"I don't think I did the right thing."

Elle dodged a group of teenagers giggling something about Nationals, and turned to her left to look at Quinn. "I think you did," she said, her voice carrying easily over the crowd at Times Square. "I think you made the decision that was best for both of you."

"Yeah, but I'm not supposed to be making decisions for her," Quinn pointed out. "She told me I could stay, she made that decision, and then I made another one for her. It's like no matter what I do I'm trying to control her."

"But you're not." Elle smiled apologetically at Quinn before asking her question. "I know that you want to enjoy the auction and we will, but do you mind if we sit down for a minute? Crowds get to me sometimes, and this discussion might be better someplace quieter."

"Of course," Quinn said instantly, and moved towards a coffee shop. Once inside she smiled at Elle. "Would you like coffee or tea?"

"Tea," Elle said, "But no need, I can get it." She ordered quickly, asking the barista to wrap up a chocolate chip cookie, and placed it in her purse.

"My lady likes chocolate chip cookies," she said with a wink, and Quinn grinned.

She ordered her caramel mocha, and then sat with Elle at a table near the window, warming her hands around the hot cup. "Why do you say I'm not controlling her?" Quinn asked suddenly.

Elle paused with the drink halfway to her mouth, and then took a sip before setting it back onto the table. "Because you're trying not to, I suppose," she offered with a shrug. "You aren't setting up your relationship with Rachel to be some sort of cat and mouse game."

"But I am—"

"No, you're not," Elle interrupted, then flushed. Immediately her eyes flew to the table. "I'm sorry."

Elle, Quinn had come to know, was one of those submissives who, on the outside, might appear to someone to be meek and mild, with a mind and life not her own, instead only controlled by the person who held the key to the light lavender collar that wrapped around her neck. But, Quinn had also come to know better than that, because Elle was only meek and mild because she had chosen to be so, and Jamie supported it. Elle liked to defer to Jamie for the major decisions in their lives, knowing that Jamie would always have both their best interests at heart. Elle liked to give polite deference to other Dominants that she spoke to, and even had insisted on calling Quinn Miss for the first few months they'd known each other. She was much more comfortable and easy with Quinn now, but even so Elle would catch herself like she just had, and felt she needed to apologize for a perceived disrespect.

"Not necessary," Quinn said softly, and patted Elle's arm. "You were saying?"

"I was saying that doing what Rachel asked you to do at first – to leave her alone – isn't controlling her. I mean you told my lady and me that Rachel changed her mind in a split second. I'm fairly certain she did it for two reasons."

"And those are?" Quinn prompted.

"Because she can't stand to see you unhappy, for one. And for the other, because she has no idea what she wants. After all these years, and because she never expected you to actually look for her. She may have expected you to hate her—"

"I could never."

"But that may have been what she consoled herself with. It may have helped her cope so that the last five years didn't kill her."

Quinn drew back, a sick feeling rising in her throat. "What?"

Elle sighed, looking at Quinn with sympathetic eyes. "How did it feel when Rachel broke the connection?"

"No," Quinn said, shaking her head. "W-we're meant to be having fun, we're supposed to be walking through the Broadway auction."

She didn't know what was compelling her to go; she hadn't really been interested in the Broadway Cares flea market until the last week. She'd seen an advertisement for it on the internet as she'd lazily surfed one night with Van asleep at her feet. Maybe she wanted to go because it was Broadway and Broadway meant Rachel. Or maybe she just wanted to go because she actually liked Broadway, and not just because of Rachel.

It was funny, when Quinn would pause to look at the New York around her, either on her walks to school or just a simple walk in the park or to get food. When she was younger, all she had thought about was finding Rachel in New York and bringing her back to Lima. They'd have a little house on Allen Street, maybe. Rachel could teach music at the high school, and Quinn could… well, she could be a real estate agent who did drawing and painting on the side. But it didn't matter what either of them did, they would be happy, because they would be together.

But then… Rachel had left her, and Coach Sylvester had prodded Quinn to go to New York and find her. Which she did. But now Quinn didn't have Rachel, so she'd be perfectly justified in going back to Lima, except… she didn't want to. Somewhere in the midst of searching for Rachel, New York had actually become Quinn's home.

She was meant to be there.

She wasn't supposed to be reliving the past, she told Elle.

"I know," Elle said, "And I'm not really asking you to relive your past. I'm asking you to relive hers."

Quinn tilted her head, feeling like an idiot, and Elle sighed.

"My lady is probably going to keep me in the corner for the next twenty years when she finds out about this," she joked with a grimace, then fastened her eyes on Quinn.

"How did it feel when Rachel broke the connection?"

"Like I was dying," Quinn relented. "It hurt… more than anything I'd ever felt before. It's hard to describe."

"Like you'd never be whole again, like a part of you had been ripped out and crushed into dust, like a hand driving into your chest and twisting until there was nothing left of your heart?"

Quinn set her coffee down with a trembling hand, afraid what she'd already drunk would come up if Elle kept on. "Yeah that… that's pretty accurate."

"I know," Elle said softly. "It's how I felt when I started ignoring Jamie, thinking that we weren't meant to be bound together."

"How… you felt?" Quinn's eyes were wide; she braced her hands on the coffee shop table to stop them from shaking even more violently.

She'd never thought…

"How I felt," Elle confirmed. "I had pulled myself away from my best friend, stopped talking to her, and stopped interacting with her. In a way I'd broken a connection… but I wasn't actually bound to her."

"A-and it hurt you."

"There have been… a few cases of people doing what Rachel has done," Elle said carefully. "Some studies have been done about exactly what Rachel would have faced the moment she broke your connection, and even before the actual severing of it."

She didn't want to know the answer, she didn't. But she asked anyway. "What… would it have been like?"

Elle reached out tentatively, until her fingers lightly touched Quinn's in a gesture of comfort. "Painful," she said. "Those who have successfully broken fate's connection have had to prepare for days, weeks, months even."

Quinn thought back to when she was 15, wondering if Rachel had distanced herself, had purposely withdrawn from Quinn to… what, make it easier? She couldn't remember, but she didn't know if she didn't remember because it hadn't happened, or she didn't remember because she didn't want to remember.

"And then when the connection is broken, there's actual, physical agony much like what you experienced, if not more."

"More?" Quinn didn't know how anything could hurt more than what she had felt that day.

"More because not only did Rachel have to sever the connection, but she had to keep it so. Did she say anything to you, just before?"

I love you, Mistress.

Quinn remembered that.

Elle shook her head. "Most of the people studied actually wanted to sever the connection. For whatever reason, Rachel had to. She hadn't fallen out of love with you; she didn't want to break the connection. But she did."

"But why?"

"I don't know, Quinn. All I know is that just… made it worse for her."

"How?"

"Do you really want to know?" Elle continued at Quinn's nod. "She didn't want to break the connection, but she did. So in addition to the physical pain, she's had to deal with the emotional agony of ripping herself away from you. She was bound to you for 8 years, and then suddenly… nothing."

"I'm aware," Quinn said bitterly, pulling her hand out from under Elle's. She wouldn't feel sympathetic, she couldn't. Rachel had broken the connection; everything Quinn had gone through had been because of Rachel. As much as she loved her, Quinn couldn't feel sorry for her.

"Are you?" Elle dipped her head so that Quinn was forced to look at her. "Imagine Rachel. She's just broken the connection with you. That first night, she's lying in her bed, trying desperately to cry herself to sleep but not able to because of how much it hurts her, and trying desperately to not think about what she's just done to you. Her mistress, that she loved, who is probably sobbing and in so much pain, begging her to just take you back, that whatever it is you'll fix it, that you love her."

"Stop," Quinn whispered, feeling the tears beginning to course down her face.

"So night after night she comforts herself by saying that in time, you'll stop hurting and you'll learn to hate her. You'll hate her, and you'll forget her, and in time, maybe, her hurt will stop, and she can forget you. Even though she doesn't want to. Even though she never wanted to. Night after night, Rachel survives by convincing herself that you could never want her, you could never love her, and that what she wants is never going to happen, so she might as well move on."

"I've always loved her," Quinn sniffled, wiping the rapidly descending tears away with the napkin Elle handed her. "I'd never not want her."

"I know. And then you show up and you burst Rachel's protective little bubble that she's created around herself. To keep from missing you. To keep from wanting you. To keep from loving you. But you walk into that diner and it all comes rushing back in an instant."

Elle shifted her chair next to Quinn's, so she could wrap an arm around her and hold her as she cried. "In a way," she said, her tone full of regret, "Rachel has been far more damaged than you, Quinn. She's had to cope with whatever made her decide to sever the connection, and the fact that she did something so horrible to you. She's had to protect you from her, herself from you… the connection isn't the only thing that got broken. Rachel broke herself."

"But I don't know why," Quinn sobbed, and she felt Elle shrug.

"I don't either. What I do know is that you did the right thing by walking away from her at the diner, and then at the grocery store."

Quinn sat up and shook her head, wiping her eyes again and trying to smile feebly at Elle to show she was okay, even though she felt nowhere near okay. "No, I'm making her chase after me like some idiot."

"Is that what you think this is?" Elle asked, a note of amusement in her voice. "You don't put too much trust in fate, do you?"

"Yeah well fate loves me about as much as Van did after I got him fixed."

Elle laughed, and Quinn couldn't help but grin. "So you think Rachel just randomly decided to show up at the same grocery store where you were? That she just randomly happened to look up and see you?"

"… yes?"

"No." Elle stood up and threw away her cup, moving to the door and waiting patiently for Quinn to join her.

Quinn didn't think she wanted to go out to the auction now. All she could see, all she could think about was Rachel, curled up in her little pink room, crying herself to sleep. Why had she never once thought about what it had done to Rachel? But it was too late to think about that; all that mattered was fixing it now.

"Come on," Elle said, holding up the door with a reassuring smile. "Let's go buy some Broadway goodies while I tell you all about fate."

"Tell me about fate, huh?" Quinn said, unable to hold back a smile seeing Elle's enthusiasm. She could see why Jamie loved the girl so much. She was passionate about everything in her life: from her education, to her family, to her lady. As submissive as she was, Elle was also obstinate, sassy, and not afraid to come up against Jamie if she thought the situation warranted it.

And Jamie, she told Quinn, loved the challenge. There was nothing she found hotter, she said, than being proven wrong by Elle.

"It's funny how both you and Rachel think you can control how this works," Elle mused as she walked with Quinn back into Times Square. "Both of you think you can circumvent God, or fate, or a higher power, whatever this is."

"I don't want to circumvent fate," Quinn countered. "I want it to work for both of us."

"And yet you can't even see that it is working for you," Elle said with a good-natured roll of her eyes. "I mean, you found Rachel in some random diner in New York. Do you have any idea how many diners there are? Out of all the diners in the world," she added, her voice sounding like a 1950s noir crime drama, "You just had to walk into hers."

Quinn laughed, stopping to rifle through some autographed playbills set up at one of the tables. "Okay, but that could've been a coincidence."

"And then she walked into my grocery store, looking at the magazine rack until somehow, her eyes met mine. She was beautiful, a powerhouse, a woman beyond her time…"

"Okay okay!" Quinn held up her hands to stop Elle's perfect imitation of old television, and shook her head. "I get it. "

"No, you really don't. Ooh, Les Miserables!" She nudged Quinn with her elbow. "My lady says any musical that names a character Jean ValJean isn't worth her time."

"Your lady should blame the book then, and not the musical," Quinn said, and smiled a little to herself. Rachel would have been impressed with that.

"I'll be sure to tell her you said that," Elle said with a grin, then looked at Quinn. "You two think you're on some treasure hunt, trying to find and capture the other. You can't even see that fate is bringing you together on a silver platter. It always has, and it always will. You just have to be ready to accept it."

"Neither one of us are ready," Quinn said, moving to another table and smiling at the actor sat behind it. He had played Fiyero, the first time she'd seen Wicked, and she wondered if Rachel had seen him as well. She wondered what Rachel had thought about the performance, because she remembered that as a little girl Rachel had been particularly fond of critiquing the performances she'd seen on the Tonys, when she'd managed to sneak past her mother and watch them. "She doesn't want a dominant, and I don't think I'm good enough for a submissive right now."

"And… you have to be a domme and she has to be a sub for you two to get coffee?" Elle asked. "No one is saying that you have to put her on her knees as soon as you find her."

Quinn winced, remembering that that had been exactly her plan. "I know."

"You and Rachel have a lot to work through. You want to know why she broke your connection. She needs to trust enough to let you back in, and probably to forgive herself for hurting you the way she did."

"I forgive her," Quinn whispered.

She wondered how Elle caught it over the noise of the crowd, but the young woman did, and she wrapped her arm around Quinn's waist to squeeze her, briefly. "I know you do. And my lady forgave me for hurting her." For a moment Elle's eyes took on a faraway, pained look, before they cleared and she smiled again.

"But it's important for Rachel to forgive herself. All you need is for fate to give you both a push in the right direction, and a few cups of coffee, some heartfelt conversations, and… who knows where it will lead you."

Quinn looked at Elle, who was occupying herself with looking at a few autographed cds, and she sighed. "How'd you get to be so smart?" she asked.

Elle grinned at her. "Neurosurgery," she joked. "Now come on, my lady said if you didn't have fun I was going to be sitting on pillows for the rest of the week so… have fun, damn it."

It was nice, Quinn thought, to be able to hang out with a submissive that wasn't Sam, and a submissive that was also another woman. She suspected that that had been Elle and Jamie's plan all along, when Jamie had begged off the trip to the flea market so that she could do homework, and suggested that Elle go instead. Jamie no doubt knew that Elle might be able to explain things from Rachel's point of view, or, at least, from the point of view of a submissive who had once also tried to break a sort of connection. It was ever apparent to Quinn why Elle and Jamie had been a perfect match for each other. Elle's quiet deference with occasional flashes of obstinacy complemented Jamie's protective nature as well as her desire to be challenged.

They were, Quinn thought, a match made in perfect fate.

She wasn't sure if she and Rachel were, anymore, but Quinn hoped fate gave her another chance to find out.

The flea market stretched from Times Square to West 44th Street, Shubert Alley and 46th Street. Quinn felt as if she could walk for miles and still not see everything that she was meant to take in. But it wasn't just the Broadway merchandise, the stars who were in front of her in the flesh instead of up on the billboards, or the fans crowding past her to get autographs and pictures.

No, it was the city, looming high and bright above Quinn, and she smiled to herself, taking in a deep breath and trying not to stare into the sun as she looked up. New York. It was her city, she realized again. Something had brought her here, and Quinn wasn't altogether sure that it had been just Rachel.

Maybe, she thought to herself, she wasn't meant to be just a real estate agent, just as Rachel wasn't meant to be a music teacher or a waitress at some greasy spoon down the street. Maybe something stronger than Quinn had led her, by way of Sue Sylvester, of all people, to New York. First to find Rachel, but in the end, to find who she was meant to be. As a person. As a woman. As an artist. As a Dominant.

Or maybe, Quinn laughed to herself, she was just being ridiculous.

She turned towards another table, and the laughter died on her lips.

She was standing with her back pressed up against a wall in the alley. She had a playbill in her hands, hands that trembled so hard Quinn could just barely make out the yellow, green and black on the front cover.

Wicked.

Rachel wasn't flipping through the pages; she was just staring at the two witches on the front, her fingers tracing its outline. Her face was half-hidden by her long dark hair, nearly black in the sunlight, but Quinn could see the tears streaming down her face. There was something that Quinn hadn't ever seen before, an expression of indescribable hurt and longing and Quinn realized that finally she was catching a glimpse of Rachel, the Rachel beyond the girl who tried to act as if everything was perfectly fine. And what she saw was breaking Quinn's heart, because Rachel Berry, her Rachel, her princess… was in pain.

The playbill tumbled to the street when a hot wind picked up and suddenly Rachel's head lifted, Rachel caught sight of her, and Quinn lost her breath.

She didn't know what she'd have to do, but she knew, as Rachel stared at her with tear-filled, anguished brown eyes, that she'd do anything to see a smile return to the girl she still hoped could be her little one.

"Come on, princess," Quinn murmured to herself. "Come here, Rachel. It's all right." She threw all she had into the emotion, into the feeling, as she tried to make Rachel feel the comfort, tried to help her hear the words of reassurance.

"I'm right here; it's going to be okay…."

Her shoulders slumped in disappointment when Rachel turned on her heel and ran off; Elle reached out to grab her arm when Quinn started off after her.

"She's not ready," Elle said.

"I know, I just—" Quinn pulled her arm out from Elle's grasp and darted across the street without hesitation, narrowly missing being hit by a truck as she headed straight for the alley.

Once there, she picked up the playbill, dusting it off and looking down at it, her fingers tracing the same path that Rachel's had over the outline of the two witches. She kept going to the show, Quinn remembered, a slow smile spreading over her face. Her mother would get angry with her, but Rachel was still going to shows. Especially Wicked.

A misunderstood witch and her blonde best "friend."

Maybe, just maybe… Rachel Berry was still meant for Broadway.

"I would hate to know what my punishment would have been if you'd have ended up in the hospital today," Elle huffed as she came to stand beside Quinn and catch her breath. "So I really hope you don't plan on doing that again."

Quinn shook her head at the young woman, the smile still apparent on her face. "I'm sorry," she apologized, "But I had to get—" She lifted it up, showing Elle, and she nodded.

"How long has it been since Rachel severed your connection?"

"Almost five years," Quinn answered, though she knew Elle knew that, and waited patiently for the young woman's point.

"And how long have you been in New York?"

"A year."

Elle nodded again. "And… how many times have you 'coincidently' run into Rachel since you came to New York?"

Quinn sighed and raised her eyes to the sky, but she couldn't seem to stop smiling. "Three times."

"Hmm." Elle grinned impishly. "Still think fate has nothing to do with it?"

She wanted to roll her eyes. She wanted to insist that it was just another happy accident, that of course Rachel would have been at the flea market, considering how much she loved Broadway. That it was just, once again, a fluke that Quinn had decided to come even though she'd never even considered it before.

But the look on Rachel's face, the tears filling brown eyes that should never be sad, told Quinn that to protest would be pointless. And it filled her with hope, even as she remained hopelessly worried about the girl who had, once again, run away from her.

No, fate had everything, everything to do with it. And Quinn would wait, for as long as it took, for Rachel to know it too.