Please, please I beg you, I know nothing about how the legal system works, at least not well enough to actually write about it. So I'm begging you to just go with me on whatever it is I do. Pretty please, with sugar on top? And once again, standard disclaimer I don't own Glee or any of its characters.

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"Why don't you explain what happened?" Aiden asks his wife gently.

"Here, let's head into the living room, that way we can talk more comfortably." Leroy suggests.

"Yes, in fact why don't you all head in there now and I'll go make us some teas, Quinn's got us hooked on them." Hiram says, not waiting for an answer and going back to the kitchen, needing to do something.

"I think San's got Quinn for now, let's stick around here and see what's going on." Rachel suggests.

Brittany looks longingly up the stairs, wanting to go and comfort Quinn, but Rachel was right. They needed to know what was going on and Quinn probably wasn't in any position to talk right now. Besides, Santana was with her. Finn reaches over and squeezes her shoulder comfortingly and then leads her after Rachel and the adults.

As they all settle in the living room, Maribel wrings her hands in agitation until Aiden takes them in his own to still them. He looks at her with his deep dark eyes and right now she wants nothing more than to sink into his embrace. But these people want answers and so with a deep breath she begins to speak.

"First I want to say that Quinn did spectacularly today. I could tell she was nervous and so I tried to talk to her but I don't think she was really hearing anything I said. But as soon as she entered that courtroom… she was flawless, absolutely flawless. She went up there and the way she spoke, it was the perfect mix of fact and emotion. She won the jury over in less than a minute, I could see it, my opponent could see it, the case was all but won."

"We had done some prep-work, I went over the questions I was going to ask her, and some of the questions that her parents' lawyer might ask her, but when she talked about what happened to her while she lived with them, it was heart breaking. I can't believe I missed so much, that I didn't spot the signs. She's like a daughter to me and I really let her down…"

"It wasn't just you, we all kind of failed Quinn on that front." Brittany says softly, trying to comfort a woman who had helped to raise her.

"That's kind of you to say, but you guys, no matter how mature, are still kids. I as an adult should have seen something, but thank you Brittany."

"We all missed it, mi amor, the important thing now is that we make sure it doesn't happen again. What happened next?" Aiden asks, gently rubbing circles on his wife's hands with his thumbs.

"Like I said, she was brilliant, the case was pretty open and shut as it was, but she all but cinched it. She was going to be set, her parents were going to do jail time, she would have gotten a decent chunk of cash to put into some kind of savings account. Not a great deal of money, let me tell you the Fabray financial situation is a giant mess, they were running out of money and fast. While the trials going on I can't say anymore, but things were going downhill over there. But it still would have been a good bit of money to help her go to college, plus with student loans, and I figured that we could help her out as well, we have more than enough to pay for Santana, helping out Quinn wouldn't be a big deal. Things were looking really good for her."

"So… where did it all go wrong?" LeRoy asks gently.

"I think everyone saw the writing on the walls, but especially Judy, that… Gah! That bitch!" She then turns and looks to Leroy. "I apologize for cursing in your home." LeRoy just waves it off as no big deal.

Maribel continues her story. "But she was more cunning than I gave her credit for. She and Russell have, up till now, been presenting a united defense. But after Quinn had given her testimony and as soon as Judy was up on the stand, she threw Russell under a bus. She talked about how she had lived her life in terror and how she had "failed" to protect her daughters. She painted this picture of herself as being just as much a victim as Quinn was, and she did this all through a mess of tears. I might have believed her if I hadn't seen the calculating look in her eyes as she took the stand."

Maribel leans back in her seat and lets out a frustrated sigh. "She said that she wanted her own representation and that she wanted to take back her life. That she wanted to escape her abusive husband and make things right in her family again. And then she had the nerve, the utter audacity to look Quinn right in the eyes and tell her that she was going to beat these charges, that she didn't blame Quinn, and that she was going to get back custody of her and make them a family again. Quinn looked so scared, I just…"

"Any chance she was being sincere?" Hiram asks as he enters the living room and hands her a warm cup of tea. "Here you go."

"Thank you," Maribel takes a deep breath and inhales the scent of the tea, allowing to sooth some of her frayed nerves. "And to answer your question, not a single syllable of that was sincere. If it was I'll eat my shoes. I saw the calculating look in her eyes, the way that she would discreetly watch the jury members. And the sad part of it is, is she was very convincing. I literally watched as one by one the view of the jury about her shifted. I'll probably be able to get a max sentence for Russell but I don't know that I'll be able to get anything against Judy after today. There is a good chance that she'll be acquitted."

"Will she be able to get back custody of Quinn, she can't just… I mean she let Quinn get thrown out onto the street pregnant and hurt… and she did things to hurt Quinn too, maybe not physically but… no one would just give her custody back right?" Brittany asks, terrified for her friend.

Maribel looks at Brittany and smiles sadly. "I will fight that tooth and nail, and Quinn's opinion on the matter since she's older will hold some weight, but judges tend to like to keep families together if they can. I won't lie, there is a possibility of it happening."

"No." Brittany gasps quietly before she stands up and quickly moves upstairs to be with Quinn. She couldn't believe this was happening, Quinn was finally free, finally safe from her parents and now this had happened. She hated Judy Fabray at that moment, more than anyone she had ever hated in her entire life. She had never wished ill on anyone before, but today she made an exception.

"Excuse us, but we need to go." Rachel says standing up and looking around the room at the adults. Hiram nods his head, and both Rachel and Finn head upstairs.

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xXx-Scene Break-xXx

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When Rachel and Finn reached Quinn's room they lightly knocked on the door before going in. Santana was sitting on the bed with Quinn wrapped protectively in her arms. Quinn had obviously been crying but had managed to stop for now, though she was still shaking almost as if cold. Brittany was sitting beside them looking just as unsure about what to do as the rest of them. Rachel takes a seat on the foot of the bed while Finn goes and leans against the desk. All four of them, Santana, Brittany, Rachel, and Finn feeling sick over what was happening to their friend.

"I can't believe they're going to get away with this." Quinn whisper softly, her voice slightly cracking. "I shouldn't have said anything, I should have just left it alone."

"Don't say that Q," Santana says as she holds Quinn a little bit closer. "Today was a setback, but there's still hope. It's not over yet."

Quinn laughs, but it's the humorless laugh of someone who has given up. "You don't get it, none of you do, they're going to win. They always win, I've tried to fight before and I lost, I should have remembered my lesson from last time, that it does no good. I've put up with so much, for years I counted down every single day until my eighteenth birthday and the day I could leave home. Some days the thought that I was one day closer to leaving was the only thing that kept me from…" Quinn trails off, but the implications are clear and a cold chill settles on everyone at the thought that Quinn had even for a moment considered hurting herself.

Quinn starts to cry again and she clings to Santana just a little harder. "I was free, I was finally going to be free of them. They were finally going to have to face the consequences of their actions. I felt good and safe for the first time in my life. I can't do it again, I can't live like that again. I won't… you don't understand, you have no idea what it was like living there, of being afraid… every single day to go home. No idea what it was like to not know what I would be going home to…"

And with a shuddering gasp, it was as if a dam had broken, Santana wasn't even completely sure if Quinn was aware that they were all there, but she began to talk. She told them everything, every little detail, every single incident that she could remember. The physical and the emotional abuse that she went through. The way that her dad would yell at her and hit her, the things that her mother would say to her, the way that she would look at her as if she wished Quinn had never been born. The way that her sister dismissed her and abandoned her. She talked about what happened the last time she had told someone, how nobody had believed her then and when she had tried to confront her father about it how she had been hurt bad enough to be taken to the hospital.

She talked about how after that she learned to listen for her parents before ever going inside. How she would lock the door to her room and hide in the bathroom whenever her father was on a particularly violent bender. How if she wasn't able to avoid him that her mother would tell her that it was her own fault. How she couldn't remember the last time her mother had said 'I love you,' without a half empty glass of wine in her hand. Years and years of neglect and abuse that had been building up within her, of wondering what was wrong with her, why her parents seemed to hate her so much, all of this came pouring out of her, as she confessed her deepest and darkest secrets to the four people in this room.

To the surprise of Santana and Brittany she even opened up about Puck. About how she had come across Finn and Rachel, and how it caught her by surprise how much it hurt to see them together. How Puck had come across her when she was vulnerable and how she had let him comfort her and how she had taken one drink right after the other from him. The disgust she felt knowing that he was the first person to ever touch in such an intimate manner and the self-loathing that accompanies it. How she just lay there confused about what was happening and only knowing that she wished that it wasn't. She talked about the shame and the numbness as she stumbled home. She talked about how she tried to put things back to normal, and pretend that that night never happened. She tells them about the night she discovered she was pregnant, how scared she was. The pregnancy was scary, but the thought of what her parents would do had caused her to have a full blown panic attack.

She tells them about how finally, for the first time that she can remember, things seemed to be going her way. She finally found a home with the Berry's, she was going to escape her parents, it broke her heart but she finally knew what she was going to do about the baby, and that it did give her some comfort that the child would grow up with a loving family even if it wasn't with her. And now it was gone, it was all going to go away. Her mother was going to get off, and if she could get off then her father could as well. Her entire life was falling apart in front of her and there was nothing she could do about it.

When Quinn finished speaking she was shaking like a leaf. She felt cold, she could feel Santana's arms around her but it didn't help. She had laid herself bare before the four most important people in the world to her, opened herself up completely to them. She had no more secrets from them, they knew everything there was to know about her. Every secret, every thought, every doubt, these four people now saw her for what she was.

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xXx-Scene Break-xXx

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The five of them stayed in that room in silence and as the silence continued it got progressively heavier. Santana could almost feel Quinn literally shutting down in her arms. She had just bore her soul to the four of them in this room and none of them new what to say or do. They didn't hate or feel disappointment with Quinn. If anything hearing about all the things she had gone through, hearing about how she felt and what she thought about it all made them feel that much more strongly about her, but what could they say? What could possibly be said to such an open and raw confession that didn't sound like a useless platitude, Quinn had just trusted herself with them and none of them knew how to repay that kind of trust or even what to do with it.

And Santana knew her friend, she knew that her friend wasn't taking this silence as them trying to process all that they had just heard, in Quinn's mind it was them trying to figure out the best way to get as far away from her as possible. And Santana knew she couldn't let her friend shut down like that, she couldn't let her pull away, not after this. Not after she had finally opened herself up and let them in. And then suddenly it came to her.

"Quinn?" Santana says softly, but loud enough for everyone in the room to hear her.

Quinn lifts her head from Santana's shoulder and looks at her. And Santana can't remember a time she has ever seen Quinn looks so lost and broken before.

"I want to tell you and everyone else here something," Santana takes a moment to steel her resolve. She's not a very open person and despite how much she loves and trusts the other people in this room, this was going to be hard. But this was the only way she could think of to help Quinn and so she begins to speak. "I'm gay."

Quinn smiles weakly at her, but it's genuine. "I know that."

"Yes and so does Brittany, but Rachel and Finn didn't."

Finn does in fact look surprised by this revelation. Rachel, however, looks like she has just received confirmation for something she had already suspected. However both of them remain silent as Santana continues with what she wants to say.

"But that's not all I wanted to say, I'm gay but even now I'm not sure how okay with it I am. Neither of my parents are very religious and they've never given me any indication that they care one way or the other about homosexuality, but… my abuela, she's super hardcore Catholic and very anti-gay. I've heard her say time and time again that being gay is a sin and that people like that… people like me, deserve to go to hell."

Santana lets out a humorless little laugh. "Since I was a little girl, my abuela used to take me to church, we'd go every Sunday and I loved it, I always felt so peaceful and happy there. But as I got older and as I began to discover that I was gay, it got harder and harder for me to go, I haven't been in three years and it's caused a bit of a rift between me and her. She doesn't understand why I won't go with her any more but she still says that she loves me and that she hopes that one day I can find my way back to God and…

I want to go back, I would love to go back to church. I believe, I have faith, but… it doesn't matter because according to them I'm going to hell. I'm going to hell for something I have no control over and I know that my abuela says she loves me but I've heard her say some awful things about people like me and so I wonder how much she actually can love me, if she still would love me if she knew about me. She has been such a big part of who I am and I love and adore her, but if she ever found out that I was gay I'm afraid she would hate me. And so I have a hard time accepting this thing about myself because how can I accept it if one of the most important people in my life will hate me for it. Honestly, I probably wouldn't be nearly as scared to come out if I knew that I would have her support, but I know I won't and it paralyzes me. I can't even tell my parents because even though I know that they would probably be okay with it and support me, they would tell my abuela and I know she wouldn't." Santana voice cracks at the end, but she manages to keep her composure.

"San… how come you've never talked to me about this before?" Quinn asks forgetting her own pain for the moment and worrying about her best friend.

"I've never talked to anyone about this before, I've never spoken about it or voiced it out loud even to just myself. But I'm choosing to share it with you and the rest of the people in this room now because I want you to know, Quinn, that you can trust us. That when you opened up to us it was okay for you to do so. You spilled your secrets to us so I'm giving one back to you."

"San…" Quinn whimpers almost too quietly for even Santana to hear, but she does and Santana holds Quinn closely and kisses her forehead.

"I love you." Santana whispers softly to Quinn.

"I'm stupid, but you guys probably already know that." Brittany says quietly, breaking the silence that had followed Santana's confession.

"No you're not!" Both Santana and Quinn speak up quickly.

"No talking you two, this is my confession time." Brittany tells them seriously.

"I grew up knowing that I would never be as smart as other people. I continually struggle with things, simple concepts that I look around and other people seem to just get. And for the most part, I've learned to accept it, I've learned to accept that I'll never go to a real college, I'll be lucky if a community college will accept me. I've learned to accept that the only shot I have of getting out of this town is if by some miracle I get a scholarship for dancing or cheerleading, and that if I injure myself I'm pretty much resigned to being a bag girl at the local supermarket for the rest of my life."

Brittany smiles sadly and Quinn. "You and San work so hard to help me keep passing grades. Homework that would take you guys a half an hour to do, you guys spend two hours doing just to try and get it through my thick skull. I love you both and-" Brittany's voice cracks and she begins to cry.

"I love you both, but I'm just waiting for the day that you guys realize that I'm just too stupid to help. That no matter how much effort you guys put into it I'll never get it, and that one day you'll realize that you're wasting… you're wasting your time and that you'll leave me behind.

"Quinn I know you are having a hard time what with the baby and everything and your worried about your future, but I truly believe that you are going to overcome all of this, that you're going to rise up higher and better than ever before. You are too smart and too talented to ever get stuck anywhere that you don't want to be… and Santana" Brittany turns her gaze to her girlfriend.

"San, you know how much I believe in you, how much faith I have in you. And I worry, one day… I just know both of you are going to realize just how far beneath you guys I am, that all of your hard work in helping me will never amount to anything more than a C or C- average. One day you guys will decide you've had enough, that you're done wasting your time and that when you do, I'll lose the best friends, the only friends, I've ever had."

Quinn and Santana break apart and move over to hug their friend. Brittany always seemed so happy and confident, they never would have guessed in a million years that this would be something that the blonde cheerleader would worry about.

"So that's my confession Quinn, you trusted me and I know it's not earth shattering but… that's my secret and now it's yours too."

"Oh Brittany, how could you think for even a moment I would ever leave you behind? Not happening… never, not in a million, billion years." Quinn says through the tears as Brittany places a kiss on her forehead.

"I guess it's my turn." Rachel says softly while looking down. "I… I see a therapist twice a month, and I have since I was twelve years old because… my parents caught me cutting."

This draws a gasp of shock from everyone.

"I don't do it anymore, I haven't for a couple of years now… but there are days when it's hard. Days that I hurt so much inside that I… I just… I was bullied just about every single day and I couldn't talk to my parents about it because they just didn't get it. They always assumed that it was because of their relationship and sometimes… I wish it had been, because it would have given me something to blame. But it wasn't, it was always about me, about what I liked, what I dreamed, my personality. People hated me and it had nothing to do with having two fathers although that has come into play more in recent years.

But can you imagine, it's your tenth birthday and you're having a party and… nobody shows up. Nobody cares that it's your birthday, nobody cares that you were born. I was Rachel Berry, the biggest loser in school. I had no friends and everyone felt like it was okay to take a shot at me because hey, you didn't get any lower in the school hierarchy than me.

The bullying just got worse and worse, until finally I couldn't take it anymore, I needed an outlet. I've… I was never suicidal, although looking back it was probably heading that way, the cutting it hurt physically but emotionally it was a… it was a release… I still have the urge to do it sometimes, but since becoming your friend it's become easier to deal with but I still have a lot of issues and so, yeah… I still need to see a therapist twice a month to talk it out. So… that's my secret."

Rachel looks up in surprise when she feels herself being engulfed in a rather warm, but gentle group hug by Brittany, Quinn, and Santana.

"I am so sorry for what part I played in that." Quinn says.

"Me too, I… you're an amazing person Rachel and I'm glad we're friends." Santana adds.

"I'm glad we're friends too." Rachel says back. "I must say it feels pretty good to be with people who I can trust with that… I… thank you."

"What I have to say sounds pretty dumb, especially compared to what you all just said, but you guys are my friends and…" Finn says quietly drawing the girl's attention to him.

"If it's important to you Finn it's not dumb." Quinn says.

Finn takes a moment to gather his words. "I guess I'll just come right out and say it… I hate my father. I've grown up every single day of my life hearing about how my father was a hero. He was in the army and he died serving his country. He's a hero, your dad's a hero, he died a hero. Hero, hero, hero… I've really come to hate that word by the way.

They tell me he's a hero, but I honestly don't care because all that means to me is that he wasn't there for my mother who had to raise me without him and he wasn't there for me growing up. He wasn't there to teach me what it means to be a man. And I don't mean stupid things like how to throw a football, or how to drive, although I wish he had been. But real things you know, like right from wrong. How to endure, how to… well… be a man.

And the sad part is, as much as I hate him and as much as I resent him being gone… I still cling to him. I am desperate and would give anything to actually be closer to him. We have a chair in our house, you remember Quinn the old leather recliner?"

Quinn nods her head.

"It's got to be the most uncomfortable piece of furniture in the entire world, it's lumpy and the spring pokes you in the back, honestly we should have gotten rid of it years ago, but it was my dad's. It's one of the few things left of his that's around and growing up… god this pathetic… but growing up if I got scared or was worried about something I used to sneak downstairs from my room and sleep on it because that chair was his and… it was the closest thing to getting a hug from my father that I would ever get."

Quinn gets up from her spot by the other girls and makes her way over to Finn who is standing as stiff as a board and is trying so hard not to cry, to be strong. She wraps her arms around him and holds him close. "That wasn't stupid Finn." She whispers to him.

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Holy cow, this was a difficult chapter to write. I mean seriously the entire thing was just completely draining. I would like to apologize for the lack of updates. School has been kicking my butt and if I want to pass my classes, time that is normally spent writing needs to be spent studying. I'm currently working on the next chapter but I'm not sure when I'll have it up. So the story is definitely being continued it's just going to be a little bit slower with the updates for a while.