Chapter 43

Santana had probably memorised Samantha's office by now. She knew everything hanging on the walls, what all the paintings looked like, what all the certificates and degrees were for, how many rocks were in the glass she had on the table by her chair, and how many spirals there were on the carpet. She'd studied the room in great detail over her past two sessions, needing to look anywhere but at Samantha. She knew if she looked into the calm, understanding eyes of the psychiatrist she would probably walk out. She hated that look. It wasn't exactly pity, but it held an air of… 'I know you're suffering, let me help you' that Santana hated.

"Santana?"

Santana sat back, resting her back against the couch cushions and crossing one leg over the other. She watched her foot swing as she jiggled it, admiring her heels like she wasn't the one who'd bought them.

"Santana?"

"What?"

"Do you remember how you felt the first time you went to throw up your lunch?"

Santana clenched her jaw. Some of these questions seemed stupid to her. Samantha was supposed to be a highly educated therapist, who'd worked with hundreds of patients before Santana. It seemed she should know what someone had to be feeling to consider sticking their fingers down their throat.

She shrugged.

"The usual."

"And what's that?"

"I was a cheerleader. Have you ever seen the uniforms cheerleaders wear?"

"Sure" Samantha nodded. "Cute little skirts and ribbons in their hair."

Santana narrowed her eyes. "Do I look like I wore ribbons in my hair?"

Samantha smiled but didn't answer.

"You think the skirts are cute?"

"Sure. That's what they're supposed to be right?"

"Yeah. Would you wear them?"

Samantha put down her pen and cocked her head.

"I suppose not."

Santana nodded.

"They're sexy. They're supposed to make us look…alluring, while we dance around and shake pompoms. I was hella sexy in that outfit."

"Okay?"

"Our coach was the devil incarnate. She used to motivate us by yelling insults…I don't know" Santana shook her head. "She was horrible."

"Did you ever insult you?"

Santana scoffed.

"What kind of question is that?"

"Okay." Samantha sat forward. "How about this. Did any of her insults ever get to you?"

Again, a stupid question, but rather than point that out, Santana turned to look around the room, hoping to find something new to distract her.

Did any of Coach Sue's insults get to her, a teenager in her most insecure and formative years, who already had a grandmother that had raised her with insults? She was a prime target for Sue Sylvester. The perfect girl to tear down and reshape how you saw fit. You want a cheerleader that can fit into the smallest size uniform? All you had to do was compare her to other girls slightly bigger than her. Tell her she was on the way to fat hanging out of her shirt. She'd be skinny by the end of the week.

"Did you look up to your coach?"

"Hell no." Santana replied immediately. "She was a hateful bitch."

"From what you've told me, you were a hateful bitch."

"Yeah well, it wasn't exactly my most endearing quality was it?"

"What changed you?"

Brittany. Brittany got Santana to see that she could be happy. Slowly, and it did take years, Brittany got Santana to stop seeking for other people's approval. That she was who she was, and who she was, was awesome. Brittany changed everything.

She smiled. "My wife."

"Brittany."

"Yeah."

"How?"

How? Santana wasn't even sure. Something about Brittany was so genuine that it forced Santana to be so as well. She wasn't cruel, she wasn't angry or spiteful. She didn't really care what other people were doing, how their lives were going. She just lived in her own world, doing what she wanted. Santana had been captivated by that.

"She just….I guess she was a different voice."

"Different?"

"Yeah. Everyone in my life was saying one thing, expected me to be one way, and Brittany just…She didn't have any expectations, I don't think. She just…" Santana's smile grew. "She was just happy to know me."

Samantha nodded. "It can often be freeing to have someone in our lives who expects nothing from us. We don't feel like we can disappoint them, whatever we do, and that gives us room to just be. To express our thoughts and feelings without fear of judgement."

Yeah Santana thought. That was what Brittany gave her. Freedom.

****

Samantha's office was always so quiet. Whenever they would sit in silence, Santana couldn't hear the cars in the street, which made it feel like they were separate. Like when she walked into the office she was removed from time and space.

"Glee club is where you discovered your love for performing is that right?"

Santana nodded.

"But it was full of people you…didn't usual associate with."

"People I hated."

"What did you hate about them?"

What wasn't there to hate? Santana thought. They were loud, obnoxious and not to mention just generally lame. They were always so focused on the rightness or wrongness of someone's character or actions, always worrying about other people but somehow also judging them. Living for drama. They were a lot to handle for someone who more often than not didn't like people.

"They weren't my kind of people."

"But you moved in with them in New York right?"

"Yes."

"So…"

"I guess…we all grew up. I wasn't the same person I was in high school by the time I went to New York. Neither were they."

"Okay." Samantha nodded. "So in high school, there was no point at which you liked them."

Santana sighed. "No. I…they grew on me eventually. Not all of them." She added, raising a finger. "But I got to know some of them and they weren't so bad."

"So you would you say you loved the glee club?"

"By the end?"

"Yes"

"Yes."

"Why?"

Why. Santana could say she loved the Cheerios. She loved being captain of the Cheerios. Loved coming up with routines. But she couldn't say she loved the cheerleaders. She had a few friends yeah, but not like the glee club. There was always the feeling of unease. Like she wasn't safe. At any moment someone could stab her in the back for a chance at captaincy. Any sign of weakness and you could find yourself right back at the bottom of the food chain, dodging slushies to the face.

Glee club, though they were all emotional and ambitious, didn't have that tense atmosphere. Sure, Rachel was annoying, and Santana was sure she would fight you to the death for the chance at the spotlight, but all you would lose was that. The spotlight. There was no fear that your deepest secrets would be revealed, or if they were, since they were all huge gossips, there was no fear that they would be used against you.

"The competition never got nasty. By the end we all admired each other's talent. We grew together, pushed each other to be better and cheered each other on. There was fighting, but it never meant the end of the world. It wasn't anything we couldn't come back from."

"Acceptance and forgiveness." Samantha said. "You'd never had that had you?"

Santana frowned.

"What do you mean?"

Samantha folded her arms together in front of her.

"Your parents weren't around a lot. They worked very busy, very demanding jobs, and so you didn't feel secure in your relationship with them. Your grandmother was, from what you've told me, a very judgemental woman with high expectations of you. So there was no room for failure with her. Same with your cheerleading coach."

Santana nodded.

"So up to this point, all you've known is either you succeed, or you fail. Given your choice of words, I assume that failure on the cheerleading squad meant being replaced by someone gunning for your spot. The competition was eat or be eaten. Am I right?"

"Yes."

"So then the glee club comes along, and there isn't any of that. People fail, quit, fight….but they always come back. They're always given another chance. There are people ready to help you make it back, help you get better."

"Yeah."

"Everyone was accepted as they were, and forgiven countless times for the failures."

How many times had Santana insulted the glee club? Betrayed them to Sue, stabbed them in the back, exposed their secrets. Yet, they always welcomed her back. They were always ready to forget what she'd done and let her back in.

Brittany had said once that the glee club was a family. She'd been too angry at the time to hear it, but it was true. A sometimes dysfunctional one, but a family none the less. And it was thanks to them that Santana made it out of high school. That she was able to look back on her years there and smile. Laugh even.

"Yeah, you're right."

"While you were in the glee club, did you struggle with eating?"

"For a while. In the beginning."

"Do you remember when you stopped?"

Slowly, Santana shook her head.

"No. One day I just…I don't know. I don't think I even realised that I stopped going to the bathroom after lunch. One day I just wasn't doing it anymore."

"Do you know what happened recently, to trigger that urge again?"

They'd been sleep deprived, Santana knew that. They rarely slept through the night, rarely showered, and walked around in clothes they'd been wearing for days, covered in milk or spit up. She hadn't been washing her hair, because when she did get the chance to shower, her arms were too tired to do all that work, and she didn't have the time anyway.

"My brain was too tired to even think about how I looked." She chuckled.

"And yet." Samantha said quietly.

Santana's smile slowly dropped.

"That's your homework for today. Go home, and think about what happened. How were you feeling, what were you thinking? Something triggered this, and we need to find out what if we're going to really help you."

**********************************************************************************

Santana woke up on her own for the first time in a while. Instead of a baby crying, or an alarm for work, her mind simply switched on, as if it had decided she'd slept enough. She didn't feel tired or sleepy, but the digital clock on her bedside told her it was too early to go in to work. After a few minutes of watching Brittany sleep, something she hadn't been able to do in a long time, she gently kissed Brittany's forehead and got out of bed.

She went downstairs to put on a cup of coffee, and found herself lost in thought as the sound of the machine filled the kitchen.

Samantha's question about what had triggered her Bulimia had been bugging her for two weeks. She'd had two sessions since then and each time Samantha had asked her for an answer. But Santana didn't know. She wasn't sure anything had happened to specifically trigger it. All she knew was that she was exhausted and then she'd realised she and Brittany hadn't had sex in months. Had she been a little self-conscious about that? Maybe. Her first thought had been that Brittany didn't want to have sex with her because she was gross and adding weight. That had been the first time in years that she had even thought about her weight, but what triggered that thought? Santana couldn't say. It was just how her mind worked. How it had always worked. Always jumping to the worst case scenario, always assuming people were thinking the worst of her.

There was no reason for it, she was just born that way.

So the last two sessions with Samantha had been difficult to say the least. Samantha was adamant that Santana wasn't digging deep enough. That she was refusing to open old wounds and really look into what had been going through her mind when she'd first locked herself in the bathroom. So she pushed her. Santana had to give it to her, Samantha was a tough woman. She'd fully expected to be kicked out after a particularly spiteful comment on her part, but Samantha had simply taken a breath and tilted her head.

"If I was wrong, you wouldn't be this defensive Santana." Samantha had said. Santana had stormed out.

For a few days she'd vented to herself, because she wasn't sure Brittany would be happy to hear what she had to say, about therapy, and Samantha and how they were both stupid. But then the truth of it had set in and she'd begun to wonder. Why was she being so defensive? What was it about this particular topic that turned her back into her high school self, in denial and refusing help.

Santana jumped slightly as the coffee maker beeped.

With a fresh cup of coffee, Santana went back upstairs to check on the babies. It was still a bit early for either of them to be up, but sometimes Jesús would wake up and stay quietly in his crib, staring at the mobile. This was how Santana found him when she walked in, lying flat on his back and staring wide eyed at the slowly spinning mobile. Kyler was still asleep.

Placing her cup on the changing table, Santana lowered the side of the crib and climbed into it. Jesús crawled to her, laying half his body over her stomach with his red resting on her boob.

"Morning my baby."

Her left hand started making gentle circles on his back as she closed her eyes. The only time she didn't feel out of control of angry lately was when she was with her sons. The way they were always so happy to see her, always happy for hugs and kisses, made her feel like she could just exist for a moment, without having to think about why she was so messed up.

"I'm sh-bad at a lot of things Jesús." She whispered. "And I might be a mess right now….maybe always, but you will never be. I promise I'm going to take care of you. I'm going to make sure you grow up loved and adored. I'm going to make sure you never know what it's like to feel like a mistake. Like you have to earn love, and any mistakes you make can cost you it."

She opened her eyes and looked down at the baby on her chest.

"You are the light, the love and the pride in my heart and in my life. You are and always will be the source of my greatest happiness, no matter who you grow up to become, and I promise to make sure you know that. That you feel-"

Jesús placed his palm over Santana's mouth, making her giggle. He'd developed the habit of doing that whenever he was cuddling or being fed a bottle. Brittany had realised he was asking for a kiss, since she and Santana often kissed the boy's hands when they were holding them across their chests trying to get them to sleep.

Obliging him, Santana took his hand and pressed it to her lips, kissing it several times and then holding it against her lips.

"I love you amor."

*****

When Jesús had woken up enough to be hungry, Santana took him downstairs. The clock on the microwave said 7:07, which meant Brittany was about to get up, so after Santana made up Jesús' bottle of milk, she decided to make breakfast.

When she was younger, like maybe five or six, Santana remembered loving the days her mother would cook, because she would play salsa music as she cooked and dance around the kitchen. It didn't happen often because her mother was rarely home early enough to cook dinner, and left too early to make breakfast, but sometimes on her days off or over the weekends she didn't work, Santana would beg her to cook, and the two of them would dance and laugh as her mum taught her easy recipes.

They were the few memories Santana had before her image of her mother was tainted by her anger and resentment, and they reminded her that her parents weren't bad people. They weren't bad parents. They weren't the Pierces, all warm and affectionate, but they loved Santana, back when she used to let them.

She knew these things, yet she couldn't bring herself to forgive them. She thought she had, but now she was a mother herself, and she couldn't imagine leaving her sons to do anything by themselves. Couldn't imagine not picking them from school or showing up to their football games or dance recitals. She couldn't imagine leaving them in the house until it got dark, to put themselves to bed, and then leaving so early in the morning that they had to eat breakfast alone. There was a disconnect between the part of her that was a daughter who recognised that her parents had done their best, and the part that was a mother and thought their best wasn't good enough.

Trying to reconcile the two had been giving Santana headaches. So instead of trying to, she decided to learn from her parents. Some of these small things had stuck with her after years of anger and fighting with her mother, which meant that the small things mattered. So she ran upstairs quickly and got her phone. She was going to make breakfast while she sang and danced, and give her sons small things like that to remember when they were older.

****

Santana sat in her car for nearly an hour, debating about going in the Samantha's office. She knew she didn't yet have an answer to her question, and in trying to get her to find one, Samantha was going to tear into her, call her out and expose her insecurities. She knew it was necessary, but that didn't mean she liked it, or that she could stop herself from fighting back. Having someone dissect her entire life, telling her in actual words all the ways she was messed up, all the things she was deprived off, all the unhealthy ways she learned to cope, was not a fun thing. It was not an easy thing. And it was not something Santana was wired to accept.

Still, she'd promised Brittany she was going to get help, and Brittany was always saying how proud she was that Santana was doing this. How proud she was of how much she'd grown, and how much she loved her for doing this for herself. She knew that if she told Brittany she was done, Brittany might not fight her on it, but she knew Brittany would be disappointed. Santana didn't think she could handle that. It would be like promising Brittany she would go to prom with her and then chickening out. She hadn't been mad then either, but the disappointment had been agony for Santana. She'd never felt so ashamed of herself in her life.

Taking a deep breath, she got out of the car.

****

"Why don't you tell me about your grandmother?"

Santana actually felt her entire body flinch.

"I don't talk about her."

"Do you not think that's a problem?"

"I think it's a boundary."

"Do you talk about her with Brittany?"

"No."

"You don't talk about her at all?"

Santana narrowed her eyes and bit her tongue. She'd insulted Samantha enough in the last session.

"Santana, she raised you. Right?"

Santana didn't respond. She didn't nod or speak, she didn't even blink.

"You told me that you spent most weekends and holidays at her house. You stayed with her when your parents were out of town until they thought you were old enough to stay on your own. She was the one called to school when you were in trouble, who took you to hospital when you were unwell. Right?"

"You're testing me Samantha."

"I'm just trying to say that your refusal to discuss someone who was such a big part of your life is an indication that she may be a big part of your trauma as well."

"Stop."

"You said she wasn't a nice woman."

"Stop it." Santana pointed threateningly at Samantha, feeling the rage building inside of her.

Samantha sighed.

For a few minutes neither of them spoke. Santana was trying hard to keep her thoughts away from her grandmother, who she never let herself think about. It was the only way she could go through life without fighting the urge to cry.

"Santana, do you think it's possible, that the voice in your head that told you being gay was wrong, is the same one that tells you you're fat? That your grandmother-"

"Shut up!" Santana jumped up. "Just shut the hell up. What the fuck do you know about how my abuela raised me?" Her voice shook as she yelled. "What the fuck do you know about what it means to raise a latina girl? You don't know what she had to prepare me for. You don't know how strong she had to make me."

She grabbed her purse from the couch and stormed out of the room, slamming the door so hard it echoed down the hall.

Tears were streaming down her face as she got into the elevator to the basement, and by the time she was getting to her car she was screaming. She took out her keys and then threw her purse at the windshield of the car, kicking the car tire as soon as she was close enough. Her hands were shaking so much it took her nearly a minute to unlock the car, and when she had, she beat the steering wheel as hard as she could, over and over again until she didn't have the strength to anymore.

Her abuela was harsh, that wasn't news. She was rude and could be mean, she was judgemental and opinionated, but she'd been there for Santana all of her life. She'd helped her with her homework and read her the bible. She'd braided her hair and taught her how to cook and made her disgusting home remedies when she was sick. She was the one reliable person in Santana's life until Brittany had come into it, and it broke Santana in more ways than one when her grandmother had turned on her and kicked her out.

Who the hell did Samantha think she was to bring her abuela up like that? Even Brittany knew not to talk about her. Santana never talked about her and Samantha had just….

Santana wiped her eyes harshly, leaving her cheeks slightly pink, got out of the car and marched back into the building. She threw the door to Samantha's office open with so much force that it banged against the wall behind it, and advanced on Samantha. She was sitting behind her desk now, rather than on the chair opposite the couch like she did during sessions.

"You don't know her." Santana said in a low, threatening voice. "You don't know what she did for me."

Samantha looked calmly up at her. Closing the laptop in front of her and joining her hands over it.

"My abuela was there for me when my parents weren't. When they chose work over me, she always had time for me. She taught me everything and made me who I am."

Samantha nodded.

"Exactly."

Santana frowned.

"What?"

"We are all moulded by the people that raise us. The people around when we are kids are the ones that inform who we grow into. You have severe insecurities, anger issues, trust issues, and for a while, internalised homophobia. You have underdeveloped emotional intelligence and an acute fear of rejection. And who raised you?"

Santana took several steps back, shaking her head.

"Your grandmother instilled in you the idea that other people define your worth Santana."

"No…my parents-"

"Your parents weren't around and that in itself does have consequences I'm sure, but you've told me yourself that when you were struggling with coming out, it was because a voice in your head kept telling you it was wrong. That who you are is wrong. This was not something you learned because of your parents' absence. This is something you were told."

Santana dropped heavily onto the couch, still shaking her head. She knew her abuela was the person she was most afraid of coming out to, because she was the most religious in the family, but now that she thought about it, her grandmother hadn't even told her who she was was wrong. She'd said the sin wasn't in the thing, but in talking about it. She was ashamed because now Santana's secret was out and people would know. Wasn't that exactly what Santana had been afraid of? People finding out? What people would say behind her back?

Her grandmother wasn't a nice person, Santana had said this before, but had she really been in denial about what that meant. Had she actually been abused all her childhood?

"She…" Santana took in a shuddering breath, forcing her tears back. "She raised me on insults."

Samantha stood up and walked to her usual seat, crossing one leg over the other.

"She…all my life she called me names and…she told me I wasn't good enough. I thought I got over it. That I was used to it. That it made me strong and gave me thick skin."

"You might be used to it, but being used to something does not make it okay. And as children we internalise the words of the adults around us. If they tell us we aren't pretty, we believe them, and forever strive to attain whatever standard of beauty we think will please them."

"But she loved me."

"I'm sure she did." Samantha nodded. "She may have been raising you the way she was raised. It doesn't matter Santana."

Santana's eyes widened.

The day she had first thought that she and Brittany were becoming lazy, they'd been talking about the Cheerios. Brittany had said,

"Can you imagine if Coach Sue saw us now?"

And Santana had thought, 'She'd be almost as disgusted as my abuela.' Catching the words on the tip of her tongue.

It was only a few days later that she'd asked Brittany if she thought she was fat, and a few days after that, that she'd thrown up for the first time.

It was because she'd thought about what her abuela would think of her.

"Her love was conditional" Santana said. "Either you did things the way she wanted them done or she stopped talking to you. Before I came out, that had never happened to me. I'd learned to read her. I knew how she liked things. What to do to keep her happy. I modelled myself after her so she would love me."

Samantha nodded.

"Oh my god" Santana breathed.

*****

Santana couldn't believe she was actually lying across the couch in a therapist's office. She looked like she could be in a cheezy movie, about to have an epiphany that would change her life. Her head was aching from all the crying she'd been doing, so she had her eyes closed. It had been at least twenty minutes since anyone last spoke. She didn't have the energy to continue the conversation, and Samantha seemed content to let her think in silence for once.

And she had been thinking. She had been thinking through high school, trying to figure out how much of who she was back then was entirely constructed by her abuela. But something wasn't adding up.

"So what changed?" She asked, her voice slightly hoarse.

"Huh?"

Santana opened her eyes, turning her head to look at Samantha.

"What changed? If I was doing everything I could to keep my grandmother's love, what changed that I stopped?"

Samantha smiled at her.

"Will you stop doing that?!" Santana snapped. "I don't need you to look at me like some child who doesn't understand something simple. Just fucking tell me."

"You tell me."

Santana rolled her eyes, sitting up.

"Okay. If you're going to continue being useless-"

"Santana you are the one who was there. You're the only one that knows what happened to make you feel that you could demand or expect more from your grandmother. Something that made you believe that you deserved to be loved for who you are, rather than changing yourself to be loved."

Santana clenched her jaw.

"Brittany?"

"Is that a question?"

Santana knew that Brittany had represented something different, for Santana. A hope that life didn't need to be so full of anger or fear. She'd seen how free Brittany was, so unconcerned about what people would think or say, so secure in who she was that it never even crossed her mind not to do or say the things she wanted to. Santana had wanted to be more like her, that was for sure. She admired that about Brittany. But could she say that Brittany had changed how she saw love, or how she saw herself, so much that it made her realise she deserved more from her grandmother?

Maybe not at the time. At the time all Santana knew was that Brittany loved her in a way that no one in her life ever had. In a way that let her be who she was and was still always there. No matter how rude or mean she got, no matter how many times she lashed out and it would have been completely understandable to walk away. Brittany had shown up for Santana every time she needed her, and it allowed Santana to safely work through her emotions, until she was comfortable enough to talk about it. Comfortable enough to come out.

Her grandmother never talked about feelings. She said talking about it was being dramatic. Making your problems other people's problems for no reason. Family issues were to be kept within the family, and ones issues with themselves were to be kept to themselves. Doing otherwise, telling people about your problems was weakness, and her abuela had no time for weak people.

"The world is hard Santanita" she often said. "You must be hard too."

"Brittany." Santana said, surer this time. "Brittany let me be soft."

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When Santana got home from Samantha's office, Brittany wasn't home yet. As such, since she'd gone to work with the twins today, the house was empty. Santana tried to keep busy. She washed the dishes in the sink left over from breakfast, and put a load of laundry in the washer, but there wasn't much to do after that. Eventually she found herself sitting in her room, bored and trying not to think. She'd done enough thinking for the week.

"Oh" she said, quickly getting up and heading into their closet. In the corner was a red wooden box that Santana hadn't thought about in what felt like a decade. She carefully took it out and walked it back to the bed, where she sat cross legged and opened it.

It was almost full, which shocked her. She couldn't remember if it had been full the last time she'd opened it, which must have been in high school, or if Brittany had been adding to it all these years. The latter thought made her heart swell.

One by one she took out letters, some long some short, sticky notes with cute drawings or short messages like 'I love you' written on them, pages torn from books that she and Brittany had scribbled each other's names on, with love hearts all over them, pictures they'd stashed away and the friendship bracelets they wore before Brittany had bought Santana the charm bracelet. She smiled down at each item, feeling tears pooling in her eyes.

Brittany had given the kind of love that Santana thought was fake. The kind that made you giddy inside, and do crazy things that you never thought you would. Inside this box was everything Brittany had done to fix Santana. To heal her. Every note or letter from Brittany was one step closer to Santana getting to who she was during senior year. Years of work, heartache, fights, tears, but Britany had gotten her there. She hadn't given up, hadn't pushed her too hard, hadn't gotten irritated. She'd just been the voice of encouragement, there every step of the way to remind her that she was loved.

As she read the letters, Santana found that she actually remembered exchanging them. She remembered the days and what had led to the letter, or what class they were in when Brittany had taken over her book and drawn a cat in the corner of it, which she then tore off and stuck in her pocket.

She remembered the way Brittany's eyes had shone with happiness the first time Santana had slipped a sticky note in her locker with the pun 'Paw-don me, but are you fur real?!' which had started a cat pun war between them that Brittany had of course won. Santana couldn't remember ever laughing so hard before, and every day she'd opened her locker with a sense of excitement, which puzzled her, because it was all over a damn sticky note. With a bad joke no less. Yet it was the kind of foolish happiness she had never gotten to experience before.

Then she saw a picture of her and Brittany in the motocross gear that they had to wear when going out to ride. The one and only time Brittany had taken her to her old motocross track and convinced Santana to ride. Santana actually laughed out loud as she remembered that day. She'd been terrified to get on the thing, because though she loved Brittany, she wasn't sure she trusted her to handle her on a machine as dangerous as a motorbike, with no adult present. She'd screamed when Brittany had actually started moving, clutching Brittany's waist painfully. Brittany had laughed at her.

It was a solid ten minutes before Santana calmed down enough to semi-enjoy the experience, but then it had been ruined by another rider zooming past them, splattering both of them and the bike in what had felt like an avalanche of mud. Santana had been furious as they returned their bikes, but the old man and woman that ran the place had laughed, along with Brittany, and forced them to take a picture. Looking down at it Santana could still see the anger on her pouting face. Yet there was a hint of a smile behind her features, like she couldn't bring herself to really be mad at Brittany. And Brittany looked like it was the best day of her life, though Santana often thought that about Brittany in pictures together. Maybe it was because Brittany allowed herself to feel that happy all the time, where Santana was reserved for most of it.

Taking out the friendship bracelets, Santana wondered what 13 year old her would think about where she had ended up. Brittany had given it to her because she was so sure they would be friends forever, now Santana had a ring that said the same thing. She'd been so embarrassed by the bracelet back then. She'd hidden it from all of her friends, and tried as much as possible not to wear it, because she knew what they would say. They'd laugh, call her childish and ask her if she was still in the fourth grade, which she knew would piss her off and force her to deny it. Probably calling them stupid in the process. Santana cringed even now at the thought of how hurt Brittany would have been if she'd done that. So 13 year old her had refused to let a single soul, except Brittany, know about the bracelets. She'd told Brittany it would be even more special if it was their little secret. Brittany had accepted it without question, even going so far as hiding her own. When she'd given Santana the charm bracelet, Santana had taken the opportunity to get rid of the ones Brittany had made, but Brittany had been sad to see them go. So Santana had taken a wooden box she found lying around in her house and put the bracelets inside.

"This is where special things go Britt." She'd told her. "Things more special than everything else that they can't just be put anywhere."

And thus, their box of things was born. Brittany had taken it home and returned it the next day painted red, because it was Santana's favourite colour. They'd been putting things in there all through high school, and when it came time to go to university, Santana had left it with Brittany.

It had come as a shock to her when Brittany unpacked it from a box when she was moving into their apartment in New York. She'd assumed Brittany threw it out when they broke up.

It was the perfect roadmap of their relationship, from friendship to true love, and Santana was sure that aside from her children, this box was what she would run back into the house to save if there was a fire.

She carefully put everything back, somehow managing to keep her tears in, and closed the box.

Looking at what they'd thought were the most important things as teenagers had put her conversation with Samantha into perspective. She decided in that moment to keep adding to the box, so that another ten years from now she could open it again and see how her relationship with Brittany had grown. So that she could marvel at how far they had come, and so she could remember all of the love she has in her life.

She had been through a lot as a child. She'd been raised to be tough and she'd learned to deal with things on her own, which were not inherently bad, but now she had sons, who she had to raise better than she was. That was why she was going to keep seeing Samantha. So that she could make sure she wasn't unintentionally teaching her kids to be like her. So that like Brittany was for her, she could be a source of happiness and freedom for them.

"Honey I'm home!" She heard Brittany calling from downstairs, followed by the yelling of both babies. She smiled and stood from the bed, making her way to her family.