Akron, Ohio. May 21st, 2027
Dear Rachel,
I don't think I have to write this down anymore. I think I can actually tell you everything this time. So this isn't a letter. It's just a note, some kind of milestone for us, a reminder that we won't need these pages anymore.
See you soon,
Santana
..
Springtime has been truly amazing this year. It's one of the things Santana's learned to notice and appreciate with time. It didn't come easy. She's always had more important things to worry about than the flowers or the colors that surrounded her. She noticed red and black and white uniforms, never petals but pleats, never the wilting geraniums in the vase she just soiled with her retching after dinner, but the earth she'd have to revolve around so as to conceal it from her mother and still have the car keys to keep seeing her girlfriend in secret. There were never flowers in her broken promises. Her world kept on rolling off its axis, but there was never a lack of people to help her. She got better and stronger, more comfortable and more certain that she wanted more. She loved Brittany, how could she not love Brittany, but that was the only thing between her and infinity.
She would always choose infinity. And with it came Rachel, with Rachel came the colors, with the colors came the flowers. They were maginificent.
The world explodes in color around her now and she knows she's not alone. Santana's footsteps don't make a sound in the vividly green grass—ironic, really—as she finds the spot. The lack of an envelope on her hand is not lost on her the entire way. She flexes her fingers and wrings her hands together just to give them something to hold on to. She drops her bag along the way, takes a few more steps and sits down. She was alone in this beautiful place, but not anymore. Now's she's with Rachel.
"Hi," she says, her voice raspy and low. She clears her throat and waits a few beats until she's sure she'll be able to form words. "Hi baby."
Birds chirp and a light breeze blows a dry leaf that stops at her knee. Her hands need to do something, so she picks it up and it's instantly comforting. But she's not dropping a letter here, she came to speak.
"I promised Quinn I wouldn't be long, she's waiting in the car. She wouldn't dare rush me, but I don't wanna be a jackass either, so… We just came from Akron and you must be wondering why." She chuckles, her fingers play with the dust from a piece that just broke off the leaf. "Beth just graduated from high school, can you believe it? That tiny little thing, we never thought she'd grow up to be shorter than you given her genetics, but well, all three of your parents are freakishly tall and look how you turned out. That should've told us something."
Her heart is finally settling to an acceptable rhythm, it doesn't feel like it will bleed out of her ears anymore. She needs the normalcy.
"Speaking of whom, they were all there. Shelby called your dads and said they should be there to see Beth's speech. By the way, one would think Beth sold tickets, there was this entire section that was there just for her. Well, she was valedictorian, but you gotta admit the kid is pretty awesome, too." Santana uses her fingers to count, lest she forget anyone in attendance. Rachel needs to know everything. "Your parents, Q, that supremely boring boyfriend of hers, Brent or something—nevermind the name, he's new and annoying and I'll let her know soon enough. Um, Puck and Tina, who's pregnant, by the way. There's a new bastard Puckerman on the way and Beth is equal parts excited and terrified—as are we all. But Tina's pretty amazing, maybe the kid won't grow up to throw people in trash cans but zing them with truth bombs, I have faith," she says, a smile feeling a little more comfortable and genuine on her lips. "Shelby's parents and Beth's little sister Daisy, remember her? She got her from Guatemala the year we got married. She's all right. Don't let me sit here and sing a 4-year-old's praises, they're not that great. Anyway. There were about five other people from Shelby's extended family as well. Judy! Oh my god, Judy was there. She had this whole thing with the guy sitting next to her, he would just glare at her every time she got up to take a picture. Quinn was mortified, I just wanted to laugh my ass off. I just didn't because there were two Fabrays to give me death glares and Britt, who kept elbowing me in the ribcage—gotta check for bruises later because I can still feel it. Her fiancé was there with his kid, I forgot his name—the kid's, her fiancé is Jason, you know that. He proposed last year, she called me crying and I swear I didn't understand a word. I never knew she could be so damn loud, either."
There's a pause when everything around her goes a shade darker. The sun is starting to set behind some trees in the distance and she sighs.
"All the Puckermans. Hannah, Jake, Mrs. P. Some of Beth's best friends, from the neighborhood and such. For some reason Mr. Schue was there, it was nice because we got to see Ms. Pillsbury. She asked me about you. About me, actually, but it's like evey time people ask me how I'm doing these days, it's indirectly about you. Not that I mind. I ask myself how I'm doing every day I have to get out of bed—before I open my eyes, really. It's not easy to be hit with the realization that I'm gonna look at yet another day without you in it."
Her voice catches and she thinks about how much she likes that in-between, that limbo where she's not fully awake and the colors are still vivid, the smells are still there and, more often than not, the bed is warm with a wonderful presence. It's a moment she always tries to stretch into a few more seconds before reality starts bleeding into it. The colors are opaque and the red is liquid and she wipes her hands on the sheets to clean it off. But of course it was never there. Her hands are clean—they have been for nearly two years. This thought always blasts the noise of wringing metal to her ears and she squeezes her eyes shut. The flowers and the colors always make the noise and the blood go away.
She takes a deep breath. "It's weird. Beth's whole speech had someone we knew in it. The audience reflected that, obviously, but it was mostly about you. How you not only changed but shaped her life. I wanted to laugh at the collective symphony of sniffles around me, apparently I was the only one not crying. Hell, even Quinn was a mess. She and Britt sat on either side of me and held my hands then. I wasn't gonna cry. I didn't want my make-up to run." She gulps and casts her eyes down. "And I didn't want my eyes to get blurry either, I wanted to see the pride in Beth's face while she talked about what it was like to have had you in her life. She didn't cry, either. She looked me straight in the eyes the entire time. After the ceremony was over and your dads finally released her from the longest hug in history, she came up to me and said 'Just when I think I broke you… Well done, here's your $20,' and she just started bawling. There wasn't a bet anymore or the possibility of pictures, so I have no idea how long we were there sobbing like two idiots. It was a long time. I hadn't cried like that in a long time."
She looks behind her and sees Quinn getting out of the car. It's a long walk, so she turns back to look at Rachel's name, tracing a fingertip to the engraving of the hyphen between their last names, one thing she grudginly accepted when they got married and now will pick a fight with anyone who forgets to include Berry in hers. (Her Grammy had to be re-engraved, she wouldn't take it home unless her name was right. It doesn't matter that the industry knows her as Santana Lopez. Circumstances changed that when a bus crashed into her car two years ago.) "Of course I made a few touch-ups, couldn't have you seeing that hot mess formerly known as my face. The dried mascara looked like tire tracks on my cheeks, I swear to god. And now Q's coming over. Don't worry, I told you she won't rush me. I've been sending you letters long enough for her to interrupt my moment."
Sure enough, Quinn takes her time walking towards Santana's general vicinity, stopping to look down at a headstone or two, crossing herself a few times. Santana thinks it's funny and sort of eandearing, how she sends an automatic prayer to people she most likely never knew. Or maybe she does, now, coming here so often to deliver some of Santana's letters and place fresh wildwood flowers where Rachel rests. Where Rachel's body rests. Santana likes to believe she's there every night before sleep takes her, in that fleeting moment where she's about to wake up, when she cries during her weekly Funny Girl session, when she absentmindedly jots down 'soy milk' on her grocery list—one that eventually winds up in the trash, because she never drinks it. But she continues to buy it. It's just something she'll always do.
Quinn is closer now, and she focuses on her words again. "She's been amazing, you know. She's never left my side. She even does me the favor of leaving her dull as fuck boyfriend at home whenever I need her… It's not often, I'm doing my best, but sometimes I don't feel like I can get out of bed without having you to touch. She even tossed the adoption papers we had stashed in the study, I couldn't even—And she sits with me and tells me how her day's been and how the novel she's been trying to write absolutely sucks, how Judy's on her case to get on with it because it's becoming embarrassing to tell people your daughter's a writer without having anything to show for it." She giggles lowly, she knows Judy means well. And it's things like that that keep her sense of normalcy, that life is moving and the world keeps turning and she's being a part of it. Slowly. Steadily.
There's an urgency in her voice now. "I want you to know that there will never be a day in my life where I won't think of you. You're in me. There's no undoing that. I'm trying to move on, I really am. But I want you to understand if by some reason I just can't… it's not for lack of effort, but sometimes I get too tired and I feel like I don't wanna live. You've been a part of my life in so many ways, even when I hated you, you were there, I could never just tune you out. You were that loud and obnoxious, but then you were my life. And what do you do when your life is taken from you? They say you can't have your happiness depend on something other than yourself, but what can I do when you were all of me? You and Britt taught me how to love, but you taught me how to be. I know that I can, but sometimes I just don't want to be, not without you. But I'm trying. Please believe me when I say that."
A small puddle of her own tears on the marble below her let her know she's been crying. As Quinn kneels down slowly next to her, she wipes her eyes and looks up at the sky, hoping the wind will help drying some of the wetness. To her credit, Quinn doesn't ask stupid questions. She places a sunflower Santana didn't notice she was holding next to the headstone, reaches for Santana's hand and bows her head. She's praying. So that means they're praying.
I love you more than I can begin to say. There are no words for how much you've changed my life and who I am. Whatever happens, I want you to be waiting for me, with that smile that fires up my soul and that way only you can say my name. I want you to hold me and tell me you love me, because it's been so long. So, so long.
See you soon.