Two weeks before her due date, Quinn was reaching the peak of how much she could take. The baby—whom she had yet to name—was pressing on her bladder constantly and her ankles looked like she'd attached pool toys to them. The weather was warming up as Spring began in earnest, and she found herself sweating unattractively more often than she'd like. She was sitting at the dining room table finishing up homework when the doorbell rang, startling her out of concentrating on history. When she opened the door and found none other than Noah Puckerman on the other side, she very nearly closed it again without saying a word.

"Wait! Q—we need to talk." He put his hand on the door and flashed plaintive, puppy dog eyes at her. Quinn swallowed and moved aside to let him in.

"Fine. Say what you need to say." They stood awkwardly in the small entrance area of the condo, Quinn's hands folded over her belly and Puck stood sheepishly with his hands in his jean pockets and his eyes on the ground.

"I, uh, well, I'm sorry." He glanced up at her through his eyelashes."

"What are you talking about?" Quinn realized that she sounded harsher than the situation really demanded, but Puck was far from her favorite person these days, so she didn't feel that bad about it.

"Look, can we sit down? I've got kind of a lot to say, here, and I need you to really hear it." She gave him a searching look before nodding briskly and leading him to the couch.

"What exactly are you sorry about, Puck? Because I have to say that I've put up with a lot of your crap recently, and—"

"All of it. From sleeping with you when we were both too drunk to realize what we were doing, right on down to the way I've treated you since the truth came out."

"Really? Because you didn't seem regretful while all this was happening, you know! I mean, I've been trying to make the best of things, take care of my daughter—"

"But that's just it! You keep saying my daughter, like she's just yours! Why do you think I was so angry all the time?"

"Well it's not like you were doing much to help out! Every time I needed your help with something you blew me off or called me a fat slut!"

"And you kept calling me a Lima Loser! How was I supposed to react? You tried to pretend I wasn't the father, and then spent 90% of your time telling me what a bad job I was doing when I tried to do anything at all!" He paused, shutting his mouth with a snap, closing his eyes and breathing slowly through his nose. "I didn't come here to fight, Q, I came to apologize to you for acting like a douche. It was wrong. I don't have an excuse, except to say that the situation wasn't easy for me either and I didn't handle it as well as I should have." He sat back and waited, looking at Quinn with a blank look on his face.

"Why did you come here?" Her question was quiet, and she found that she genuinely wasn't as angry as she was even 30 seconds ago.

"I told you—I came to apolo—"

"No, I mean, why now? Why the change of heart at all, actually?"

"I've, uh, I've been talking to my Rabbi." He paused and looked pretty sheepish or a self-proclaimed badass. "He's been helping me work through some stuff about my dad, and, well, you. He said the most badass thing a guy can do is be there for his kid—and I thought about it and kinda figured he was right." Puck shrugged a little. "And I realized that when our daughter is born, she's gonna need her parents to be grown-ups. We should probably start acting like it, huh?" He gave her a small smile—nowhere near his usual smirk—and Quinn was suddenly hit with the realization that he had a point. She nodded again.

"Thank you, for coming here and apologizing." She swallowed slowly. "And you're right. As scared and overwhelmed as I was, I could have been nicer to you, too." He nodded and accepted her apology. Then he flashed another smile at her.

"Now that we've reached a truce and everything—do you think we could maybe talk about how I can help—please?" He looked incredibly hopeful, and Quinn found herself wanting to cooperate, at least a little. She sighs.

"Well, I've got an ultrasound in a few days—Mr. Schue was going to take me, but you can come along if you'd like."

"Really? You wouldn't mind?" He looked like a hopeful puppy dog, and Quinn shrugged. He'd apologized for being a douche, and it's not like she was relying on him for something or anything—she could afford to be generous.

"Yeah, whatever. You couldn't possibly be more awkward than Mr. Schue; the first time he took me to the doctor's office he couldn't look at any of the posters without turning beet red. He spent the visit with his eyes glued to the floor." She giggled, and Puck looked relieved.

"Hey, Q?" He looked bizarrely shy—an expression that had Quinn fighting the urge to glance out the window and look for flying pigs.

"Yeah?"

"I'd really like my daughter's parents to be friends, you know? My parents aren't friends, and I always thought it'd be nice." Suddenly, Quinn was reminded of her own parents, how her father strutted around and demanded things, and her mother simply nodded, toed the line, and drank to avoid conflict.

"Yeah. Mine aren't either. It sounds nice, though, you're right." She was struck by a sudden urge to share something with the father of her child, which again had her mentally searching for those flying pigs. "Hey, do you want to see a picture?"

"Of your parents? Uh, not really." He looked confused and a little put off at the idea of looking at her parents' picture, which, Quinn supposed, was fair enough.

"No, idiot, of the baby! I have some ultrasound pictures from past visits—do you want to see them?" She was trying to curb her natural bitchiness, since this was important, but honestly, she was incredibly uncomfortable and Rome wasn't built in a day, right?

"You've already got pictures? Lemme see!" He helped haul her off the couch and tried not to stare as she more or less waddled into the kitchen towards the refrigerator. She pulled a stack out from under a magnet shaped like a gold star and handed them to Puck. He was silent as he leaned back against the counter and slowly paged though the images. Suddenly, he cleared his throat.

"Does she have a name yet?" His voice startled her out of her own thoughts and at her confused look, he clarified. "The baby—have you named her?"

She shook her head, "No, I've been trying everything I can think of, and Mr. Schue bought me a baby names book, but I just can't find the one yet. Hopefully it'll come to me soon, because I really want to put her name on the wall in our room." He looked at her quietly for a moment.

"Do you care, uh, I mean, can I make a suggestion?" He looked like he was making a conscious effort to watch what he said, and Quinn thought, what the Hell. If it sucks I just won't pick it.

"Give me what you got, Puckerman." She gestured with her hands for him to go ahead.

"Esther. It means 'star' in Hebrew." She started a little.

"Uh, Puck, I thought I made it clear that I wasn't comfortable raising the baby Jewish back when I was living with you—"

"No, I know. But the story's in the Christian Bible, too, right? And plus, it's kind of what got me over here today." Quinn blinked.

"It is in the Bible, you're right," She nodded, faintly amazed that he knew that. "What do you mean the story got you over here? I thought you said you'd been talking to your Rabbi?"

"Look, I've been talking to him a lot—about a lot of stuff that has nothing to do with you," He paused to give her a fierce look, as though she was going to try and get him to spill his guts. "But we've been talking about the baby, too. And I asked him why God would choose to send her now if he's got such a grand plan, you know?" They sat down together at the stools at the breakfast bar to talk. Quinn's ankles were swelling even more and she was sick of standing.

"I asked my priest the same thing at the last meeting of the Catholic Unwed Mothers Connection group I'm a part of." She surprised herself with that admission. She hadn't meant to tell him that at all, this was the first time they spoken without screaming at each other in months—she didn't want to overextend the truce.

"Right, well, he said that even if it doesn't seem like it right now, sometimes people are placed in situations that are hard for a reason, yeah? Like Esther was. She saved the Jews, even though she'd gotten all kidnapped and nearly killed for going to the king before she was invited and everything. Plus, she was super brave, which is awesome and badass—something I'd think our kid would appreciate when she got old enough." He paused, gauging her reaction, and swallowed.

"Well, uh, that's a pretty loose interpretation of the plot points of the story, Puck, but I guess the gist is right." She gave him a more serious look. "I'll think about the name, ok? Let me try it on for size for a while." Puck nodded and gestured to the stack of images on the counter.

"Fair enough. Can I take one of these? Then I'll get out of your hair—I think we've had enough togetherness for this afternoon, yeah?" She nodded and slid off the stool. He grabbed an ultrasound picture off the counter and followed her back to the front door.

"See ya around, Puck." She had her arms wrapped around her stomach again as they walked back to the door. Suddenly the door opened and Mr. Schuester walked though, carrying bags of groceries.

"Hey Quinn, I got that Catalina dressing you said you couldn't live without, but I couldn't find any artichokes that weren't-" He stopped cold as he turned around and noticed Puck standing in his entryway. "What's going on? Quinn?" He swiveled to look at her.

"I was just leaving, Mr. Schue." Puck dodged around Will and slipped through the front door, handily avoiding a confrontation with the teacher. Quinn had to admit—even if it was just to herself—that she was mildly impressed with the evasive maneuver. She took a deep breath before she tried explaining how Puck's visit had actually been not all that bad.

"Mr. Schue—really, everything's fine." She tried to flash her most calming, don't-freak-out-Mr. Schue-I've-got-everything-under-control smile at him. He wasn't ready to just let it go, but he at least no longer looked like he was ready to simultaneously kick Puck's ass and hyperventilate at the same time.

"What was he doing here, Quinn—are you sure you're alright?"

"Yeah—we talked for a while."

"You talked? That was it?" Will looked incredulous

"Well, ok, we argued a little, but really, it was good. We needed to talk."

"What about?" Will seemed apprehensive, but Quinn didn't think she could blame him that much, since ever since Babygate (and God, did she hate that term, thank you very much Kurt and Mercedes) all they seemed to do was scream at each other until Quinn ended up in tears. Still, it's not like they had that many topics in common.

"The baby, obviously." She refrained from rolling her eyes, as that seemed to push the boundaries of respect for her elders just a little too far for her tastes.

"What did he say?" Will moved to put the groceries down on the kitchen table, but his tone was still more than a little wary.

"He said—"she paused, thinking of how best to summarize their conversation. "He said that he wants his daughter's parents to be friends. And I agreed." Will turned to look at Quinn fully. She raised her chin and met his eyes, hands over her bump.

"Friends? What does that mean?" Sometimes Will was taken aback by how Quinn seemed both older and younger than she should be in equal parts. She came to incredibly mature conclusions one minute, but expressed them with incredible naiveté, all at once.

"Well, we didn't get that far in the plan, but we're going to try to be better. We apologized for the things we did to hurt each other and we're going to try and move on." Will opened his mouth to speak, but she cut him off. "And we did hurt each other, you know. It wasn't just him hurting me all the time." He shot her an incredulous look.

"Really? Because I've seen a lot of him being needlessly cruel and you just having to take it." She smiled a little at his staunch defense of her.

"Look, Mr. Schue—I know you like to stay above McKinley's student drama and everything, but there's a reason I was the head cheerleader. My nickname might as well have just been 'head bitch' instead of 'Q'." He opened his mouth to protest, but shut it again at her look. "I said a lot of things to him that you weren't present for. And the whole Finn thing was my idea. He wanted to take responsibility right away. That's what this meeting was really about—taking responsibility."

"Responsibility for what?" Will was still not convinced that all should be forgiven.

"For ourselves. For our decisions—good, bad, and all. For our child." Will looked at his 16 year old roommate/pseudo daughter. She was meeting his eyes straight on, standing calmly in their shared kitchen. The words coming out of her mouth were reasoned and logical. The fact that they didn't satisfy his own urge to exact justice on the boy that made her cry was, when he stopped and thought about it, irrelevant.

"O.k., then." She blinked, surprised that he gave in that easily.

"O.k.—that means you're not going to be weird when he comes to the ultrasound?"

"He's coming to the—no, no I will not be weird. Promise."

"Alright, then." She nodded at him. "I'm going to go put my feet up. My feet are swelling and I feel fat." She turned around and moved down the hall to her bedroom. Will saw her grab her Bible off the end table on the way through the living room.

When he was sure she was out of sight, he sat down at the kitchen table and rubbed his hands over his face. Sometimes it made him feel really young, dealing with Quinn. When she took control of a situation like that she reminded him that she was going to be a mother soon—and it looked like she was going to be a good one, at that. He, in contrast, was a thirty-something with a divorce under his belt and nothing much to show from the relationship.

"Mr. Schue!" Quinn's voice floated in from the other room.

"Yeah?"

"Did you say you found the Catalina dressing and artichokes?"

AN: Ok, so there's not exactly a terrifically awesome excuse for taking a gagillion years to update, other than to say that, um, real life happened? Anyway, here's the next chapter. The plan is for one, maybe two more chapters and an epilogue, FYI, but I make absolutely no promises as to when they might materialize.