"Man, oh man, you're my best friend,

I scream it to the nothingness

There ain't nothin' that I need."

- Home by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros

...

Epilogue

...

When she was little she liked to disappear in books and dream she was in the stories. Then later, when reality got a hold of her imagination she tried writing her own stories. Never on paper, just in her head. It was just her and her imagination for most of the time, after all.

She imagined the memories of the books she had read and the movies she had seen were her own and sometimes she wished desperately that they were real - that she could live one of those extraordinary lives and have memories like that full of freedom and love.

...

She was packing up her clothes and pictures and books for Yale - she had decided to go - wheelchair or not. She was almost walking entire days now, anyway, she could deal with the pain.

Besides, anything to get away from her father, who won't look at her, and her mother, who didn't know who to side with, and her sister who can't shut up about howQuinn Fabray isn't as perfect as we all thought after all.

She stumbles on the old picture of Puck, hidden in her old and torn copy of Pride and Prejudice. She sighs, sitting down on her bed as she clenches the picture in her hand and looks around her room.

She guesses her room and her dysfunctional family aren't the only things she has to leave behind.

...

Yale is great.

She loves taking classes and being independent and having discussions about things in the world or in the past and not feeling like she's being treated any differently. Her classmates in Yale are so competitive they don't even care her father is the President - they just want to beat her at everything. (She loves feeling so smart when she beats them though.) She loves finally feeling like she's doing something.

Some days are hard and she cries herself to sleep - she misses Santana's hugs and her sister's whining about some dress and even her father sometimes. She doesn't think about Puck, because she doesn't want to.

He doesn't want her so she won't want him.

...

During her second semester he shows up at her apartment and he looks differently and she forgets it's already been three months.

He doesn't apologize and he doesn't make an elaborate confession of how much he loves her, just says, "I missed you and I love you and - will you…will you marry me?"

She's done fine without him for three months, just fine - but after he's been with her for five minutes it already feels so much better thanfine.

"Yes," she replies and doesn't cry or jump up happily but just carefully smiles at him and he smiles back as he takes her hand and puts a small silver ring with a tiny diamond around her left finger and kisses her. It's a much different ring than the one Jeff got her, but she likes this one much, much better. So she kisses him again.

...

They get married at a small church in New Haven a few months later, not many people are there but her mother shows up and Santana is there too, and even Rachel comes - and that's all that really matters. At the end, they say a prayer for Finn and all the others who've been lost along the way, and Sarah too. After, he looks over at her and squeezes her hand before kissing her again.

He moves in with her into her small apartment and he finds a job in another bar, this time as a manager. One night when they're sitting on the couch - her head on his shoulder and his arm tightly wrapped around her shoulders - he kisses her forehead and quietly says, "Thank you for waiting."

And it's then she realizes that those three months without him - she had been waiting, like she had told him, even if she didn't know so herself. All those minutes she had spent not thinking about him but studying or making new friends - she hadn't thought about him because she knew that one day she'd be with him again. People don't just go through as much as they do and give up and not be together.

"I did it for me, too," she tells him in reply, moving her head so she can look up at him, "I'm not happy when I'm not with you, Puck, and that sounds like a sappy romantic television movie but it's true. I'm not - I tried to be and I pretended for a while - but I'm not, not completely."

"I'm sorry," he apologizes, using his free hand to brush her hair behind her ears as he avoids her eyes

She takes his hand and squeezes it, placing a kiss on it, before retorting, "Don't be."

...

Years later, when they don't have to go to the White House to see her family anymore - they're at dinner with just her mother, since her father disowned her right after he found out she chose Noah over him. She had sent him an invitation - he was her father after all and in spite of everything, she did still love him - but it was left unanswered.

They eat steak and even joke around and her mother allows Santana to join dinner and she decides then that she's not scared anymore. She's not scared of being someone ornot being someone.

She clears her throat, squeezing Puck's knee in the process, "I have a confession."

Puck shoots her a confused look and her mother looks rather afraid and Santana has that one look in her eyes like she already knows what's coming, one that Quinn will never understand, because how does she know everything?

"I'm pregnant."

Santana takes out a bottle of champagne (and more orange juice for her) and her mother cries (and so does she) and Puck just hugs her for a moment, first whispering an 'I love you' before thanking her. And she knows exactly what that means, so she repeats the sentiment - she's thankful too, that he gave her everything she ever wanted.

...

She realized that now that she had Puck, really had him - that she could finally make memories of her own. She wouldn't have to pretend anymore.

They could have all the babies they want and they could get married and he could open a bar or just work in one and she could become a lawyer or a writer and they could move to a nice small town and live in a white picket fence house or they could do none of those things. There were possibilities.Memories that hadn't already been featured in books or movies.

And now she could finally start making some.

…

"Let me come home,

home is wherever I'm with you

Ahh, home

Let me come home

Home is when I'm alone with you."

…

I hope this didn't disappoint but it probably did because I suck at epilogues, haha. Thank you to everyone who has ever read, reviewed or favorited this story! And of course a huge thanks to my beta, Brooke! She's been you all.