Author's Note: Thanks to everyone, really. You guys are so awesome for sticking with this story.

Quinn entered the sliding door of Lima Memorial Hospital, took the elevator to the third floor, and walked promptly to room 337 where she knew Rachel lay beyond the closed door. There she stopped, though, suddenly nervous about seeing Rachel again. What could she possibly offer the girl in the way of getting better? Of trying to be friends? She bowed her head and closed her eyes, holding the cross around her neck between two fingers. God… please help me to stop questioning. I think this is the right thing to do, what you want me to do. Just… please help me to be strong. For Rachel. Amen.

Quinn knocked quietly at the door, hoping she wouldn't be waking anyone up. Sure, it was almost three in the afternoon, but she knew from personal experience that hospitals had a way of screwing with sleeping schedules.

The door opened, and Leroy stood on the other side. "Quinn," he said, tense smile coloring his voice. "It's so nice to… What happened to you?"

Damn. Her worries about coming had temporarily made her forget about the fight that morning. And with Brittany crying after practice, Quinn hadn't thought to check the mirror in her Cheerios locker when she changed back out of her uniform. She must look like hell.

"Who is it, Daddy?" Rachel asked, though in a monotone voice like she didn't really care about the answer. That voice was so un-Rachel Berry like that it hurt. Rachel's voice had always been full of passion and energy, usually to an annoying degree. Quinn had hated it for most of the time she'd known her, if for no other reason than jealousy. Jealous that Rachel could love and be excited by life that much. Now…? Now it was just heartbreaking to see how far she had fallen. From the look on Leroy's face, it was clear he hated that voice, too.

Leroy stepped back from the door, silently inviting Quinn inside. "Your friend Quinn stopped by to see you, Rachel," he said, looking over at his daughter. He sounded like he was talking to a small child. It would have embarrassed Quinn to be talked to that way, but Rachel didn't seem to care. "Isn't that exciting?"

"She's not my friend," Rachel said dispassionately in that same monotone voice as Quinn entered the room. Everything looked basically the same from the morning before. Rachel's left hand and forearm were still in the brace to keep her tendon from stretching, and her other wrist was still bandaged. There was a different woman in the corner reading a book while keeping an eye on the room. The atmosphere was wrong, though. Stale and gray and so very Un-Rachel. "She's just someone I…" She stumbled over her words, staring at Quinn. "What happened to your face?"

Quinn looked back and forth from Rachel to Leroy, trying to smile though her busted lip protested painfully. "Just a little cheerleading accident this morning. One of the guys was lifting me up, and I slipped."

"And landed on your face?" Rachel asked, chuckling a little. As soon as she realized she laughed, her eyes went slightly wider for a second, and she looked down, averting her gaze from Quinn. "Sorry." Monotone again.

"It's okay," Quinn said, coming closer, taking the chair beside her bed. "It is kind of funny. I probably look beat up. It was a rough practice"

"You're having cheerleading practices over Christmas break?" Leroy asked.

"Yeah," Quinn said, sighing. Christmas was her favorite time of year. The fact that it was only five days away and she still had two more Cheerios practices sucked more than she cared to admit. "Sue, our cheerleading coach, is kind of… intense. Nationals is coming up in two months, and she doesn't see Christmas as a suitable purpose for skipping practices."

"That seems kind of insane," Leroy said, smiling.

"It is," Quinn agreed, "but if you ever got the chance to meet Sue, you'd understand. She's really focused on—"

"Why are you here?" Rachel asked, looking up at Quinn.

Quinn glanced over at Leroy as he started to say something, but she interrupted him. "Because I want to be." Well that sounded arrogant. "Because I wanted to see how you were doing. I was worried you might be…" Don't say going crazy "…bored here at the hospital, and I thought you might want someone to talk to besides your dads and nurses."

"Why would I want to talk to you?" Rachel asked, but, like her previous question, she didn't sound angry.

"Rachel…," Leroy started.

"It's okay," Quinn said to him, then turned back to Rachel. "Honestly, you might not want to talk to me. Really, I just wanted to talk to you, to see how you were doing. I wanted to make sure you were okay, and, if you're not, I… I want to help you be okay." She couldn't look at the girl in the hospital bed anymore, and took to staring down at her hands. "I feel… I don't know. Responsible, I guess. Like this is partly my fault. I hate it. I know I've done some terrible things in the past, but—"

"Daddy," Rachel said, interrupting her. "Would it be okay if I spoke with Quinn in private?" Quinn looked up surprised, and turned to see Leroy staring at them in confusion. "Please?" And for a second, Rachel sounded more like her old self again, and Leroy couldn't help but agree to anything she asked for.

"Sure, baby girl," he said, moving towards the door. "But I'll be right out here if you need me."

"Okay," Rachel said. "Thanks Daddy." Leroy fixed Quinn with another confused, considering stare, then stepped outside, closing the door behind him. Once she heard it click, Rachel turned to Quinn, staring thoughtfully at her. "I didn't want him to know how much the Cheerios have bullied me," she said quietly. "I don't want to hurt him."

"He-he doesn't know?" Quinn asked. "You never told your dads?"

"I did at the beginning of high school," Rachel said, looking down at the sheet covering her. "But near the end of our freshmen year, when things were getting really bad, I was… convinced… not to tell anyone anything else. I haven't told them anything since then. They think it's stopped, and I would appreciate them not knowing otherwise. I don't want to hurt them any more than I have."

"Rachel, I…" She didn't even have words for what she was feeling. How much guilt could one person hold before they burst? She looked over at the brunette still looking down. "I'm… Look, I'm not telling you this to get you to forgive me or anything. You don't have any reason to. I just… I want you to know how truly sorry I am. I can't apologize to you enough, but if I could, I'd spend the rest of my days trying to make it up to you. I… I'm really, really sorry for how I treated you."

Rachel didn't look up from her blanket. She didn't say a word, move a muscle, shed a tear. Quinn wanted her to say something. Tell her to go to hell, or that she forgave her, or that she was going to get her back, or… something. Something more than to sit there like a statue, like she hadn't heard. Like she didn't care.

"Rachel…?" Quinn leaned over, trying to look her in the eye, but the girl's head was too far tucked into her chest. "Rachel, please. Just say something."

"I don't know what you want me to say," Rachel said, still looking down. "Do you want me to forgive you?"

"Only if that's how you really feel." There was a long tense silent minute, then:

"I…" Rachel finally looked up at Quinn. "I don't know how I feel. I haven't known how I feel for a while now. Since… since before Sectionals. There's just…" Her voice broke a little, and Quinn's heart broke with it. She sounded so sad and desperate. Quinn wanted to be thankful that at least she wasn't using that monotone voice, but this… She sounded so hurt. So in pain. "There's just too many thoughts, too many emotions. I don't know how to respond because I don't know what my response is. It's like everything is jumbled. Or like everything has been moved slightly to the left. Like my life has been moved two inches to the left. Just enough to make everything feel off, to make me feel… crazy… but not enough for anyone else to notice." She paused. "See? I don't even know if that makes sense or not, but it's how it feels. I don't know how to feel, Quinn. I don't know what to do…"

Rachel looked at her with tears threatening to fall. Her eyes were pleading, and Quinn needed to help her. She wanted to. "Cats or dogs?" Quinn asked suddenly.

"What?"

"Cats or dogs? Which do you prefer? You know, as pets?"

"Cats, I guess, but—"

"Why?"

Rachel wiped the unfallen tears from her eyes with the back of her hand. "Quinn, I don't know what—"

"Just say the first thing that pops into your head," Quinn said, soothingly, looking Rachel in the eyes and trying to get her to play along. "Don't think about it." Then more hesitantly , more quietly, she added, "Can you do that? Please?" Rachel stared at her for a moment then nodded slowly. "Okay," Quinn said, half smiling. "Why do you prefer cats as pets?"

"I..." It was clear she wanted to say I don't know, but Quinn was still gazing at her encouragingly, hazel eyes locked onto her chocolate brown ones. "They're divas," Rachel said, sniffling. "They're self sufficient, but they still want to be the center of attention."

"What's your favorite color?"

"Pink."

"Why?"

"It makes me feel pretty and girly," Rachel said. "I don't always…" And Quinn knew why. How many times had she called her 'Manhands' or 'Rupaul' or 'a tranny'?

"Summer or winter?" Quinn asked another seemingly random question before she could focus too much on her own thoughts. She had to do this to help Rachel.

"Winter."

"Why?"

"Because…," Rachel bit her lip, breaking the eye contact. "Because I can wear more clothes so people don't have to look at me so much." What little of a forced smile Quinn had was wiped away. "And because the thicker clothes help more with the slushees."

"Rachel, I—"

"Please don't, Quinn," Rachel said, sniffing again. "I'm trying to be honest. My psychiatrist said I needed to be, anyway. Just… just ask me something else, okay?"

"Okay, umm… Favorite meal?"

"Breakfast." Before Quinn could ask her why, Rachel was already answering, and for the first time since coming in, it sounded like Rachel. "My Dad makes these really awesome vegan pancakes into a Mickey Mouse head shape. They're delicious and cute." Rachel actually smiled for a second at the thought, while Quinn's stomach did some kind of fluttery thing because she had caused that.

"Favorite movie?"

"Funny Girl." Rachel paused. "I like the story. It's about a woman who overcomes the odds to become a star." Quinn heard just from her tone that there was more she wanted to say, but she didn't know if she should ask. She didn't want to push.

"Favorite TV show?"

"iCarly." Quinn arched an eyebrow. "What? It's funny."

"Okay," Quinn said, genuinely smiling now. She searched for another question. "Um… oh! What are you thinking right now?"

"That I'd like to ask you a question," Rachel said.

"Okay."

"Why do you hate me?"

Quinn suddenly felt like she'd been punched in the heart. Her smile faltered, and she actually moved away from Rachel in her chair. "I don't… I don't hate you."

"But you used to, right?"

"I never—" A look from Rachel stopped her mid lie. She didn't want to lie necessarily, but she hated the truth so much. She was a horrible person for what she'd done, for the way she'd treated Rachel. She paused for a minute, looking around the room, out the window, at the nurse now pretending to read her book while listening to their entire conversation. She had a sudden laughable thought of the nurses being part of Sue's 'eyes everywhere'. After a long time, she finally said, "I never hated you because of you. It was because of me."

"I… I don't know what that means," Rachel said, a finger of her right hand tracing the contours of the brace on her left.

Quinn sighed. She deserved the truth. "My father," she nearly spat the word, "is a horrible hate-filled man. He's a conservative Republican Christian, along with every negative connotation that brings. He hates anything he considers 'liberal', 'sissy', or 'ungodly'. And he used all three of those words to describe your family a lot." Rachel looked away from her, and it Quinn, but she knew she deserved it. "I grew up hearing about the Berrys, that they were 'horrible sinners'. That they were an 'abomination of God' and 'shouldn't be allowed to have a child'. He used to love to bash your family at the dinner table while my sister Frannie nodded along. My mom at least had the decency to ignore his ramblings."

She paused, wishing Rachel would look at her. "My father is a horrible hate-filled man," Quinn repeated herself. "But he was still my dad, you know? And I was daddy's little girl. Of course I thought everything he was saying was right. He was my dad. He knew better than I did. If he said the Berrys were horrible, then they must have been. And the church we went to backed him up. They would slip in subtle little digs about your family, saying that 'a community is only as strong as its members, and if its members were heathens, it hurt the community'." Quinn felt sick at the memory of her old church using God against Rachel and her family. "They… he made it okay for me to bully you. I was doing it to make him proud." She was silent for a moment, letting the memories swirl around in her head. "When I got to know you through Glee, and then, when he kicked me out… That's when I realized he was wrong. That the way I was acting wasn't okay."

"But you still hated me," Rachel said, still not looking at Quinn.

"I…" Quinn faltered. "I didn't hate you. I just wasn't… nice to you. Or even civil, really. And I'm really sorry for that. It's taken a while to get him out of my head. I like to think I've changed, though, that I'm someone that could…" Quinn train of thought derailed. She couldn't say what she was thinking, because those words didn't make any sense to her. She'd been about to say what she had prayed for… someone that could love and support you. She didn't, though. She couldn't.

"What?" Rachel asked, finally turning back to Quinn.

"I think I'm someone that could be your friend," Quinn said finally. "If you'll let me."

"I don't…" Rachel started, biting her lip and looking down. "I don't know if I can. I… I don't know why you'd want to be. I'm not exactly easy to be around. I know I'm shutting my dads out and they hate me for it."

"Rachel, they don't—"

"They do," she said, sniffing again. "I can see it. I'm so angry and confused, and I know I'm not the daughter I've been. They don't know how to handle me anymore. They walk on eggshells around me. You saw the way Daddy was talking to me, like I'm a five year old? It's been like that since we got here. They keep giving me this look; like I'm made of glass or that I'm crazy or something." She stopped, closing her eyes with tears leaking down her face. "Am I crazy? Is this what it feels like?"

Quinn reached out her hands, taking Rachel's fingers in her own. The brace was in the way, and she couldn't hold onto her hand completely, but she wanted her to know she was there. "You're not crazy, Rach," she said, thankful the girl wasn't pulling back from her touch. "I don't know how you're supposed to be feeling, but you're not crazy. You're just… you're just hurt or sick or something. That's why you're here. So you can get better."

"What if I never get better?" Rachel's voice was small and broken, and Quinn just wanted to spend the rest of her life comforting the girl if she had to. "What if I'm never… fixed?"

"You will be," Quinn said, rubbing her fingers gently. "I promise."

After Rachel's breathing had evened out and Quinn was pretty sure she was asleep, she went to let herself out of the room, only to find Leroy waiting outside. "Have you been out here this whole time?" she asked quietly, standing in the doorway and hoping not to wake Rachel.

"She's my life," Leroy said simply. "There's nowhere else I could be."

"That's…" Quinn started, overcome by emotions after talking about her own father. She quickly gave Leroy a hug, but before he could question it, she let him go. "I'm sorry," she said quickly.

"It's okay," he said with a sad smile, looking down at her. Much like Sue, his eyes seemed to penetrate her, but she was too emotional from talking to Rachel to put up a very convincing front. "So…" he said, changing the subject. "Who punched you?"

"What, no," Quinn said with wide eyes, stumbling over her words. "I dropped… I mean, I fell onto… someone dropped me and I—"

"Quinn," Leroy said, silencing her. "You may fool Rachel with that 'falling on your face' story, but I've been in quite a few fights in my day. I know a shiner when I see one." He was smirking, having caught her in her lie.

Quinn sighed. "One of my Cheerios," she said finally. "She was…" God, did she even want to say this and cause him any more trouble. The Berrys were already having so many difficulties as it was. "She was talking about Rachel. Making fun of her, saying she wished Rachel would… would finish…" She couldn't finish that statement. Ever. Leroy just nodded gravely, smile gone. "So, I kind of jumped her and started punching her repeatedly until I was pulled off."

Quinn looked down at the floor, embarrassed in front of this man for losing her cool when she was supposed to be a leader. It had been stupid to get so worked up, to let someone rile her up to that level. It was weakness, and as a leader, she couldn't be weak. If she wanted to help Rachel, she couldn't be weak. She had to be strong, like Leroy and Hiram were being. They all had to—

"Thank you," Leroy said, this time pulling her into a hug. His voice was thick with emotion as he spoke. "You stood up for my family, and I appreciate that more than you can possibly know. This town… sometimes there are so many bad ones that I forget there are good people here, too."

"There are," Quinn said, muffled into his shirt. She pulled back a bit and looked up at him. "And there are more people that care about Rachel than just me. Would it…" She hesitated, wondering if she was doing the right thing. "Would it be okay if I brought some more with me to see Rachel tomorrow?"

Leroy smiled down at her. "I think she'd like that."

Inside the room, Rachel had woken from her light drowsing by the creak of the door as Quinn had opened it. And without Quinn fully closing the door, she got to hear the conversation. Her Daddy loved her. Quinn had fought for her. And she said she wanted to bring more people to come see her. People that cared about her.

Rachel wanted this to make her feel better. To make her feel like she was wanted and loved and cared for. It was just confusing, though. She felt guilty that she had hurt these people by trying to end her own life. She was hurt that they didn't care enough before she'd tried, but that they suddenly cared now. She was angry that they hadn't come to see her but glad that they hadn't come, too. Rachel felt awhirl in her emotions, but one thing kept sticking out in her mind, and she clung to it like her own personal life preserver.

Quinn fought for me.

Author's Note #2: To answer a couple of things…

deedee: Forgive my ignorance, as I'm still pretty new to Fan Fiction, but what's "classic faberry"?

Renata: Thanks. Because of your comment, I went into more of an explanation of why Rachel's dads wouldn't be as mad at Quinn as they should be (they didn't know about it). I hope this answered that for you.

Spezria26: No, don't worry. Sue meant they lost him to Dalton Academy. They lost him from their school. I'm trying to stick with cannon up until Ep. 2x09: Special Education.

To everyone who's commenting on the realism: I've really been trying to do my research into what suicide attempt survivors are going through afterwards. There are some amazing stories out there.