Author's Note: I'm trying something that I've wanted to do for awhile - a Lauren Zizes story! Plus you'll see other under-represented characters in this. If you stumble upon this story, while taking a break from your Brittana and Klaine, it would mean a great deal to me to get a review!!

Lauren Zizes should have been able to take her. She'd been easily twice the size of the Asian girl from Yale, but the girl was unexpectedly spritely and quick, and she took Lauren down faster than you could say 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.'

Only this hadn't been any normal take down. Lauren's skull had hit the girl's knee with such force that she heard the bones crack in the girl's leg. Or maybe that had actually been her head.

The next thing Lauren knew, she was waking up in the hospital and learning she'd suffered a pretty serious head trauma. For awhile, it was tricky to remember to swallow her food after she'd chewed it. And apparently, she didn't realize she was in a hospital at first. She'd called her little brother two times in a panic because she thought she was in some kind of brothel, mistaking the male nurse for her nightly visitor.

One and a half years of wresting at Harvard University down the drain. Once she recovered, Lauren didn't know what she wanted to do next. Wrestling was out of the question. She couldn't imagine going back to the mat, after what she'd endured.

It was humiliating, sure, but she kind of liked the job she'd landed in town over the holidays. It was January, which meant that gyms were busier than ever, and she'd been hired to work at the smoothie stand. It meant she could access the weight room anytime she wanted. So, she did what any disgraced college drop out would do: she stayed home.

What she didn't mean to do was reconnect with one Noah Puckerman. She'd just been trying to get an oil change for her car.

"Hey." He'd slid out from under the Honda Accord he was working on. Lauren did a double take. Creeper on a creeper. "Fancy seeing you here."

She played it super aloof and cool, even though she was dying inside. She hadn't seen him in literally years now, and he still did something to her. Damn him. "Girl's gotta go places," she said. "Though you wouldn't know much about going places, would you, Puckerman?"

"You look different."

Leave it to Puckerman to lead with checking her out and commenting on her body. She crossed her arms in front of her still ample chest. Thank goodness losing forty pounds in the hospital hadn't robbed her there. She knew her face was now slimmer and her waist was smaller, but she was still a big girl. Or — what did he call her — a fat-bottomed girl with a big ass... heart? Yeah, high school Lauren may have put up with that, but the older and wiser version wouldn't.

"I'm dropping my car off," she said, as if she didn't know him. She didn't feel like she really did anyway. Not anymore. "My little brother is waiting outside to drive me home."

"I'll call you when it's ready." It looked like he wasn't going to inquire why she was still in Lima when she was already supposed to be headed back to school for the next semester. He didn't know anything about her head injury or quitting the team because Lauren hadn't told people any of it. When she'd dropped Glee club, they'd dropped her, too. She'd tried really, really hard not to care.

"Okay."

"Still the same number?"

"The same." She still had his number, too. The last time she'd dialed it, she'd been a little tipsy at a function with the wrestling club and the dare was to drunk dial your ex. Noah had been a good sport but that was the last time they'd spoken, until today.

She trudged through the melted snow to find her brother waiting in his car. She could hear the sounds of Tupac blaring from it before she even got in. If her half-brother Roderick wasn't in the car, he had his music filling his ears, filtered through a pair of huge white headphones that served the purpose of simultaneously providing entertainment and preventing any and all social interaction.

"I'm kinda glad you're gonna be staying for the semester," Roderick told her, as she climbed into the passenger seat and clicked her seatbelt in place. "I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm really sorry you're not going back to Harvard. But, well, we've never gotten to actually live like siblings before. And it's my senior year. It's our last chance..."

"So, you mean to say you don't regret moving in with Mom, now that I'm back?"

Lauren knew Roderick was kind of using their mother, in an attempt to run away from his father in Chicago and the new wife and kids he didn't like, but she liked having him around, too. They hadn't lived together since her mom and his dad had been married, nearly ten years ago.

"Uh-uh," he said. "Maybe you'd like to come see Regionals, too? Ms. Berry gave me another solo after I took everyone to church at Sectionals. Said I earned it."

Lauren grinned. She didn't know where this newfound, confident Roderick Meeks had come from. But she supposed she owed it to him to see what he was working so hard on. She'd been absolutely floored by his performance at Sectionals. (Nobody else from Glee club had known she was there. She'd hid in the back.)

"You know, they bring alumni in from time to time to mentor us," he said. "I know you're technically an alumni of the New Directions, too. I saw the pictures in your room."

"You better stay out of my room if you know what's good for you, Meeks."

He ignored that comment, like she hadn't said it, and Lauren was annoyed with his complete lack of fear when she cracked her knuckles and gave him her best 'I-Mean-Business' face.

"I don't know if that'll keep happening, now that Ms. Berry's going back to NYADA," he went on. "I don't even know who our new advisor will be when we go back to school tomorrow. I guess we'll find out."