Disclaimer: I don't own Glee or any of its characters.

A/N: I saw a ton of reviews for this, so I decided it was time to get my writing in gear for an update so I wouldn't keep all you amazing people waiting! I would've had it up sooner, but alas, my internet is terrible. Thank yous to pumpkin513, BabyTigerVampire, umbrellaleg, grangergirl22, saihunter, veraklon: Denial is basically a rewrite of Season 1 in the faberry styling, because I really hated how dependant Rachel became/the Finn-Rachel pairing… it was so symbotic… This is more along an original realm, so I feel like I can take a little more creative reign. I'm glad you enjoy the story :) Thank you for your kind words., Music and Reading Lover, Cate53, Gleeeek, Musicmakesmehigh: Well hey! I recognize you from Denial! Your review just made my day! Thank you so much. And you know what? Your REVIEWS are a kind of awesomeness :), Buffy-Obssessed, freakanatomy, sapphiclove21, t1Mb3r, Rollergirl76, d80p: Oh, don't worry, this will have a happy ending. It'll be angsty in some parts, because Rachel's going to be a bit conflicted, what with wrestling with all her family problems. I can do angsty one-shots, but never angsty multi-chapters, it sits wrong with me. I love my characters too much to have their lives end in misery., always-smile15, aquarius127, tori348, k-la115, Princesakarlita411: No, I don't plan on writing Quinn's POV. I'm not a huge fan of switching between characters unless I have it planned out all nice and neat (because then I get messy)., Frilonsky, slamdimekicks, sillysah, JustNerd, , smartblonde317: Finn annoys me too DX He does the most stupid things and Rachel lets him get away with it time after time…, erw-fan, LiveLearnLove, cleebritygrl09, Laila The Lost Princess, angelv7: Here's the chapter :), kpsiawesome, breaking on the inside, MysNiWol, clenche, NoMercyNoMore, Sannie, , Alex Belle, spizle, mcooper11, makurutenoh, Saurus: I'm a Spanish student… my teacher is a hardcore grammar demon/Spain Spanish perfectionist… though I still get a lot wrong DX, and XxkoeyxX: Thank you for your enthusiasm :) I'm happy to write as long as people tell me (hence the review request) that they would like me to write more. Enjoy the chapter, and if you'd like the next chapter, leave a review, so I know that there are some people who'd like to read more *Smile*

Chapter 3: Stand Up To Them

"Is there anything you'd like to share with the class, Rachel?"

The sound of Mr. Schuester's voice against her ears broke Rachel from the searing connection between hazel and dark brown, eyes shifting to look at the tentatively smiling teacher standing next to her.

Shaking her head slightly, the singer cleared her throat, plastering her 'show face' (a skill she'd easily picked up after years in choir and improved through frequent use on her father) on, a radiant smile splitting across the corners of her full lips.

"I'm pretty new to Ohio," Rachel lifted a hand to draw back the fringe of her bangs, eyes flickering around the room shyly (yet another trick she'd picked up over the years), biting her lip in seeming hesitance. "So I hope everyone will take it easy on me… I'm still adjusting."

It was an easy task for Rachel to appear undaunted. She practiced the art of nonchalance, of wearing masks for five long years in frequency about her father and classmates. Even in Maria's presence, Rachel wore masks to keep a clean fence between her friend and the agonizing memories of her Fathers' divorce.

That cheerleader, though. She'd managed, somehow, to unhinge Rachel's barriers and leave her wide open. One look into those golden eyes, and Rachel was that vulnerable little twelve year-old, cowering under the sheets and unable to cope.

And if there was something that Rachel learned she hated more than anything else in the world, it was being vulnerable. Vulnerability allowed people to tear you asunder. Allowed them to twist you around their crooked fingers and smash you into little pieces.

Little Rachel that lived in Lima five years ago might have been naïve enough to allow someone in. And little Rachel had been hurt so many times because of that. She cowered and cried when her so called 'friends' arranged pranks or made fun of her fathers. When they whispered unkind things into her ears after they backed her against the wall during recess and shoved her around.

Time after time, she listened to Leroy's Catholic musings (despite the fact that she was a practicing Jew) of 'forgive them, Father, they know not what they do' and turned the other cheek to their mysteriously placed anger. Time and time again, Rachel looked at herself in the mirror in the school bathroom, dirty with mud from the harsh punishments of her aggressors, and she forgave them because she thought them 'misunderstood.'

But after the divorce, when she saw the darkness in mankind through the cruel names flung through a broken house from the people she once thought the most loving men in the world, she stopped believing in the goodness of man.

Man could not be trusted to be kind to one another. Man fought and bickered. Man hurt people who were different or exceptional because man envied others. Man hurt each other when they hurt. Man would attack and rip out someone's jugular if he bore his throat to his brethren.

Rachel could still feel those eyes on her. Still feel amber orbs studying her openly, and she wanted to scream at the girl from across the classroom. 'What do you want? Why are you staring at me? Stop looking at me!'

But she couldn't and wouldn't because that would entail being vulnerable. Because Rachel didn't want that disgusting, haunting sense of nostalgia to rear its smirking head again.

'Screw the cheerleader,' Rachel thought numbly, still smiling shyly at all the people in the room, purposely avoiding the stranger's gaze. 'You have more important things than a fucking cheerleader to worry about, Rachel.'

"Rachel, why don't you take a seat next to Tina?" A gentle hand went to her shoulder as Mr. Schue pointed at an empty seat beside a darkly clothed Asian girl in the middle row of the classroom. "And we'll start the lesson."

Rachel took care to look down at the floor, pretending to mind her steps over the numerous bags her classmates left scattered across the room (the cheerleader was still staring at her) as she made her way to her seat.

The petite girl slid her messenger bag over her shoulder, draping it across the back of her chair, flipping the lid open and pulling out a black five-subject notebook and dark blue pen.

Looking up at the board, Rachel scrawled the title of the Powerpoint Presentation that Mr. Schue had put up on the projector (conjugating the present subjunctive) across the top of the empty page. She settled herself against the desk, dropping onto her elbows, eyes locked on Mr. Schue as he began to lecture.

During the second or third slide, Rachel felt something poke her side tentatively, making her flinch and nearly throw her pen at the back of Finn's head. She ignored it. There'd been some kids at her other school who'd always felt it necessary to ruffle Rachel's feathers with some sort of annoying little running gag throughout the class. Spitballs, poking, kicking, and shoving (disguised as resting their feet on the back of Rachel's chair and yawning) were all things the singer dealt with over the years.

If the kids at McKinley wanted to be as immature as the idiots at her old school, fine. Rachel could deal with all situations. Spitball? You got a wad of notebook paper smacked into your face (with a healthy amount of saliva courtesy of Maria's generous donation). Poking? Maria would deal with you by tripping you in the hall later. Kicking? Rachel dealt by catching the offender's foot between her ankles and stomping on them for healthy measure (God Bless the person who invented mixed martial arts). Shoving was probably easiest, as people often underestimated Rachel's strength. Just dig your heels into the ground when they shove, and then who gets the last laugh when the idiot uses too much strength and ends up falling on his ass?

But after the second jab to her side, Rachel's eyes slid in the direction of her offender, narrowing as she prepared to verbally dismantle them.

Only to find that the girl next to her, Tina, was smiling at her, pointing down at her own notebook.

'Don't bother taking too many notes… we've been going over the subjunctive for a while. In fact, I have it on good authority that that's all we'll be doing all year.' The handwriting, neat and ornate in its little twists and loops, shone bright red on the page (you could hear Señor Cortez screaming from across the country right now).

Rachel furrowed her eyebrow. …Really? It was that slow here? 'There aren't any weekly standards laid out?' she wrote, adding a confused facial expression for good measure.

'No one studies, so Mr. Schue doesn't make teaching anything else a point,' Tina shrugged her shoulders, 'I guess you could say everyone's a bit slow in the foreign language department.'

'Oh.' What a strange concept. Back home, the importance of languages had been stressed since freshman year. Principal Powers had told everyone at each start of the year assembly that in order to be successful, one needed to know how to communicate with others, starting with the most widely spoken languages.

Accordingly, the school stocked native speakers or well-respected foreign language professors to teach. Señor Cortez, a proud Spaniard, all four years of Spanish with such passion and reverence, it was as though he considered the language holy.

He hadn't taught them commonly accented Spanish, as Rachel had learned in eighth grade, but re-taught the class to use the hissed sounding syllables of Castilian Spanish. He spoke in nothing but Spanish, even if he caught his students outside class. Instead, he had them scrambling for translators and dictionaries until they grew used to his fast-paced, take no prisoners style of speaking and learning.

Rachel looked forward to Spanish III, despite the fact she'd already learned all fourteen tenses that Señor Cortez drilled into them from day one. But apparently, there wasn't much use for her skills.

Mr. Schue was even lecturing in English, something that she hadn't seen done since Middle School.

'I'm guessing your old school was pretty ahead of it?' Tina looked at the singer sympathetically.

'Yeah…'

'Most of the classes at McKinley, excluding the hard sciences and math, are pretty much 'dgaf.' Tina's eyes flickered to the front of the room, watching Schue gesticulate. 'Mr. Schue's more of a 'just fill in the salary' teacher in Spanish. He's a lot more into Glee Club.'

'Finn told me about that,' Rachel recalled, interest once more building in her veins. 'New Directions, right? Are they good?'

'Yes, we are good,' Rachel chuckled a little as the girl triple underlined the word. 'We made it as far as Regionals last year. But we didn't place :( I'm convinced it was a conspiracy.'

'A conspiracy?' Rachel asked, tapping her pen, observing the seriousness on the girl's face. 'Are you serious?'

'You really must be new if you don't know about it,' dark eyes met as the girl wrote. 'If you're going to understand anything here, then you have to know how things work at McKinley.'

"Split up and do exercises 10-15 in your textbook," Mr. Schue's voice broke the tapping of pencils, along with the loud snore of one of the Jocks in the room. "You can talk, butpleasework."

Pulling the Spanish book from her bag, Rachel set it on the table, turning to face Tina. "How things work around here?"

"There's kind of a system around here," the Goth said, adjusting the ring of fishnet around her finger. "You probably noticed it this morning when you walked to class, right?"

Rachel nodded. The Jocks throwing the people in the dumpster. The nerds and the freshmen getting slushies thrown into their faces. She'd never seen that at any of her other schools, not even while she lived in Lima five years ago.

"Our cheerleading team is nationally ranked," the girl explained, flipping her textbook open to the assigned pages. "They have bragging rights at the school, which also means theyhave all the power."

"Our football team sucks, but most of them are dating girls on the Cheerios—Hey, I didn't name the team—so the jocks are on top. Which sucks, because none of them are fond of losers. To the Jocks and Cheerios, there's nothing better in their day than making our day miserable."

"So all the canning and slushy throwing," Rachel bit on the tip of her pen, "is an everyday thing?"

Tina nodded with a frown. "It's a way to put us in our place. You're a loser? You get baptized with a slushy."

"What does this have to do with the Glee Club, though?" Rachel's face screwed in confusion. Because really, so far she could see no connection between McKinley's elite squad of jerks and prisses and Show Choir. If anything, they couldn't be on more opposite ends of the spectrum.

Singing was never at the top of the food chain. Whether you won awards or not, the jocks or the drama geeks never saw you as equal to them. Rachel wasn't naïve enough to ever think that choir could be considered cool.

Because if you were a guy and you joined choir, you were gay. If you were a girl, you were a musical nut that probably needed to be arrested and carried off to the local asylum. It didn't matter if none of the above was true, those were the common assumptions engrained into the student body's mind.

And even if most of the choir kids were cool, Rachel still admitted that many of them were either too weird or nerdy to fit into the 'normal' crowd. That was why they joined either Choir or Band (the latter of which even Rachel shuddered to join… because band geek stereotypes about being sexually active or perverted? True, as Rachel discovered in her relatively short run as Jazz singer), to fit in somewhere.

After all, that's what all teenagers wanted. To belong.

"Mr. Schue took over for Mr. Ryerson after he got fired," Tina continued, "and started to take us to compete. Figgins cut the cheerios budget so we could travel, and it pissed the Cheerios coach off."

"…Soo, that was the end of it, right?" Rachel was still so confused. This was beginning to sound so much like a soap opera. What the hell was wrong with this school? It seemed like everything that Rachel thought could never happen, things that were TV worthy, happened at McKinley High.

"Coach Sylvester tried to break us up all year," Tina grimaced. "She got three Cheerios into the club to mess up our chemistry, stole our set list, and tried to set us against each other. Then she was one of the judges at Regionals-."

"She was a judge?" Rachel's eyes widened. "Why would they let someone so biased judge the competition?"

"I don't know. Your guess is as good as mine," the Asian shook her head, setting her pen down on her notebook. "We're just lucky that we got another year… and it's our last chance, too."

"Your last chance?" Confusion seemed the common thread in this conversation. How could there be so much drama in one place? Everything seemed to be so randomly placed. So strange.

"If we don't place at Regionals," the black haired girl bit her lip, eyes filling with sorrow, "then Glee club is over. The money for the club goes back into Coach Sylvester's pockets."

"You have to be fucking kidding me," the guitarist whispered. The bell rang somewhere off in the distance, the room shuffling around the two girls. "Everything at this school seems to go to Hell."

"Hey, what's your next class?" Tina asked as the two of them packed up, shoving her notes into her bag and shifting her backpack onto her shoulders.

"Umm…" the brunette slipped a hand into her pocket, pulling out the mutilated list she'd folded into messy squares that morning. "English Lang with Ms. Glenn?"

"I have class next door, wanna walk together?" the girl asked as Rachel tightened the strap of her messenger bag against her shoulder, pulling the collar of her leather jacket up.

"Yeah, that'd be great," Rachel smiled brightly. Her eyes darted about the classroom. The strange piercing sensation she'd felt probing her during the whole of her morning was gone. The cheerleader, with her knowing emerald eyes that provoked such unwanted emotions, was nowhere to be seen.

The tension in Rachel's shoulders fell as she closed her eyes, heaving in a heavy sigh of relief. She felt comfortable in herself again. Like she had this morning when she first left her car. It was a welcome change.

The two girls walked out of Mr. Schue's class side by side, engaged in conversation over some odd end topic or the other. They smiled and laughed, and for the first time, Rachel felt at home in Lima, Ohio. There was someone on this side she could talk to. She wasn't alone anymore.

But as they rounded the corner to the row of doors near their classroom, Rachel, preoccupied with her conversation, failed to notice the obstacle in front of her.

The singer walked straight into solid wall, stumbling backwards. As Rachel caught her balance, though, a rough shove sent her sprawling to the tiled floor, Tina following shortly thereafter.

Her side smarting, Rachel let out a pained groan, grasping at the throbbing region and shakily pulling herself up onto her knee. Her muscles spasmed in protest, making her buckle a bit beneath her weight. Brown eyes lifted and narrowed as Rachel looked at the offenders.

Two boys, at least six feet in height, stood above the girls, nasty smirks curled across their features. Their broad, muscular shoulders were covered in the bleeding red of letterman jackets, riddled with multiple game patches and various accolades.

"Well well, what do we have here?" the taller of the two, his face riddled with acne, inquired in a slow drawl. "A Glee Club queer… and… oh, I haven't seen this one before, have you, Peterson?"

"Nah Langley," the other grinned. "Must be a new transvestite. Because the Asian already knows to keep out of the way."

Rachel got to her feet slowly, clenching the material of her jacket between shaking fingers as the other hand melded into a fist. Blood pounded in her veins, and she tried desperately to reign in her anger. She ignored their words as she parted her lips to speak. "I'm sorry we bumped into you. Now excuse me, we have to get to class."

The boys stepped closer to the advancing singer, giving her another rough shove, sending her into the nearby lockers as Tina pulled herself to her feet, almond eyes flashing with fright.

"I don't think you'll be going to class yet, new kid," Peterson's chapped lips parted to reveal horribly yellow teeth. "I think you should learn how things work in the halls here, and we'd be more than happy to educate you."

"Peterson, Langley, she's new," Tina stepped in front of Rachel, looking the jocks in the eyes. Rachel could see the steady shake of the girl's form as she regarded the attackers meekly. "Cut her some slack… she doesn't know how things work around here."

"That's why we said we'd educate her, queer," Langley spat. Dim eyes lit up as the bully's gaze fell upon a Big Quench cup in the hands of a fellow jock. "But losers always learn best through observation… so why don't we make an example out of you."

A giant hand fell upon the cup, wrenching it from the footballer's hands as he let out a huge swear. Before Rachel could see it happen, there was a splash of liquid hitting the floor echoing throughout the silent corridor (everyone had long since stopped and started staring), and a splatter of green across the white toe of her black Converse.

Tina's lithe form shivered violently as chips of sugar drenched ice fell thickly from her clothing and hair. Slushy drenched hands came up to wipe at her eyes as the girl gasped and shook with cold.

Around the girl's trembling frame, the hall burst out in laughter, pointing and jeering at Tina. At the head of this twisted celebration, Peterson and Langley roared the most, throwing back their ugly heads and practically dying with laughter.

Tears fell freely from almond shaped eyes, making salty tracks in the green fluid.

Tina was crying. Tina was crying because of those stupid assholes.

Rachel snapped.

Suddenly, the pain in her side was nothing. Her blood ran thick, hot streams through her veins. Brown eyes darkened to a threatening wine red shade, shining with the promise of violence.

Beautiful features transformed into a mask of livid rage, and the once cohesive thoughts so carefully arranged in Rachel's mind fell into utter chaos.

The only thing that echoed in Rachel's ears were the terrible sobs of her new friend, the cruel laughter of that hateful crowd, and the harsh bray of the two idiots in front of her. Her muscles screamed 'make them pay! Ruin them, run them into the ground! They hurt your friend!' Her fingers itched with the desire to wring out their necks like she knew she could.

But she couldn't break the promise she made to her martial arts teacher. She couldn't use her skills to rearrange their faces and send them crying pitifully in their damned locker room because Rachel Berry never broke a promise.

So the brunette settled for the next best thing, reaching an epiphany as her eyes fell upon a sizeable Big Quench clenched in the fist of a nerdy, orange 'fro wearing boy staring at her with lecherous, beady little eyes.

The drink was in Rachel's hand before she could remember ripping it from the nerd's grasp, and soon she was in front of those two idiots, snarling as she threw her hand back, launching the contents of the cup into their stupid faces.

The jocks let out a pained wail as the drink hit them, shivering piteously as Rachel threw the empty cup down to the ground, a murderous look splayed across her features.

"Doesn't feel so good when you're on the receiving end, huh, you assholes?" The guitarist's voice had deepened to a furious, low whisper. "What kind of pussies are you, picking on a couple of girls?"

Langley's face turned a bright hue of dark red beneath the sugary purple veil of the slushy. "You better shut up before I make you, you queer!"

"You don't have the balls to make me shut up, son of a bitch!" Rachel hissed, stepping forward. The girl opened her arms tauntingly. "You wanna be a 'big man?' Fine, come on, hit me! I'm waiting! Show everyone that you're missing a pair!"

"Shut up!" the jock roared. Within seconds, Rachel was on the floor, grasping at her cheek while several people tried to hold Langley back, right hand covered in a light spray of dark red blood.

The singer removed her fingers from her face, a stream of blood trickling from the corner of her mouth. A sick smirk curled at the edge of her cut lip as she looked up tauntingly at the bully. "That the best you can do? My five year old cousin could pack a better punch than you, muscle-head."

"You bitch!" Langley screamed, attempting to throw off the ring of his teammates who tried desperately to subdue him.

"What the hell is going on here?"

Rachel's eyes flickered over to the edge of the clearing, where the crowd parted down the center.

The uncomfortable, gnawing sensation began to plague at Rachel afresh as the newcomers drew close to the edge of the circle. She felt herself grasp at her bruised side once again, trying to find some way to ground the mess of sorrow replacing rage in her veins.

The blonde cheerleader stood before her, hazel eyes flashing dangerously as the angry jock calmed slightly, face still red, shoulders heaving. At her right and left, a brunette and a tall blonde stood respectively, clad in the same crimson red as their companion.

"These losers," Peterson grunted, stepping forward from his place in the crowd and nodding toward Rachel and Tina, "were getting cheeky, so Lang 'n I thought we'd teach them a little lesson."

"That little troll right there slushied us!" Langley's black eyes flashed dangerously at the little singer. "And then she got cheeky!"

"Did she now?" the average-sized, Latin looking brunette from the hazel-eyed cheerleader's right asked, quirking a finely groomed eyebrow, gaze flickering toward Rachel with a shred of surprise glinting.

"And you thought that it was alright to backhand a woman," the middle Cheerio interjected, narrowing her eyes, "because she gave you a little sass?"

"She questioned my manhood!" Langley shrunk under the girl's stern gaze, sputtering weakly.

"Well, looks like she had a point then, didn't she?" the Cheerleader cut out harshly. She stepped toward the restrained jock, hands on her hips, glaring evenly into frightened eyes.

"Langley, you broke two rules," the girl's tone was deceptively sweet, sending terrifying shivers down Rachel's spine as she observed an equally gentle smile fall across the girl's rosy lips. "You slushied a Glee Clubber… and you hit a girl… So you're going to listen well to what I'm going to say, alright?"

"You're never going to lay a finger on the Glee Club again," the girl spoke softly as she pushed a finger into the boy's broad chest, "just like I ordered at the start of the school year. And you're not going to touch the new girl, either. Understand?"

The boy was silent for a moment, studying the cheerleader as a faint, mocking smile dropped over his lips. "…You've gotten soft, Quinn. Did carrying a litter make you a loser?"

At the boy's words, 'Quinn's' jaw hardened, the serene curl of her lips falling into a thin line as she grabbed the lapel of the Jock's jacket, pulling him forward.

"You're lucky I don't like to get my hands dirty, bastard," she murmured, drawing him up to meet her eyes. "Now you're going to do what I say, or I'm going to have Puckerman and Zizes on your ass."

"Leave the new kid alone and don't touch the Glee club," hazel eyes swirled a violent green as a terrifying smirk made its way across the Cheerleader's lips. "Break the rules, you get castrated… and I'll send Santana to do the job, and you know how much she loves a fight."

The Latina chuckled darkly, tapping a white tennis shoe against the floor as she observed the scene with amusement.

"So," another rough tug of the boy's collar, "do we understand each other?"

A brief nod, and the jock was sent scrambling down the hall with his companion as the crowd observed in stunned silence.

"Get a move on, pendejos!" 'Santana' shouted, turning a fiery glare at every onlooker. "This ain't a fucking show! Get to your goddamn classes!" The crowd scattered at the sight, leaving it vacant, with the exception of Rachel, a slushy drenched (yet very astonished) Tina, and the three cheerleaders.

Rachel was in somewhat of a shock. She thought that the cheerleaders were supposed to be on the 'elite' side, not the losing, slushy drenched end of the spectrum. When they showed up, Rachel prepared for the worst, physically and mentally. Her body was running on adrenaline, and she wouldn't fail to defend herself, screw the vow.

Instead, this confusing girl helped her, a total stranger. Someone whose fate was to undoubtedly end up on the loser chain in the school.

Rachel was used to the elite playing on the winning team. The bad guy was never supposed to switch sides in High School. It was an impossibility.

Yet it seemed that McKinley High school defied the impossible with each waking moment Rachel spent there. The popular kids played for the losers in this strange, alternate dimension. A confusing concept to grasp.

Rachel hissed as she attempted to pull herself up from the ground, wincing in pain as her side and head throbbed in protest. She slumped onto a shaky arm, chest heaving with exertion.

"Hey, don't try to get up," a warm limb draped itself about the singer's shivering shoulders, steadying her. "You took some pretty good knocks back there."

Rachel looked up to find warm, green tinted ambers gazing gently at her as the blonde pushed her over to lean against the locker.

"Is there anywhere that really hurts?" the girl's voice was soft against Rachel's ear as fingers gently turn her head, running across the bruises on her cheek.

"No, no, I'm fine," Rachel muttered, wiping the blood from her chin. "Thank you…?"

"Quinn," the cheerleader supplied with a soft smile. "Quinn Fabray. The bitchy looking one's Santana."

"Shut your trap, Fabray," the Latina muttered, walking off down the hall after Quinn gestured off in some random direction, muttering something along the lines 'how ungrateful' and 'what a fucking bitch.'

"Rachel Berry. I would say 'pleased to make your acquaintance' but I feel so fucking craptastic, a better intro will have to wait for another day," Rachel tried to offer a slight quirk of her lips, wincing as a stream of blood oozed from the wound.

"I can only imagine," Quinn chuckled, dabbling at the flow.

Rachel's eyes darted about the hall. "…Umm, we're two people short. Where's Tina and err…?"

"Brittany," the blonde answered, "probably took Tina to get cleaned up. Slushies aren't exactly the most pleasant thing to wear in the world."

"You speak as though you've had experience."

Quinn smiled bitterly. "Unfortunately, I have."

"If it's not too much to ask, could you look in the second pouch of my bag? I have a pack of Kleenex in there," the brunette questioned, trying not to move her lip much.

Long, slender fingers opened the clasp on the bag, digging through the numerous contents before resurfacing with a cheap packet of tissue. Gathering up a sizeable wad, Quinn pressed the paper to the bloody cut without shrinking back in fear.

This cheerleader was… different, Rachel realized as the girl tended diligently to her lip, pressing a new, clean side of paper to the gash each time crimson fluid shone through.

In San Diego, the cheerleaders arrogant, vain creatures. Thought that they were remarkable. Deemed themselves perfect physically and mentally. The perfect superficial model for any of the self-loathing teenaged girls in the school who didn't look beautiful in any sort of conventional manner.

Some of them were less attractive than most of the student body's girls, but they still took it upon themselves to stress their 'perfect' faces that had gotten them 'perfect' boyfriends in ASB, drama, or the sucky football team.

Quinn Fabray was undoubtedly one of the most gorgeous girls Rachel had ever seen. Any sane person, male or female, could see that.

Her face was well-sculpted, delicate and smooth with fair, smooth skin untainted by any sort of blemish or freckle. The Cheerio wasn't as thin as a stick, though she was thin, and toned right down to every lean muscle in her arm, with curves that were pleasing to the eye. Golden locks, though restrained by a tight ponytail, looked soft to touch. Curling, blonde lashes framed those haunting golden eyes that made Rachel want to back away several paces from the girl.

But Quinn was not unkind. The curve of her rosy lips seemed genuine, along with the polite, almost fascinated manner in which she regarded Rachel.

Years of reading lies on the faces of others had taught Rachel to see through any sort of veil of deception. Quinn had no masks to hide behind. There was not a trace of a lie in her bearing. Only concern, shadowed by undertones of sadness.

Which vexed Rachel even more than any sort of lie. Why would a perfect stranger be concerned about her? She'd met Quinn less than ten minutes ago, yet the concern of a lifelong friend was wrought across her features.

It was puzzling, yet Rachel knew that if she asked, she would have no answer. There was a barrier over Quinn's emotions. Rachel could see it in the blonde's somewhat stiff bearing earlier during her confrontation with the boneheaded jock.

Even now, she could see Quinn was holding back. Her gestures weren't entirely fluid. There lay a hint of hesitance in every little action, and a certain kind of fear that flashed ever so briefly in the blonde's eyes whenever Rachel looked up at her.

But still, Rachel could do nothing, and she was grateful to the Cheerleader for her help. She would let the matter rest. It wasn't her place to interrogate strangers. By Gods, it was only her first day.

"I'm feeling better," Rachel drew a deep breath between her teeth. "We should both get to class. There's no telling what we're missing."

"A kid that's actually eager to be in class?" the blonde smirked teasingly. "You're such a precious little nerd, Berry."

"Berry?" Rachel's brow furrowed. "Don't pull a PE teacher, Quinn. You're making my PTSD act up. My first name's Rachel."

"That's nice… Berry," Quinn helped the girl to her feet before placing her hands on her hips. "Don't go getting hit any time within the next five periods. I'm not going to be there to save you every time."

"I don't need any saving, Fabray," Rachel tightened the strap of her messenger bag, eyes hardening. "I can handle myself fine… But thank you for today."

Hazel eyes softened, smirk losing intensity, fading to a faint smile. "You're welcome."

With that last soft inflection, Quinn Fabray turned on her heel, disappearing around the corner, leaving Rachel to stare after her, lost in thought.

The singer sighed, shaking her head. One period down, and already so much crap had happened! William McKinley High is a cesspool of drama and angst that she really didn't need added to family stress right now.

Rachel turned on her heel, groaning.

Because the girl knew that she really didn't have a choice in the matter. Things were going to happen in Lima Ohio.

And Rachel could do nothing to stop it.