent. He practiced techniques with his voice to give them a better sound. The audiences seemed to dig his raspy voice, so he played on that as much as he could. All of it inspired Jesse to lay down better music composition. Nick and Max were just thrilled that they were finally getting to play music for actual crowds, that people seemed to enjoy the sound that they were putting out. They stopped arguing over song lyrics, they stopped picking fights with each other over stupid stuff, and they dedicated their time at rehearsals to laying down solid sounds instead of half-assing it.

Jane had come through with a design for the band and Quinn had updated the band page to invite all of their fans and their fan's friends to the gig at the Zon on Saturday night. She also had each of the band members take a stack of fliers and physically go into local stores and ask them to put them up.

The local independent music store agreed to keep a stack of them at the counter for their customers and to put it up in the window. When Quinn went in a couple of days later, the stack at the counter was gone. She smiled and replenished their supplied.

The guy manning the counter stopped her on her way out, "I've heard great things about the band," he told her.

She nodded and flashed him a smile, "they're a great group of guys."

"Do they have a demo? We've had people ask if they can buy one here."

Quinn did her best not to look surprised, "a demo? No, not yet, they're planning on mixing one soon. Promotional, of course, just for the hardcore fans."

He shrugged, "if you guys decide to sell one, just let us know, we'll be happy to sell it here."

She nodded, "I'll definitely keep that in mind."

A grin broke out on her face as soon as she left the store. She could hardly believe it! People were asking to have a Spiral CD! She was going to have to look into renting them a studio so they could put together an e.p. for their fans. She would have to discuss with Trent how he wanted to go about getting the studio time. She knew they couldn't afford it, she knew that they were far away from making enough from a weekly gig at the Zon to lay down their own demo.

He was on her laptop when she entered his house and found him in the living room. He was practicing his guitar while he stared at the monitor. Quinn crept up behind him and looked at the monitor. It was a news article on the war that he was reading. She checked his other windows and saw that he had Daria's page pulled up.

She guessed her sister made some crack about the war and Trent was reading up on it to see what she was talking about. Part of her mind declared that he didn't ever have to research stuff to talk to her, but she quickly stifled the voice and sat on the couch next to him. "Demo CD!" she announced to him with a squeal.

He looked sidelong at her before putting down the guitar. "Let me say goodbye to Daria and we'll talk," he told her as he reached over and flipped the window on the laptop. She saw that the two were actually holding a running dialog about something and that Daria had sent him the link to read. He typed a quick goodbye, citing that he had to talk business with Quinn.

Daria's quick response came, wishing him luck on the upcoming show and to have a good night.

"You two are talking a lot," Quinn muttered, her good mood expiring when he made it clear that talking with Daria was more important than the band.

Trent smiled, not noticing her sudden change in mood. "Yeah, this internet thing is amazing. I feel closer to her than I ever did. She's really helping me come up with things to write about, too."

Quinn's good mood was now at a 180 and she was as upset as she had ever been happy this day. Daria was helping Trent write his music? Daria was giving him ideas? Daria was honing in on her business?

Her eyes widened as this jealous thought shot through her head. Why was she so threatened by Daria talking with Trent about song-writing? Daria was a great writer, Quinn thought so herself, editors at several magazines and newspapers thought so. The goal was to make Mystik Spiral successful and to get Trent and Daria together. The best way to get both of these goals to fruition was if Daria, an experienced and well-received writer, worked with Trent on his music. This was what Quinn wanted all along.

Trent was talking with his dream girl. About his dream band.

Trent could not remain oblivious to Quinn's sudden mood swing. She'd come in very excited about a demo CD, and he really did want to hear what she had to say about it, but at the same time he didn't want Daria to think he just bailed on her. They'd been talking for an hour about how the current war was a vendetta a decade in the making, a family feud that had carried over from one president to the next. She had sent him an article about the Gulf War of the first Bush president's term and he learned a lot about what was going on now. School had never taught him about the Gulf War. They stopped teaching history right after the Nixon administration, saying that the presidential papers hadn't all been gone through so what really happened was clear enough to teach yet.

He hadn't cared at the time, he hadn't thought it was relevant; now though he was slightly pissed that they hadn't bothered to teach this to him in school. Not that he would have known anyway. He didn't have the best attendance or GPA of his classmates.

So, he wanted to say goodnight to Daria. She was the light that he was striving for, and he thought they both found it easier to talk to one another when they couldn't really see one another. He knew that he found it easier. For example, in one of their chatting sessions, he'd complimented her on the picture of her in the kitchen. He could practically see the embarrassed flush taking over her face as she read his words. Her response came back clear though, she told him that Jane was messing around with a camera that morning and she hadn't even realized that pictures were being taken. She'd had finals the next week and was using every moment she could to study, Jane was not stressing her finals and had decided to play with a camera she'd found at a garage sale.

He'd asked her what she was studying in the picture, that's how conversations went after all. Smooth transitions with the occasional flirting, keeping the subject up in the air until you knew the other person as well as you knew yourself.

She'd told him anatomy & physiology. He'd stopped himself from making several poor jokes, and he told her as much.

"Thank you for that," she'd typed back. He could hear her voice in his head as she said it, hear the subtle inflection. She'd said that to him before, he'd realized with a smile.

"Would you say that it really makes you think?" he'd written back, a little amazed that he remembered that day that she stood outside of his door and asked him that. She'd been beautiful even then, flustered and worried about Jane, stressed out from being the Misery Chick that everyone wanted advice from. And it didn't make him think. And she was thankful that it didn't, that someone understood that death wasn't something to dwell on, but to accept as inevitable while you lived a life separate from it.

"…I can't believe you remember that conversation," she'd written back to him.

He'd smiled at their mutual disbelief at this memory of this passing time in their lives. She'd been a Sophomore in high school at the time, he was still envisioning his life with a supermodel girlfriend. "What can I say? You stick in my brain."

"My soul's waves of grain?" she'd quipped back in seconds.

"I feel like I've heard that before," he'd joked.

It was a conversation. A conversation with a bouncing topic, and subtle flirting, where he was getting to know her.

A conversation that he couldn't have with her in person because she'd get flustered or he would say something stupid while distracted by her. He didn't want to mess this up. This was the best connection he'd ever had with Daria and he wasn't going to intentionally screw it up. Not by something as stupid as putting his band before her, or worse, putting her sister before her. He'd never make that mistake with a girl he was dating again. He shuddered. He still couldn't go into a book store after that.

Quinn had been so understanding about his want to form a relationship with Daria. Everything that he had done up to this point was her idea, it was her plan, and her effort that was changing his life so he could finally muster the courage to try for Daria. He couldn't understand why she seemed so upset by it now. Almost like she was…jealous?

No. That wasn't possible. He had told Mrs. Morgendorffer less than a week before that no one was going to get hurt during this. Quinn was a friend and a business partner, nothing more, and she knew that. She knew that! She knew that he was in love with her sister.

She watched the understanding light on his face and her own eyes widened in surprise. "Sorry, let's start over," she suggested, trying to push the sudden jealousy out of her mind. "I lost my head for a second!" She couldn't fathom this sudden anger with Daria and jealousy of her. Why, because Trent Lane, slacker extraordinaire wanted to date her? Marry her? Spend his life with her?

Because this guy that she had always seen as a total loser turned out to be really sweet, and funny, and creative, and talented…and he wanted to date her sister? Because she'd clocked more hours in his life than Daria had at this point and he still wanted to date her sister?

Nothing to lose one's cool over.

Nothing a mani-pedi and a trip to a hair salon couldn't fix.

Trent Lane was not going to unravel her. No way.

Trent slowly agreed to the suggestion, letting her go on about the demo CD while his mind raced over anything that he could have done to give Quinn the wrong idea about them.

Well, he did walk arm in arm with her at the mall. They hugged upon meeting now. He'd held her hand in the car to reassure her. They had personal jokes between them. He'd helped her out of her seat at the meeting at the Zon. She'd slept in his bed…

Okay, maybe there was some mixed signals given off. Signals that Helen Morgendorffer saw as a glaring neon sign and tried to warn him about, but hey, Janey had always said he was oblivious.

He wished he was oblivious right now.

Quinn paced her room that night, nervously biting on her thumb nail while she thought. She was wearing yellow shorts and a gray tank top, and had a white moisturizing mask upon her face.

Spiral's gig at the Zon was in two nights. On top of preparing for that, and she seemed to be the only one freaking out over it, she had also created weird vibes between her and Trent. She could see the musician's discomfort as he sat next to her on the couch and she talked about the band possibly laying down an E.P. for their fans. Her little freak out over how much he talked to Daria had opened both of their eyes to a very disconcerting reality.

Sandi had always told her that guys and girls couldn't be just friends, but she'd always laughed it off. "Oh, Sandi, of course they can! I mean, if the guy's ugly and doesn't drive a good car, but he's got a platinum card, we could still be friends!"

If she could go back in time and throttle her teenage self, she would. It made her so upset when she thought of all of the people that she had used, the boys that she had let fight over her because it made her feel special.

She'd wanted to bring it back to strictly business, but their relationship had never been strictly business. She was overhauling his life, not just his band. She had agreed to this. She had promised him that she could make him ready to date Daria.

He was. It didn't take much. A little polish, a little adjusting. She'd changed a small part of his life, and had completely rearranged his outlook on life. He was more confident now, he was ambitious now. Daria would take one look at him and fall head-over-heels.

Then one day, Quinn would get to stand next to her sister at her wedding to the musician. Well, next to Jane. Quinn didn't doubt for a second that her sister's best friend would be the maid of honor at that affair. Jane had been more of a sister to Daria over the years than she had. She'd thought that things were getting better between them too, now this!

Freaking Daria was trying to steal the guy she liked!

Wait, what?

That sounded crazy even to Quinn. Daria and Trent had been infatuated with each other for years. It was her knowledge of their mutual attraction that made Quinn want to help in the first place! Now they were communicating. Actually communicating about things that weren't Jane or him needing a tooth brush.

This was a good thing!

It was just…well, God damn it, Daria always got everything that she wanted!

Quinn stopped pacing and frowned at that thought. She really was losing her mind if that was the argument she was going to base her sudden dislike of their budding relationship on. Sure, when Daria asked for something people seemed eager to give it to her, but that was because Daria rarely asked for anything. She got what she wanted because she only ever wanted the bare minimum people could give her, and she only asked for things that she was certain that she could receive.

That was Daria. She was so insecure that she never tried for things that she didn't think she could succeed at, paralyzed by the fear of being rejected. Daria hadn't forced the issue with Trent when she was a teenager because she hadn't felt secure enough in succeeding. She was so certain that she would face rejection that she induced a stress rash over the thought of being around him!

Quinn was the opposite. She was confident and secure of her place in the world. She knew that a smile and a slight touch from her could get most people to give her whatever she wanted. When that didn't work, a pout, a whine, and a stomp of her foot generally got the job done. She had no trouble asking for whatever she wanted from people because she was used to people saying yes. Everyone said yes to her!

Guys had never been an issue. Except for David.

That was a hard time in her life, meeting a guy that thought that she was shallow, that didn't care how pretty she was when she smiled, how alluring her pout was. He was the first person that looked beyond her shell and decided that she wasn't worth the time. He'd been nicer about it. Nicer than she had been in half of her rejections of people. Still, he rejected her.

The first boy that she ever really liked for more than his car, or his money, or what he could buy for her, rejected her.

It was a horrible feeling and it made her understand her sister's perspective a little more. Why put yourself out there if people could make you feel this horrible about yourself?

So, this communication that Daria was doing with Trent was a good thing. It meant that Daria was feeling confident about herself, that she was feeling secure enough in herself that she didn't shut down around Trent.

It was a good thing.

And her younger sister had thought that if that happened she would love it, but she hated it. Hated it!

Damn it. Quinn needed advice.

She also hated feeling like a little kid as she crept out of her room and cracked open her parent's door. Jake was already soundly sleeping on the bed, snoring loudly, while her mother worked over some legal briefs with the help of the night lamp. "Oh, Quinn, did you need something, honey?"

There was that little kid feeling again, crawling onto the foot at her parents bed and pulling her knees up to her chin and resting her head on them.

This was too surreal.

She never thought that she would have a crush on the same man that her sister did.

And she never thought that if she ever did develop a crush on someone that Daria did, she would know that she didn't stand a chance of winning him against her sister.

Helen took off her reading glasses and observed her silent youngest child. She knew that look. It was the same look Quinn had taken on when she thought that her guardian angel had deserted her. The look of a girl that was feeling like she was alone in the world. She was afraid that she knew what this was about.

"How's the plans going for Saturday night?" Helen tried again.

Quinn frowned and looked at her mom. "Okay, I guess. I think the band will be ready. People love them already. They're requesting a demo CD. Pretty certain they won't need me for much longer."

"Nonsense!" Helen chastised her. "Those boys are going to still need you to keep them in line. One good performance, two good performances even, doesn't mean that they're going to make it on their own. Lord knows that they need someone looking out for them, someone with a head on their shoulders…"

Quinn's lips twitched before she looked down and picked at some fuzz on her parent's comforter. She couldn't believe they slept on freaking cotton. How unromantic.

She sighed heavily as she decided to hit upon the true nature of this nighttime visit. "Trent isn't going to need me for much longer."

The frown that crossed Helen's face was swift and severe. As much as she had hoped that it wouldn't happen, Quinn had gotten herself emotionally involved. She wasn't surprised by it. Quinn was passionate when she took on a task and she invested herself in it wholly. Sometimes that passion got misdirected.

Trent Lane was definitely a misdirection.

She didn't think Quinn was in love with Trent. She thought that Quinn had made Trent the current focal point of her life and was starting to get upset at the thought of him caring for someone else and leaving her. She thought that her daughter was mistaking that jealousy as a romantic interest.

Quinn's relationship with boys was puerile at best, no matter how sophisticated she thought that she was. She'd never had a relationship with a boy. It had never been her interest, no matter how much she liked to date boys. It was the excitement and novelty of a new boy that motivated Quinn, she had never been able to settle into a relationship – they were too stale, too boring, too predictable.

Helen knew that Trent was not interested in Quinn as anything more than a friend. She'd seen the looks and heard the subtle changes in his voice as he talked about each of her daughters. He was grateful to Quinn, but he was in love with Daria. Trent was older than Quinn. Emotionally as well as physically. He was done playing around with girls and he was looking to settle down with the one girl that he really loved.

It was a lousy position for a mother to be in. She was happy that Daria and Trent were on the road to finding happiness together, but she was also saddened for her younger daughter that was feeling like she was being shut out of something she helped create.

"You'll always be Trent's friend," Helen began, not blaming her daughter for the scoff and withering glare she threw her direction. "You've given him his life back, his confidence back. He'll always have a place for you in his heart."

Quinn pursed her lips. She supposed that should make her feel better. Satisfaction in a job well done. Hurrah, a guy that she practically molded out of thin-air was going to be the perfect guy for some other woman.

It was freaking hard being an adult.

Logically, logically she knew that Trent Lane and her were a bad idea. A freaking horrible idea! He didn't have a steady job, he'd never once asked to take her to Chez Pierre, he drove a beater car that she wouldn't even get in, and he needed people to help dress him… he was a freaking mess! But he had a cute smile, and he was super sweet, and he was passionate, so passionate about his music.

"I'm being stupid," Quinn moaned as she climbed to the head of the bed and lay down next to her mother, careful to not wake her still slumbering father up.

Jake rolled over at this interruption in his bed, but was otherwise still.

Helen sighed and looked at the adult woman lying beside her as she did when she was six and had a bad dream. She was semi-annoyed with Trent for this. "You're not stupid, Quinn. Trent is just in a different place in his life than you are."

"The kind of place where he pines away for girls that get embarrassed when he talks to them?" Quinn snarked back, burying her face in the pillow, mindless of the facial mask that she was transferring over.

Helen frowned at Quinn's portrayal of her older sister. Daria was sensitive, yes, but it wasn't her fault that Trent had taken a liking to her. "He'll always need your help, no matter if Daria's in his life or not."

The girl felt a pang of guilt as she thought about what she was saying. She still believed in Daria and Trent. She still thought that they would be good for each other. She just hated that things were working themselves out so easily. She hated feeling like her purpose was being taken away from her again.

If Mystik Spiral took off and was successful, then they could hire someone much better than her to run their business affairs. If Daria and Trent worked out their feelings for each other on their own, then she wouldn't have a reason to control Trent's life…and then she would have to start taking a serious look at her own.

Tears trickled out of the corners of Quinn's eyes and her mother wrapped her arms around her, letting her release the emotional dam.

It was freaking hard being an adult.