A/N: This was originally written for a big bang challenge that didn't work out, so I'm posting the here. It's mostly written already so updates should be reasonably quick.

A massive thanks to Penelope Cross for beta-ing this fic and making it considerably better than it would have been.

Santana gets her first camera when she is eight.

It's a pink Disney Princess camera and it lasts exactly four days before Puck convinces her to lend it to him so he can take a picture of a dissolving slug. She gets it back in five pieces and she sneaks into his room and pierces his only football as revenge.

When she is fourteen she discovers Evanescence and dark clothes and she tries to convince her mother to let her streak her hair with green. Her mother laughs and says over her dead body, and she runs up to her room and slams the door, hard. After three days of tears and screaming matches her mother agrees to buy her a semi-professional camera so she can express herself if she'll agree to drop the hair dyeing thing and throw away all of her Dashboard Confessional CDs.

She agrees, because no one uses CDs anymore anyway, and she spends a glorious three days taking black and white pictures of park benches and birds flying in the sunset. On the fourth day Quinn Fabray comes over with a massive shit eating grin and a perfectly pressed, red and white uniform plastered to her body, and she spends the next three hours convincing Santana to join the cheer leading squad with her.

'We'll rule the school,' she says. 'We can be at the top.' Santana listens carefully because you have to be careful with Quinn. Half the time what she doesn't say is what's going to come back and bite you in the ass if you're not careful.

'I don't know,' she replies, because she needs a second to figure out what Quinn is playing at.

Quinn looks at her, staring unblinkingly until she starts to squirm, and she steps forward and sits on Santana's bed, right next to her.

'I like your clothes,' Quinn says lightly. 'They suit you. The whole grunge thing looks good.'

'I know it does,' she says but the way Quinn is smiling at her knocks the usual punch out of her tone.

'You and Jacob Ben Israel are going to have so much fun together next year.'

'What?'

I mean, you look nice and everything, but you can't expect anyone to take you seriously if you walk around like that,' Quinn waves a lazy hand in her general direction, 'especially in high school. The only place you're going to fit in will be with the rest of the arty losers.'

She flashes back to the week before, in the park, when Puck and Finn and some other guys threw Jacob into a puddle and rubbed his face in the mud.

'It probably won't be so bad,' Quinn continues, and just for a second she wishes that she could throw her out of the window. 'They don't usually hit girls. And you're pretty tough. You would probably be okay.'

'Quinn,' she warns. Quinn holds her arms up in and leans back a little.

'I'm just saying. You should be prepared, that's all.' She stands up neatly, and makes for the door. 'Tryouts end tomorrow. I hope you decide to go,' she says, and disappears around the corner.

It's not so much that she wants to be a Cheerio. Quinn's sister Fran was one, and she used to spend hours describing the pain and humiliation the coach threw at them. There isn't much about being a Cheerio that actually appeals to her.

Except Quinn is already walking taller, holding her head higher than she did the last time Santana saw her. Because she knows that when she walks into the high school in September every person who sees her will move out of her way, and if Santana doesn't get herself in the same position she'll be one of the people who will get shoved to the side.

She is the first person to get to the tryouts the next day, and after the Coach sees her do a perfect back flip off the bleachers and perform the crazy hard routine she's sure was made up on the spot she is presented with a uniform identical to Quinn's and is ordered to lose five pounds before the start of the fall semester.

She goes home and tries it on, and watches the pleats twist and bounce as she practices walking.

She feels exposed, vulnerable in the uniform, because she's been wearing nothing but (ripped) jeans and t-shirts since summer started and she feels almost naked. She scrapes her hair back into a ponytail, puts her hands on her hips and scowls at her reflection in the mirror.

That's better.

That night before she goes to sleep she packs her camera away as carefully as she can before stashing it right at the back of her closet, behind all her old trophies and weird class projects. When she rearranges all her stuff so that she can't even see the case anymore she breathes a sigh of relief and picks her phone up so she can text Quinn about Cheerios practice.

She starts to use the treadmill in the spare room at least once a day and every time she stumbles off, muscles screaming, she imagines walking the halls of McKinley with every eye trained on her and a hot guy on her arm. Not any of the ones she grew up with, a real guy, like the ones Quinn's sister Fran used to bring home. She will flirt and laugh and everyone will stare when she walks into a room. She's going to rule the school.

Of course ruling the world is no fun if you do it alone, so as soon as Brittany is back from her trip to the Grand Canyon she works on getting her onto the squad. It takes four boxes of Dots and a promise to help her bathe Lord Tubbington before Brittany agrees to try out. After that it's easy to arrange for the Coach to 'accidentally' come across Brittany flipping and twisting all over the place in the local park. Brittany plays the surprised and pleased part perfectly and Santana grins from her hiding place when she sees her take a small card from the Coach.

Quinn is less than pleased when she finds out that Brittany is on the squad too. Santana knows it's because she thinks that Brittany's special brand of crazy will only drag them down. Brittany been able to take care of herself for as long as Santana has known her and everyone likes her. Besides, there's no way she's going to spend the next four years with a girl who thinks it's normal to have Jesus watch you as you sleep.

'I thought you weren't going to join the Cheerios,' Brittany says suddenly. Santana jumps a little. Brittany never speaks when Ariel is singing.

'I changed my mind,' she says, when it's clear Brittany is going to wait for an answer. It's weird to have her full attention when a Disney film is on. Santana shifts uncomfortably. Brittany's hand drifts down to brush her hair off her face.

'It's just, you don't really like all that dancing around stuff.' Brittany pauses the TV just as Ariel's dad makes the Eric statue explode. The garish colours in the darkened room are creepy, and she moves her head from Brittany's lap onto the pillow next to her.

'But you like it, right?' Brittany nods and Santana lets out a breath. 'It's not really about that. It's about power. We can be at the top.' She takes in a deep breath to explain that she doesn't want them to get trampled next year but the words slide back down her throat when Brittany's hands thread though her hair and massage her scalp. It sends chills all the way down her arms and she turns her head away to hide her face.

'Okay,' Brittany murmurs eventually, and presses play. The TV goes back to a soothing blue and Santana lets herself sink back into the pillows.

Quinn Fabray lied to her.

She fucking lied.

Okay, maybe she didn't lie, but Santana can't figure out why Quinn didn't think to mention that she had been appointed Junior Captain or some shit over the summer. It means that Quinn gets to boss her around and spend half of each practice cramming as much of herself as she can up the Coach's ass while Santana runs so many suicides she swears she puked her liver up at least once.

It means that Quinn is automatically put near the top of the pyramid even though Santana is definitely lighter than her. She has to spend the end of most practices trying not to get trapped under her giant thighs.

Well, not giant.

But still.

She has to make a choice, about whether she wants to spend the next few years underneath the thumb of the current head cheerleader or get herself under Quinn's protection and accept her role as minion.

For now.

So she learns how to flank, and laugh on cue, and she vows never to listen to any of Quinn's stupid ideas ever again. She takes Brittany along too, to make it bearable.

But it isn't so bad, because she's only one place off being at the top.

She makes her move when Quinn is still recovering from having the baby, and she spends two weeks begging for breast implants.

'Please, Mama,' she says, after her mother has said no for the thousandth time.

'Why is this so important to you, Santana?'

'I just need it,' she says helplessly. She doesn't really know what to say, apart from that. She can't tell her mother that she needs them because she's felt her grasp on safety and comfort and power slipping the whole year. Some of it is because she's still in the glee club, but most of it is Brittany's fault. Well, not really her fault, but Santana has woken up curled around her one too many times and now she can't stop thinking about her.

She knows those kind of feelings aren't an option. Her school is a place where Kurt still gets thrown in the dumpster and Rachel has three separate outfits within easy reach at all times. She can't leave herself open to that kind of crap, and that means she has to be the Santana that doesn't daydream about holding Brittany's hand in the hallway in school.

'I just really want them,' she says, and she just barely manages to stop her voice from cracking on the last word. Her mom stops chopping a carrot and walks around the kitchen island, towards her.

'What's wrong?' she asks, and Santana steps forward and wraps her arms around her mom. She buries her face in her shoulder.

I just think... I want to look better, that's all.'

'You look beautiful now,' her mom says, hugging her back.

'I know,' she says, and her mom laughs a little. 'It would make me so happy, though.' Her mom pulls back a little so she can look at her, and Santana forces herself to look her in the eye.

'Are you sure that's all?' She nods vigorously and her mom sighs. 'Okay. But this is the last big thing you're going to get from me, you hear?'

A month later she is the proud owner of a chest that hurts so much she wants to claw the damn things out herself.

'Go for a walk,' her mother tells her a week later, when the swelling has gone down and she is starting to get seriously bored. 'I only agreed to this ridiculousness so you would stop whining at me.'

She can't just walk around with nothing to do, though. She runs upstairs and grabs her phone so she can pretend to be texting someone. She digs around and finds her camera too, before she can think about what she's doing, and she heads for the door as her mother comes towards her, wielding a broom.

'Don't come back until you can smile again,' her mother says, shaking the broom theatrically, and Santana bites down on a grin. Her Mama is crazy.

'Let me see,' Quinn says. Santana raises an eyebrow. 'I don't mean... shut up.' Quinn's face goes bright red.

'There isn't really anything to see, Q. It's done.'

'I didn't really think they were necessary,' Quinn says, and Santana tries to hold back a scowl. She knows for a fact that Quinn has spent the last few weeks trying to whip her body back into shape after the baby nonsense of last year, and she's been buying Vitamin E by the bucket load to get rid of the stretch marks.

She didn't ask her over to fight, though, so she keeps her mouth shut.

'So why did you tell me, anyway?' Quinn is looking at her suspiciously, which is fair enough. They didn't exactly keep in touch last year. She shrugs.

'I don't know. I just did. I was bored.' Because Brittany isn't around is the real answer but she's not going to say that. It doesn't really matter because Quinn looks like she knows what she's thinking anyway.

'Do you want to watch TV?' She offers. Quinn nods faintly and she finds an episode of Real Housewives of Atlanta playing.

Quinn is a lot easier to get along with when they're laughing at idiots together instead of talking.

When Brittany comes back from visiting her grandparents in Indianapolis the first thing she does after she unpacks is run over to Santana's house to bring her a gift.

'Because you're all prickly but really nice inside,' Brittany explains when she hands Santana the miniature cactus. Santana eyes it warily.

'Britt, I don't think cacti are that nice inside.'

'They make tequila out of them, don't they?' Brittany flops down on the bed and Santana carefully puts the plant on the windowsill before lying down next to her.

'How was your vacation?'

'My sister got carsick and threw up on my mom's back. It was gross. How was yours?' Brittany winds their fingers together and she takes a breath.

'I didn't really do anything.' She can feel the pad of Brittany's thumb tracing her palm and it's making her face heat up. She pulls her hand away.

'Hey, Britt,' she says quickly. Brittany's face starting to do that thing that means she's about to say something that Santana won't want to hear. 'Look at this.' Santana moves off the bed and rummages around under it until she finds the shoebox where she has been stashing her pictures. She grabs a random handful and dumps them on the bed. She watches Brittany as she looks through them. She took pictures of everything while Brittany was away: people, trees, her driveway. She even took a picture of a porta potty at a construction site.

'These are really cool,' Brittany says. She looks up to see Santana trying to hide a pleased smile. 'Did you take them yourself?' Santana ducks her head to try to hide her face but Brittany moves quicker than she can and holds onto her wrists, gently.

'Whatever. I mean, I took so many there had to be a couple of good ones in there.'

'They are more than a couple of good ones in here, San.' Brittany still hasn't let go of her wrists and she lets her pull her back onto the bed. 'You really like it, huh?' Brittany is looking straight at her and it is so hard to lie to her when they are sitting like this. She doesn't even want to, really, because since when did she have to be cool around Brittany? She keeps this in mind as she forces down a joke about the fact that she has a shoebox full of strangers' pictures under her bed.

'Yeah,' she says, and Brittany looks like she wants to kiss her, only they don't kiss like this, after holding hands and talking about feelings. They kiss when they're drunk, or when they're nearly asleep. Brittany must see Santana start to shrink away because she lets go of her wrists and leans back a little.

'Show me the camera. You've never let me see it before.' Santana grasps onto the lifeline gratefully and fetches her camera from its case on her desk.

Her mom got it second hand from eBay but it was still expensive enough that she has a deathly fear of breaking it and she slides it carefully into Brittany's hands. Brittany turns it around a little before looking at Santana plaintively.

'Turn it on for me?' Santana chuckles and presses the 'on' button. She lets her hands slide over Brittany's to correct her grip and holds it steady for her.

'What do you want to take a picture of?' Brittany looks around for a second before settling on the cactus on the windowsill.

'That.' It's awkward, trying to get a decent shot while holding on to Brittany's hands, but she manoeuvres them as well as she can, and checks the frame and the light (she may or may not have got a how to photography book off Amazon because if she's going to embrace her inner nerd she's not going to be shit at it) and takes the picture.

It comes out well, she thinks. The sun is filtering in through the window and the plant is making pretty shadows on the floor.

'Let me see,' Brittany says, craning her neck, and Santana tilts the camera towards her.

'That's really cool, Santana.' She lifts the camera out of Brittany's hands and cradles it carefully. She likes how it feels in her hands, the weight of it, and she startles when she sees Brittany gazing at her. They're not supposed to gaze at each other.

'You look really cute holding it like that,' Brittany says.

She doesn't know what to say to that, so she fiddles with some buttons.

'Can you take a picture?'

'Of what?'

'Anything. I just want to see.' She's not sure what it is exactly that Brittany wants to see, but the room has gone really quiet and she wants a distraction. She raises the camera up and shoots the picture before she's even gotten a good look at what she's taking. Brittany holds her hands out for the camera and she hands it over.

'I look nice,' Brittany says after a while. She's been staring at the tiny screen for a while and Santana was starting to get worried. 'How did you make me look like that?'

Brittany looks a little surprised in the picture because Santana caught her off guard, but she still finds herself having to turn the camera off to stop staring.

'I didn't have to do anything,' Santana says, and she watches the smile spread across Brittany's face.

She tells Brittany that she loves her in the hallway at school, and when she turns her down she is almost happy that they're in public because it stops her from crying the way she way she wants to. As soon as she gets home she turns off all the lights in the house and crawls into bed. Her mother finds her there, hours later, and all she does is sweep Santana's hair off her face and gather her into a hug.

'Was it Brittany?' Santana nods.

Who else would it be?

'I love her.'

'I know,' her mom murmurs. Of course she does. They were really fucking obvious and her mother isn't stupid.

There isn't really anything else to say, after that, and she lets her mom fuss over her and put her to bed. It's nice, having someone to take care of her.

Three days later the bouts of crying have mostly stopped and she's ready to become a (somewhat) functional member of society again.

She tries to take pictures to try to forget the whole Brittany mess. She wants to do what all the tortured artists do on TV and lose herself in her art (which sounds so fucking pretentious) but when she goes out with her camera all she wants to do is use it to beat Artie's stupid face in and she stops taking it out because she is afraid for its safety.

When her mom walks in on her having her third Jersey Shore marathon in a row she picks up the phone and spends the next half hour chattering on the phone to someone. She only leaves the room when Santana pointedly turns the volume up as loud as she can and Snooki's nasal whine fills the room.

She jumps when a pile of papers lands in her lap.

'I called around and got the names of some good photography workshops at the community college.'

'Mama...' She didn't spend the last two years hiding her stupid photography hobby to have someone catch her in a class with a bunch of bored housewives.

'No, Santana. I can't stand seeing you look this depressed. It's making me depressed. You don't want me to start painting again, do you?' Santana shakes her head quickly. The house can't handle any more of her mother's 'art' hanging on the wall.

'Good. They want a portfolio before they can accept you, so go put something together.'

She groans. She's just gotten comfortable in her snuggie.

'Santana, you're sad. Your singing club isn't helping and you're not in the Cheerios anymore, thank God. I think that having a hobby, something you can do by yourself is a good idea. Now, go on.' She's pulled to her feet and the next thing she knows she's stumbling up the stairs.

'So, who here loves photography? Who loves taking pictures and capturing moments and telling a story?' A few hands creep up into the air.

The teacher, Greg, is long and spindly and intense. He reminds her a little of the Other Mother from Coraline.

'Good.' He smiles. 'We're going to have some fun.'