A/N: Okay, so this is my first Glee fic, so please play nicely with me. There are minor trigger warnings for violence/abuse, homophobia, and self-harm/other injuries. This is more Quinn-centric than it is Faberry, but Rachel is included in this. Title is from "Scars" by Papa Roach.

For Faberry Week 2014 - Scars

There are twenty-three in all.

Number one is on her right elbow, so small and faint that it's barely noticeable, from when Quinn was three and fell off of her tricycle in her driveway. (She clearly remembers crying that day, not because she was in pain but because she had gotten blood on her new, white, for-church-only—and definitely-not-for-play—dress. She also remembers her mother's sympathetic eyes as she carefully applied a Band-Aid, and the kiss her father planted on her forehead afterwards.)

Number two is just above her eyebrow. When Quinn was four and a half, she and Frannie were playing tag inside the house. Quinn tripped over the rug and hit her head on the edge of the coffee table. There had been a lot of blood (as is common even with superficial head injuries), and Frannie screamed, which signaled her parents to come running. It had required three stitches, but Quinn always fondly remembered her parents fawning over her in the ER on that cloudy Thursday afternoon.

Number three occurred at age six, and is located on her left knee. It had been a mild, sunny day, but the atmosphere inside the Fabray house was gloomy. The lights were off; the doors to Quinn's father's study and her parents' bedroom were both shut. Frannie had been at a friend's house that afternoon. Quinn had been climbing a tree in her backyard and missed a step, scraping her knee along the rough bark. Bleeding and crying, she had stumbled back into the house and knocked on the door to Russell's study. Face flushed and breath smelling like something Quinn had never smelled before—something sour—he had told her to rinse it off, get her own damn Band-Aid, and stop making so much freaking noise.

That happened right around the time her parents started drinking and stopped sleeping in the same bed, Quinn thinks.

Wait—she's sure, because scar number four happened a few months later. It was around five in the morning, but she had been awake most of the night listening to her parents fight—during which, one of her parents (Russell, she thought) had smashed either a glass or a bottle. After it had been quiet for about an hour, Quinn slipped downstairs for a glass of water. While passing through the dark living room, she stepped on a stray piece of glass that had been missed during the clean-up Quinn was sure her mother had performed. It sunk into her heel, prompting a yelp, which led to a trip to the emergency room, five stitches, and her father yelling at her for both waking him and "sneaking around in the middle of the night."

Number five wasn't until age eight (because by then, Quinn tiptoes around the house and hides in her room whenever one of her parents starts pouring that amber-colored liquid that makes her father angy and her mother weepy), when Russell came into her bedroom after he came home from work to give her a kiss on top of her head. Quinn was playing with her Barbie dolls in the enormous Barbie McMansion she had received for her birthday.

"What're you up to?" Russell asked, eyeing the way Quinn had arranged the dolls: two children at the kitchen table, the blond Barbie standing in front of the refrigerator, while the brunette Barbie was poised at the stove, her tiny plastic hands cooking tiny plastic bacon for her tiny plastic children.

"The mommies are making breakfast for their babies," Quinn said, her smile drooping a bit when she saw Russell's features darken.

"Where are the daddies?" he asked, in a tone that told Quinn that there was a right and a wrong answer to his question.

"There are no daddies," Quinn told him timidly. "The mommies love each other."

Smack! She felt a sharp sting on the right side of her face.

Wrong answer.

She pressed a hand to her cheek, and when she pulled it away, there was blood on her palm. Russell's wedding ring had clipped her on the jaw, but he didn't seem to notice as he yelled almost incoherently about "wrong," "sin," "disgusting," "God," and—though she didn't recognize the word at the time—"faggot." It was only until Judy rushed in to investigate the noise was Quinn, crying with her arms wrapped around herself, handed a wet paper towel and a couple of bandages.

Numbers six and seven weren't a big deal at all. She was nine, she was stupid, and she poked a stray cat—and received two nice scratches about two and a half inches long on the back of her right hand.

Number eight was caused by her mother's nagging more than anything else. It was a mosquito bite on her left forearm—a big, red one, irritated by her incessant scratching. Judy told her it wasn't "ladylike" to have such an "unsightly thing" on her arm and to "leave it alone," so (as ten-year-olds will) Quinn did the exact opposite.

Number nine occurred when she was twelve and is located on her right shoulder.

It was around eleven in the morning on a Saturday, and Quinn skipped into her father's study to ask him a question: "Daddy, can I go over to Emily's house?"

Russell looked up from his laptop and smiled at his daughter. "Emily?"

"Emily Robertson, Daddy. She's in my English class," Quinn said, stepping closer to the desk. "She invited me over. She has a swimming pool."

Immediately, Russell's face darkened. "Robertson, did you say?"

"Y-yes, sir," Quinn said, starting to feel a little nervous.

"The girl with two moms," Russell said, and Quinn knows it wasn't a question.

"I think so," she said quietly, looking at her feet.

"Then no," her father said, the volume of his voice rising, "you may not go to her house."

"But Daddy—"

"Don't you 'but Daddy' me, Lucy Quinn!" Russell shouted. "You are not to go over to her house. You are not to speak to her anymore. Do you understand me?"

"No! Why can't I be friends with her?" Quinn cried, indignant.

"Her parents' lifestyle is disgusting, and I don't want you around that." Russell slapped his hand against his desk, rising to his feet and towering over Quinn.

"Because she has two moms? What's so wrong about that?"

"What's wrong with that?" Russell roared. "It's vile! It's a sin! They're going straight to hell, and thanks to them, so is their daughter."

"It is not! They—"

Smack! Suddenly Quinn was eight years old again, the tiny kitten being roared at by the raging lion. She stumbled back, her shoulder colliding hard with the edge of the book shelf. The sting was sharper than the pain on her cheek, and when she clutched at it her hand came away bloody. If Russell noticed, he didn't show it.

"Get out of my sight," he said, turning his back to his daughter.

She doesn't cry this time. Nor does she ever cry in the countless times Quinn relives the moment in her dreams—the little girl walking away toward her father, over invisible hot coals and broken glass in bare feet, to be slammed into a wall of nails that shatters her heart into tiny pieces, blood pooling around her feet.

She always wakes up freezing cold.

Number ten is almost completely invisible, unless you know exactly what you're looking for. It's a vertical line between Quinn's nostrils—a souvenir of her transition from Lucy to Quinn. She still remembers—back when she was still Lucy, at age thirteen—the look of surprise on her father's face when she asked him if she could have a rhinoplasty procedure (a nose job).

"Well," he had said, "if it will make you happy, then yes."

Quinn remembers it made the scars on her jaw and shoulder tingle.

Numbers eleven and twelve happened when she was fourteen during Cheerios practice. They were running laps around the track when she tripped and fell, scraping her shin on the rough surface. Even if she didn't have the scars from that day, Quinn would never be able to forget the incident thanks to Santana (who still makes fun of her for it).

What Santana doesn't know is that she tripped because she was distracted.

That was the first time she ever saw Rachel Berry.

Numbers thirteen, fourteen, and fifteen weren't until she was sixteen. It was an uncharacteristically warm, sunny day for October—the complete opposite of Quinn's mood. And for once, she didn't appreciate the irony. She had given Beth up a few months ago, and although Quinn had moved back in with Judy and Russell was gone, the house was still dark and she ate dinner alone most days. Rachel was to clinging to Finn like she needed to breathe his air because her own was poisoned. Santana was almost as infatuated with her new spot at the top of the pyramid as she was with Brittany. And Puck seemed to only have eyes for Lauren Zizes, of all people.

Quinn remembered that day when she was four and had hit her head on the coffee table. How quickly her parents had come running, how they had fawned over her until the wound healed.

She drew the razor blade over the inside of her left wrist as she thought of how lovingly her father had stroked her hair. She thought of how her mother had brought her juice in her hospital bed in the ER as she made two more parallel cuts. She thought of the relief that had washed over her father's face when the doctor said Quinn was going to be fine as she watched the blood ooze over her pale skin.

She thought of Rachel's sympathetic eyes as she pressed some tissues to the cuts and cried.

Numbers sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two, and twenty-three were when she was seventeen years old—punishment, she had thought lazily as she drifted in and out of consciousness, for letting Rachel Berry marry Finn Hudson. For not fighting harder to make Rachel see that she was destined for things far bigger than Finn Hudson.

He didn't deserve her, and Quinn deserved this.

There are scars on her left side, arm, and leg from wear glass and pieces of her car door cut into her skin. There is another between two of her ribs and one in the center of her chest from the various tubes that had kept her body alive. There are two four-inch ones along her spine from the surgery, along with the long, thick one that wraps around her side and onto her back. It's puckered and ugly and more obvious than all of her other scars put together, and sometimes still burns when she runs, or has a fever, or looks at old Glee Club photos of Rachel and Finn, arms around each other with blinding smiles. She doesn't wear two-piece swimsuits after the accident, turns away from her mirror when she changes clothes, turns off the lights when being intimate with someone.

Twenty-three scars in total.

Rachel kisses each and every one of them, and the big one on her back five times. She brushes Quinn's hair out of her face tenderly, finishing with one final kiss to Quinn's lips.

"You're beautiful," Rachel whispers, pulling back to look Quinn in the eye. Quinn feels her words resonate throughout her body, in every scar. Rachel Berry thinks she is beautiful.

She reaches across the bed and turns on the lamp.