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 86th cycle. Now cycle 87!

IT'S THE FIFTH ANNIVERSARY CYCLE OF GLEEKATHON! - Five years! Five years! *insert flailing* Okay, not quite, but by the end of this cycle, it will have been five years of daily stories (sometimes twice a day! ... and for seven very frightening days a couple years back, three times a day!). It will also be the end of this crazy ride. I started thinking about ending gleekathon months ago, and I wanted to finish my ongoing series before that happened. It made it so I could finish out this fifth year, and it couldn't be any better that this cycle is actually ending on October 22nd 2014, which was the day it began, in 2009... Now here we go!

This story is a 'Genre Swap' for Under Dark Clouds, a Berry-St series story originally posted on May 12th 2014.

"Awakening"
Rachel/Santana, Quinn
Berry-St series

Genre: sci-fi

It didn't feel like centuries ago. She knew it had been, in actual years, but as they'd been in cryo through all of it, to her it felt like what she'd experienced, and that was that the fight they'd had was only days ago.

They were both scheduled to report and be frozen, before the ship took off on its way to the planet they were meant to explore, on the same day, but the night before that, they'd had a fight, the biggest one they'd ever had, and Santana had left without giving her a chance to make it right. And then by the time Rachel had reported to the chambers, her girlfriend had already been processed and now slept in the ice, where she would remain for the next four hundred plus years. She hadn't even given her a chance there. So she'd gone into her tube as well.

The awakening had been jarring and disorienting. One moment she was feeling herself fall asleep, slowly, and the next she was being woken suddenly, violently.

That was days ago. Ever since then, regardless of the medical team's insistence there was nothing for her to do about it, she'd been sitting, facing the still frozen tube which held Santana. They hadn't woken her like they'd done with Rachel, and it had taken about a day before they'd explained to her why that was, and why she'd been woken ahead of time to begin with.

It seemed a virus had found its way through their systems, something living, something… alien. It had been fortunate in that it had tripped the emergency recall on the first of the medical team, who was then able to enact the protocol and start waking those that they could, to pull them out of the reach of the virus. It had struck at its hardest in one section in particular. Already they'd had a handful of casualties, and a few more who had woken… and those might have been worse than the deaths. They had woken, but they had changed. They hadn't realized it at first, chalking it up to the trauma of their awakening, but as a day wore on and then another, it became clear that there was much more to it. They were violent, dangerous, and when one of their own had nearly been killed, the ship had been brought to band together and subdue them, lock them up. A few of them were calling for their execution, but thus far the captain had refused.

Santana's tube was just barely within the infected zone. The medical team was working round the clock to find a way and disable the virus from within that zone, before they ever dared to awaken the people still dormant. Rachel had been dogging them, making sure they did everything they could to protect her, save her. She had seen what happened to the infected.

The fight felt so stupid now, whether it was days or hundreds of years away. The bruise on her lip had remained to her all this time, but now it had started to heal. It had been the result of a misunderstanding and a mistake in encountering Quinn, one of their fellow travellers. The girl had been transferred out from another team, another ship, and had been struggling to adjust ever since. What made matters more difficult was that Rachel apparently resembled Quinn's girlfriend to a frightening level, and a painful one, too, as the other girl had passed away not too long ago.

Rachel had felt a need to keep an eye on Quinn, to make sure she would be alright, which inevitably had led to miscommunication, and then a kiss. Rachel should have pulled away immediately, but then in the midst of surprise, she'd thought about what the other girl had been through, and a part of her had decided maybe she should let it happen, only a little, to give Quinn some relief, before they went and slept for hundreds of years. Only then she'd thought about Santana, and she'd pulled away, which had led to the tear at her lip. Quinn had apologized profusely, Rachel had promised her it was alright, but then Santana had not thought the same thing. Rachel had had no desire to keep it from her, though she would have liked to have had the option of telling her first. Instead, Santana had seen her lip and had put two and two together. They'd fought, they'd parted, and centuries later, here they were.

What if she never woke up, what if they kept her sleeping for so long as they tried to understand a way to fix her? Rachel had heard the others talking. Some were of a mind that they should just give them mercy and make sure they never woke up to turn into the monsters the virus had made of those who did wake. That was part of the reason why Rachel had been keeping guard as she did. No one was going to touch her, no one was going to…

A light had started to blink, outside Santana's tube. Rachel stood, panicked, before hitting the call button to alert the medical team. It was too late though, the awakening process had begun. All she could do was to hope for the best and be there for her girlfriend, no matter what.

The team had worked fast, and Rachel had been forced to step back, let them do what they had to do. It all happened very fast, and the next thing she knew, she was sitting in wait next to Santana again, only this time her girlfriend was laid out on a bed in the infirmary, unconscious. They'd sedated her right away. Rachel got up now, moving to check on her arms and legs. The medical team had insisted on restraining her to the bed, in the event that the virus really had taken hold of her. Rachel touched them in turn, made sure they weren't hurting her. She was checking her right wrist, when she saw the fingers move.

"Santana? San…" Her eyes were opening, and Rachel breathed, holding her hand as she leaned to kiss her forehead, touch her head. "You'll be okay, you're…"

She was cold to the touch, icy. She hadn't been a moment ago, they'd been warming her, and she had felt it in her hands and feet, but her head… it was ice… just like the others.

"Santana?" she begged, sniffling as she looked into her eyes, tried to find her. The eyes that stared back at her felt unknowable. "Please, you know me, it's Rachel." But she wasn't listening. She was becoming aware of her condition, her restraints, and she was struggling against them, screaming and thrashing.

Rachel stepped back, horror struck. Her worst fears were coming true. Her girlfriend had been infected, just like the others… and there was nothing she could do about it.

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!