It was decided rather abruptly that the Bushwick apartment was be emptied out and that the inhabitants would move on from the damp walls and the leaking roof. Santana agreeing to move in with her girlfriend had been the final straw. Rachel would move in with two of her co-stars in the city and Kurt was going to try his luck in London for a year. They all gathered to empty the place, to pack their belongings into boxes and suitcases.

"I don't even remember what it's like to have walls" Kurt joked.

Quinn had almost forgotten how bad the place smelled, like dirty socks and mildew. She opened the windows wide as Rachel went through a book shelf.

"Is this yours?" she asked Quinn, holding out a copy of 1984.

Quinn shook her head. A lot of different people had lived in this place. Rachel, Kurt and Santana had been the three constant inhabitants, but Blaine, Finn, Brody, Puck and Quinn had too called this place home. When everyone had collected the stuff that was there's, they made piles of stuff they guessed belonged to the others.

"It's probably not Finn's" Rachel said, still holding the book.

"Just throw it away" Santana suggested.

"I can't do that!"

"If someone hasn't missed the book in all this time, I doubt he or she ever will."

Quinn thought of how few things she had owned during the year in New York. She hadn't been able to bring furniture with her from Boston, no books or the bed or the coffee machine from Italy. All of those things were still in Puck's place. He still probably had her books in the shelves, still drank coffee from her machine and still slept in her bed. With Karen.

"I wonder who will live here now" Rachel sighed dreamily.

"Hopefully no one" Quinn replied. "I hope they tear this place down before someone dies from all the mildew."

Santana laughed. They continued packing for about an hour and then Kurt ordered them pizza. Sitting on the hard floor, they ate Quinn's last New York pizza in a long while. She hoped. She felt done with this city, a city that was so connect with confusion and heartbreak and bad decisions. Her friends had come to New York to fight for their dreams while she had come to run away from her nightmares. There was a poignant difference.

"I have to admit" Kurt said. "It will be strange not living with you guys anymore."

"It will" Rachel agreed sadly.

She had always been one for nostalgia.

"My ears might be able to heal now" Santana teased. "Six years of living with you guys... It hasn't been easy."

"Remember Brody and his pager that went off all the time?" Kurt asked. "God, that used to wake me up."

"Don't talk about him" Rachel exhaled.

"And how Finn would never be able to lock the door properly and how all those stray cats wandered in?"

Quinn laughed even though she hadn't lived here then. She laughed because she had heard the story of Finn and the four cats so many times it felt like she was part of it anyway.

"And Puck…" Kurt began and then stopped.

His eyes flitted over to Quinn before looking down. She said nothing. She could have told him that it was fine, that he could talk about Puck if he wanted to. She could have had, but she really didn't want to talk about him. Or think about him. Which was a big paradox since it was all she ever did.

"Thanks for letting me stay here" she said instead.

"Anytime, Q" Santana grinned, flinging her arm around Quinn's shoulder. "You were the perfect roommate. Always paid the rent on time and never seemed to be around."

"The glory of nightshifts" Quinn agreed.

They finished the pizza, closed the windows and called a cab each. Santana was going to the Upper West Side, Rachel somewhere in Midtown and Kurt to the airport. Quinn had parked her car on the street. She had planned to drive all the way from New York to Ohio by herself. It was the first time ever and she had never felt lonelier. However, when she stopped for the night at the same motel as last time, she had never before felt freer.

…

Quinn almost felt like she was wearing a costume as she stepped into the Kennings office in Boston. Her new business suit was black and incredible tight. She had tamed her hair into a strict bun and painted her lips red. In her arms was a black binder, with her grades and letters of recommendation. Far away was the cotton dresses and braided bangs.

"Quinn Fabray?" a woman asked.

She was in her thirties, wearing an identical suit as Quinn.

"Yes" Quinn replied.

The woman looked her up and down, made a face, and then shook her hand.

"Lisa Henry" she introduced herself.

"Nice to meet you."
Lisa nodded curtly and began to walk. Kennings had a bigger office than Quinn had expected. People sat in small rooms talking or in front of big computers or spoke on the phone all over the place. Lisa told her nothing, just kept walking passed all the people whose work Quinn so admired.

"Here we are" Lisa Henry finally said and knocked at the door.

The sign outside read MIRANDA KENNINGS and Quinn started to panic. Again. She had panicked when a nice secretary had called her up to ask her to come in for an interview. She had panicked last night, not being able to sleep. She had panicked on the train. Miranda Kennings. Quinn hadn't expected the meeting to be with her. The founder, the CEO, the everything. Multiple award winning director Miranda Kennings.

"Welcome" another woman said, opening the door. "Mrs. Kennings will see you now."
They passed through the secretary's room and into an adjoining office, facing the river. Miranda Kennings greeted them in doorway. Quinn had seen pictures of her and yet she astounded by how tall she was. She introduced herself and so did Quinn and they sat down. Lisa hovered in the doorway with her arms crossed.

"Quinn Fabray" Miranda Kennings said and how strange it was to hear her own name from her idol's mouth. "How lovely to meet you."
"You too" Quinn said with too much feeling.

"You're graduating school soon, huh? Yale?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"I went there too, did you know that?"

Quinn nodded. They had a classroom named after this woman at Yale.

"Lisa, did you go there too?" Mrs. Kennings asked her employee.

"No" she replied. "Berkeley."

"Oh, right. However, as you might know, Quinn, we don't take interns."

"I know."

"But Mary, that's my secretary who just let you in, she sometimes cheats and reads the applications anyway. She watched your short film and then called me to cry in the middle of the night."

Quinn smiled, half-wondering if this was some kind of a dream where a fairy godmother in the reincarnation of a secretary waved her magic wand.

"And Mary has good judgment" Mrs. Kennings went on. "And I watched your work too. It surely lacks in some aspects, but overall... It's your first project?"

"Yes, it is" Quinn confirmed

She had no idea what else to say. It was one thing to send in an application and a completely other thing to have someone praise you for it.

"I'm willing to make you an offer, Ms. Fabray" Miranda Kennings said. "a one year internship, starting in September. What do you think?"
Quinn almost giggled. It was absurd. So easy. It felt almost like a joke.

"I think it sounds great" she replied.

"Wonderful. Lisa will be your supervisor. She's going to need a helping hand with all her projects and what's better than a Yale girl to help out?"

Lisa made a face again but said nothing. Quinn signed a contract with her full name. She shook Miranda Kennings (MIRANDA KENNINGS!) hand and Lisa's hand.

"Welcome to Kennings, Ms. Fabray" Mary the secretary said.

"Thank you" Quinn replied.

…

She didn't get the same motel room as last time, but it looked identical. The same dirty bed spread and the same kind of soap. It was just a little closer to the vending machine. She bought a bar of chocolate from it and ate it on the very spot where she and Puck had stood, a few weeks ago. Where he had kissed her, even though they weren't supposed to kiss. She stood there and chewed her chocolate and wondered why it felt like ages ago.

"Are you getting separation anxiety?" Santana drawled as she picked up the phone. "I saw you not five hours ago."

Quinn swallowed the last bite of candy.

"How are you settling in?" she asked, because she was taught to be polite, even in the moment of an epiphany.

"I've been here five hours, Q."

"Right…"

"What did you want to talk about? Lonely on the road?" Santana asked. "I'm guessing you didn't just call out of the blue."

"I'm romanticizing it, aren't I?" Quinn blurted out. "Me and Puck. What we had. I keep thinking back, to all these moments. Like when he moved in and when we went to that Yale dinner thing and when… I only remember the good things, right? I'm romanticizing."

"I don't know" Santana said simply.

"Then guess. Please."
Quinn wondered if she was the only guest at the motel. The parking lot was deserted and all the rooms dark. It looked like a beginning of a horror movie, but she didn't feel afraid. Horror movies had never had much of an impact on her. Life was scarier.

"I think you had a great thing. I think that you loved him and he loved you and that you were happy. Not all the time, of course. But most of the time, the majority" Santana said, in her softest voice that wasn't very soft at all.

"Okay."
"But I think you are romanticizing him. That he was good and pure and that you messed things up all the time" she went on. "He isn't perfect, Quinn. He isn't without fault. And you aren't to blame for everything."

If she listened carefully Quinn could hear the kids in the background. Tanya's kids, maybe playing some game before bed time. A pang of loneliness hit her again, as she stood outside the rundown motel in some town no one had ever heard of.

"It was my fault" she whispered.

"It was no one's fault" Santana argued. "Stop moping. It's been a year, and yeah, it sucked, but it's in the past."

"I need to get over it" Quinn said.

"Yes."

"I need to stop thinking that things will only be good again if he's with me."
"Yes."
She exhaled. And she thought that she would rather be here alone than with him, if he was still with Karen.

"Say hello to Tanya for me."

"I will. You going to be okay?"

"Yeah" she said, actually believing it for once. "Yeah, I'll be fine."

…

Quinn graduated college and invited all her friends and family to celebrate. They all squeezed into the tiny apartment and drank champagne and toasted her. Frannie and her fiancée had even flown in, just for the occasion. It had been forever since Quinn had seen her sister and when being a bit drunk, she hugged her tightly. Frannie laughed at they let go.

"It's so good to see you, Quinny" she said, patting Quinn's shoulder.

"You too. Really good."
The fiancé's name was Eric and he was a bit too old and too stuffy, but Frannie seemed to like him so Quinn decided to do the same. She felt happy. School was over, no more essays or tests. No more Yale functions where she could barely keep her eyes open. And she had the internship starting in the fall.

"What's next?" her sister asked. "Mom said you got a job in Boston?"
"Yeah. Well, not. It's an internship. I'm really excited about it though."

"I used to live in Boston" Eric said. "Great city."

"Eric went to Harvard" Frannie interjected, with ill-hidden glee.

He was exactly the type of man that Judy had hoped that both her daughters would end up with. Well-educated, handsome and rich. Eric was some kind of investment banker and Quinn had never seen him without a suit.

"What about Puck?" Frannie asked.

Her tone was careful and guarded. She was her father's daughter in some ways and one of those ways was about disliking Puck. Quinn knew that it probably still stung for Frannie to think about how Quinn had ruined their reputation by getting knocked up. However she was enough of her mother's daughter to forgive Quinn for it, and to instead blame Puck.

"He's going with me" Quinn replied.

"He's got a job?"

"Yeah, he's going to be a music teacher at a middle school just outside town."

"So he's basically dropping everything to go with you?" Frannie asked, sounding surprised and skeptical at the same time.

"He didn't have much here. Except me."

"Sounds pretty serious" Eric said, smiling nicely. "He seems like a nice guy."

Frannie made face, just for a fraction of second but Quinn had seen it. Nice probably wasn't the word that her sister would have used to describe him.

"He is. The nicest" Quinn said.

"You got a place yet? Daddy said he's selling this apartment."

"He already sold it" Quinn told her. "Another student is moving in. I met her the other day."

"Is he buying you a place in Boston too?" Frannie insisted.

"No."

"Really? He bought me my first apartment after college. I mean, before I met Eric and moved in with him."

"Well, dad and I don't have the same relationship you two have" Quinn said with forced lightness. "We're getting a loan instead."
"We?"

"Puck and I."

Quinn stared into her sister's eyes, challenging her to say something dismissing. She did not.

"That's a big step" she said instead, which wasn't negative in the strict sense, because it was a big step.

"I know."

"Are you ready for it?"
"We've already lived together since sophomore year."

"Yeah, but…"

"We had only known each other for six months when you moved in" Eric reminded Frannie softly. "That was a big step, but it felt right."

Quinn decided that she liked Eric, a lot. She checked over her shoulder and noted that Puck was refilling his mother's wine glass. They laughed at something. Quinn smiled too. There were more people from his family here than hers. They had all come, aunts and cousins and whoever, even those who she had only met once or twice. Her own father hadn't even RSVP'd.

"I mean, there's money involved, a loan… That's a big deal" Frannie went on.

"I love him" Quinn said simply, but it was not simply because she had never told another person than Puck that.

Frannie's face softened. She looked more like Judy when it did, less like their father.

"Okay, honey" she said. "I'll back off. You love him."

"Yes" Quinn whispered. "I really do."

…

Of course it was a bad idea to tell him to come to her house, but it was the best option she had. This wasn't New York or Boston where you could casually decide to meet at some café where no one you knew ever went. This was Lima which had only one coffee shop, where everybody knew who they were. And going to his house wasn't an alternative. Not while Karen still lived there.

"You wanted to talk?" he asked.

She felt like she hadn't seen him in ages. Not since they had baby-sat Beth and he had held her hand in the car. Since then she had again become obsessed with making a documentary, emptied out an apartment and made up her mind.

"Yes" she said, stepping back from the door to let him in.

He took his shoes off because Judy was anal about getting mud on the floor. They were white Converse, dirty and soft with wear. It was the same pair of shoes he had had when he had knocked on her New Haven apartment door all those years ago.

"Do you have a new project?" he asked, nodding at the living room table where she had piled all her stuff.

To anyone else, it probably just looked like a mess, but he recognized it. She was never one to clutter, except when she was editing. He lived with a mess just like that one for a long time. Once it had been part of their apartment's interior design.

"I'm remaking the documentary" she replied.

"Why?"
"I have to know why they didn't hire me; what I did wrong."

It wasn't a secret. It was just that no one had asked.

"You did nothing wrong."

"I have to prove that to them" she said, going over to close her laptop's lid.

The machine was hot and made a lot of noise. She hadn't turned it off in days. She made a mental note to make a copy of the hard drive in case it decided to go on a strike. If she lost all the raw material, she would break and crash.

"I drive past her place sometimes" Puck said, his voice lower. "To see if she's back."
Quinn stayed with her back to him. Every muscle in her body tensed.

"Have you seen her?" she asked, even though she already knew that answer.

Despite everything that had happened, he would still have told her if he had seen Alisha. Even if he had hated her, he still would have let her know. He wasn't evil.

"No" he replied, just like she had known he would and still she felt her stomach sink. "Not once."

She turned to face him. Her disappointment was mirrored on his face. But no. This was not the point of him being here. This was not the time to talk about old times and how they had ruined everything.

"We need to talk" she said.

"Okay" he replied.

"This isn't working. This isn't right" she began and then stopped.

Because she had this entire speech planned out and his face was messing it all up. She loved him enough to make her forget the speech and the purpose of it all, and that itself was the problem.

"I know" he mumbled. "I know."
"I can't be around you like this. It's not doing me any good and I guess that Karen isn't thrilled about it either."
"No, she's not."

"I don't know how to not think about you. The last five years of my life I have spent most of the time thinking about you. I… built you up and set you on some kind of pedestal in my mind."

He looked down at his feet. He wore black socks without any holes. He was about three steps with those feet away from her and suddenly it felt too close and too far away at once.

"I spent this entire year punishing myself for the mistake I made. I made myself miserable because it was what I deserved. But I'm not going to do that anymore" she went on.

"Okay" he said simply.

"I only stayed here for you. Because I love you. Because I still have this idea of you and me and growing old and playing bridge and drinking tea on some porch somewhere. I hate Lima. I hate being here, but I love you so I stayed."

He said nothing. He didn't need to.

"I'm going to stay for a bit longer. I have to start caring for other people than myself and my mom's first on that list. And I want to spend some more time with Beth. Than I'm going to leave."

"I'm not going to stay here forever either" he told her.

"I know. I know. I'm just making it clear that I'm going to move on, Finally. I'm going to stay a bit longer, but not for you."

He finally looked up from his feet. His brown eyes, Beth's brown eyes, looked at her and she wanted to take it all back. She wanted to beg him for leave Karen and pick her instead. She wanted to grovel on her bare knees.

"Maybe, in a while, we'll be able to do things together, with Beth. Maybe we'll be able to drive here together again. But not now. Not yet" she concluded.

She cleared her throat and backed away a bit. There were now five steps between them.

"You still love me?" he asked hoarsely.

"Yes" she replied. "Of course I do. You know that. But that's not the point."

"You broke up with me."

"You know why I ended it."

He nodded slowly.

"You didn't have to tell me this" he told her seriously. "You didn't have to tell me about moving on."

"I'm not going to run this time" she said. "I'm showing you, for what it's worth, that I'm done running."

He nodded and she nodded and then he left. No hug or kiss or even a handshake. He was just gone and Quinn knew that she would not see him for a long time. She clenched her teeth and drank two cups of coffee and didn't cry a single tear because she hadn't lost him now; she lost him a year ago.

…

"It's too big" she told Puck seriously in a hushed voice as the realtor turned away.

"Nah, it's not" he argued. "You're just used to the old place; you know where you could barely turn around in the kitchen."

She rolled her eyes at him and peered down the pamphlet in her hand. This place was lovely with a semi-new kitchen and windows in every direction. The area wasn't too dodgy either. But it was too big.

"We don't need two bedrooms" she said. "Or do you want your own?"

"You have a lot of stuff" he grinned.

"I do not!"

There were other couples there too, mostly a bit older and some with kids. Everyone spoke quietly, as if not to let anyone else know how great the apartment really was.

"We can't afford it" she said. "You know we can't."
"We can."

"I have an internship, which equals no salary."

"My mom will help us with the money if that's an issue. She told me."

"Your mom doesn't have this kind of money, Puck. Neither does mine."

"I promise. We'll work it out."

She sighed. This was the first apartment they were looking at. She had just humored him by agreeing to see it. It was too expensive, too big and a waste of time.

"We might not need a second bedroom right now" he said.

"No" she agreed.

"But we might. Soon."
"What do you mean?"
"You have to plan for the future, right? You're usually such a pro about that, Q."

"I see nothing in the near future that would make it logical for us to buy a too big apartment" she hissed.

Panic flooded through her, because she understood now. He was planning. He was making plans for their future. For kids. Children. Babies. The thing he had always wanted and what she had feared since turning sixteen.

"I know an internship and a temporary job aren't the best conditions for starting a family. But I will probably be able to work without a degree the rest of my life and you will get hired by one of the best production companies in the world."

She slowly placed the pamphlet on the nearest available surface. He knew how afraid she was of having children. More children. Of messing them up. Of messing herself up. And here he brought it up like it was nothing.

"We're too young to think about that" she said sternly.

"Maybe."

"No, not maybe. We are."

There was finality in her voice that made him shut up. She stared harder at the other couples. Puck and she were not one of them. She was not one of the many carefree women who crowded this place. She was scared, of herself and everything and now of him.

"It's too big" she said for maybe the eighth time.

"Okay" he said. "Okay."

They left. He tried to take her hand on their way down the stairs but she wouldn't let him.

…

"Mom" Quinn said softly. "Mom, we need to talk."
Judy looked away from the TV and smiled.

"About what, honey?"

Quinn's eyes took in the half empty wine bottle on the coffee table. She took in the dark circles under her mother's eyes and the unwashed hair. Years ago, Judy would never have left her bedroom looking like this. In some people's eyes it was a sign of health when you learned to care less about your own appearance, but Quinn knew her mother well. It wasn't a sign of nothing else than despair.

"I'm worry about you."

Judy laughed.

"What about?"

"Mom… I know it was hard when we all left you. Frannie and dad and me. I know it must be lonely."

She sat down next to her mother on the coach and muted the cooking show on the TV. Judy tilted her head to one side.

"You don't have to worry about that, honey" she said dismissively.

"I think I do."

"It's been a long time since you all left."

"Mom, are you really happy in this big, empty house? You could sell it. Buy a small place or go traveling or something."

Judy laughed.

"Me? Traveling? I've never been anywhere."

"Even the more reason then."

Quinn felt her mother's hand on her shoulder. The pink nail polish on her fingers was almost entirely scraped off.

"Quinny, it's not your job to look after me."

"Well, I don't have job right now, so I guess I need to something to do."

"I'm fine. I promise."
Quinn took a deep breath. This was the second big speech she had written in a few days. The Puck speech and the mom speech.

"Mom, I think you drink too much."

Silence filled the room. Judy's cheeks turned pink before she laughed.

"I don't."

Quinn dropped the subject. She regrouped and tried to find another way to solve this issue.

"Why don't you come with me? I'm not going back to New York. We could get a place together somewhere, you and me."
"You don't want to live with your mother."
"I don't want to be alone" Quinn said honestly. "And I don't think you do either."
Judy exhaled.

"Then we have to learn, darling. You have to get used to living alone. I'm still working on it but we can't always depend on other people to be there for us. We have to handle ourselves."
Quinn opened her mouth and then closed it again. She realized that her mother was right. She would have to adapt to living alone, wherever she was headed. She couldn't rely on Puck or Santana or Rachel to take her in.

"Just think about it" she said. "About the house thing. And the traveling thing."
Judy nodded.

"I will."

They sat quietly for a long while. It really wasn't that strange that Judy didn't want to admit her darkest secrets to Quinn. It had been a long time since they had had that kind of relationship.

"Mom, do you want to know what happened between me and Puck?" she asked cautiously. "I haven't told you, have I?"

Judy reached over to the remote and switched the TV off.

"Yes, honey. I really would like to know."

…

"It can't be a surprise to you that I want kids" Puck told her, his voice too loud and too intense.

"And equally it can't be one that I don't" she retorted.

It had only been a matter of hours before the fight had begun. The fight that had been waiting to happen for years. This was the only thing they could never agree on or compromise about.

"I'm not saying it's time now. I mean, in a year or two" he went on.

"No" she said. "I can't do it."

"You don't know how you're going to feel in a year."

"Neither do you."

She felt her body pulse along with her heartbeat. It had been years since she had been this angry. She felt betrayed. He was the one person she had trusted with everything and now it seemed like he didn't care what she thought.

"I know you're scared but it will work out…" he began.

She cut across him.

"No. It won't. Things don't just work out. God, you haven't changed at all, have you? You were the same when I was pregnant. You kept telling me that we could work it out, that it didn't matter that we didn't have any money or any support or that we were just kids. You live in this illusion of that a family will make everything okay."
"We could have done it" he said, still stubborn. "I know we could have been good parents."
"No, I wouldn't have been. I wasn't in any shape to take care of a child. I still am not. That won't change just because you want it to."

It struck her that this might be the end. If they couldn't agree on this, their future was doomed. She even considered agreeing with him, just to keep him, but she couldn't. Quinn would do a lot of things for him. Almost anything. But not this. She couldn't.

"What's the worst thing that could happen?" he asked harshly.

"The baby could turn out like me."
"Come on…"

"You should know how bad parents can mess you up. You and I are the text book examples of it. Remember how your dad quit on you and only reappeared to get money? Remember how my father threw me out on the street when I was a teenager?"

He was angry now; livid. His face turned hard and his eyes black and he had never looked at her like that before. She wanted to run. Instead she backed away. He didn't advance on her.

"So, that's it? You made up your mind for the both of us?"

"I just know that I can't. Not now, maybe not ever."

"I want nothing else than to have a family" he told her, lowering his voice to almost a whisper. "It's all I ever wanted."

"You know me" she cried. "I haven't lied about this. I haven't kept you in the dark."

"You can't be scared forever" he told her, his voice loud again.

"It won't go away just because you're screaming at me."

She thought that this was thing that would destroy everything. All this years for nothing. He wanted a family, multiple kids, and an opportunity to be a better father than his own had been. If she didn't want the same thing, he would leave her. There was no other way out.

"So I'm supposed to just accept that?" he shot at her. "Accept that the only child I will ever father is one that you decided to give away?"

He walked past her and left the apartment. The door slammed behind him. Just like it had when Russell had stormed out that time. Everyone was leaving her. She was just going to have to get used to it.

In the end, he came back. They talked and agreed to get an apartment with only one bedroom for now. But looking back, Quinn still thought of it as the beginning of the end.

...

Hi! Just wanted to say thank you for the comments and review you give me. Thank you! You are all wonderful people.

and also, I wrote this chapter listening to the new Pink song, just give me a reason, which is normally not the kind of music I would listen to. I just felt like it related so much to this story.

and sorry for it taking forever for me to write this chapter. i will get better, i promise.

thank you again!