Santana remembers nothing of the past ten years.
Of course those ten years no longer exist.
At night, Brittany tells her stories. She tells stories about those ten years, the timestream that peeled off from theirs. It was an accident, a time-travel accident that took their daughter back to their high school years. Brittany describes how they tried to find her themselves, how their son risked injury, risked death. time-traveling repeatedly to bring his sister home, to right the time-continuum. She talks about how their son, seventeen-year-old Charles had died and seven-year-old Charlie had not died when the time rubber-band snapped them back to now. Santana wants to believe Brittany, has always believed in her, but she sounds… not quite sane. Every attempt at communication only builds a taller wall between them.
The kids remember it too.
Charlie, f/k/a Charles, f/k/a Charlie, just turned eight, but he remembers fending off the bullies his sister couldn't protect him from, remembers shouldering the responsibility of bringing her back, remembers working out how to use the time machine. He remembers dying. And not dying.
Sugar, as she prefers to be called now, spent a couple of extra years in high school. Her timestream moved more slowly, somehow. She keeps reminding her Mom how loving Mama changed her, made her better, more compassionate. (Compassion is sometimes hard to find when the people she loves the most seem so remote. It's strange, too, when her kids can remember their parents' past.) Sugar tries to keep it light, but Santana senses her guilt over stepping into the time machine in the first place. Sugar blames herself for creating the ten years of grief for her parents and brother. She blames herself for her Mom's disconnection from the rest of the family. Santana sometimes finds herself blaming her, too.
She not only doesn't remember the lost years, she also forgets, sometimes, her family's trauma. The loss of their daughter, but without the resolution of death, Brittany's feeling of responsibility, Charlie's having to protect himself before he was ready, the three of them being injured by overusing the time machine. Trying to find her and failing. Trying and failing and failing and failing. Blaming each other. Growing apart. Not to mention Sugar's having to improvise for two insane years in Lima, Ohio. No wonder she was absent so often.
Sometimes Santana finds Brittany staring off. She knows where she goes when she goes there, but she can't go with her.
"You wouldn't want to," says Brittany, "they were hard years."
Those years still exist for Brittany. They still exist for the kids. The Brittany Code is embedded into their genes. Santana repeatedly crashes into the inch-thick Plexiglas wall those years have become, both shield and separation. Both comfort and distance.
All those memories, together, no longer shared. It's maybe a bit like waking from a coma.
Being left behind leaves her heavy, hot, jagged. Little things irritate her. Charlie's fighting at school, Sugar's attempts to mend the rift between them, Brittany's withdrawal. She rages, sometimes, taking it out on her family, screaming, "¡Cosas malas! ¡Cosas malas!"
Brittany and Sugar and Charlie take a breath, then say together, "That's what you said at Nationals!"
At least she remembers that. Laughter acts as a patch.
Sometimes she makes lists of things she does remember that they remember, too. Rocky Horror Picture Show. Rescuing Grease, because Finn, like Mr. Shue, could never picture Tina in a non-specifically-Asian role. (Even though it hurt, Brittany brought out the best in her.) Sugar bringing them back together whenever she could. Valentine's Days. Their wedding. Deciding how they wanted to have kids. Trying and failing, trying and failing, and then giving birth to the most amazing baby girl. Times at gay family camp. Brittany's pregnancy and Charlie's birth. Cozytimes with all of them. Baseball and soccer coaching. The Naked Ladies' Spa. Good times, hard times, times of love.
She stops short of the time machine incident. Because she doesn't remember it.
"Honey," says Brittany, late one night when she senses Santana lying awake. Santana turns and curls into Brittany's waiting arm. This hasn't changed. The collective sigh when they touch. The lifting of tension, the dropping of masks, being home.
"You're my love and my companion. You're my wife."
"I know. And you're mine."
"In all of them, all the worlds, all of them, we're together. I can feel them all. Sometimes one of us dies, and sometimes we die together, and sometimes we escape dying, and sometimes one of us is sick, and sometimes hurt, and sometimes frightened, but we're always together. You are mine, and I am yours. Always."
"All?"
The enormity hits her. How many lives can exist in one mind?
"There are so many, Love," chokes Brittany, "But here, now, we're all together. Starting now, let's just live this one."