This was a joint effort by yourkat and me. We took turns writing sections of the story and were only allowed to write for the length of a song.

Hope you enjoy.

The wind was cold, but she sheltered the flame from the match between her cupped hands. The cigarette flared to life as she sucked air in - slowly, smoothly. And then the light drizzle falling from the sky faded to the background, even as it continued to sprinkle across her forehead. A few drops caught lazily in her lashes.

But Quinn didn't care.

The city lights were bright. Despite the fact that it was three in the morning. Despite the fact that the weather was complete shit - in most peoples' opinions.

Despite the fact that she really shouldn't be here. At all.

She had told them she could handle getting out of Lima. She had told them not to worry, that she had a plan. And she did have a plan, she really did. In the beginning.

But that all went to hell pretty fucking quickly.

"Excuse me," some man barked out as he passed her on the sidewalk, bumping roughly into her shoulder.

She hadn't been prepared for that. She dropped her cigarette. "Fuck," she breathed out between clenched teeth.

He walked off without another word. The bastard. Quinn rolled her eyes and pulled out another cigarette. She struck the match and was about to light it when she saw it. What she was waiting for.

The shiny black car stood out against the lights, making it seem to sparkle in some places. She could see the results of the drizzle, shimmering on the sides. She pressed herself hard against the brick of the building next to her, barely peering past it.

She held her breath when the back door opened. A strappy black Manolo touched the ground with a soft click. The match in between her thumb and forefinger burned her skin, and she quietly cursed, letting it fall to the damp ground.

It was one of those moments, really. With the streetlamps catching every single perfect, natural highlight in the brunette's hair, with the sweet scent of the rain washing away the dirt and grime of the city straight down the nearest gutters and leaving behind an indescribable freshness. Maybe it was representative of something more. Something new.

Her cheek hurt. The sharp, unfinished edge of the brick that was pressed against her face was uncomfortable. But she couldn't look away now. Not when she was seeing her in all of her perfection.

A nicotine fix was entirely forgotten as Quinn inhaled sharply, watching the perfect LBD-clad figure of Rachel St. James turn back to the interior of the car, calling out her thanks to her driver with a smile on her face and laughter in her voice. A tall, well-built man was already at her side, black umbrella held over her head. Sheltering her from the frigid mist.

"I hope I'm not too late!" Rachel said, placing one of her hands on the man's bicep as they hurried inside.

"We'd never start without you, Miss St. James," he replied.

As soon as Rachel disappeared inside, Quinn looked up at the black awning that had been providing her protection from the sky. It was now or never.

But still she paused. She ran her finger over the soft material clinging to her. What was she going to say? Would she be able to say anything?

She scraped the bottom of her heel against the wet pavement. She'd done all of this work. Gotten all the way here, and she was going to fail now?

Quinn Fabray had made a lot of...mistakes...since leaving Lima, Ohio. New York City was a real bitch to people who showed up on her doorstep with good intentions - it was a lesson that Quinn had learned the hard way. But at the end of the day, she was still Quinn motherfucking Fabray.

And when she wanted something, she got it.

Yeah. That's what she kept saying to herself. Over and over, she repeated the mantra of hopefulness - of want and need and curiosity and maybe something achingly close to love - in her head.

You can do this, you can do this. You can get the girl.

Maybe she's been yours all along...

The bouncer at the door didn't want to let her in. But Quinn was good with words - always had been, always would be - and so it was just a matter of a minute or so before the chill from outside was already little more than a memory.

"Ladies and gentlemen!" she heard from somewhere to her left. She rounded the corner and came face to face with a stage and several occupied tables - they were packed, really. "We're pleased to introduce... Rachel St. James!"

Damn, it still stung to hear that. St. James? What a stupid fucking name.

With all of the grace that she was taught in her youth, Quinn walked over to the bar. She pretended not to be completely shaken. She had a plan and she was going to stick to it.

She ordered a whiskey. She didn't need the liquid courage. She needed the liquid calm. After her first sip, she turned and leaned back on the bar. Just in time.

Rachel had stepped onto the stage moments before to a round of polite applause. She elegantly pushed her hair behind her ear and let out a small smile. So tiny - like it wasn't really meant to be seen, but Quinn could see it. Quinn had always been able to see the little things - especially when it came to Rachel Berry-

Rachel St. James. Quinn huffed into her glass before taking a sip - longer this time.

"Good evening," Rachel said into the microphone. And it was so Rachel of her that Quinn couldn't help but smile in wonderment at what happened to her chest the other girl spoke - how easily Rachel took that stage, how simple it was for her to control the audience.

How simple it had always been for her to control people with her voice. Even Quinn, with her cold, hard facade that she had managed to finally erect and maintain during their senior year in high school.

Even then...

"Thank you all for coming out tonight!" Another smile from the beautiful young woman as she took her seat on a stool behind the mic, lowering the stand so that it was at the perfect height. "Let's just get things rolling, shall we? I know you've already been waiting for me for a while now." She winked at the audience at large, eliciting a few chuckles of appreciation.

And then Rachel opened her mouth - the band swelled behind her in accompaniment, and air passed over her lips, rushing from some deep, beautiful, effortless place inside of her.

"When you try your best, but you don't succeed..."

Quinn's eyes snapped up, open wide. The words crossed Rachel's lips even as her eyes connected with Quinn's.

Quinn's mind ground to a screeching stop. Her heart seemed to compensate though. She didn't think it would happen so fast. She didn't think Rachel would see her for a while.

Then she saw something that made her brain clear. A momentary slip. Rachel's hand slid down the smooth metal of the microphone the tiniest bit and her eyes widened, if only for a second.

Quinn let out a smooth smirk. She tilted her head to the side, conveying her nonchalance - it was feigned nonchalance, but no one else would know. She watched as Rachel's hand gripped the microphone tighter and her eyes drifted away.

It would be absurd of Quinn to let the mask slip now. The nonchalance was her safety net. The girl in front of her - the girl who had always been there, just out of her reach like a god damned fucking trophy she could never quite clutch in her fingertips - was her target, her goal, her mission. Jesse St. James was an obstacle of epic proportions.

And the gun tucked into the waistband of her jeans was her ticket to fucking success.

It was always thrilling, for some reason. Knowing that she had the power when no one else around her had any idea - with their ignorant smiles, their dopey-eyed expressions, and their grossly apparent cluelessness.

Something about Rachel was different. She had known that the second she received the slip of paper, folded up and tucked away in her morning copy of the Times three days ago.

We're all alone in this together.

She knew that elegant script anywhere.

We're going to make it. You and me. Together.

She sat staring at that small piece of paper for hours. In her tiny apartment, holding that tiny piece of lavender paper in her hand.

She didn't sleep that night. She didn't even blink. She just planned. She schemed. She scheduled and documented. She prepared - because that was something she knew Rachel would appreciate.

Quinn wasn't supposed to walk inside and take her seat at the bar until the third song came to a close. The gorgeous girl onstage was doing a five-song set, and Quinn just...wasn't supposed to be there yet.

The second song started, and Quinn laughed. Because she fucking could.

"You gotta lotta lotta nerve coming here when I'm still with him, and I can't have you... It isn't fair."

The whiskey burned when she swallowed this time.

There was a bag in the alley just outside. They just had to make it through four more songs. Four numbers sung by the flawless vocalist sitting there on that rickety stool, four different sets of notes and lyrics, and then they could go.

A loud wolf whistle resounded across the room as song number two concluded, and Quinn's head snapped in its direction.

"Fuck," she cursed under her breath.

Jesse was here. This... This was not part of the plan.

He was undoubtedly watching her. Making sure that she wasn't going anywhere without the proper escort. Quinn flexed her free hand.

That's okay. Small deviation. This was still going to happen. Their plan would come to fruition. No matter what she had to do.

She eyed the door in the back, next to the stage that she was supposed to slip through. To do that, she needed Jesse distracted.

There was an empty seat at a table in the middle of the room. Jesse walked towards it, and Quinn's eyes narrowed as he stumbled after only a few steps. But one of his buddies was right there at his side, gripping his elbow and holding him upright. He finally got to the seat, plopping down and loudly ordering the large man to grab him a drink. Quinn ducked down and tried to look as inconspicuous as she could when Jesse's goon approached and placed his order.

It was apparent that Jesse was drunk. This was not an uncommon occurrence. It could prove either grossly fortuitous, or epically disastrous. Because a drunk Jesse was bound to be sloppy - Quinn could get through that back door, perhaps, faster than him. But a drunk Jesse was also unpredictable, selfish, and violent.

It was a dangerous combination, and the bruises that littered Rachel's body proved it without effort.

Quinn's fingers flexed again, and she itched to reach for the gun. She yearned for the opportunity to end that fucking bastard.

The letters from Rachel had started eight months previous. Quinn had ignored the first couple, uncertain as to what it was Rachel even wanted from her. But it hadn't taken Quinn long to figure out that... That Rachel just needed a friend.

A god damned fucking friend, and that had broken down every single wall that Quinn had built during high school and the intermediate years between graduation and the arrival of that first letter.

Their system was damn near primitive. Notes and letters.

No phone calls.

When Quinn finally decided that they needed to meet, it had to be in the dead of night. After Jesse was passed out, Rachel snuck to a diner a few streets over. When Quinn first saw her she was shocked. In front of her was not the proud, ambitious girl she knew in high school. This was a girl who was broken - in spirit and body.

So they kept meeting in the dark of night. Quinn would crawl through windows and back alleys - anything. She didn't know when it happened - when they turned from secret allies to secret lovers - but it didn't matter now. All that mattered was getting through that door, getting into the alley, getting Rachel the fuck out of here.

Rachel started singing again. Song number three.

"Love of mine," she breathed passionately into the mic, "someday, you will die..."

No one could see the broken, battered girl underneath the clothes. Jesse was careful like that - it made Quinn want to empty the contents of her stomach right there on the floor of the bar. Quinn got to see the desperation in Rachel's eyes - the fear and the sorrow and the contempt for the man who had tied himself to her through the supposedly sacred vows of marriage. Quinn got to see it all, completely exposed and laid out on the floor next to their discarded clothes. When they would lie in bed together - Quinn wrapping the smaller girl tenderly in her arms after having gently made love - Quinn got to see everything.

And then Quinn would stare in complete awe from a distance the next morning or the day after when she saw Rachel in public. Because, in the public's eye, Rachel was always pristine, perfect. The flawless wife of the Broadway star, Jesse St. James.

Gag.

Quinn turned back to the bartender and sent another drink to Jesse's table. It wouldn't hurt to have him another drink down. He'd never refuse free booze.

The drums were starting to beat with her heart. It was getting close. She started making her way against the wall toward the front of the bar. She went through the plan in her head. Through the door, make sure their path was clear, and then wait for Rachel. When Rachel stepped backstage, they'd run for the back, grab the bag on the way out, and hop into the car.

They'd talked about this plan for weeks. Months, even. This was it. They were going to get out. She was going to get Rachel out. Rachel would be safe, and they could finally be happy together.

The next ten minutes were, quite literally, a blur. The music washed over Quinn like a peaceful wave, and it was suddenly time. The crowd stood as one, giving Rachel a well-deserved round of applause.

That was exactly the moment Quinn needed.

Ducking down, she quickly moved along the edge of the room, slipping past the hot bodies in the crowded space. She edged open the door, and she passed through into the dimly lit corridor that encompassed the entirety of the backstage area and the storage rooms for the bar's stock. There was a dampness in the air, but it was quiet when the door clicked shut behind her.

Quinn turned on her heels and quickly began to search the area - making sure everything was clear. The fingers of her right hand finally wrapped around the metal of the gun's handle - hot from being pressed into the warm flesh of her back. She pulled it in front of her, both hands firmly wrapped around it. The safety made a satisfying click in the otherwise silent atmosphere.

She rounded the corner back towards the backstage entrance just as the door clicked open.

Quinn held her breath, but only for a moment. Then the air rushed from her lungs in appreciation because Rachel was suddenly standing in front of her. And when Rachel's eyes adjusted to the darkness, she rushed forward with a nervous smile on her face. They were twenty feet from each other, and Quinn was just slipping the gun back into the waistband of her pants when Rachel's expression shifted to one of terror.

"Quinn!" she called out.

And then something heavy collided with her skull, and Quinn fell to the floor, suffocated by the darkness.

Rachel shrieked as she watched Quinn fall to the ground. A sickeningly familiar hand wrapped around her upper arm. She was thrown into the nearest wall, her elbow and the back of her head absorbing most of the impact.

"Did you think you could just get away?" he asked, condescendingly, "Get away that easily?"

There was another goon leaning over Quinn's body. He reached down to do something, anything to Quinn. It didn't matter what, Rachel was sickened by anyone associated with Jesse laying any kind of hand on Quinn.

"Leave her alone!" Rachel yelled at him - trying to get to her but being stopped by her husband.

She was being flung against the wall again when she heard the gunshot.

Another band had taken the stage right behind Rachel. The powerful sounds of their bass and sick riffs blasting through the speakers into the now hyped up crowd probably muffled the sound of a solitary gunshot.

But there in the close quarters of that hallway, the shot rang powerfully in their ears.

Quinn rolled to the side as the dumbfuck bodyguard of Jesse's dropped to the floor, his knee narrowly missing her face. For a moment, Quinn felt remorse - because the idiot had just been doing a job, taking care of a situation he had been paid to take care of.

But Quinn had something to take care of as well. She had someone to take care of, and there wasn't anything that would stop her.

Her shoulder hit the wall, and she stilled her movements for a moment, gathering her thoughts and trying valiantly to shake the fuzziness from her head. Rachel called her name out again, but her mouth wasn't quite connecting with her brain the way her trigger finger had. And so she couldn't quite answer, she couldn't quite comprehend. It was fuzzy, and that was annoying as hell.

"Quinn," Rachel cried out, and the sobs in her voice finally shook Quinn, slapping her back to reality. "Please," Rachel gasped.

Quinn rolled over onto her stomach, pushing herself up off of the ground. She stumbled across and into the other wall, her left hand - the one without the gun in it - helping to brace her and keep her upright.

"St. James," she sneered, watching from her position down the hall from them as Jesse clutched Rachel's back to his front, as he moved backwards away from her and to the side exit of the building. Quinn could see how tight his grip was on Rachel's wrists, and she knew she needed to act.

Now.

The blood was rushing through her head when she raised the gun. Rachel's eyes widened in fear and Jesse's mouth dropped open. Quinn tried her best to assure Rachel that she wouldn't shoot her merely with a look.

"You crazy bitch!" Jesse yelled, yet again almost being drown out by the pounding music on the other side of the wall.

Quinn squeezed the trigger again.

Rachel screamed and Jesse let go of Rachel to cower behind her. There was no way that the crowd in the bar didn't hear that. Quinn could already hear the heavy-footed steps of Jesse's guards making their way towards them.

Rachel stilled seemed frozen in place. Quinn needed her to move. "Rachel, run!" she called. And when Rachel didn't move this time she yelled louder, "Fucking run!"

She could smell traces of Rachel's perfume as the brunette ran past her towards their exit door and turned to follow.

It was a beautiful sight - seeing Rachel push against the handle of the door, seeing the light from a streetlamp outside filtering in through the edges. Quinn was so close to escaping behind her, but Rachel was even closer - closer to being free.

Pounding footsteps were suddenly heavy on Quinn's heels. There was a grunt, and a thud - and someone's hands were pulling on the back of her shirt, wrapping around her legs, pulling her to the ground.

She hit the unfinished concrete floor with a thud, and the wind was completely knocked from her body. She looked up - her head still spinning slightly from the impact she had suffered earlier - and noted that Rachel had stopped. Rachel was standing there in the doorframe, full-on rain pouring down on her long, loose hair and getting her arms and legs and feet wet. Rachel was just standing there, mouth opened in silent protest and horror at the fact that Quinn was sprawled out on the ground, some unknown attacker grappling at the hems of her jeans.

The scared look on Rachel's face was enough to remind Quinn - not for the first time that night - that she would do anything for this girl.

So she hauled herself up on her elbows, spun around, stared down into the demented eyes of an increasingly sober Jesse St. James, and then pointed the gun right between his eyes.

Rachel shielded her eyes from the sight. Instead she focused on the rest of the plan. She grabbed the bag that was hiding behind the dumpster and looked up in time to see Quinn running out the door.

She was still so terrified - this whole plan had mostly been her idea, but for the longest time she was convinced that it was just a pipe dream. Quinn was making this true.

Quinn was setting her free.

She felt the blonde's hand take her own and pull her away. Their fingers laced together as they ran. Rachel had never run so hard in her life. The thought of escaping the pain and the torture...

Quinn kept her hand in Rachel's as they ran. It was only a few hundred feet, but it seemed miles away. She could hear the guards behind them. She could hear the yelling and, most importantly, she could hear the sickening sound of their guns going off of safety.

Their safeties were clicking off and they had stopped running and Quinn could just picture them pouring out of that door and taking aim at their backs. She could fucking picture it perfectly in her head.

And it was terrifying.

But it also didn't matter. Because they had reached the car. They had reached the car, and Quinn was throwing the door open and shoving Rachel into the passenger seat. With their bag of essentials safely in Rachel's lap, Quinn slammed the door and literally dove across the hood of the car, rolling the last couple of feet over, crouching down, and getting inside as fast as she possibly could.

"Duck down!" she yelled, and Rachel obliged.

With the engine roaring to life, Quinn barreled back down and out of the alley. What was left of Jesse's gang dove out of the way of the old Chevy Quinn had gotten a hold of - last minute, with no track-able tags.

And it was as if... It was as if the heavens parted then, as they careened out of the alleyway and onto the street. Quinn was driving and Rachel was cautiously peeking her head back up from where she had ducked down between her own knees and the rain was still pouring, but it was good.

It was better than good.

"Are we..." Rachel trailed off, unsure of how to ask the questions that were streaming mercilessly through her mind.

But she didn't have to ask. She had never had to, really. Quinn normally knew without the words.

Maybe Quinn had always known.

Maybe Rachel had always been Quinn's.

"We're free," Quinn affirmed the unasked question. "You are free, baby girl."

And when Rachel smiled, it was true and genuine. And Quinn had never felt like less of a failure in her life.

Because she was Quinn Fabray, dammit. And that meant that she got shit done.

Especially when it came to Rachel Berry.

Fin

Epilogue

Quinn squinted because the sun was glaringly bright. Of course, it usually was at two in the afternoon. She ducked into the shade of the awning hanging off of the bar. She leaned onto the smooth wood with her elbows. "Where's Rachel?"

The bartender gave her a lazy smile. "She's changing. She did four encores and told me to tell you that she'd be a little late."

Quinn smiled. So Rachel. "Alright." She glanced up at the TV behind the bar. The news was slowly crawling on mute. It was uninteresting to Quinn, so she walked to one of the two chairs perched on the beach.

She didn't have to wait long.

Rachel made her way up to Quinn and, instead of sitting on her own chair, she straddled Quinn's lap. The blonde's hands went to Rachel's hips as she offered her a smile.

Rachel grinned widely. "Six minute standing ovation."

"Awesome baby," Quinn ran her hands up Rachel's bare sides, admiring the smooth unmarred skin under her fingertips. The bruises disappeared a few days after they arrived in Mexico. When they finally made it to their beach destination, Rachel was fully bikini ready.

Rachel dipped down and kissed Quinn. When she pulled back, a playful smile occupied her face. "Race you to the water."

Before she could process what Rachel had said, Quinn was already watching the care-free girl running toward the water. She was quick to follow, loving when Rachel got like this.

Rachel laughed when Quinn tackled her into the water.

So what if she was just singing in front of locals at the cantina that Quinn purchased? So what if she was thousands of miles away from Broadway?

She had Quinn. And she had freedom.

That was all she needed.