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A Matter Of Time

By LiveYoungDieFast

Disclaimer: I don't own glee or this plot, that belongs to Beebeeborez.

17th February 2013

Rachel watches out of the window as a van parks across the street. A young girl gets out and opens the side door and brings out a large bouquet of flowers. She closes the van door and makes her way up to Rachel's neighbor's house.

It had been a long time since someone had bought Rachel flowers. She had met her husband in high school at the age of sixteen. He was everything that she was told she wanted in a man. He was good looking, caring and the quarterback of the high school football team.

She was the head cheerleader and was cheering at a game when he approached her afterwards and asked her to celebrate the Titans' win with him at the diner.
Pete's diner was the local hang out for the kids of McKinley High School and she often spent time there with her best friends and of course it was the place she spent on many dates with her late husband.

When they graduated high school Rachel had been hoping to leave Ohio for good. Her dream was to go to New York, but Finn had received a football scholarship to Ohio State University and Rachel was to follow him. Thankfully for the couple a few days after Finn, Rachel received her own acceptance letter to Ohio State.

They got married the year they finished college and moved back to Lima, into a small but elegant house complete with a white picket fence. It was the type of house Rachel had always dreamed of even if she was living the life she hadn't.

She had taken the first job she could find; a job as a receptionist at McKinley High School. She had spent years dreaming about leaving that school and this state yet there she was a few years later back in the same place she never wanted to see again.

Nothing came from Finn's football scholarship when he graduated from Ohio State so instead he enlisted into the Marines. He had always wanted to join the armed forces, since his father was killed in the Second World War and since he didn't have the football career he expected, he saw it as an admirable second choice.

Rachel was proud of Finn's bravery but since he was a marine it meant that he spent most of his time away from her. The only chance they got to see each other was when Finn had shore leave a couple of times a year.

It was in March of nineteen sixty five when Finn's unit was finally drafted into the war in South Vietnam. It was only a couple of months later when Rachel received the news of Finn's death.

Rachel easily slipped into the role of a widow since she had spent the last few years without Finn. It took some time for her to deal with his death but she was around other women who had been through the same tragedy and understood what she was going through.

While she was in her grieving period she busied herself with a position at the department of veteran affairs. It wasn't the easiest of jobs seeing the soldiers return from the war and back to their families. She should have been happy for them, but she never got to experience that, her solider never returned home.

After it all became too much, she found herself another receptionist job at an insurance company. She had accepted long ago that she was destined to sit behind a reception desk and that's what she did until she retired.

Rachel watched with envy as Mrs. Parkinson receives her flowers, a look of joy spreading across her face. Rachel and Finn never had any children and she never remarried so she had spent the past few years alone and she knows that the next few years would be exactly the same.

It was a little after eleven when Santana slips on her shoes and exits her bedroom. She walks through the living room and grabs her keys from the bowl that sits on the side table.
Santana has been living by herself for the last year ever since her parents died. It was during her senior year when she was called out of school, she had no idea what had happened all she was told was that her parents had been in an accident.

It was already too late by the time she got to the hospital, her parents were already gone. They were taken from her by a drunk driver that drove straight through a red light and into the side of her father's car.
It wasn't even one o'clock in the afternoon and the guy was drunk, he made the choice to drive in that state and that decision cost Santana her parents. He was arrested and was sent to jail and as far as the state was concerned justice had been served.
Santana on the other hand thought differently. She knew the man would only serve half of the amount of time he was sentenced to. How was that fair? That man had taken not one but both of her parents away from her. In Santana's opinion he should never see the light of day again. It still didn't matter because no amount of justice would bring her parents back.

When her parents died so did a part of Santana, she started to change and acted out during school. She would get into trouble and stopped caring about everything. She even pushed her friends away wanting to deal with her grief on her own.

She barely got through high school just scraping by to graduate. She didn't apply for college instead she went out and found herself a job at a local club. It might not be the best job but it paid the bills and Santana loved it.

She had the night off tonight so she would do what she usually does on her day off and just hang out the club.

Santana knew there would be plenty of girls there, it was a lesbian bar after all and most of the girls that went there regularly, knew who Santana was. She would have no problem in finding a girl for tonight.

Santana enters the club and takes a seat at the bar. Jenny a fellow bartender greets her by silently placing a beer in front of her.

She knows the routine.

Santana picks up the bottle and studies it for a moment. Alcohol, the thing that single handedly destroyed Santana's life. She takes a sip of the cold liquid, she doesn't actually drink that much. She would find a girl and convince her to go home with her before she's even finished the first bottle.

She surveys the dance floor for a potential girl to go home with but her eyes are drawn to a girl that is walking towards her. The girl stops next to her at the bar, waiting patiently for someone to serve her.

"Can I buy you a drink?" Santana asks.

"Sure. I'll have a vodka tonic."

Santana smirks as she flags down Jenny. She's got the girl hooked all she has to do now is reel her in.

"What's your name?" Santana asks.

"Claire."

"So Claire, I haven't seen you around here before" Santana says.

"You come here often, do you?"

"I work here and I would definitely remember seeing a girl as beautiful as you."

She knows it's a cliché thing to say, but by the blush on the other girls cheeks she knows it's working.

"You're right this is my first time here. I'm visiting a friend for a few days" Claire answers.

"Where is your friend?"

"She's over there dancing with her girlfriend" Claire replies pointing over to the dance floor.

"Well since they're preoccupied, how about I keep you company" Santana smirks.

The next morning it's the same routine as usual. She untangles herself from the sheets trying not to wake up whatever the hell her name was and searches for her clothes. As soon as she locates each item of clothing she quickly dresses and heads for the door.

Santana was glad that the girl was just visiting Lima and didn't actually live here. It was much easier sneaking out of a hotel room rather than a girl's house, plus it minimized the chances of them ever crossing paths again.

The hotel isn't that far from her apartment, it's only a couple of blocks so she decides to walk home. As she reaches her apartment door, she notices that her next door neighbor's door is slightly ajar. She slowly makes her way over to the door and slowly pushes it open.

"Hello" she calls but she receives no reply.

She enters the apartment which is lit by a single light bulb giving the room a warm, orange glow. She slowly walks into the apartment and calls out again but once more she's met with no reply.

She decides to check all of the rooms just in case, she knew that her neighbor was in a wheelchair and was slightly worried that something is wrong with the old man. There was no sign of him in the kitchen, bathroom or the room that looked to be his bedroom and she only had one room left to check.

Santana opens the door of what she assumes is the second bedroom, what it actually is she doesn't know. The room is dark, the only light being supplied by a light stream of sunlight shining through a small window.

There are large desks pushed against each wall and another one situated in the middle of the room. Each one of them is topped with some form of electrical equipment and tools.

She has never seen anything like it before, there were machines and little devices she couldn't even name let alone could tell what they did, everywhere.

She picks up one of the little inventions and studies it. It's about the size of a large match box and has a small screen at the top with four buttons underneath. She couldn't figure out what the little machine was so she places it back on the desk. As she continues her search of each desk she accidently knocks an alarm clock on the floor causing it to start beeping.

She picks up the alarm clock and studies it, the time was wrong. It was only eleven in the morning but the clock was showing seven fifty four at night. She presses a button to try and turn off the machine but doesn't notice when it only changes the clock to five to seven.

She tries the button again causing the minute on the clock increases again. This time Santana notices the numbers flashing 19:56 as the beeping continues so she tries another button. She presses the large rectangular button this time and thankfully the beeping stops.

The machine starts vibrating violently in Santana's hand and the room starts to look like it's spinning. She feels a pressure in her chest before she falls to the floor and everything turns to black.

When she slowly opens her eyes she shuts them again quickly because of the strong sun light shining down on her. She groans and rubs her eyes cursing herself for leaving her drapes open again but then it hits her, she wasn't in her apartment. The last thing she remembers was being in old man Abrams' apartment which she distinctly remembers being dark.

She sits up and opens her eyes again, this time shielding them from the sun. She takes a look around her and realizes she's in the middle of a park. The place looks oddly familiar to her, but she just can't place it.

She finally gets to her feet and spots a couple of people in the park. There is either a
production of Grease happening at the Lima Community Theatre or they have a very bad sense of fashion.

As Santana walks through the parks she notices that there were a lot of other people dressed in vintage clothes. It's only when she makes it out onto the street that she notices the old cars.

She wonders if she has somehow stumbled onto a movie set but then what kind of crappy movie would be filmed in Lima, Ohio. She walks further down the street and notices a deli across the road.

It's the same deli that sits across the road from her apartment. It's definitely the same one because it was famous for being one of the oldest places in Lima. It had been run by the same family for over sixty years but it looked different. The old battered sign she remembers looks brand new.

She sees a newspaper boy standing on the corner and makes her way over to him. She snatches a paper from him, terrifying the boy. She looks at the paper, the headline is something about President Eisenhower, but she skips past it and looks straight at the date.

17th February 1956.

A/N This story is written for Beebeeborez who sent me the plotline and asked me to write it for her. So this is her idea and together we expanded on it and created this story. Also thank you to her for all the time she spends going over the chapters and editing them. We wanted to post the first chapter just to test the water and to see what you think.

Live_Young.