hey again, kinda short chapter. MAJOR TRIGGERS! THIS IS THE BIT WHERE WE FIND OUT WHAT HAPPENED WITH QUINNIPUFF'S DAD. GRAPHIC ABUSE! But yeah over than that not much. Please be nice and review :)

It took 20 minutes before they got split up. Quinn's excuse was that they had been building up to this since high school and they had at least 10 years worth of sexual tension to work through. To be honest, in her opinion it took a whole lot of self-control to manage a quick peck but apparently even that was out of bounds.

"That's it! Rachel, you're with us! Quinn you're with the bitches and their incredibly more bearable other halves." Kurt yelled as he literally pulled Rachel away. "You've got some explaining to do anyway, Missy!" He mumbled in her ear.

It was Marley and Brittany who literally dragged Quinn away since they were considerably less likely to be hit than Kitty or Santana. "This is so unfair! Why is it the second we sort our shit out we're separated! You guys get to stick together, why can't we?" Quinn protested with a huff that even Santana had to admit was pretty adorable.

"Because you guys were too obvious, at least we were polite enough to keep out of sight when we got our mack on." Santana explained with a smirk. "Plus I think Hummel and Wheezy wanted the gossip about last night. To be honest, so do we."

"Although if you start singing Summer Lovin' then I'll rip your face off. I love performing but it was only when I got out of high school that I realised just how weird the whole bursting into song thing was, like how did we ever get away with that?" Kitty frowned, the whole club had found it hard to adjust to not being able to sing their feelings in public and have everyone join in.

Marley rolled her eyes with a smile. "We've got bigger fish to fry, Babe."

Kitty nodded. "Yeah so give us the details, you know minus the gross ones."

As Quinn explained what had happened with that same lovestruck smile she had when she was actually with Rachel, Santana couldn't help but grow concerned. She loved Quinn, she believed that everyone who sees past her walls will love her; she deserves that at the least. Of course Quinn was blind to all love but Rachel's, she had only just begun to see love in other places. In her work, in her sister, in her friends she had found glimmers of care that previously had been invisible; she had learnt that to love something is as much a reward as to be loved.

But seeing her like this was worrying to Santana, it was like Rachel went back to being the only person she saw and that made her pretty vulnerable if something where to go wrong between them.

"We're so glad for you, Q!" Brittany beamed as she hugged the blonde.

"Yeah, so long as you're happy and she isn't going to hurt you then I'm glad. But try not to rush into it, make sure you forgive her and that she's really sorry for what happened; otherwise you could both get hurt." Marley didn't know Quinn as well as some of the others but as far as she could see she was happier with Rachel than without. Kitty however decided to stay silent and simply nod along with her girlfriend, she liked Quinn and wanted to get closer to her so to share her opinion on Rachel at that point would only damage their budding friendship.

"Can I have a word with you in private?" Santana asked; it was in that moment Quinn realised the depth of her old friends care for her, up until that point she had believed that their bond was out of the necessity of growing up together and keeping each other's secrets but now seeing the silent pleas in her intense dark eyes she saw something she had never realised. She wordlessly nodded and followed her through the woods.

"Sanny, please don't yell at her." Brittany shouted but it was useless as they both disappeared.

They stormed past trees, hands intertwined for a long while in absolute silence. By the time they stopped they were at the lake, though there was no one in sight.

"Are you going to tell me what you're thinking?" Santana's voice was soft and broken, so different than the bravado she usually portrayed. "Surely it's not that selfish to want a reason why you're doing this to yourself. To want to know why you're running back to her after years of me picking up the pieces. I love you Quinn, I don't get how you don't love yourself."

"I do. She says she's sorry and that's good enough for me." was Quinn's somewhat stoic reply.

"How can you not be angry at her? How can you not want to kill her after all she put you through! I kept a brave face for Britts but I can't stand seeing you with her! She hurt you like this! She made you think you can't get any better!" She yelled desperately, she needed Quinn to see what she was doing.

"I'm sick of being angry!" Quinn raised her voice in a hope to sound threatening but it just sounded pained. "I'm sick of feeling useless for being upset, I'm sick of hating someone I still love! She is the best I can get, there is no one better and never will be. You don't know the half of what happened when I broke down, you weren't there! So stop acting above everyone else when you only know half of the truth!"

Santana raised an eyebrow in realisation and sat down on a rock. "What haven't you told me, Quinn? I've been the person you turned to your entire life; I was the first person to know about your dad, about your pregnancy and who the father was, about everything! I never stopped apologising for taking Rachel's side back then, for leaving you alone when you needed me but I thought we were at least honest with each other!" She couldn't contain her hurt that there were still secrets between them even after all they'd been through.

"Oh so now you care!" Quinn sneered with an icy glare that was pretty much all she could handle at that moment. She still hated bringing out this part of herself but sometimes it had to be done, there were some things she just couldn't tell anyone.

Santana was too hurt to see the mask Quinn was wearing so she burned up in her anger. "I've always fucking cared Q! Stop being such a damn coward and tell me!" She shoved her up against a tree in a fury that reminded her of when she first saw Quinn instead of Lucy. In fact the whole situation was similar in the way Quinn flinched and the terror in her eyes that she hadn't seen since she did finally admit the crimes of her father. "It's Russell, isn't it? It has something to do with him." Her voice broke under her concern and she swore she almost fell apart when Quinn nodded weakly. "When?"

"The day of Rachel's wedding in senior year. Mom took him back in the summer before and he started getting violent again a few months after but it wasn't until that day… I-I'm sorry I just can't" Quinn's sobs interrupted her and Santana's hold became for of an embrace.

"It's ok, if you can't say it can you just nod or shake your head when I ask you stuff?" She stroked her silky hair in a hope that it would calm her down. Not for the first time, Santana had the urge to chase Russell Fabray down and kill him like the sick bastard he is. Quinn nodded and sniffed. "Did he cause your accident?"

As Quinn nodded Santana felt her stomach drop. "I went to tell Mom about Rachel and how I feel about her before the wedding but he was there. He was so mad, he, he, he," She couldn't continue any further, she was just so exhausted.

"Were you in the car?"

"In the boot."

(FLASHBACK!)

Russell Fabray was always violent; to his classmates, his colleagues, his wife and his children and this was known in Lima. Everyone knew the so-called secrets of the Fabray family but their money had kept those secrets away from any authority, kept Russell's secrets away from any authority. When Quinn and Frannie would turn up to school with black eyes and sunken cheeks no one would pay any notice, sure lunch ladies would give them extra food and teachers would lay off them if they didn't have any homework but on the whole everyone was too afraid of the influence of the Fabray family to go any further to help them.

But this was new to Quinn as she watched her Fathers face morph from its usual superior disgust that had been fixed on his face when he saw her since he reappeared in her life to something far darker. Fury.

"Please tell me this is another one of your sick jokes, like when you said you were going to keep that bastard child." His voice was the most sinister it had ever been, she was used to his anger but she had been confident that he had a limit. The man in front of her now had nothing keeping him back, he wasn't disappointed or angry at her; he despised her.

"She's called Beth. And she is the most beautiful thing I've ever had in my life and your granddaughter. I love her. I love Rachel too. More than my heart knows how to cope with. They are the two most important people in the world to me and if you can't handle that then take it out on me but not them. Never them." Quinn's anger-driven courage didn't last long enough to be convincing but the determination in her eyes was something Russell had rarely seen from any of his family, even when Quinn became a punk and went out of her way to disobey him she still submitted when he was about to discipline her. This strength was something that would have to be quashed.

"You think you can stop me from doing anything, girl?" He shoved her into the bookcase and slammed his fist against her chest when she struggled to get up. "You think you know what love is?" He hauled her up from the shoulders so she could see the sick grin plastered on his face. "You think that you'd suffer for them? You think you're anything but the weak child that used to come home crying because she was too fat for anyone to love her?" He let go and back handed her face. Judy cried out somewhere in the background but he knew she wouldn't stop him, she never did. Quinn stared up at him with the same defiance and a confident smirk that had mirrored the one he had worn himself so many times.

"I know I'd suffer for them, I'd die for them. And that's where I win. Because when I see Beth or when I hear Rachel sing, I'm so so proud of them. I don't care what you do to me because as long as they are happy, so am I. That's a feeling you'll never know."

Russell fumed and kicked his daughter in the stomach. "You don't get to tell me what I feel and don't feel, girl. They don't love you. How could they? All you do is disappoint people! You think you can run into this girl's wedding and convince her to care for a selfish fag who destroys everything she touches? You've always had your head in the clouds, I thought I'd beat it out of you by now but clearly your mother was sloppy in my absence."

"Oh god! How dare she? Any good parent knows to beat their child whenever they dare to think anything different!" Quinn knew she was pushing too hard but she couldn't let him win this time. She had lost too much in giving in to him, this was her last stand.

"Bitch! I've clearly been too easy on you! No daughter of mine will show such blatant disrespect! Let's see how you struggle when your tossed of the bridge." He yanked her up by her hair and smashed her face into the wall, effectively knocking her out.

When Quinn woke she was in a dark cramped place that she realised was the boot of the car. She screamed and struggled against the rope that restrained her. She heard the screech of tyres and metal churning when they crashed, it took hours before she was air lifted to hospital.

(END FLASHBACK)

As Quinn shakily explained what happened she avoided Santana's horrified eyes. She couldn't take pity or anger or anything she knew she'd find there. So she kept her eyes to the lake and waited for her to respond.

"How did the police not get involved then? You were tied up in the boot of the car for god's sake!" Santana hid her anguish in outrage, she wouldn't be the one to wallow in pity and make Quinn fell even worse; she knew her far too well for that.

"The truck hit the back of the car so Russell was barely scratched by it. He bribed the firemen to say they found me in the back seat and unrestrained, when I woke up my Mother told me what I had to say to the police. Russell allowed me to stay living in the house and keep my college fund and inheritance so long as I kept quiet about what really happened. He avoided me as much as possible and locked my bedroom door when he was downstairs. Mother tried to make up for what happened but every time she saw me she just started crying; she still didn't leave him though. She couldn't have been that sorry."

"So when Berry said no to you…"

"… I couldn't help but think he was right. That no one could ever love me, especially since the car accident." Quinn finished.

"Why didn't you tell me?" Santana couldn't help but feel hurt that Quinn had went through so much and didn't at least share the burden with her.

"Because you'd have told the police and I'd have to kiss goodbye to any hope of a future I ever had. If not that then you'd have killed him and you'd lose any hope of a future you ever had, neither of those things were worth risking."

Santana sighed and shook her head though she knew she was right. "I'm just so sorry you had to go through that alone. Does Fran know?"

"No, but she knew something big had happened. She offered for me to go and live with her for the rest of senior year in Michigan but I told her that it wasn't that bad at home. She still called up every week to check on me and she visited a few times to make sure my room was set up downstairs and then to see that I was still living there and had no new injuries. In college I spent pretty much all my breaks with her and Andy so I never had any reason to tell her after that; I couldn't bear her blaming herself for what happened to me."

Quinn, Santana and Frannie had been inseparable when they were little as Fran was always wanting to babysit and set up play dates for little Lucy at the same since even then she was incredibly protective of her sister; even though she had suffered several beatings in sticking up for her. At the time the Lopez's had just moved after a young Dr Carlos Lopez had transferred into a better paying but more demanding job at Lima General Hospital, the whole family had moved from Lima Heights to the most affluent suburb in Ohio making Maria Lopez desperately adjust to being an all American housewife and keeping the perfect face that everyone in the area seemed to where so well. The combination of the move and her parent's busy lives left four year old Santana rather lonely, she didn't have any brothers or sisters and she didn't have any friends to play with. That was until Maria answered the door to a pretty 14 year old with a girl the same age clinging to her leg, offering to babysit as she was already with her little sister for the summer. Maria could have cried with relief that someone would look after her daughter without making her feel guilty.

After that Santana had become as good as Frannie's sister, having being invited to her wedding and her sons' christening not to mention the regular phone calls to check on how things were going. That was why Santana knew that if Frannie had any idea of the horror that Quinn had gone through, she'd be there in a flash and making sure Russell Fabray never saw daylight again.

"I love you, you know that right? I love you and so does Fran. West loves you and Iris loves you. Beth and Puck love you. Charlie and David love you. Andy and Ross love you. Plenty people love you, this whole damn glee club loves you. You are and always will be loved Lucy Quinn Fabray and even if your parents don't acknowledge that love, even if Rachel doesn't; that won't change."

Quinn closed her eyes as the names made images flash behind her eyes. West, her best friend since Yale. Iris the model that had went from her first actual girlfriend to being the first Bride Quinn was happy to be a bridesmaid for. Beth, her now 10 year old daughter who was thrilled that her biological mother was a movie star. Puck, the boy who had went from impregnating her under dubious consent to being her rock when she had needed him most. Charlie and David, her 6 year old nephews who she had adored since they were tiny bundles in the maternity ward. Andy, her brother-in-law who had been the one that encouraged her sister out of her shell and into a new way of life. Ross, her constantly frustrated agent who had miraculously made her entire high school and college life disappear. She knew she loved them, it was just hard to know if they cared the same.

Rachel was different though, she knew Rachel loved her. She had to. "Rachel loves me. You don't get it do you? As long as she loves me, then he's wrong! I get over it because he'd be wrong!"

"He's wrong anyway! Regardless of what Rachel thinks he was still wrong! I'll still love you and so will everyone else and he will be wrong! You don't need her approval to know that you're worth something Quinn! You don't need anyone's!"

Quinn shook her head with an air of finality and before Santana could argue any further the rest of the group emerged from the forest with a buzz of laughter surrounding them. As soon as she saw Quinn, Rachel shyly made her way to her but with a big grin on her face. "Hey you." She beamed until she saw the clenched jaws and the bloodshot eyes that both Quinn and Santana shared and knew something was wrong. "What happened? Are you hurt?"

Quinn shook her head with a small smile. "No we're fine Rach, just getting through some stuff. Santana has agreed to lay off us now she knows the other reason things were so intense after New York."

Santana frowned but nodded and awaited Rachel's response. The tiny diva grinned initially but it faded as soon as it came. "Are you going to tell me?"

"Sorry, I just can't deal with that right now. But what happened wasn't you're fault ok?" Quinn needed to make sure Rachel knew that it wasn't her that caused it, in fact she prevented it long enough for her to make her future and that was the best she could have had. If she had reciprocated those feelings then Quinn would have pinned all of her self-worth on that and that would be unfair to the both of them and she really had moved on from that. It was just that she could now guarantee her father was wrong back then; she could close the door behind her and say all she went through was worth it because she had proved him wrong. Sure, she really had come to love herself over the years but it was Rachel's love that she needed most.

Rachel knew something big had happened to Quinn around senior year. She knew by the empty look in her eyes and her defeated smile that she had been hurt unimaginably. At the time she put it down to Finn and then the accident but now it seemed there was something far deeper behind it. Although she was determined not to pick and prod answers out of her now, especially when she knew she hadn't earned any of her trust yet. "Ok, I get that. So, Kurt and Mercedes said that we're off separation now as long as we behave ourselves. To be honest I think they only wanted to find out what happened last night and then this morning."

Quinn smiled knowing that was exactly what Santana wanted to know as well. "Did you bring lunch up with you? We might as well start since the boys have obviously got lost."

At this Santana couldn't take any of the niceties any more, she was barely dealing with the information she had been given but seeing Quinn so casual and calm was just too much for her. She stormed off towards Brittany, leaving a confused Rachel and a frustrated Quinn in her wake.

"I thought she was ok with us now?" Rachel asked, watching the usually guarded Latina wrap Britt into a hug and cling to her for life.

"She is. I guess she's still dealing with stuff you know? I mean it must have been hard to know I was keeping stuff from her even though it was kind of obvious why I was. Do you think she'll forgive me?" Quinn really did feel guilty about her habit of lying to people in order to protect them.

"Of course she will. You guys have been there for each other since you were kids, of course she'll feel a bit kept out now but she'll forgive you anyway. Anyone can see she's protective over you, almost as much as she was Brittany." Rachel wanted to appease her but there was still doubt in her mind as to why Quinn wouldn't tell her what happened.

Quinn held her hand and kissed it with a caring reverence that displayed every ounce of gratefulness she felt for the girl in front of her. "Thank you, Rach. You always know what to say, even when I don't know what I want to hear."

Rachel released her hand from Quinn's and used in to cup her cheek. She wiped a tear that fell from those mesmerizing green eyes and kissed her softly in a way that held no expectation or lust but was simply a comfort to them both. "No more crying today. Jeez this is meant to be our honeymoon period; I thought we could at least spare the drama till we got home." She joked and revelled in the laughter that was her reward. Quinn rested her forehead against hers and became contented in just being with each other, it had been so long since they had achieved this kind of comfort and even longer since they were simply understood in this way. Quinn didn't need to be shy and reserved or cold and calculating. Rachel didn't need to be bold and loud or charismatic and graceful. They were neither their high school personas nor their professional image, they were just them and that was enough