By the time winter break rolls around, a dozen college applications and nearly fifty scholarship essays are sent off, and the recordings still sit at her house, untouched and unheard. Quinn splits her time between her mother and Beth on Christmas day, just as she had on Thanksgiving, and lets Shelby snap as many pictures as she wants of the four of them surrounded by Christmas decorations and Puck's menorah.

Rachel sends her a text on Christmas morning (Merry Christmas, Quinn! I hope you've had a good holiday this year) and she responds without thinking about it, for once (Beth threw up on Puck's yarmulke. His face was the most hilarious Christmas gift ever I've ever gotten). The fact that the only other people to contact her are Santana and Brittany (who she can't help but count as a single entity at this point, since they somehow seem to spend all of their time hooking up in places that Quinn is convinced are picked solely so she'll walk in on them and blush furiously) and Puck and Sam hurts less than she thought it would.

When she finds herself once again ferrying her friends home after a New Year's party, after she slams to a stop outside of Brittany's house and yells at her friends to stop having sex in the back seat, she calls Rachel because the other girl hadn't come to the party due to a cold. They split another bottle of liquor—rum, this time, mixed carelessly with diet Coke—and Quinn passes out curled up on the couch to the sound of Rachel singing drunkenly.

The next afternoon, when she can't move without feeling like she's going to throw up, Quinn stares at the ceiling of Rachel's living room and considers New Year's resolutions, her fingers unconsciously tapping against the couch to the rhythm of Rachel's quiet snores. She doesn't move from the couch until Rachel finally wakes up to groan about her own hangover, and even then, she just smirks contentedly and keeps her gaze trained at the ceiling.

Two months into the spring semester, college application responses start fluttering in. Finn somehow makes it into Ohio State—Quinn is convinced that Rachel wrote his essays, but she finds herself with nothing but a good-natured eyeroll and a quiet nod of congratulations sent his way. Mike makes it into Harvard and Stanford and looks as excited about it as he would if his parents had just told him he was going to be shipped to Antarctica for college instead. Artie gets into some tech school no one has ever heard of, but he's ecstatic, so they all offer congratulations.

Santana gets into Brown and Columbia, to the surprise of everyone but Brittany and Quinn, and smirks arrogantly when people gape at her announcement and then proceeds to hit second base with Brittany in about four seconds before Mr. Scheu finds the presence of mind to clear his throat. Brittany, to the surprise of no one, got into approximately nineteen different conservatories, and has no idea which one she wants to go to. Rachel, of course, gets into NYU and four other schools in the New York area, and she squeals with delight when Kurt announces his acceptance into some fashionista school in the city as well. Within an hour, they're looking at apartment rates on Craigslist.

And Quinn, forever in the background but less hurt by it now than she used to be, tells herself that it doesn't bother her that only half of the glee club thought to ask about where she'd gotten into. Her mother had simply fretted tiredly at the cost of an Ivy League education; Santana had rolled her eyes and said that of course Quinn would go to Brown or Columbia and they would rule the school together, while Brittany sat wrapped around her from behind and smiled serenely at Quinn; Puck just nodded dumbly and went back to playing with Beth. Rachel, in that strangely quiet manner that she only converted to around Quinn, simply offered her congratulations and an awkward hug and her world renowned planning capabilities.

The only person whose opinion matters, though, is Shelby's, and that's how Quinn finds herself sitting in a coffee shop, staring anxiously across a booth to where Shelby and Beth sit. Six acceptance letters lay spread out across the table in front of Shelby, each meticulously stapled to the generous scholarship offers that came with them.

"These are fantastic schools, Quinn," Shelby says softly. Quinn doesn't know if she should be offended at the surprise etched across the older woman's face, but she can't help the tiniest rise of indignation. "What are you going to do?"

"I…don't know," Quinn says. "I wanted to talk to you about it. To see what your plans are."

"Quinn, this is your future, your education," Shelby says. She's absently rocking Beth's carseat beside her, eyes locked onto Quinn's. "And you have six options here that anyone would kill for."

"I also have a daughter who'll be two when I'm a freshman," Quinn says blandly. "And she goes where you go, so I need to know where you two are going to be."

"I—Quinn, you need to make this choice on your own," Shelby says. Her brow is furrowing, so horribly similar to Rachel's, and Quinn knows that it means that Shelby is about to pull the adult card on her.

"I'm pretty sure that if I want to be a part of her life, I need to stop making choices on my own," Quinn throws back. "You know that I get it, right? You are her mother. I'll never be the right person to be her mom, but I still want to be a part of her life, okay? I don't want college to get in the way of that, so I need to know if you're planning on staying in Lima."

"And if I am? What, are you just going to blow off all of these schools? None of these are even remotely close to Ohio—you're looking at California and the northeast, Quinn. No matter which one you choose, you won't be able to just pop in the car and drive down for the weekend."

"I know," Quinn says quietly. She extracts a third set of papers from her bag and hands them to Shelby: her six Plan B school acceptances; though, somewhere along the way, B stopped standing for backup and started standing for Beth.

She watches, forcing herself to sip patiently on her coffee, as Shelby's eyebrows climb higher and higher.

"You can't be serious," she finally says, tossing the letters down disdainfully. "Ohio State? Case Western? Quinn, you got into Princeton. And Stanford, and Columbia and Brown and Georgetown and Berkeley. You can't seriously be thinking that Ohio State is even an option."

"It is if Beth is in Ohio," Quinn says, her voice mild, if tense.

"This is insane," Shelby says. She shakes her head, slumping back against the booth. "People would kill for the chance you have, Quinn. You're too smart to go to any school Ohio has to offer."

"There's another option."

Rachel's voice sounds from behind Quinn, making both Quinn and Shelby jump.

"Jesus, Rachel," Quinn snaps. Lukewarm coffee decorates the tabletop from where she spilled it. "What are you doing here?"

"I followed you," Rachel says unashamedly. "Scoot over." She elbows Quinn comfortably until the other girl moves to her right with a glare. Shelby stares across the table at them, perplexed and uncertain.

"Hi," she says softly, her eyes locked on Rachel. Quinn shifts, suddenly even more uncomfortable than she already had been arguing with Shelby, because for all of the time she's spent with Rachel this year, and all of the time with Shelby, she's never been stuck between the two of them, and the tension almost hurts and is everything she doesn't want for Beth fifteen years from now.

"Hello," Rachel says firmly. "Now, the problem here is that Quinn got into several top-tier colleges but doesn't want to consider one that distances her from Beth, right?" She pauses for the barest of moments, just enough for Shelby to nod jerkily, before continuing.

"There is an option that would work for all parties involved, I think," she says. "I'm going to NYU. Quinn got into Columbia. Quinn would like to remain a part of Beth's life. And I, as your daughter, Shelby, would like for you to actually be a part of my life."

Quinn can't avoid the visible guilt flashing through Shelby's eyes as she winces at Rachel's calm words.

"You owe me," Rachel says, her voice quiet. "You came back into my life, and you dangled the one dream I'd all but given up on in front of me, and then you ruined it all. Now you have a baby, just like you always wanted, and you have an opportunity to fix what you broke with us. I'll be in New York, and so can all three of you. I know you love the city, I know you can have a fruitful career there—far more so than here. There's nothing to stop all of us from moving up there and getting away from this horrible little town and starting over."

"But what about Puck?" Quinn mumbles apprehensively. She refuses to let herself hope at Rachel's words, because if there's one thing Shelby's proved perfectly consistent at, besides caring for Beth, it's hurting Rachel even more than Quinn ever has.

"I already spoke to Noah," Rachel says. Her eyes haven't left Shelby's face, and Quinn is endlessly grateful that she's not the one on the receiving end of that glare. "He's willing to make a move to New York work. He's worked construction in the past, and we all know that what he may lack in academic capabilities, he more than makes up for in street smarts.

"I also spoke to Kurt," she adds softly, finally turning to face Quinn. "He's willing to consider the four of us splitting a large apartment or something, assuming we can find a location relatively central to all of our schools. Or six, if Santana decides on Columbia and can find a way to reign in her homicidal tendencies and incessant need to have sex with Brittany on every solid surface of the apartment."

The part of Quinn that normally would have been angry at how Rachel had been going around behind her back, talking about her with all of their friends, is too focused on the sleeping baby across the table from her to care. She stares at Beth, hands itching to hold her, and locks her jaw as she waits for Shelby to speak.

Long, arduous seconds pass in silence, in which Rachel stares at Shelby, Shelby stares at Quinn, and Quinn stares at Beth and unconsciously clenches at Rachel's knee underneath the table. Finally, though, Shelby takes a deep breath and picks up the stack of Plan B acceptances. With a slow exhalation, she folds them in half once and sets them to the side.

"Columbia, then?" she says. Her voice finally draws Quinn's eyes away from Beth, and Quinn's entire body slackens with relief at the words, leaving her slumping half against the seat back and half against Rachel.

"Columbia," Quinn says, her voice light with laughter and sounding nothing like it ever had before. For the first time, she doesn't flinch and it doesn't feel awkward when Rachel swiftly shifts in the bench and hugs her tightly.

Inevitably, Rachel and Finn break up. It happens loudly and publicly, in front of the entire glee club on afternoon in the middle of a dance rehearsal for Regionals, and starts with Finn in a bad mood about Artie taking the male lead on the ballad and ends with Rachel practically shrieking something mostly incomprehensible that sounds like "Forget the summer, we're done now!" before storming out.

They all stand in stunned silence, staring at Finn or the door Rachel had just left through, until Santana snorts behind her hand and comments on the dumbfounded look on Finn's face. The whole group dissolves into uncertain murmurs as Mr. Scheu reprimands Santana—too harshly, really, but even Finn knew by then that he was Mr. Scheu's favorite—and Quinn, silent, debates for a full thirty seconds before grabbing her bag and Rachel's and jogging out of the room.

The other girl is sitting in the choir room, back stiff from her perch on the piano bench and eyes glued to the hands in her lap. Quinn lets the heels of her shoes scuff against the floor, loud enough so she won't surprise Rachel, before settling down in a chair behind Rachel.

"I brought your stuff," she says eventually. "In case you wanted to go home early."

"Thanks," Rachel mumbles, her voice barely audible, but she doesn't follow it up with anything else. Quinn shifts uncomfortably, even now unsure of how to deal with a quiet Rachel Berry—though, to be fair, it feels entirely different to be the one who isn't hurting for once. She crosses her legs and her arms, and elects to stay silent. It's worked for them so far.

She doesn't have Rachel's patience, though, which is both ironic and laughable, and she eventually breaks the silence. "Are you okay?"

"I don't know," Rachel says. "Is that dumb? We knew we were going to break up. It shouldn't bother me."

"Just because you know it's going to happen doesn't make it hurt any less," Quinn says drily. "I knew my dad was going to throw me out, but that didn't make it suck any less."

"That's a horribly morbid comparison that's doing nothing to make me feel better," Rachel says. She turns to face Quinn, though, and the tiniest hint of a smile is pulling at the corners of her mouth.

Quinn shrugs. She doesn't know where their conversations are supposed to go anymore, not without Rachel leading the way.

"If you want, I bet Santana would be okay with egging his car or something," she offers. "Or you could give St. James a call and see if he'd be okay with playing a ninja and slashing Finn's tires in retaliation or something."

Rachel laughs quietly, shaking her head. "I don't want to hurt him," she says, but she's smiling, and the words don't sound certain.

Quinn shrugs again, and smirks. "It's not about hurting him, it's about feeling better."

Rachel chuckles and shakes her head again. "How did we end up like this?" she asks. "With you sitting her taking care of me after I broke up with Finn. How did this happen?"

Quinn shifts uncomfortably, her eyes darting around the room. "Does it matter?"

"I don't know," Rachel says. "But I do think it means something."

"Not everything means something."

"But maybe this does," Rachel counters. She sighs, pushing up to her feet and starting to pace, arms curled around her stomach. Out of the corner of one eye, Quinn traces her movements left and right, left and right.

"Last year," Rachel says. She stops abruptly, halfway between Quinn and the door. "When I asked you about the nose job. Why did you go along with it?"

Quinn inhales sharply, her eyes darting over to glare at Rachel momentarily before avoiding her once more. She grips the sides of her chair tightly, not caring that her knuckles are white and the plastic is creaking inside of them.

"Why?" Rachel asks, almost desperately. "You hated me for so long. Why would you do what I asked?"

"Don't go there," Quinn mutters darkly. "Leave it alone."

"No!" Rachel says. "I don't care what you say, but we're friends now—really friends, this time—and you owe me that much. I just want to know."

"Why does that matter?" Quinn snaps. "Why that and not the nicknames, the mocking? Why not the drawings? Why does that matter?"

"It just does," Rachel says stubbornly. "Just tell me, will you? You never do anything without a reason, even if it's convoluted, we both know that. You had to have had a reason for it, and I just want to know—"

"Because I hated you," Quinn spits out. It shuts Rachel up abruptly, brown eyes widening in hurt and making Quinn stomach twist uncomfortably. "I hated you for years because you got to be whoever you wanted and I didn't. I hated you because you didn't have your parents and sister needling at you for years until you asked for a nose job. And I hated myself for letting them get to me, because even if I was miserable and alone I still had some dignity, and I let go of it. You had everything and I hated you for it, so if you made the same mistakes I did then, well, maybe you wouldn't be that much better than me anymore, would you?

Rachel is staring at her, somewhere between shock and flattery, and Quinn's breath is coming heavily and she wants to run. She pushes to her feet, starting to loop around Rachel towards the door, and is halfway there when Rachel's hand snaps out and wraps tightly around her wrist.

"Thank you," Rachel says. Her words are more jolting than the hand gripping Quinn's arm. "For being honest with me. And for last year, for not forcing an opinion on me about it. You could have pressured me until I would have gone through with it, but you didn't. Everyone else had an opinion about it, but you just went with it. Thank you."

"Whatever," Quinn mutters. She pulls her wrist free, staring down at the fading marks from Rachel's fingers.

"I'm sorry," Rachel adds. "For pushing you just then. I know—I know you don't like talking about the last few years, or any of your past for that matter."

"Whatever," Quinn repeats. "It's fine." Except it isn't fine, it isn't even close to fine, because Rachel is still pushing her way into Quinn's life and Quinn can't—won't?—find a way to make her stop, because her hands are shaking and her chest aches like she might have her first panic attack in three months, because Rachel is still looking at her like she's done something wondrous and a part of her still itches to slap the optimism right out of the other girl.

Instead, because she doesn't know what else to do to stave off the walls that are starting to press in, she makes her way back to the center of the room and slumps at the piano, closing her eyes and pretending the room doesn't feel too small and airless. Rachel sits next to her, cautiously pressed against her side, and Quinn is too tired to stiffen and shift away.

Finally, once her heartbeat is back under control and the warmth of Rachel at her side no longer feels oppressive, she sits up straighter and takes a slow, measured breath. "We can still egg his car," she says quietly. It's a peace offering, an apology, an explanation, and her body slackens with relief when Rachel takes it for everything it is and nothing at all, simply laughing and shaking her head.

"I think I'll survive," she says with a smile. "I may have to find solace in some vegan ice cream and a musical DVD or two, but I think I'll be okay."

Quinn rolls her eyes, scoffing. "Vegan ice cream is disgusting. And I got another bottle of Stoli from Santana last weekend."

"Firstly, there is no way Santana just gave you a bottle of liquor," Rachel starts primly. "Secondly, I told you that I'm never drinking with you again because I inevitably hate myself the next day. And thirdly, Regionals are just around the corner and hard liquor is terrible for your voice. Also—"

Without thinking about it, without pausing to weigh the consequences or consider the outcomes, Quinn latches a hand over Rachel's mouth and raises a finger to her own lips. "Shh," she scolds. She hasn't acted spontaneously since Puck and his wine coolers showed up on her fat day two years ago, and touching Rachel—it's always been Rachel touching Quinn and Quinn trying to fight past the instinct to flee at the contact—seems somehow infinitely safer and spectacularly more terrifying.

"What Santana doesn't know won't hurt her, you've been saying no more drinking for the last six months and still do it anyways, and that thing about Regionals is just a sad excuse." She finally lowers her hand, forcing a smirk and nonchalance at Rachel's perplexed eyes. "But if you don't want to, fine, that's cool."

She turns to face the piano, running a scale on the keys, and waits for Rachel to speak.

"Can we go to your house this time? If I'm going to throw up everything I've eaten today, I'd prefer not risking my parents witnessing it."

Quinn snorts, playing another scale, then the first few bars of the arrangement they made for Beth. "Sure, whatever," she says. "I think my dad's dartboard is still in the study, if you want to tack Finn's picture up there."

Rachel laughs, short and loud, and claps a hand over her mouth to cover the sound. "I really shouldn't…okay, maybe," she tapers off. It draws another smirk out of Quinn, who cuts off the music abruptly and pushes to her feet.

Rachel moves to stand beside her, smoothing her skirt carefully. "Thank you," she says again. "For—I mean, I guess this is what it's like, having friends, right?"

Quinn shrugs, reaching for their jackets and handing Rachel's over. "Don't ask me, I wouldn't know." An edge of bitterness that she didn't even really feel seeps into the words.

"Me either," Rachel admits. "But I think it is." She slides her jacket on, buttoning it carefully, before suddenly stepping closer until she's almost pressed against Quinn's side. "I—would it be okay if I hugged you?"

Quinn's mouth dries up at the words, her jacket halfway on; she shrugs into it slowly, staring at Rachel's uncertainty with her own matching apprehension. Something's shifted, somehow, in some direction she doesn't know or understand, and suddenly the next five seconds feel more pivotal than the five when she agreed to sleep with Puck, when realization dawned on her father's face, when she stood in a hospital watching her daughter with Shelby Corcoran at her side.

And because Rachel's always moving first—because Rachel's the one who always has the courage, because Quinn is tired of being a coward like everyone else in her family, because waiting for other people is safer but more heartbreaking and exhausting—Quinn doesn't respond, but simply wraps her arms around Rachel's shoulders and hugs her stiffly.

The quiet gasp from Rachel is muffled against Quinn's shoulder, and an agonizing second passes before her arms move around Quinn as well and tighten. Quinn bites down on her lip and clings tighter to Rachel than she meant to, her chin falling tiredly down to Rachel's shoulder as her body relaxes in to the embrace.

They don't talk about it. But when they split the bottle of Stoli, mixing screwdrivers and shots on the floor of Quinn's bedroom while mocking the Kardashians and Paris Hilton, it's easier than it ever has been before. And when Quinn wakes up at four in the morning, still drunk enough for the world to feel soft around the edges, with Rachel wrapped around her like a pretzel, she just rolls onto her side and fades back into sleep, warm and content and with Rachel pressed tightly against her back.

The remaining months disappear, and suddenly, graduation is there and then ending. They'd taken second at Nationals—though they slaughtered Vocal Adrenaline at Regionals, though, and that was what really mattered—and no one questioned the fact that it was almost definitely Shelby who made it happen. Quinn was salutatorian and Mike was valedictorian, and she had laughingly refused when he tried to get her to take his speech. His quiet confidence was a grounding contrast to Brittany's effervescent senior class president speech, and after that it didn't take long for the entire class to walk for their diplomas.

Afterwards, there are hugs and tears and pictures, and Quinn lets Rachel and Shelby and her mother and Brittany all yank her from one pose to another. She laughs when everyone else is surprised by Sam showing up—he'd told her months earlier, when he called about how he'd been accepted to Pratt's architecture program, to tell her he wanted to surprise everyone at graduation—and watches with amusement as Finn and Puck and Mike all happily tackle him, graduation robes flying behind them.

Her eyes are locked on their impromptu wrestling match—accompanied by a chorus of laughter and indignant shrieks from parents—and doesn't look away until she feels someone pressing into her back. Rachel is silent, her focus on the boys as well, but she hugs Quinn from behind, chin resting on the taller girl's shoulder.

"You're going to Columbia," she says quietly, and even though Quinn doesn't mean to—even now, after months of cautious hugs and hesitant affection from Rachel, pulling away remains her first instinct; Rachel, though, stopped caring ages ago—she stiffens the slightest bit. Rachel doesn't pull away, though, but instead tightens her arms the tiniest bit. "And your daughter is going, too. You're going to go to medical school and be a doctor and you're going to make her even more proud of you than she will be to have a famous Broadway star Emmy-Grammy-Oscar-Tony winning aunt-slash-older-sister. She's going to have a family that loves her, even if it's even more unconventional than mine."

"Shut up, Berry, you're going to make me cry," Quinn mutters, but she's smiling, and it doesn't feel cautious or hesitant or awkward at all to let her head tip to the side, temple pressing against Rachel's. She feels Rachel's laughter more than she hears it, and her smile broadens when Sam, shouting victoriously as he gets Finn into a headlock, flashes a happy smile her way.

"I always told you, you know," Rachel says are a moment.

"What?" Her eyes are still lingering on Sam as he tries to ward off Mike's attack while still keeping Finn in the headlock.

"You're a pretty girl, Quinn," Rachel says. Quinn stiffens again, because the words strike a chord to a memory she doesn't want to consider, but Rachel continues. "But you've always been a lot more than that." The words are even heavier than they were the first time, and something feels different about them—it might be Rachel's chin on her shoulder, or arms wrapped around her stomach, or the way her own hands are resting over Rachel's forearms comfortably and her head is back to leaning almost intimately against Rachel's; she's almost terrified to try and consider what the difference actually is—but she just breathes in deeply and tightens her grip on Rachel's arms.

At home, a flash drive with a recording for the child whose laughter she can hear even now, over the sounds of the wrestling match in front of her, sits reverently next to her computer. No one but Rachel and Quinn know it exists, and she hasn't felt the need to give it to Shelby on Beth's behalf since it was decided that Quinn would go to Columbia.

Sinking back even more comfortably into Rachel's embrace, she thinks—cautiously, for the first time ever, but even then still with a tinge of optimism that's new to her mindset and entirely Rachel's fault—that maybe she can wait and just tell everything to Beth herself.

I—I—well, I can't sing as well as your mom, or Rachel—I'm sure you'll know who she is by the time you listen to this—no one can sing as well as them. But there was this song from an album that P—your dad used to play, when I was pregnant with you. It's from when we were younger, and this kind of angry rock band, this group called Sum 41, but it's actually a really nice song, and even before you were born, it made me think of you. I guess most people would classify it as—romantic, or something, but the first time I heard it, I was six months pregnant and all I ever thought about was you and how you were something good I could bring into the world and how much of it I wanted to show you.

I think the reason I was never able to forget this song was because of how it made me feel when I was pregnant. Well, I mean, not how it made me feel, but how it put how I felt into words. Because even then, when my parents had kicked me out and I didn't really have any friends and I was terrified of the fact that there was this life growing inside of me that I was responsible for, that I had created, I already loved you more than anything else. Even when you were making me throw up all the time, or making me crave asparagus—which I had never liked before—or when I couldn't sleep because I was the size of a planet. I loved you then, and I love you now, and I always will, Beth. So, I wanted you to have this song, from me, so you'll always know that, okay? Even though I know I tend to be a little sharp sometimes, because not all of us have perfect pitch like your mom, I hope that it—that you can understand that, despite all of the bad choices I've made in my life, you were never one of them and you'll forever be the most incredibly perfect thing I ever did.