-Part V-

"Rachel, stay with me!"

The brunette's eyes opened. "I'm sorry…I'm so sorry…I love you, you know I love you."

"I love you, too. Don't leave me like this, Rachel. Please…hold on, okay?"

"It's really dark," Rachel whispered. "I feel…light."

"No, Rachel, no." Quinn pulled her hand away from Rachel's neck and dug into her backpack. She produced a gold ball and held it up in front of the brunette's eyes.

Rachel blinked.

"Forever, Rachel. Forever, I swear it. Okay? Yes, the answer to your question is yes…people can be in love forever."

Tears welled up in Rachel's eyes and the brunette smiled a little. "Forever," she whispered. "I want you forever."

Rachel let go of Quinn's hand and the blonde nodded. "You'll feel sleepy," she reminded Rachel. "And warm."

Rachel nodded but before she could reach up, her eyes slipped shut and Quinn panicked. She shook Rachel's shoulder and pressed her fingertips against the girl's neck again before she took a deep breath and kissed her forehead. The blonde pushed the ball into the palm of Rachel's hand and wrapped the girl's fingers around it.

"Please work," Quinn mumbled. "Please…please work."

Quinn held her breath and shut her eyes tight until she heard Rachel gasp for air and the brunette almost knocked her over when she sat bolt upright. Rachel looked down at the ball in her hand and back up at Quinn and flung her arms around the blonde's shoulders. Quinn returned the embrace and kissed Rachel's neck.

"I love you," Quinn murmured. "Oh God, Rachel…I…I love you."

"I love you, too," the brunette said with a gasp.

Quinn pulled away and looked at the young man who was pacing frantically with his phone pinned to his ear. She glanced back and forth between Rachel and the young man before standing and walking over to him. He spun around with his eyes wide when she tapped him on the shoulder.

"I'm fucking on hold!" he said. "I can't believe they…"

Quinn grabbed the phone out of his hand and shut it.

"Listen to me…what's your name?"

"Ron."

"Ron, I'm going to give you a hundred dollars in cash here in a second when I grab my bag. What you're going to do is forget this ever happened, okay?"

"Wh-what about…"

"Don't worry about her. I just need you to take the money and forget this."

"O-okay."

Quinn nodded once and patted the young man's shoulder before going over to grab her backpack out of the street. She rifled through her wallet and pulled out a crisp $100 bill and handed it to him. He looked at it then at Quinn and over to Rachel who was now standing in front of his car inspecting the damage.

"How is she…"

"This never happened," Quinn cut him off.

The young man nodded and Quinn handed him his phone and he shakily took it and walked back to his car. Quinn beckoned Rachel out of the street and the pair stood on the sidewalk for a while, the gold ball still clasped in Rachel's fist until she held it out and dropped it in Quinn's hand.

"So…" Rachel breathed. "I don't…feel any different."

"You won't." Quinn looked around at the empty street and clutched her lip between her teeth. She slipped her hand into Rachel's and tugged her back toward their apartment building. Quinn used Rachel's phone to call her next lesson and cancel, Rachel dropped her bag and fell to the couch. Quinn followed.

"What do we do?" Rachel asked, looking down at her hands, the scrapes that had been on her knuckles all gone.

"We…we go on. We do what we have to in order to survive."

"Can I finish school?"

Quinn chewed on her lower lip again.

Rachel sighed. "I'll withdraw my…"

"No." Quinn swallowed hard and took a deep breath. It was time to change strategies. "I'm sick of running, Rachel. If you want to go to Julliard and graduate and go on stage then you should do it. We'll deal with whatever comes. It was easy with just me and Puck. We didn't have huge dreams like you do. Hell, the dreams when we were sixteen were to live passed the age of thirty-five and survive a flu epidemic. You've wanted this since you were born. You once told me you'd give it all up for me. I won't let you."

"You said it could be dangerous…"

"They can't kill us," Quinn said with a shrug. "The last couple years…it was so hard. For the first time we didn't know where we were going to sleep from one night to the next. We squatted in abandoned buildings and slept under bridges…I don't want to do that again. I told myself that things might change when I found you…and I think I'm ready. I wasn't…then. When everything happened and I had to leave. I wasn't ready…but I'm ready now. I'm willing to face whatever comes as long as you're with me."

Rachel launched herself at her girlfriend, knocking her onto her back on the couch. The brunette's lips attached to Quinn's and her hands ran up the blonde's sides.

"I promise I'll make it all worth it, baby," Rachel whispered. "I promise. I'll take care of you, okay? You won't have to worry about anything ever again, I swear."

Quinn groaned and dug her fingernails into Rachel's back through her shirt. When Rachel's fingernails ran down her bare stomach she figured this wasn't going to be a bad way to spend eternity.

...

Quinn found another job to go along with giving piano lessons. Another hole-in-the-wall bar where the manager didn't give a shit if she was legal or not. He was an irritable old bastard but the pay was okay and it was cash under the table because he was also cheap. The one thing she didn't expect when she took the job was the man behind the bar on her first day of work.

"Puck!" Quinn squealed when she stepped out of the break room to start work.

"Q!"

Puck enveloped her in a huge bear hug and the blonde grinned at the familiar arms around her.

"Keep it in your pants!" the owner barked from his spot in a booth where he was going through his receipts.

"Shut it, old man!" Puck barked back. "How long have you been here?" he asked when he released the blonde from his grip.

"Since March. I found Rachel in Lima, she left the city but we came back together. It's a long story, I'll tell you later. You should come by our place sometime."

"Sweet. I pretty much live in a closet in the back and work for that and whatever leftover food we have at the end of the night."

"We actually have a second bedroom. There's a bunch of stuff in it right now but I'll talk to Rachel if you want."

"I'd so owe you. I know I'm a dude but seriously, there are some smells even I can't handle. That closet is one of them. Pretty sure any normal human would be dead by now."

"I'm not paying you two to stand there and fucking gossip!"

"You're not paying me anything, you cheap bastard!" Puck yelled.

"Back to the bar, Puckerman!"

"I'll talk to you after we close, okay?" Quinn smiled and hugged Puck again and grabbed her tray to run off to get the first customers of the evening.

Within a week Puck was moved into the spare bedroom. Rachel burned all of his clothes because no matter what they did they couldn't get the smell out of them. Puck retaliated by walking around naked for a day because Rachel hadn't given him any time to get new clothes. Quinn turned the air conditioning up as high as it would go to the point that she and Rachel had to put on extra layers. Puck finally gave up and fashioned a bedsheet to look like a toga until Quinn went out and bought him new clothes.

...

"So I was thinking," Puck said, dropping to the floor for movie night. He tossed a bowl of popcorn onto the coffee table and picked out Armageddon since it was his week to pick the movie.

"No, Puck."

"Absolutely not, Noah."

"Fuck you guys. You don't even know what I was going to say."

"We're still not having a threesome," Quinn said, grabbing the popcorn bowl from the coffee table.

Puck growled and grabbed the remote. "No fuckin' fun at all," he mumbled.

Quinn and Rachel each threw a handful of popcorn at him.

...

August 2015
New York, New York

Puck aligned the bottles of liquor on the shelves behind him while Quinn wiped down the bar and stools after the last customers had finally stumbled out of the bar. They'd had a pretty good night, they brought in a lot of tips. Their boss had left earlier that night because his wife, who was apparently more of a bitch than he was an ass, had demanded he be home for dinner once and not "spending time in that waste of space you call a bar" (Quinn and Puck had heard the old woman yell at her husband more than once when she came to the bar just to bitch at him). He left the pair to clean up and shut everything down.
Puck poured a couple of shots out after Quinn took off her apron and tossed it on the bar. It was as clean as it was going to get and it wasn't like the old man cared unless the health inspector was coming by. She gladly took the shot of whatever Puck had poured and was getting ready to knock back another when the door opened and an old man, even older looking than their ancient boss, stepped inside.

"We're closed," Puck said.

The old man moved a little closer and Quinn recognized him as a man she'd seen in the bar almost every night for the last two weeks. He never said anything, just settled himself at a table and drank cranberry juice and had some food. He'd watched her incredibly close after one night she dropped a wine glass and sliced herself open picking up the shards. She'd glanced around and tried to cover her hand to let it heal but something in the old man's gaze had told her that he knew something.

"I'm going to have to ask you to leave," Quinn said with a smile, trying to be polite as possible. The old man always left her a good tip, after all.

The old man took off his hat and set it on the bar. He took a deep breath and shook his head. Quinn watched as he put his hand in his pocket and pulled something out and set it on the bar. The blonde's eyes traveled to the object and she furrowed her eyebrows. On the bar was a small glowing silver ball.

"I bet," the old man wheezed, "that you have one of those in gold."

"H-how did you…" Quinn stammered as she looked at the ball and back to the old man.

"It's amazing how things travel. Where they end up. I figured you two shared the secret. You're close."

Puck knocked back his second shot and stared down at the silver ball. Quinn caught his gaze for a second.

"Where did they come from?" Puck asked. Quinn could see his fingers twitching to reach out and touch it.

The old man chuckled. "That, I'm not sure of. I found them at a little market, the owner wasn't sure where they'd come from, either. I thought maybe my wife would like them, something a little decorative that don't serve much of a purpose. What I do know is that I dropped the other long ago. I was an oil worker in…"

"Titusville, Pennsylvania," Quinn finished.

"Yes ma'am. Had a hole in my pocket, I suspect. I never meant to touch this one until I found its brother but somewhere around fifty years ago it slipped out of its box and I grabbed it."

"And…you aged."

The man nodded. "Was long about twenty-two when I first got them. Spent quite a few years playing with them back and forth once I figured their purpose."

Quinn nodded.

"Woulda destroyed them," he sighed.

"But you couldn't," Puck said. "They don't melt, they float even if you weigh them down…"

"And they come right back up to the surface if you try and bury them."

"What do you want for it? Do you want the other one?" Puck crossed his arms over his chest and stared down the old man. Quinn reached across the bar and poked his shoulder, telling him to back off.

The old man chuckled. "No, no, sir. I don't want anything from you. I've lived my life, longer than you've lived. I saw Washington cross the Delaware and America become what it has. My life will come to a close soon and I'm ready for it. You've got a decision to make, though. I'll be leaving you to your thoughts." He grabbed his hat, the silver ball stayed on the bar.

Quinn was too stunned to say anything, she just listened to the bell on the bar door jingle as the man left. She grabbed her discarded apron and picked up the silver ball with it, taking extra care to not touch it with her bare skin. Puck grabbed the two shot glasses and tossed them in the sink then jumped over the bar and locked up the front doors. The pair darted out the back door and to their apartment, running as fast as they could.

The blonde found Rachel in their bedroom changing into her pajamas when she burst through the door with the silver ball still clutched in her hand.

"Hey beautiful," Rachel yawned. "How was your shift?"

"We need to talk."

"Do we have to talk now, sweetheart? I'm certain I'm on the brink of exhaustion. The librarian had me stacking the encyclopedias. I don't think she likes me."

"It can't wait."

Quinn grabbed onto Rachel's arm and tugged her into the living room where Puck was sitting on the couch with his head in his hands staring at the coffee table. Quinn dropped next to him, Rachel on her other side.

"I can't believe this," Puck mumbled. "Like it's just that fuckin' simple."

"What's going on? Did something happen?"

Quinn nodded at Rachel's questions and loosened her death grip on her apron and carefully put it on the coffee table. She pulled the fabric away to reveal the silver ball, glowing just as the gold did. There it was. Her escape. Their escape.

"Is that…"

"The solution," Quinn mumbled.

"Well this just isn't fair!" Rachel shrieked. "I've been immortal all of two months and you find the way out? I have yet to witness anything of historical significance or get shot and survive!"

"You want to get shot I'll find someone," Puck mumbled.

"Shut it, Puck."

Quinn stared at the silver ball; Puck's almost depression radiating from her right and Rachel's anger at not having gotten to really experience immortality seeping out from her left. She'd once told Rachel she'd jump at the chance to get rid of the immortality in a heartbeat. She remembered that conversation very, very clearly. But now, presented with the actual option, she was hesitant. For some reason, anything less than eternity with Rachel didn't seem long enough. For the first time in her existence, Quinn was afraid of dying.

"Quinn? Baby?"

"I don't know what to do," Quinn sighed.

"You said…"

Quinn, still in shock and disbelief stormed to the kitchen where she paced, arms crossed over her chest. Rachel, as expected, followed and attempted to calm her down but there was no calming.

"Damn what I said, Rachel! Damn all of it! I love you…I love you and I…I'm scared. I'm scared because this is all I've known for so long and now you're in the picture and you are the picture. I never thought we'd find a way out…I never thought I could end it and so the decision was easy. It was easy when I thought I'd be breaking up with you…"

"You were going to break up with me?"

"Before you graduated from McKinley," Quinn mumbled. "But you're like…this…I don't know. I didn't do it because I didn't want to. That's not the point, Rachel!"

"You were going to break up with me!"

"A long time ago! I changed my mind, though, didn't I? I'm still here and I came back for you when I had to leave! I'm here and I'm not going anywhere now can we please focus on the issue at hand?"

Rachel growled. "Alright. What's the issue?"

"The issue is that I don't know what the hell to do. I'm so fucking confused right now…I want to but I don't!"

"So don't do anything," Rachel said with a shrug. "It's a fairly simple concept. Don't do anything until you've made a solid decision. Is the reversal permanent? If you were to touch the gold one again would you return to being immortal?"

Quinn nodded. "The man said he spent years playing with them, switching it on and off."

"Well then if you ever change your mind one way or the other you can simply go back. It's simple logic, Quinn."

"What about you?"

"As the only person here who has had an actual near-death experience I think I deserve at least a few more years of immortality. I feel a little safer, to be honest. And if you were to decide to become mortal again then you'd catch up to me in age, since you'd move on from eighteen, and I'd feel less like one of those slightly creepy college students who date high school age people. Although numerically speaking you're much older than I am, the age difference would've shown eventually had I not been thrust into a situation where I chose immortality over immediate death. I must admit I was a little apprehensive about that. I'm not sure many people would've accepted a fifty-year-old dating a girl who looked like a teen."

"So…"

"In a nutshell, since you have obviously learned how to tune out my voice," Rachel sighed, "I shall remain as I am for the time being."

"Wonderful," Puck mumbled as he walked through the kitchen.

"Puck, Rachel and I were…"

"Yeah, I heard all of it."

Puck grabbed a kitchen knife out of the holder and Quinn furrowed her eyebrows as she saw it shake in his hands. He lifted up the leg of his jeans and Rachel shrieked. Puck pressed the blade of the knife against his calf and yelled as he dragged it over his skin. He dropped the crimson tinged knife into the sink and the three of them watched the blood pour out of his leg. Quinn finally took action and grabbed a towel to press against the wound when the bleeding didn't stop and the cut didn't close.

"You idiot," Quinn hissed.

"I had to know," he mumbled.

"Well…now you know. Now we know."

Puck shrugged and winced when Quinn pressed even harder on his leg.

"What's it feel like?"

"Hurts like a bitch," he said.

Quinn quirked an eyebrow.

"Oh, the other thing. Feels just like it did with the other one. Warm and tired."

"That's it?"

Puck nodded. "Yeah. Ow! Careful!"

"You pushed deep, you moron, I have to keep pressure on it. Rachel, grab a chair so the idiot can sit down."

Quinn nursed Puck's wound and finally got the bleeding to stop. Because Rachel was Rachel they still had a first aid kit around and she dressed the wound and mumbled that it could probably use stitches but Puck turned pale at the mention so the blonde just did the best she could with medical tape and gauze.

The silver ball joined its brother in a box and was returned to Quinn's nightstand. The blonde would stare at it every night after she thought Rachel had fallen asleep. She would think about the last four years and the girl snuggled up to her and how much her existence had changed since she met Rachel.

She was honestly beginning to wonder if she really would've done it had the option presented itself before Rachel. She thought maybe she'd have done what the old man did, go back and forth. She just wasn't sure. One thing Quinn did know for sure was that she'd never felt about anyone like she felt about Rachel. Rachel was literally a once in a lifetime experience. But that was just it. She wondered if perhaps once in a lifetime experiences are meant to be just that. Once in a lifetime. Not once in an existence. She tilted her head down and pressed a kiss to Rachel's forehead.

Quinn took a deep breath as she reached over to her nightstand and tugged the drawer open. The small box stared back at her as she looked down at it. She opened it and the glow from the two balls illuminated the room just a little. Quinn's fingers hesitated over the silver one until Rachel shifted and groaned.

"Baby, wha's wrong?" the brunette mumbled. "What're you doing?"

"It's time."

"Time for what? Sex? Mkay…"

Rachel pressed a few kisses to Quinn's collarbone, almost making the blonde forget her goal but the glow from her nightstand made her shake her head and nudge Rachel away. The brunette sat up a little and gasped as Quinn reached back into the drawer.

"Quinn, are you sure?"

"I'm sure."

Quinn picked up the silver ball and clenched it in her fist. Puck was right, it was the exact same feeling she'd had when she first touched the gold one. Once the feeling of warmth disappeared she dropped it back into her nightstand and shut the drawer. She could see through the faint light coming in through the window that Rachel was smirking at her.

"What's that look for?"

"Your hickeys won't go away now."

Quinn was in the middle of her eyeroll when Rachel's teeth latched onto her neck.

...

Not much changed, Quinn noticed. It hurt a little more when she ran into things and she had to be extra careful not to cut herself when she was preparing dinner or cleaning up glass shards at the bar from when someone knocked over their glass. She found it a little funny that now the roles were reversed from where they had been when she and Rachel met.

Rachel left Julliard again when her roles in shows started getting bigger. She found out she landed her first Broadway role on what they had deemed Quinn's 19th birthday, July 14th from what the blonde could remember. She still had a year to go before Rachel would consent to giving up her immortality because of her insistence that the pair be the same age when she give it up to start "living instead of existing", as Quinn put it.

One thing that did change was Puck. He was a little more fearful and a little more cautious and definitely a lot quieter. She'd watch him at the bar and at home and mostly he would be staring off into space deep in thought. No matter what she tried to get him to talk to her, he wouldn't. He'd just mumble something of an apology and find something to fix around the apartment.

Then, just like that, he was gone. Quinn woke up one morning to Rachel calling her for breakfast. She poked her head into his bedroom and there was nothing. His bed was made but his dresser drawers were pulled out and empty. Quinn went back across the hall and her eyes darted to her nightstand. The drawer was ajar just a little and she opened it to see the gold ball out of its box and rolling around freely. She ran to the kitchen and looked around the room. There was no letter, no explanation. Just the absence of the third of their trio.

"I don't think he's coming back," Quinn mumbled over her pancakes.

"Hey." Rachel slipped her hand over Quinn's and squeezed. "We'll be okay."

Quinn smiled and pulled Rachel's hand up to kiss the back of it. "I know we will be."

"Whether it's forever or not…we'll be fine. You know I'll always love you."

"I love you, Rachel."

The blonde's heart fluttered at Rachel's bright smile and she leaned into an embrace with her lover and reveled in the warmth that Rachel offered. She didn't know what the future would hold, she never did. All she knew is that at least she wouldn't be alone in it like she thought she would be.

...

Epilogue

March 2084
Lima, Ohio

The cold breeze was enough to chill a person to the bone. It didn't stop a young man from walking through the cemetery with two bunches of store-bought daisies to kneel in front of one large headstone and put the flowers down. He gripped the grey rock as he knelt down and shook his head.

"I can't believe I'm more of a coward than you guys," Puck mumbled. "And I can't believe you had them put your actual birthdate on there, Q. You're crazy." Puck traced his fingers over the matching numbers for the date of death, only about nine months before. "How the hell did you manage…"

"Excuse me?" a voice came from behind him.

Puck stood and turned to see an older woman standing with two single stemmed pink roses in her hand. She looked at him curiously, studying his face before she gasped.

"Noah?"

Puck nodded. "Yeah. Do I know you?"

"No," the woman shook her head. "My name is Katherine. Fabray-Berry is my maiden name. Rachel and Quinn…they were my mothers. They talked about you all the time. I've seen pictures. I never thought I'd meet you. They always said they had no idea what happened to you." Katherine placed the two roses next to the daisies and motioned to a nearby bench. Puck sat down and stared at the brown grass at his feet.

"I figured they had each other," Puck said. "They didn't need me sticking around while they tried to start their lives, you know?"

"Mom…Quinn…she always figured it was something along those lines. She said you never really told them."

"Like I said, they didn't need me sticking around."

"Momma…Rachel, had me," Katherine said. "About five years after you left. They traveled for a while to all the places Mom remembered and had been to. Momma said she loved it but what she really wanted more than anything was a family. It was difficult getting the paperwork filled out but eventually they got around it. I've got a younger sister and a younger brother. Sarah and Noah."

Puck chuckled.

"That was Mom's doing, she said she wanted to name him after the only other boy she ever loved. Sarah and Noah stayed in New York, I moved to Lima after college. I always liked it better than the city. I raised my family here, three sons and a daughter. They're all grown now and have children of their own," Katherine smiled. "Mom and Momma moved back after Momma retired from the stage. They were lucky to get to see all of their grandchildren before they died."

"How the hell did they manage to die at the same time?"

Katherine shrugged. "They lived in an assisted living facility and their caretaker came in that morning and found them. They'd both died in their sleep, most likely. I guess it was fitting. Mom always said that Momma was a once in a lifetime experience for her."

"Rachel would've wanted a movie of it made. Girl was damn dramatic."

"She tried for a while to get them to do a biopic. It never worked out because she could never agree with what actress they wanted to play her."

Puck snorted. "Figures."

"I have them," Katherine said. Puck didn't need to inquire as to what she was talking about. "They're yours if you'd like."

"That'd be cool."

...

Puck walked through the streets of Lima with the addition of a box containing the gold and silver balls in his backpack and a piece of paper with the contact information of Quinn and Rachel's other children along with a promise that he'd keep in touch with Katherine and her family.

He'd stayed for dinner and Katherine had her children and their children over. They shared stories of memories of various points in Rachel and Quinn's lives as well as how a few of them had chosen to take immortality for a few years but always went back after Quinn talked to them about it.

Katherine's oldest grand-daughter, an eighteen year-old blonde named Cassie, flirted shamelessly with him and slipped him her number and e-mail address right before he left. He had to admit that he did feel a little drawn to her. Katherine had arched her eyebrow in a way that Quinn would be proud of when he left and he turned back to give Cassie a little wave.

He found himself at Lima Park and he sat on a bench to look out over the pond and he thought about how his life ended up here, right back where one of the biggest adventures had started. Quinn had changed his life and then Rachel came along and completely turned his world upside down. He'd loved Quinn and cared about Rachel, enough to let them live their lives and from what he'd heard they had lived life to the fullest and never let anything stop them.

"Hey," a soft voice came from next to him. "It's cold out, I brought you a coffee."

Cassie dropped down to the bench and handed Puck a steaming cup of Starbucks and sipped her own.

"You follow me?"

Cassie smiled. "Maybe."

"Your grandma wouldn't be happy about that."

"Grandma was the one that gave me money for the coffee. Great-Grandma Rachel always told everyone that we'd get along because we're so much alike."

"Yeah?" Puck frowned a little when Cassie shivered and he wrapped an arm around her shoulders to pull her in a little.

"Yeah. I'm kind of a troublemaker."

"You want to talk about it at dinner tomorrow night?"

The blonde girl grinned and nodded. "I'd love to."

Puck continued sipping his coffee, occasionally glancing to the blonde on his left and wondering if maybe this was it for him. He'd never admit any of his thoughts out loud because it would destroy his need to be somewhat of a badass but he wondered if maybe the turning point for Quinn had been finding Rachel and knowing that they could be in love forever but they wanted a steady life together.

He hadn't really been ready to settle down with Quinn when they were teens, no matter how much he begged her for it. It was out of a sense of responsibility more than anything although he had loved her but it wasn't a love like Quinn had found with the short brunette. It had been taking care of each other, looking out for each other. But as he sat in Lima, Ohio, the place that changed his entire world, he thought maybe another change was coming. Only time would tell.


The end! Thanks for reading, I appreciate it!

(Please do not ask me for a sequel. Really, don't ask. It's not happening.)