Started my daily ficlets to make the hiatus pass, then decided to keep going with a 2nd cycle, and then a 3rd, 4th, etc through 46th cycle. Now cycle 47!

This is a shift day. There was another upload this morning: Troika, chapter 4.

"The One I Keep To Myself"
Brittany, Sue, Brittana
Sylvesters series
(all series now listed under the communities tab in my profile)

It wouldn't have seemed possible to most people, but for Brittany there was one person she would go to with certain dilemmas and that was Sue Sylvester. To them she was the menace with the bullhorn, but to her she was a beloved mother, and on other occasions she would have gone to her with this, except this involved a secret. Actually it involved many secrets, one of which her mother would be very familiar with since it was their secret, both of them.

Telling her she loved a girl, Santana of all people, would have involved telling her that this girl already knew they were mother and daughter, and that she had been letting her into their house, her room and her bed. All these years there had been one golden rule: tell no one, and nothing has to change.

But she'd told Santana. She hadn't slipped, been caught in a lie, no, she had told her, plain and simple. She knew the risks, but she could weigh them and be okay with it, because it was her, and she trusted her with it, because it was her, and she trusted her more than just about anyone in the world. She also knew she couldn't have it known or she could get shipped off to some other school, with no mother, no Glee Club, and no Santana… She could have nightmares about getting chased by zombie cats all she wanted, and having to switch schools would have been worse.

Except now there was this… this situation. She was with Artie, and she honestly loved him, wouldn't want to hurt him… but she knew she might, because then there was Santana, and she loved her, too, she loved her in a whole other way. She'd told her that much, without hesitation, just like the day she'd told her about her mother and their secret. But when she'd told her about how she couldn't just break up with Artie, she'd pushed her back and walked away.

She would have gone and asked her mother for advice, for some way to make it better. Everything with her and Santana it had always been fairly simple, no hitches, but then near the start of the school year they'd been pulled apart, and after that nothing had gone right. In the meantime, there had been Artie, and as much as it had started one way, it had ended another, and it had complicated everything even further. But she never would have even gotten to where she had with Santana in the last few days if it hadn't been for the time she'd been spending with Artie all these months.

Now where was she supposed to go from there? She had never hidden from her mother that she was with Artie; she'd never had to. He didn't know her secret, she hadn't been sneaking him in and out of their house for a couple of years… They had been through so much together already, her and Santana, and all Brittany wondered was if she'd ever get to share it with her mother.

Sometimes she'd say to herself that she'd wait until high school was over, and she'd tell her everything. She wouldn't be able to make her change school anymore, it would all be just fine. That was how she saw it, and it made her feel better. But that was before the talks, and the song, and… the talk at the locker. Now she'd been left to wonder.

She needed to protect her… Santana. Yes, she loved them both, but she'd be lying if she said she loved them the same way. The love she had for Santana she had been protecting from the moment she decided she was going to tell her the truth. She wasn't the first girl to keep things from her parents, the first girl to sneak someone in or out of their room. But with the whole matter of this secret, she had never been in that position, she had never brought anyone home, because she wasn't supposed to. She didn't mind really; she had been the girl people had to sneak out of their room, but probably not for the same reasons.

She'd snuck out of Santana's before, countless times. Either that or they'd scramble to recover before anyone came along, and they played like nothing had happened. It wasn't like she wanted any of their parents finding them and seeing what they did sometimes, but… not all the sneaking around was about sex; with others yes, mostly, but not with Santana.

She just wished she had more to go on, about what it all meant. She couldn't talk about those things with her grandfather, and as helpful as Miss Holiday had been, she wasn't going to tell her everything. Santana herself was still resisting her on a lot of things, and she knew what she'd done that day had required a lot of strength, which only made Brittany feel worse about how it had gone down.

After that, all there was left was her mother, and she couldn't talk to her. To be honest, she sort of wondered if she knew… anything. Her mother had always been very good at pulling information out of her, if she was on to something. She hadn't said anything here, so… did she really not know? All these times Santana had been there, in the other room or sneaking out, unbeknownst to her… Had they been so good as to pull this off without error?

When she'd come home that day, she and her mother had sat to dinner, and the whole thing had started off quiet, with her still turning over the events of that afternoon. "So what's troubling you?" She looked up.

"What?" she asked.

"Saw you arguing with Santana earlier," Sue revealed, and Brittany paused. "Don't see that often. What was that about?"

"We weren't… It was nothing," she tried to keep from looking directly into her eyes, knowing that was when she could guess the most.

"Didn't look like nothing from where I was standing."

"Where was that?" Brittany asked. Sue frowned, looking to her. It wasn't as easy as the girl might think, to sort out what was going on in that head of hers. The mood was an easy pick, but beyond that it required a practiced hand, and even as her mother Sue could come up short sometimes.

She had raised her to value secrecy, she knew that. From very early on she had instilled in her this mindset where she had to be able to live a lie believably enough to fool any and all… Now it was coming back to bite her.

"You know if you ever need to talk…"

"I know," Brittany nodded, though on the inside, everything twisted. She did want to talk, more than anything. But she couldn't… wouldn't? The chance was right there, but all she could see was her mother disappointedly telling her that she hadn't done as she was told, and how she had to drop everything and go somewhere else.

Things would get better; they just had to. And maybe one day everything would be sorted out and she would be able to look her mother in the eye and tell her. She'd tell her she loved that girl, so much so that she'd entrusted her with truth, and that for this reason she had been forced to lie to her. But she'd also say it hadn't been done lightly, that she had considered her in all this because, while she loved Santana, she loved her mother, too. It wasn't the same kind of love, not in every way. But it was the same in how much the people who received it really mattered to her.

THE END

A/N: This is a one-shot ficlet, which means that signing up for story alert will not bring you any alerts.
In the event of a sequel, the story will be separate from this one. And as chapter stories go, they are
always clearly indicated as such [ex: "Days 204-210" in the summary] Thank you!