Light patters of rain and the sound of a heartbeat against Santana Lopez's ear was lulling her on a lazy Saturday afternoon, hands sifting through blond hair in metronomic fashion, keep time to the musical amalgamation of beats surrounding her. It had been a long and tough week, full of schoolwork. Halfway through her pre-law degree, the first week of her junior year was sizing up to be the most brutal. One of her professors had the gall to announce that she was only awarding three A's in the entire class of three hundred just before assigning a two hundred page reading and a paper due by the end of the week. It left her reeling, panicking, and stressing all the way up until the deadline, after which she promptly passed out, waking up to the sound of a thunderstorm and a warm body that snuck into her dorm room bed and slipped under her, quietly offering some sense of comfort while the Latina hoped to recuperate.
She longed for days spent like this, easily shutting out the rest of the world. Santana had a penchant to worry about everything: schoolwork, homework, work-work, what she thought about things, what other people thought about things, what she thought about other people, what other people thought about her, what she thought about herself. It all built up, the perfect makings of a time bomb. But lately, most of what Santana thought about was the way her life seemed to jaggedly stack onto one another when the rest of the world seemed to snugly fit into perfect little puzzle pieces. The feeling was hard to place and even harder to describe. It left her roaming aimlessly in circles.
"Do you ever wonder if something's missing from your life?" She asked pensively, staring up at the exposed pipe running across the ceiling of her small dorm room. Her head moved along as she felt a deep sigh dispel from under her ear.
"Sometimes," came a deep and calm voice, rumbling in half slumber, humoring the girl in hopes that she would shut up and let this nice Saturday just happen.
Frowning, Santana slapped the closest body part she could find and sat up.
"Seriously Leo," she hissed with a scowl. Santana Lopez did not like to be patronized or dismissed. No matter how much the woman had learned or grown or changed, that would stay stubbornly the same.
Running a calloused hand through his hair, her boyfriend Leo sat up and looked her dead in the eye, gauging her thought process. There were days that he was sure she'd remember having this exact same conversation, but like the Twilight Zone, they just kept circling the subject over and over again. Remiss, she brushed off his hand on her shoulder, staring blankly out the window, deep in thought. This was a conversation Leo knew well in their time together, knew full well the beginning, middle, and how it would end. Santana would cry herself dizzy and fall asleep in his arms, wake up as if nothing had happened, take her medication in the morning, and simply move on.
When she was tired, this 'missing piece' she opined to exist seemed to be more glaring, more potent and salient than usual. At that moment Santana couldn't remember having been so exhausted in her entire life. A secret smile played on her full lips. What a horrible and morose joke, given what little she remembered before sophomore year.
Drawing her legs up to her chest in the small space afforded to her between her hulking force of a boyfriend and the wall, Santana sighed. Perhaps that was what was missing: her entire life. Looking over at the blond boy with a slight tinge of desperation, she asked him, "Tell me again?"
Leo pursed his lips tight contemplating whether this was helping or hurting before giving in. He could never say no to her, not really, not even in the beginning (maybe especially so).
"Okay, come here," he said as he tugged her back into his arms, reciting the words he'd memorized verbatim by now, her biography. "Your name is Santana Lopez from Lima, Ohio to parents Francisco, a heart surgeon, and Maribel, a producer for Telemundo. You went to William McKinley High School and helped win four consecutive cheer championships, during two of which you were the captain. After graduating, you decided to come out to USC where you were lucky enough to meet me the first week, the coolest hottest RA on campus." Leo ignored the dubious look received from his girlfriend. "We dated for nearly ten months before you went back to Ohio."
On instinct, Santana gripped Leo at his sides, as if seeing the headlight of a train coming at her from out of a dark tunnel, but made no motion to stop Leo's monologue. She had to know, had to hear it again.
"At the end of the summer, you decided -and to this day I still don't have a clue why -to learn how to ride the motorcycle your high school ex-boyfriend Puck had bought with his pool cleaning money. Everything was fine until a car ran a red light and the motorcycle ran right on into him." She tried to gulp down the feelings that were rising up like bile burning in her throat and concentrate instead on the Southern twang of Leo's deep voice.
"I drove thirty straight hours from home as soon as I heard. When I got there, the doctors said you suffered from post-traumatic retrograde amnesia. You had no memory of who you were before the accident save for some bits and pieces." The entire biography was true. Santana remembered waking up to a surgically white hospital room and a splitting headache. Over the months following, she would get flashes of her past life, her mother's empanadas, her father's disapproving stare, Puck's mohawk, or holding up a huge cheerleading championship trophy. But they were just flashes and without a beginning or end, they didn't mean anything. It left Santana feeling like she'd jumped into the middle of a movie, clueless and out of place.
Like every other time (though she didn't remember any of the other times, just knew that they existed the way she knew her past existed), Santana broke out hysterically into tears, clutching at the collegiate t-shirt Leo liked to wear around the dorms and smattering the heather gray black with tears.
Like every other time, Leo silently held onto her just as tightly as she did him, knowing she was afraid he and all these new memories would slip and fade like her old ones had, knowing that she cried in frustration, rage, hurt, anger at some unnamed forced that put this disaster into effect.
They stayed like that until the rain stopped (and Santana's tears had too). In the dead silence that followed, Santana began to laugh, wiping dry her tears and leaping to find a mirror and fix what had to have been the most disastrous streak of mascara known to man. She'd cried so hard, her head threatened to split open. The pain had her hand reaching automatically for the pill bottle at the top of her dresser.
"God, I'm such a mess," she laughed humorlessly as she sniffled and dabbed her cheek, a free hand deftly popping open the orange container.
"A hot mess," Leo hummed from agreement with an even-tempered smile, not having moved an inch from where he had half laid, half sat on her bed. "Since the rain's stopped and it's Saturday, do you wanna grab a bite at Senora Salsation's or somethin'?"
"Oh god, hells to the yes. I am starving," Santana responded, a little too dramatically with that Lima Heights Adjacent swagger. Leo laughed, throwing his feet off the bed and hopping up behind her. He wrapped his arms around her slim waist and gave her ear a small nudge.
"Then hurry up and clean up this mess," he told her, gesturing to her face in the mirror with his chin and grinning unabashedly at Santana's shocked, appalled and slightly menacing reaction.
"Leonard Quincy Fabray, you take that back right now," the Latina commanded with an extremely compelling voice, though Leo seemed to be generally unmoved and unphased. After a year of her attitude, he was trained to know the difference between what he could get away with and a bouquet of fresh roses at her doorstep.
"I surely will not." He hadn't lost his grin as the blond turned on his heel and walked towards the door, "meet you out front, Tana," was all he said before making his way out of her dorm room.
"I ought to hang him from a rafter by his Dumbo ears, stupid cocky bassett hound," she muttered halfheartedly. Changing out of her sweats and tee, Santana wondered if this was what high school Santana had planned for herself: leveling a miraculous 3.96 GPA at the start of her third year, pre-law in California, with a wonderful and understanding boyfriend, living a perfect life… and hating it. Something was missing, she thought with frustration while tossing her medication in her purse. Something wasn't right and it left her just inches to the left of center. It all felt so wrong, surreal, artificial somehow. She felt like her dreams (ones she couldn't remember come morning) were more real than her waking moments (and perhaps, if she was honest with herself, maybe they were).
By the time Santana made her way out to the lobby of the residence, Leo had changed into a button down shirt and a pair of jeans, ball cap matting down his normally tussled and wavy blond hair and was pacing around aimlessly on the phone while waiting for her. He smiled at her moments later, shutting his phone and slipping it back into his pocket.
"Puck and Finn are just finishing up with their last pool for the day. They said they'd meet us there. Is that alright? If not, we can just go to Chipotle instead." It was a sweet offer. Leo knew that Santana felt overwhelmingly unsettled sometimes by the infusion of her past life with the one she lived now (with the exception of Leo of course). It was just difficult to find a configuration of emotions and reactions that were suitable, expected of her, around people from Lima. The feeling, in the past year, was fleeting and Santana was just feeling to the point where she could act naturally around Finn and Puck without fearing that she was not acting 'herself'.
"No, don't worry about it. Let's go," she placated, giving Leo a shoulder bump as she walked past his nervous and prone frame. She understood that that feeling of not knowing how to act around someone sometimes was unlikely to be an affliction she carried alone as she heard Leo exhale a sigh of relief, jogging up to meet her pace as they walked to his truck.
Sometimes Santana wondered what made her freshman self continue dating this guy after seeing the gigantic and overbearing truck Leo owned and operated. After all this time, she couldn't help but imagine herself much more comfortable in an SUV or Jeep of some kind. Nothing too small, she pondered, and something rugged enough to exude some sense of badassery. But, well, this was the hand she was dealt. She looked over at her boyfriend, pulling his behemoth of a vehicle out of a too small parking space and setting off onto the road. Okay, he wasn't completely horrible. He understood her and was the kind of laid back that just simply absorbed the energy from Santana's irrational outbreaks and tantrums and exhaled it into nothing.
The ride to Senora Salsation's was fairly short. The taco truck circulated near campus on weekends late afternoons after the park lunch rush but before the clubbing crowd. Thankfully, they didn't wait long before Puck and Finn arrive.
Both boys walked up with grins on their faces, sunglasses shielding their eyes from the (though setting) California sun, offering Leo a handshake before greeting Santana brightly. She bit back the urge to recoil, frantically searching her mind to remember which was which (after all this time). It was much worse when they first showed up in California six months ago, expecting her to know them and leaving sorely disappointed. They'd since met up three more times, but each time to little effect and even less committed to Santana's new memory. A part of her didn't want to remember them. If she let one in, more would surely follow, and while the psychiatrist urged her to read into her past life, Santana was somewhat afraid of what she'd find, and even worse, what she wouldn't (though she wasn't sure what either of those things were).
Her best mnemonic device was Frankenteen Finn and Puck Sucks. Looking from Sears tower, she had to deduce that was Frankenteen, and looking over to the pouty faced boy standing next to him who looked like he stepped out of a wanna be bad boy band, Santana was sure she was right.
"Hey Finn," she said, uncomfortable with the hug she was pulled up into before looking over at Puck and offering him a hello as well. The two of them had to have dated through high school for a good reason because he seemed to either sense her discomfort or was like her and preferred to keep her distance, but nevertheless, he just nodded a little chin tilt in her direction along with a sleazy but (hopefully) teasing 'lookin' good, Santana'.
As they ordered, the boys all fell into some painfully dull conversation about football and Santana found herself just staring off aimlessly, brown eyes darting about the many students who were just beginning to come out from the cracks and crevices after the recent downpour. They all seemed so adjusted, in place.
It just punctuated everything that Santana couldn't feel, underscored who she wasn't. She felt like a shallow shell and it made her so angry to think that this was what her life was reduced to, not even knowing if it was better or worse than her last.
"Hey Santana, what are you staring at?" Finn asked, snapping the girl out of her reverie. It crept up on her, the anger, and filled her unwitting mind up almost immediately.
She rolled her eyes and retorted, "Anything if it'll distract me from your monstrous Frankenteen face." Sometimes Santana wasn't sure where all the lashing out came from, if it was simply who she was, or if it was a reaction to the accident, but she was unapologetic and none of the boys ever seemed phased by her outburst. Their names were called for food and Finn offered to bring it over instead of giving a verbal response to Santana's out-of-the-blue quip, but Santana wasn't done. "No, please don't stand up. It just places your milky man-cow udders right in my face and I really don't feel like going to the farm today. Leo, grab our food."
"Dude, lay off, man," Puck interrupted, defending his best friend as Leo got up to walk to the food truck. Santana didn't even know why she was being so angry. Maybe it was seeing the two of them being best friends with one another, having that history, history she should have had with them but didn't. They didn't even bother filling her in on it and now they were trying to suck her boyfriend into their vortex of secret jokes and memories with the lure of football.
"Whatever. Don't even get me started on you, mohawk," was all she could say before Leo had returned back to the table.
"What's going on?" He asked while doling out the food, glancing at each and every person at the table.
"Nothing. Santana's bored of our conversation and wants to talk about something else, so she's lashing out at us until we do," Puck explained smoothly, adding a lime to his taco trio like nothing was new or interesting. It made Santana seethe, the way he knew her so well, could read her game like he'd been given the playbook. It wasn't fair. She hardly knew them at all.
Without another word, she pushed her paper tray of food aside towards Leo and stomped off fuming. Santana was so filled with rage and frustration that she wasn't even hungry anymore. By the time Leo had caught up to her, she was clear across the building. He jogged up, hand catching her wrist only to have it flung away.
"I wish everyone would stop acting like they know me so well!" Santana screamed wildly, not caring what kind of spectacle she was making from the whole and cookie cutter people scattering out across the lawn nearby. "I know everyone knows me, but I don't know me and it's not fair! It's not fair and I just want everyone to go away and shut up and stop acting like they know me. So just go away, Leo."
But Leo seemed undeterred, stepping forward in an effort to give the crying girl a hug. Santana bristled, shoving him away violently. She didn't want people around. The girl didn't want to admit it, but this feeling stuck with her all the time. Sometimes it was bearable to have Leo comfort her, but others, she thrashed wildly, ready to explode into a million pieces.
"Just go back, Leo." She told him helplessly, watching him deflate and finally concede.
"Okay. Call me later," were the only words he could come up with, adjusting the bill of his cap nervously before awkwardly leaning down to kiss her on the cheek and walking back. Santana should have been more affected by Leo, but sometimes couldn't muster up the energy to find that kind of emotion.
The time spent on the shuttle back to campus, then back to her dorm was quiet, almost serene. Santana watched her vague flickering reflection in the window. What did she expect to see every time she looked? Why did she keep looking as if there was something more? Bleary eyed and drained, she robotically waved the keycard against the entry of the doorway.
As the door was ready to shut and lock behind her, Santana heard a quick, "Hold the door please!" Her hand shot out to pry it back open just in time to allow the girl through. Befuddled, she watched a whisk of blonde hair and a wiry tall body slip by, leaving her wondering how her body responded so quickly. Santana Lopez took orders from no one. She held her breath at the scent of perfume wafting in her face. It was light, airy like the presence that flitted by her, and something about it nudged at her, pushed her back, back in time, back to another life.
"Thank you," came that wistful voice once more. It filtered through her ears like a summer breeze before the nag of déjà vu started to set in. The girl stopped dead in her tracks and turned around to where Santana stood unmoved, in complete suspense. When the Latina lay privy to the blonde's face, the girl looked as if she'd been caught doing something wrong, like she was waiting for a police officer to hand her a speeding ticket. The girl was a life-altering kind of beautiful, so beautiful that it made the marrow in her bones shake.
"I'm sorry, I mean… thank you," she said in a lamely flustered tone before settling back on the words she'd backtracked and apologized for. It looked like she wanted to say something more but stopped herself, jogging off as quickly as she jogged in.
Like a zombie, Santana walked into her dorm room, extremely happy to know that her roommate was scheduled to be gone all weekend. Without bothering to change, she flopped onto her bed and bit back the harsh onslaught of tears that were threatening to come. This happened sometimes, for no reason at all, it would spring up onto her like a thunderstorm on a Saturday morning and she would be powerless to it. Curling up against her pillow, hugging it to her chest in hopelessness, she let the tears wash through her.
All she could think about was that girl and her voice, the way her blue eyes stared down at her with single-minded intensity. It shook her to the very core and rattled it all around. That feeling folded over itself more and more, multiplying and feeding on her pitiful sobs, the feeling that she was missing something, that there was a hole shot straight through her heart and soul and the chasm was falling wider and wider while Santana desperately clawed her way out.
Your heart's super deep, a voice nagged at the bag of her head, wispy and displaced, and that means you've got so much love, but deeper things have dark stuff in it. It always happens and that's okay. She'd heard these words before, and they repeated in her head often in times of gloom, but it was getting harder and harder to see the light, the further and further she drifted. It seemed like such a vague possibility now: for her to be happy. And it only served to make her cry even harder. What made it all the worse was that her mind wouldn't leave the still warm memory of that blonde and her sapphire blue eyes and her breathy 'thank you'. It made her head ache trying to place that déjà vu, then her heart ache even more when she realized she didn't even know where to begin.
When Santana woke to the sound of her door opening, she briefly assumed it was her roommate, but from the heavy and nervous shuffling sounds of hesitation, she knew it wasn't true, even with her eyes still snapped shut. She hadn't called him, hadn't contacted him in any way, but he somehow had a way about knowing how long before he could come around. It was that thing, that thing of having other people, even strangers knowing her better than she did herself. Moments passed before she felt Leo slip into bed with her the way their afternoon had started, except there was no rain, no water except the tear tracks drying on her eyes, and the newfound image of long blonde hair whisking past her, the scent of familiar perfume haunting her brain.
"Leo," she began hesitantly, a hum came in response. "Do you ever wonder if something's missing from your life?" Her voice was thoughtful and sincere, as if asking it for the very first time (the same as every other time). She thought about the way that everyone seemed to know their place in life while she had simply been dragging and drifting along for the past year. Even if they didn't know what direction they were going, they at least knew where they were. A pause wracked through the room, silent save for the muffled sounds of people down the hall.
"Sometimes."
"Will you tell me again?" Another pause came, longer this time because Leo wasn't sure how good this was for her. When Santana first woke up in her hospital bed, she cried, not even recognizing her parents, much to her father's dismay in particular. It took weeks before she spoke to anyone, and even then it was a distant and deflated conversation. It was months before Santana would talk to anyone, having thrown herself completely into schoolwork. A distraction, Leo supposed. It was a year, a year of them being together, of Leo telling her on a weekly basis (sometimes moreso) a dictation of who Santana was, who she was supposed to be. Where was the progress in that?
He looked down at her, and his jaw clenched. But how could he say no? It was never in him to say no to Santana Lopez, not even in the beginning.
"Your name is Santana Lopez from Lima, Ohio…"