AN: Warning: spoilers from "Bad Reputation." I love the shout-out to/teasing of Puck & Rachel shippers:

"Did you know that when we dated, the rest of the school gave us a nickname: 'Puckelberry?'"

"That's humiliating."

"The fact is that slumming it with me actually improved your reputation. It gave you a sense of humanity."

Hee! It's funny 'cause it's true. I also love that the writers gave a nod to how much they have in common: singing, seduction, Judaism, hotness, and lack of impulse control when it comes to terrorizing others (whether with criticism or with a fire extinguisher).

Murphy and co. have created a crazy love hexagon with Jesse, Rachel, Puck, Quinn, Finn, and Santana. Heck, it's an octagon if you include Brittany and Kurt. Here's my attempt to meld crazy new canon with my storyline.

At our choreography session, we had agreed to wait a week for Rachel and Puck to sort out their romance for themselves. Surely they would wake up sooner or later. Rachel would break up with Jesse, and Puck would make his move, right? Instead, Rachel made that insane video and presented it during our Thursday glee rehearsal. Apparently, we didn't take the cry for help in her performance of "Thank Goodness" seriously enough. Or maybe it was my fault.

I woke up at three a.m. Friday morning to pee, again, because the baby seemed to enjoy sitting on my bladder. As I came out of the bathroom, I heard noises downstairs: the oven opening and closing, and Celine Dion?

"Don't wanna be all by myself," Rachel was singing along softly into a spatula. Tears ran down her cheeks, and every inch of the table and the counter was covered with cooling cookies, icing, dirty bowls and flour. Rachel looked more manic than I'd seen her since our mashup of "Walking On Sunshine" and "Halo."

"Rachel? What on earth are you doing?"

She jumped and gave a little scream at the sound of my voice. "Oh, Quinn. You scared me. I'm just making my famous 'I'm Sorry' cookies."

"For who?"

"It's 'for whom.' Damn it, I did it again. I try not to criticize but I just can help it. I mean, I try to hold it in, but…"

"MAN-HANDS, focus!" I hadn't called her that in a while, but I wanted to get her attention. Okay, and to be honest, I was still mad at her.

"Oh. Um, they're for everyone. I mean first, I was making a batch for Jesse, because he was my boyfriend and I humiliated him. And then I started a batch for Finn, because I know how hurt I felt when he put his reputation before my feelings, but I did the exact same thing to him. And then a batch for Noah, because I was manipulating him. Also, I know his affinity for homemade baked goods. But then I realized that I owed you a batch, too, because I didn't think about how my video would make you feel. By that point, I figured it was best that I bake some for the entire glee club. After all, by sowing these seeds of discord, I hurt the group as a whole."

She'd barely taken a breath, and the whole time she was talking, she kept working, transferring cookies from a baking sheet to a cooling rack, then flattening a ball of dough with a rolling pin. She grabbed a star-shaped cookie cutter.

"But I'm going to fix it. I'm working on a plan." She gestured to the white board on the wall that usually held her intricate schedule of extracurricular activities. Instead, there was a timeline, and a diagram of our relationships. Most groups have love triangles, but we have a love hexagon? There were points on the diagram for me, Rachel, Jesse, Puck, Finn, and "Santana (& Brittany)." Color-coded arrows connected the various points. Rachel was in full-on Crazy Berry mode, which was good for achieving a career on Broadway or firing the creepy, groping music teacher, but bad if Rachel turned her sights on your life. "You see, the first step is to figure out where everything went wrong, but then I'll fix it, Quinn. I promise. I'll fix everything. I just need to…"

"Rachel!" I reached out and stopped her frantic motions with the cookie cutter. "I wrote the glist." I don't know why I said it. It's just she was in this shame spiral of insanity.

"What?"

"This mess wasn't all your fault. I was tired of feeling invisible, so I made the glist and put myself at the top. I put you at the bottom because I'm mad at you, and I knew it would drive you nuts. I…I'm sorry."

"Wait, that was before I made the video. Why were you mad before the video?"

"Look, I know it's not fair of me to feel this way, since you took me in and you're trying to be my friend, but you have everything. You have your dads, your body, your talent and your boyfriend. You had Finn. Even Puck wanted to be exclusive with you! When he's with me, I have to drag him away from flirting with a different Cheerio every five seconds."

Rachel slumped onto a kitchen stool and guiltily murmured, "I almost kissed Noah this week. Twice. I'm so sorry."

"And I'm sorry I made fun of you when you told us about Jesse pressuring you…and that I drew that mean picture and posted it everywhere."

"That was you?" Rachel looked hurt for a second, but shook her head. "What I did was far worse. In order to further my cause, I made it look like both your ex and your current boyfriend are interested in me."

"They are."

"No, they aren't."

"I disagree. And actually, they're both my exes."

Puck and I didn't work well as an actual couple, but we actually made great friends. We continued to hold hands and cuddle because Puck was better with physical affection than words, so it was just his way of showing that he cared about me and the baby. And, though I hate to admit it, it was comforting and made me feel safe. It didn't seem like the right time to explain our relationship to Rachel. I also suspected she wasn't ready to hear that Tina, Britt, San and I had consulted and decided that Noah and Rachel were cluelessly in love.

"You and Noah broke up? So I managed to break up another of your relationships? That's just GREAT." Rachel picked up a bowl of icing, squirted in some red food coloring, and began to stir vigorously. "Perhaps you could reconsider? Noah is just…Noah. Impulse control is not his strong suit, but he's really trying to change. And deep-down, Finn is still in love with you."

I tried not to let my heart jump at her words about Finn. "Puck and I realize we make better friends, that's all," I said. "But you're wrong about Finn."

Rachel shook her head. "While we were dating, I'd see him watching you. Losing you to Puck hurt his pride, and he hates feeling dumb in front of the whole school. His injured pride is only thing keeping Finn from going back to you. It's the only thing stopping him from resuming his friendship with Noah, for that matter. Finn liked me in the first place partly because we have such good stage chemistry, but mostly because the intensity of my crush blinded me to his faults. As a result, I'm embarrassed to admit, I worshipped him."

I barely stopped myself from pointing out that everyone already knew she had worshipped Finn, so she didn't have to feel embarrassed for admitting it.

"Finn misses that ego-boost, but he actually loves you," Rachel added. "I'll help you get him back, Quinn. That's how things are supposed to be. I just managed to manipulate everyone into this giant mess."

Rachel set down the bowl with a thud and went back to cutting out cookies, then carefully transferred the dough stars to a cookie sheet. She popped them into the oven, set the timer, then began to ice a cooled batch with the fresh pink icing.

"Look," I said, "things have been wrong between me and Finn for a while. If everything had been okay, I wouldn't have had sex with Puck and Finn wouldn't have fooled around with you. And after I got pregnant, I was so mean to Finn. It was like, I didn't want this to be my fault, so I blamed him for not paying enough attention to me, and for joining New Directions. But it started before that.

"I was a Cheerio, and the Cheerios are the best cheerleading squad in the country because Sue Sylvester rules with an iron fist. She used to tell me, 'Q, children need fear. It's mother's milk to them.' I thought she was right. Everything I'd accomplished in my life, I had done because of fear: fear I'd let my parents down, or my team, or even God. Fear that I'd be unpopular, or that I'd end up alone. But the more I tried to scare Finn into being what I wanted, the more I just scared him away."

Rachel opened her mouth, but for once she didn't know what to say.

"I learned from Ms. P and Mr. Shue and your dads that you can make people better through love, too— encouraging people, and inspiring them to be better. You're not the only one who wants to be different, Rachel—who wants to stop criticizing. I know how hard it is. I know that rush that comes from putting other people down. You do it with music; Cheerios do it with looks."

"It's not the same," Rachel said. "Although I state my critiques too harshly, or in instances when I should let Mr. Shue handle it, I'm just being honest, to make them better singers!"

"Look, some of the stuff we say to you is obviously bull, but the stuff about your clothes, or your diva fits? They're true. You don't think you'd be more popular if you followed our advice? That doesn't mean it's right for us to torture you, just because you don't live up to our standards."

Her eyes widened with awareness.

"Thank you, Quinn. That's very enlightening. Look, I…I was changing out of a slushied top in the bathroom the other day and overheard a conversation. Mercedes told Tina what you said about eating for the baby, taking care of your body, and Mercedes being beautiful. You are changing. It's just…it's not instant. Change is a process."

"Exactly, Rachel. You want there to be this magic moment when everyone instantly sees you differently. I know that's how it works in a musical, but real life doesn't work that way."

Rachel nodded, reluctantly. "So cookies probably won't get everyone to forgive me."

"Probably not," I said, "But they couldn't hurt. Maybe just present them as cookies, though, not a plea for forgiveness. No strings attached, okay?"

Rachel nodded.

"Let's clean this up and go to bed."

"Quinn, how are we ever going to get out of this mess?" She was talking about the love hexagon, not the kitchen.

"I don't know, Rach. I think we just take it one step at a time. What if…what if we just stepped away from the drama for a while?"

But I knew, at this point, that was probably impossible. Everyone in the hexagon would be in glee practice every day. Glee meant too much to Rachel and me for us to give it up. Besides, I was full of pregnancy hormones, and Rachel was a diva by nature.

"Easier said than done," Rachel mused.

"I know," I said, "Just try to forget about what you thought you wanted, or what you're supposed to want. Trust your heart, Rachel."

"I'm going to hug you," she stated, then wrapped me in her arms. She was careful of my belly, but hugged me firmly, relaxing a knot inside me that I hadn't known existed.

So, we've paved the way for straight-up Puckleberry next chapter! I'm thinking of setting it in Glee rehearsal, from Mr. Schue's POV, although we haven't had a Rachel POV in a while. We also haven't heard from Mike or Matt (much like on the actual show)! I could also go omniscient. Who should it be? Thoughts? Questions? Concerns? Drop a comment.