Composing a text to Santana and Brittany took Rachel 12 minutes, even though the end result was a simple, "Quinn is at the hospital. I'm in the emergency waiting room." She didn't have to ask them to come. They'd come.

Almost immediately after she'd sent the text off a thought occurred to her and she sent a similar text to Ms. Pillsbury.

Sue disappeared while Rachel had been contemplating her text and somehow Rachel knew she wasn't going to come back, not anytime soon. Sue Sylvester was going to be busy, and she was going to be picking fights all up and down the county. Rachel knew this instinctually, and she was glad for it. Quinn was lucky to have someone as crazy and ferocious as Sue on her side.

Rachel heard Santana before she saw her.

Shouting from the parking lot announced her arrival, a flurry of furious Spanish as she yelled at her mother to hurry and Maribel Lopez yelled back that to stop yelling and pull herself together before entering the hospital. Santana practically ran through the automatic doors, her eyes wild and hair flying, fists half cocked at her sides as if she was ready for a fight. Brittany and Maribel trailed behind her. Brittany looked physically ill, almost green, and as soon as she saw Rachel she started to cry.

"What happened?"

"Where is she?"

"What's going on?"

"Stop, please," Rachel begged, her voice barely a whisper as she shrank into the plastic hospital chair.

"Esperate," Maribel said, putting both of her hands heavily on Santana and Brittany's shoulders. Both girls looked up at her. Maribel leaned forward, eyes focused on Rachel. "Mija… come give me a hug."

Rachel looked into Mami Maribel's eyes and she burst into tears, throwing herself at the woman.

For a few minutes, Rachel cried and cried. When she heard her dads approach she reached out on arm without letting go of Maribel. Soon, all six of them were in a group hug, Rachel in the middle, protected from prying eyes.

When Rachel finally was able to stop she pulled away and the circle of protection around her loosened to give her space. Santana's face was no longer angry. It was tight with horror. She swallowed and, looking very much like she didn't want to ask, tried again, "What's going on, Rachel?"

Rachel didn't know what to say. She didn't want to spill Quinn's secrets to the world any more than she already had. Telling the authorities was one thing. Telling Santana and Brittany as they stared at her with haunted, searching eyes was something else entirely. She opened her mouth to say something, but all she could do was stand there like a gaping fish as no words came.

"Quinn was seriously hurt last night," her father finally said. "She came to our house for help and we rushed her to the hospital."

"But hurt how? What the hell happened? She was fine at the dance! Did she get hit by a car after running away? Did she fall off a cliff? What the FUCK happened to her? How was she hurt?"

"Rachel?"

Rachel was saved from answering by the appearance of Miss Pillsbury and, weirdly, Mr. Schuster. Miss Pillsbury rushed up to the small McKinley group, doe eyes impossibly bigger than usual. "Where is Quinn? Is she alright?"

There was silence. Rachel's dads shared a look. Rachel focused her eyes on Miss Pillsbury, because she was easier to look at than her two best friends right now.

"It was her dad. Was it her dad?"

The words were quiet, like Brittany was afraid to say it, afraid of the answer.

"Mija! What a thing to say!" Maribel exclaimed, eyes wide.

Rachel's dads fidgeted.

Rachel looked at the door to the emergency room.

"… why is no one saying anything?" Maribel asked, her alarm fading into fear. Miss Pillsbury's hands flew to her mouth.

An animalistic roar came from deep in Santana's throat, and suddenly she was flipping the chairs that weren't nailed to the ground, throwing them, trying to destroy everything in the vicinity of her hands. Maribel leapt into action before anyone else could, wrapping her arms around Santana and pinning her arms to her sides. "That fucker, that motherfucker, I'll kill him! I'll crush his balls in a vice, I'll strip the skin from his bones with my fingernails, I'll fucking crucify him!" Santana screamed, her face nearly purple with rage. Orderlies ran out from behind the desk, alarmed. Rachel's dad waved them off as best he could and Rachel's daddy helped Maribel nearly wrestle Santana to a sitting position on the floor.

Brittany knelt next to Santana and pulled Santana against her. Santana stopped struggling, stopped screaming in rage and started screaming in despair.

Rachel watched this all unfold with a sort of detached agony. She felt like there was a veil between herself and the world. She'd felt so much already, and her brain had officially decided to call it quits. Rachel knew that her brain being the busy thing it was wouldn't be quitting for long. But until it performed a system reboot, she felt as numb as Quinn had looked standing in Rachel's bedroom and telling her that her father had raped her.

She turned to Miss Pillsbury, who was leaning into Mr. Schue and crying softly. "She came to me this morning and told me what happened. What's been happening. I'm sorry it took me this long to figure it out, Miss Pillsbury. I'm sorry I couldn't help her like you wanted me to."

"Oh, Rachel, no," Miss Pillsbury murmured. "She came to you, Rachel. She came to you because she trusted you. That's exactly what I wanted, what I knew she needed. She needed someone to trust that she felt like wasn't doing it because it was their job. You did exactly what I needed, Rachel, and from the bottom of my heart I thank you."

Rachel didn't feel like she'd done enough. Not near enough.

Emma Pillsbury pulled away from Mr. Schue and put her hands on Rachel's shoulders. As if reading her mind, she said, "It might not feel like you did enough, Rachel, but you did more for her than anyone has in… in I don't know how long. I'm so sorry that- that I put this type of responsibility on you. I had no right. You are an astounding girl, Rachel. Please… please let the adults do what they can right now." Miss Pillsbury pulled Rachel into a bone-crushing hug. "We have to try to make up for what we didn't do for her now. That's our job."

Rachel nodded into Miss Pillsbury's shoulder.

Santana had calmed down a lot since her outburst, but she was still sobbing weakly into Brittany. Maribel was standing now with Rachel's fathers. They were talking quietly and Rachel suspected that her dads were telling Maribel the full situation from the way that Maribel's entire body was taut with barely contained fury. Santana got her temper from somewhere.

"Rachel, I think it might be a good idea for you, Santana, and Brittany to go home now."

Rachel whirled back to look at Miss Pillsbury in disbelief. "What? No! No way, I'm not leaving her here alone."

Miss Pillsbury shook her head. "No, of course not. I'll stay. But you need to take care of yourself, Rachel, and so do the other girls. You've been through a lot, too."

"Maybe you could call the glee club, get together with them?" Mr. Schuester suggested, the first thing he'd said since arriving. Rachel looked at him with mystified wonder. He was so lost in this situation. Somehow, Rachel felt bad for him. Mr. Schue didn't have the emotional fortitude to deal with this kind of thing.

"Yeah… maybe," Rachel replied, with no intention of doing so.

"Rachel. Please. Go home."

"I agree with Miss…" Rachel's daddy said as he walked up, training off as he realized he didn't know the guidance counselor's name.

"Pillsbury," she supplied kindly.

"Daddy, no. I can't leave her. She'll be alone and- and afraid and-"

"Quinn isn't going to be released today. We've been in communication with the doctors and they want to keep her for the rest of the day and overnight to make sure she doesn't have a serious concussion. She at the very least has a minor one and they want to monitor it. Quinn will be released to us tomorrow morning at the very earliest. You can't stay here for the next 18 hours."

"Like hell I can't," Rachel grumbled.

Leroy Berry gave his daughter a very firm look. "Let me rephrase. You will not be staying here for the next 18 hours. Mrs. Lopez, your dad and I were all talking and we think it would be best if you three girls go back with us to our house. Santana can stay the night and I'm sure when we call Brittany's parents they will also agree to her staying over."

"But daddy, I-"

"There are no buts, sweetheart. Your dad is staying here for another few hours to finish up paperwork and make sure there isn't anything else needed from us."

"And I'll be staying, Rachel," Miss Pillsbury interjected, nodding at Leroy. "I plan to stay until they kick me out." Mr. Schuester seemed alarmed by this declaration but didn't say anything about it.

Leroy nodded back at Miss Pillsbury. "And Miss Pillsbury is staying. As you can see, Quinn is being taken care of. It is my job now to take care of you."

Rachel puffed up all ready to fight, but she could tell it would be a losing one. Despite her desire to stay, the news that she was going home had hit her with a wave of lethargy and she was feeling the effects of fear and panic mode being turned on for hours on end. Suddenly her body desperately wanted sleep. "Okay, daddy," she said.

Her daddy looked surprised it hadn't been more of a fight but he quickly recovered and put an arm around her shoulders. "Alright. Lets go."

Rachel nodded. Maribel saw the movement and knelt down to help Santana and Brittany to their feet. "Mija, go with Rachel and her father now. Brittany and Rachel will take care of you."

"Always, Mami," Rachel found herself saying, despite her bone-deep tired.

Santana's shattered face worried Rachel. Brittany's hard and empty face worried her even more.

Rachel fell asleep in the car. She woke up long enough to crawl up to her front door and into her living room. The stairs were too daunting a task and Rachel Berry fell asleep on her couch.

.

Quinn stopped being dead sometime between Rachel's house and the third intrusive medical exam.

It was horrible.

She'd been cooperative until then, letting herself be pushed and prodded, not registering the humiliation as anything more than an itch under her skin, and then suddenly the doctor was saying something and she was awake, and she pulled the IV out of her arm, pushed the doctor away and started screaming at the top of her lungs for them to GET AWAY and LEAVE ME ALONE, and she was being restrained and they were injecting her with something and

and she woke, groggy and furious that she wasn't dead and furious at Rachel Berry and hating everyone, everyone, EVERYONE.

She stopped talking, stopped answering questions, leveled Quinn Fabray glares at anyone who walked by or attempted to speak to her. How fucking dare they? How dare they bring her back from the dead?

Quinn hated that it probably hadn't been them that had done it, either. Because she's not certain, but she thinks she heard someone yelling somewhere far down the hall, and it had woken up a part of her brain that had responded with an image of bruised knees and biting words and a 12-year-old Latina telling her that she was fucking stupid but at least she was interesting and did she want to be friends?

Fuck Rachel.

Fuck. Rachel. Berry.

Quinn ignored everyone who attempts to talk to her for hours. It doesn't matter. She'd answered a bunch of questions in her zombie state, so they're not as anxious about her answering as they would have been if they hadn't gotten a bunch of what they needed already.

They had at some point moved her out of the emergency room and into a proper hospital room, which she took to mean she was staying. For how long, she didn't know. She didn't have anywhere to go back to anyway. She suspected that someone at some time might have mentioned where she was going after she left, but she'd been dead then so it had been pretty stupid of them to tell her back then anyway. God, did she hate everyone. The hatred was sustaining her, letting her run on venom and bile so that she wouldn't have to think about the other stuff, the reason she was here and-

(you. are. mine.)

-the ruin that her life had become.

There was a knock on her door around three thirty. Quinn ignored it but then a quiet, gentle voice said, "I won't come in if you don't want me to, Quinn, but they finally let me come see you and I wondered if you'd like to see a friendly face?"

Quinn looked up, the hastily and poorly constructed wall around her crumbling as she stared in open astonishment. "Miss P?"

Miss Pillsbury smiled at her and came into the room. Somehow, this out of everything that had happened seemed the most impossible. Miss Pillsbury had come to see Quinn?

As she sat, Miss P asked, "How are you feeling?" She instantly seemed to regret it and added, "Physically?" Quinn wondered briefly if it was for Quinn's benefit or her own that she'd added that. Did Miss P really want to know about her mental state after being raped by her own father? Would anybody want to know that mess?

"I rolled my ankle," Quinn said vaguely, bringing up the only injury that had not been sustained from her father's assault. "They haven't asked about it."

"I'll make sure they know about that when I talk to them," Miss P said.

"… Most everything aches. I feel kind of like a walking bruise. Which doesn't make a lot of sense because it's not like- like every part of me was hurt. Just… specific parts got hurt. Like my head. They're probably keeping me for observation for a concussion."

"They didn't tell you?"

"They might have. I wasn't really… I don't really remember specifics of a lot of conversation."

"You were probably in shock."

"Yeah, I guess so." I was dead, I wanted to stay dead.

Miss Pillsbury nodded and she smiled a concerned smile, her forehead wrinkled and the dimples in her cheeks barely poking out. "I can't imagine what you're going through, Quinn. I want you to know I'm here for you. I'll be here for you, for anything you need."

"Thanks, Miss P," Quinn said. She meant it, but it had popped out of her like an automated response. Because it was so simple a thing to say when what Quinn wanted to say was "why?" and "what do you think of me now?".

"You have a lot of people behind you, Quinn. More than you know. And this will be difficult, but no one will let you do this alone, I swear to you."

"Okay."

Miss Pillsbury seemed to wait for more, but there wasn't any more that Quinn could think to say. Be there for her? Not let her be alone? The sentiments were great, and Quinn knew Miss P believed it. But Quinn had always been alone in some capacity, and she expected it to stay that way. Especially now that with all this madness coming out, there was no way people would look at her the same. No way people would like her the same, or support her. Or believe her, even. She knew it the same way that she knew that her father was right now calling an attorney, throwing money at the problem. She knew it the way that she knew her sister would be getting a call and would be rushing to defend her father, calling Quinn a liar and a little bitch without actually coming home to see what was going on. She knew it in the way that she knew her mother was off somewhere drunk out of her mind, wondering if she'd made the biggest mistake of her life when she'd tried to rescue Quinn, and wondering if she should have just let well enough alone.

Rachel had started a war on her behalf that Quinn had never wanted to fight or hoped to win.

Fucking Rachel Berry.

"I can stay for a bit, if you'd like. We don't have to talk about anything serious, or we don't have to talk at all. Just let me know if you're okay with me staying," Miss Pillsbury said, and the earnest expression on her face made Quinn's stomach churn.

"If you don't mind."

Miss Pillsbury's entire face lit up. She pulled a book out of her bag, a book that Quinn had recommended to her a few weeks ago. "I've been absolutely loving it. You never steer me wrong."

For the first time in hours, Quinn almost smiled.

.

Rachel was awoken by the doorbell ringing.

She sat up groggily from where her face had been plastered to Santana's hip and she'd drooled a patch of damp onto Santana's pants. Brittany was sitting with Santana's head in her lap and when Rachel looked at her Brittany gave her a tired smile. "You're awake."

"Not on purpose."

Footsteps on the stairs announced her daddy coming to answer the door. Rachel wasn't planning on moving from her spot on the couch until she heard her dad's startled voice say, "Finn? Kurt? What are you two doing here?" Rachel stood up like a shot and headed for the front door.

Finn was standing in the doorway with a crock pot in his hands and a confused grin on his face. Behind him, Kurt was looking uncomfortable. When Kurt saw Rachel his lips pursed in a thin line. Finn replied, "Mr. Schue texted all of us that Quinn got hurt and Rachel wanted our company."

Rachel almost smacked her face with her palm.

However well intentioned it had been, this was the opposite of what she wanted. And if he'd texted the whole group…

"I brought the beer!" Puck yelled as he marched up the walkway with a box of A&W balanced on his shoulder. Mercedes and Tina were right on his heels.

"Boy, that's root beer. Why do you always gotta be like that?"

"I have to find some way to make our parties interesting."

"This isn't a party, this is a "feel better Rachel" gathering," Tina said. She was holding food in her hands as well and smiled at Mr. Berry. "I brought fruit salad."

"Thank you, Tina, but I don't actually think that this is-"

"Come on in," Rachel said, trying to inject perkiness into her voice. Her daddy gave her a look which she pointedly ignored. They were all here now and if she banished them from her doorstep there would be drama, there would be even more questions, and Rachel couldn't deal with that. Not right now.

Without needing any further invite the beginnings of the gang trooped into the Berry household. There was mixed confusion when they saw Santana asleep in Brittany's lap but Santana woke when Puck dropped the case of root beer loudly on the living room table. Mercedes and Tina both smacked him for it and he looked genuinely guilty for a second.

"What the fuck," Santana grumbled, then Rachel watched as the memories of the morning rushed back to her. Her grip tightened on Brittany and she hid her face in Brittany's shoulder. Brittany didn't seem startled to see her friends from glee club all showing up out of the blue, and a flicker of life returned to her face.

"Hi guys."

"Hey Brittany," Tina said, not seeming to register the weirdness of both Santana and Brittany. Mercedes paused, frowning slightly.

"Was she really hurt that bad? What the hell happened? We just saw Quinn last night."

Rachel wrapped her arms around herself. "She'll be okay," she said, trying to sound like she knew what she was talking about.

"That isn't what I asked," Mercedes replied, raising an eyebrow.

"We're trying to respect her privacy," Rachel said more firmly.

"It was scary, Mercedes," Brittany said quickly before Mercedes could say anything else. "We don't really want to talk about it just yet, okay?"

Mercedes didn't seem satisfied but she didn't protest.

"Um, Rachel. Can I… talk to you?" Kurt said suddenly. Unlike everyone else who had arrived so far, he hadn't come farther in than the foyer. Rachel noticed the way he was fidgeting and not looking her in the face and her heartbeat quickened.

Rachel approached Kurt and he grabbed her forearm and pulled her further down the hallway and away from the group. His face was pale and grim and he said in a low voice, "I don't know if anyone else thought to, but I…" He trailed off, then held up his phone. A news article was on his screen.

Local Business Man Arrested On Suspicions of Battery and Rape

"Russell Fabray, a local Lima business man, was arrested today when police got a call alleging that he had beaten and raped his 17-year-old daughter. The teen, whose name we will withhold for privacy, is currently in the hospital suffering from blunt force trauma and other-"

Rachel stopped reading. She looked at Kurt, helpless. He knew. And the others would know soon, even if Kurt didn't tell them. It was going to be everywhere in a matter of hours.

Kurt's face was a stoic mask.

"I'm sorry, Rachel. I didn't say anything to Finn. I haven't said anything to anyone, but I just wanted you to know-"

"That it's out there. They didn't even bother to hide anything. Everyone will be able to figure it out even if they did hold back her name. Those… those jerks!" Rachel stamped her foot and in the other room the conversation quieted, reacting. She looked down the hall and lowered her voice. "I'm sorry. I don't know what to do…"

"Rachel, if you knew what to do in this situation I'd think you were some sort of robot. This isn't something you can plan for. I mean… fuck, her dad? What kind of monster-"

"I can't, Kurt, I can't do this right now," Rachel interrupted, putting her hand up and taking a step away.

"Right. No yeah, sure. That makes complete sense. I'm sorry."

"No, it's not your fault. I'm worried about Quinn, scared of her dad, angry at the news, I feel powerless. There's nothing I can do, Kurt, and that's not something I've ever really felt before. Not like this." Rachel's voice wavered.

"There isn't anything we can do to help Quinn now. Why don't you just take a break with us. Even if it's just an hour. I'll get them to clear out as soon as you want them to. I've got you, Rach."

Rachel sighed and leaned her forehead against Kurt's, hoping her gratitude would transfer through osmosis into him. "Thank you, Kurt. Just… thank you so much."

"Anything for you. Come on." Kurt held out his hand. The two of them walked back towards the group just as Sam and Mike were pushing open the door and calling out greetings.

If you're still with me your patience is wonderful and I'm truly truly blessed. Thank you all!

Also to the person saying I was implying that rape and incest are the same thing, I'm sorry but I don't see how I did? The fic is tagged as both Sexual Assault and Incest, two different things, and for the last chapter I tagged that specifically as Rape. Sorry if there was confusion.