Started my daily ficlets to make the hiatus pass, then decided to keep going with a 2nd cycle, and then a 3rd, 4th, etc through 52nd cycle. Now cycle 53!

THIRD ANNIVERSARY CYCLE: It's late October again, and within this cycle I will be completing my third year of daily gleekathon stories and commencing a fourth! As in previous years, this means special things happening. I've selected my favorite stories from throughout the year, and I'll be treating them to something special. In previous years this included Prequel, Sequel, and POV Swap, and then Additional Scenes and Alternate Endings. This year I'm adding two new treatments: Genre Swap (I think that's pretty straightforward) and Element Change (I change one thing in the story, see how it affects the rest). Note that in both these cases and some of the others, there may excerpts directly transferred from the story it references. Also, since this year saw the addition of 'shift days', and since I suck at picking, I have selected 42 stories, to be treated two per day! So here we go!

This story is a POV Swap to Our Little Secret, a Santana story, originally posted on January 30 2012.

This is a double shift day. There will be one more upload today: Opened Door.

"My Sister My Hero"
Catalina (OC) & Santana

Catalina Lopez had never stopped looking up to her big sister. The eight year gap in between them could have made it hard for them to relate and get along, but it didn't. As far as she was concerned, there were none better than her big sister, especially now. She wasn't blind, she knew her sister didn't get along with Rachel, and Santana had still asked her to help when she'd wanted ballet lessons. Personally she saw nothing wrong with Miss Rachel, as she'd taken to calling her, and she was having so much fun with her lessons, but she guessed there was more to it between them.

With her lesson ended that day, Santana was there to pick her up, so she'd gone into the bathroom to change. She was putting her ballet clothes in her bag, but then she could hear the two of them talking, and she paused. She knew her sister always told her not to listen in to other people's conversations, especially hers, but she just couldn't make sense of what they were going on about, so she'd pressed on. She wasn't sure how she'd pieced it together, but then she had seen and heard enough in the past to make something of it. Just because she was only nine, it didn't mean she couldn't understand things… except then her sister had spotted her, and she froze. What was she supposed to do? Santana called her out, softly, so she grasped her bag and walked out to her.

"Say thank you to Miss Rachel, okay We have to go," Santana had told her, putting her arm around her.

"Bye," Catalina had looked back to her teacher, who held up her hand in a half-wave, smiling to her before she followed her sister out and they went to get in the car. Catalina tossed her bag in the back before getting in the passenger seat, buckling in, and then they were off.

Neither of them were speaking, and as far as Catalina was concerned, she wasn't ready for what she was going to either hear or say. Was her sister upset that she'd listened in? She couldn't tell yet, and even then… Maybe she didn't want to talk about any of it, especially if it might mean she'd get in trouble…

When she felt the car come to a stop and she heard the engine go off, she bowed her head, closing in on herself on instinct. "I know you must have heard some things back there, things that confused you," her sister had spoken then, and it made her look up. She didn't look upset.

"You're not mad I peeped?" she still had to ask, and Santana smirked.

"No, not mad," she went on, and Catalina relaxed enough that she could turn to face her. "Just how much did you hear?" Catalina hesitated at that.

"I don't know… I wasn't sure what you were talking about, that's why I listened…" she decided honesty was probably best at this point.

"Did you understand?" Santana asked her, and Catalina felt herself shrink again. Maybe she shouldn't say, just pretend like she hadn't connected at least some dots. She didn't want to upset her sister, and what if she'd come to the wrong conclusion? Then she might really be angry at her, or hurt, or… "It's okay, Tali," her sister had gone on though, and she looked back up to find her smiling. Did she already know what she meant to say? They had always been on the same page with a lot of things, but this… this felt bigger. Still, she gathered up her courage.

"You…" she started, but it took her a few moments more to know just how she could put this idea forward. "You like girls?" she finally asked, letting out a breath. When Santana nodded, she had to take a moment to think. Now all she could hear in her head were those awful words Peter Shaw had said about people like her sister. The thought of anything happening to Santana was as terrifying of a thing as she could think of. "Are you going to get in trouble?" she asked, concern in her eyes.

"In trouble how?" Santana asked, unsure what she meant.

"At school someone was saying… bad things," she wouldn't dare let the words pass her lips, and she almost had to look away so her sister wouldn't guess. It had made her so upset to hear them, even when she only ever had suspicions about Santana being one of them. What upset her almost more than anything was that her sister could ever find out she hadn't tried to tell him he was wrong or something…

"Who? When?" her sister sounded shocked, and Catalina tried to play it off, not wanting to make things worse.

"I don't know, a few weeks ago, a boy in my class…" she bowed her head, not wanting to be caught for a liar, before looking back at her. "So it's not true?" She didn't want to think that it was, but she had to be sure.

"Not even a little," Santana had told her, and she was so happy to hear it. Now though she had to ask…

"Why didn't you say before then?" Her sister looked back to her, and she could see the question working itself out in her eyes.

"Took me a while to… understand it for myself, and it was something I had to do before I could ever consider saying anything, you know?" Catalina thought about what she said, and it made sense to her, so she nodded. "Does it freak you out?" was her sister's next question, and Catalina paused, like she had to examine herself, whether she was freaking out. She wasn't, really, if she thought about it. Her sister was her sister, nothing had changed, she was the same Santana she had always been, the one who would take care of her, play with her, laugh with her, the one who would go out of her way to make her dreams come true, even if it meant letting her get lessons from a girl she didn't care for. Who she liked or didn't like never really factored into this, so why should it frighten her to have this knowledge?

"I don't think so," she told her. "I don't feel freaked out," she shook her head with a shrug, and her big sister's response was to laugh, which made her smile.

"Well, good," Santana had told her, and Catalina had turned her smile to her. Now that they had started talking about it, she figured she might as well get out any questions she might have, so she really had a handle of the situation. The next logical question was…

"Do Mom and Dad know?"

"Well… no," Santana shook her head, and Catalina wasn't sure if she was surprised or honored that she'd found out first, even if it had sort of been an accident. "You can't tell them either. I'll do it, I promise, I just… don't know h… when…" Santana had gone on, and Catalina understood, though for her part, the really burning question had yet to be asked, and before her window of opportunity closed…

"Do you have a girlfriend?" she asked, and Santana almost looked startled.

"N-no, no girlfriend," Santana told her. She wondered if Brittany might like girls, too. Of all her sister's friends she'd met, her blonde best friend definitely seemed to be the one person who made her the happiest. This was probably too big of a question to ask, so she didn't, instead riding right along with everything else they had discussed.

"Oh… okay," she nodded casually. It wasn't like she worried about her. Her big sister was a great person, so someone was bound to realize it eventually.

"I love you, you know that?" her sister told her, and Catalina turned to her, smiling brightly and then laughing. Her sister had unbuckled her belt and moved over to hug her when she'd told her…

"Love you too, Tana." She felt Santana kiss her head, and she could hear her sniffling near her ear. "Don't cry, okay?" she begged.

"Just give me a minute," Santana had asked, so Catalina had let her, enjoying the embrace. There was no one Catalina Lopez cherished more than her big sister. She was the best person she knew, so that made her a hero as far as she was concerned.

THE END

A/N: This is a one-shot ficlet, which means that signing up for story alert will not bring you any alerts.
In the event of a sequel, the story will be separate from this one. And as chapter stories go, they are
always clearly indicated as such [ex: "Days 204-210" in the summary] Thank you!