So originally, this was meant to be a light one-shot whilst I researched for a one-shot I've been asked to write about a 'walk through a museum with brittana'. But, alas, it had turned into something like 50,000 words (god knows how) so it's probably a little big for a one shot, which is a sort of shame because I think the first couple of chapters aren't going to be interesting for you guys but they're really needed so I can establish Brittany for you. It was sparked partly from a diary I'd kept when I went to St Lucia that I recently found and Ed Sheeran's song Tenerife Sea, (please, please listen to it.) But the first few chapters are actually snatched from a novel I'm writing in real life so I'm really hoping you guys give this a chance. I've written the whole thing so updates will be frequent and I'm sure it will only be about seventeen chapters at most (when I say chapters, though, it's based on days so some are much longer than others.) But I've totally written a scene in this that made even my heart fly and so you should probably read this just for that. (Chapter 7 that will be.) So enjoy! And please give this a chance. Give the way it's written and how I've perceived Brittany a chance - I swear you'll like this, just hold out for Santana. She's on her way :)

disclaimer: I OWN NO ONE. Any mistakes are mine and I apologize. I don't have a beta.

The Start?

there's a strange sort of sensation when you're swimming underwater. it's almost like you've gone completely deaf, yet you can hear absolutely every tiny thing. like you're senses have gone into overdrive and everything's too loud and everything's too quiet all at the same time. it's peaceful, yet eerie. it's relieving, yet severely intense. it's safe, yet more dangerous than anything you've ever done before. it can almost be maddening if you let yourself feel the terror. but really, it's actually beautiful. so beautiful. being underwater instantly makes you forget everything that haunts you above it. it's like a protective barrier you can't seem to find in real life. and there's the thing that fascinates me the most - how being underwater can make you feel like you're in another world. how you feel almost dead yet so incredibly alive and how it might just possibly be better than living on the other side.

as a kid, i used to love placing my face halfway in the water and halfway out so i could see half underwater and half above. my eyes would sting and the water would always shoot up my nose but i was so determined to see both worlds at the same time that i would spend hours trying. i even saved up my money (rather than habitually buying the latest addition of animal action every week) for a pair of high end goggles but i then found it difficult to focus on what was happening above the water at the same time as what was happening underwater, so i threw those goggles across my granny's pool like they were plagued with a deadly disease. nothing ever seemed to work so when my mother would frustratingly call me out the water, i'd feel so upset that i hadn't succeeded, i'd spend the rest of the day picking the fraying cotton balls off my t-shirt in a stagnating state of angry disappointment.

it wasn't until i was about twelve that i realised trying to see both above water and under water at the same time was really quite impossible.

after all my effort, it was only underwater that i really wanted to see. even though in my granny's pool, underwater was never as cool as being under the sea or the lake in my garden. it wasn't even as cool as the pond round the back of the lavender. it was just nice because it was, well, underwater. and i adored that muffled silence like a drug addict with a ketamine craving. i was untouchable under that surface; when i could look up and see the floating ripples of a shaky sky, not even the rain could get me, and that made me happier than anything else in my childhood world of oversized dolls houses and too expensive hand-me-downs.

talking of my childhood, the whole however many years of it felt like one long search to me. it was an endurance test - a journey of many overgrown pathways and wrong turnings. i just wanted to know what being alive felt like because i never felt like i really was. and it wasn't because i was unhappy or ill or deprived. it was simply because i probably had one of the world's biggest imaginations and because of that, nothing was ever good enough. i was always convinced there was something bigger out there. i felt like a princess living in this beautiful castle who didn't want to wait for her prince. i didn't care about princes and true love and life-saving kisses. a kiss wasn't going to bring me back to life because nothing had killed me yet. i just didn't have the time; i wanted to be out there, swinging on the ropes i'd tied in all the trees in our garden. i wanted to be fighting off all the bad guys with my own sword. i wanted to be swimming in the water so i could see what was beneath it and feel alive for a second. i wanted to make my own adventure with just myself for company. because i was more than enough. and i didn't want to wait. people are always waiting these days.

i wasn't going to wait.

my sister, on the other hand, was a great waiter. she would wait all of her life if it meant at the end of it she'd have a bank full of bentley's and penthouse city apartments. i'd watch her, as a kid, paint her nails by the side of the pool with a pale polish she couldn't afford, fascinated by the way they'd never look any different afterwards. and even when i'd accidentally splash her and she'd have to start "all. over. again", with her teeth gritted, it always seemed far too much effort to waste.

and like my sister, my brother could always wait too. sometimes for hours. he'd spend about four hours waiting for my father to finally surrender on a chess match every thursday evening just so he could hear my father say, "son, you're unbeatable." he waited for days upon days at the front door for a letter from the city informing him of his acceptance into law school. he once even wasted four months for a girl, who was probably a little like me, whilst she went off traveling the world with her best friend and never came home. you know, he's probably still waiting for her now, sat in his graveyard five bedroom house on the outskirts of the city, wife away with her girlfriends, children asleep in their handmade wooden beds, cat curled up on his waiting lap, and a stack of archived cases he's been putting off sorting for much too long. waiting. always, always waiting.

he will never stop. and neither will my sister.

when they both come home for christmas, my brother with his family, my sister with her boyfriend of the month, it just makes it ten times more obvious that my whole family waits. our house waits. our whole existence as the "prestigious pierce's" sits waiting. (if my family are the valuable, valiant knights of the village then i am the venturesome, vibrant vagabond the village "doesn't need to know about." apparently.)

my mother, she waits for my father. and my father - well, he waits for six o'clock when he can have his scotch. and that's about as exciting as our family gets. and during my parent's annual family vacation, my family will be no different.

my sister will get me some god awful perfume that she found in some god awful counter in the city as a desperate attempt to make me smell girly on the beach. (i don't see the point when I'll be in about out of the sea all day.) my brother will kiss me on the cheek at the airport and leave a stubble rash where his protection is supposed to be. his wife will air kiss me on both cheeks, acting far too over-pleased to see me and their twin daughters will look up at me with expectant faces, holding their hands out for a present they know i haven't got them.

(spoiled brats.)

and my sister's boyfriend? well, he will look at me with some sort of respected disgust, grimace like he's just smelled cat shit and probably proceed to pat me on the head like i'm eight years old again. they all do it. it must be some city boy odd shit.

my granny will come too and she'll take a look at all three of us and stand us in row before we head down for dinner each night, telling us all exactly what she thinks of our outfit choice, our hair style and our make up. possibly our attitude as well. they'll be the usual "wonderful" for my sister, "like a king" for my brother and well, for me? my granny will tut and mutter in disapproval at the many rings adorning my fingers and she'll say something along the lines of, "where did this family get you from?" but i shake it off.

(or at least i try to.)

but this year i'll probably hurry and escape to my room where i will pull out my journal from the bottom of my suitcase and write about everything i dislike about my family and everything i love about the idea of one.

because after all that's happened. after everything i have done and after all the things i haven't been able to say, i really need to figure out how i can adore such a beautiful and magical vacation with my absolute whole, whole heart, when the people who surround it all can't even bare to look me in the eye.

yeah. this vacation is probably going to be a little different.