Author notes: Another one based off a roleplay, cowritten with starpotentialberry. Redo of season two. I wrote Santana parts, she wrote Rachel.
Santana can still hardly believe that she actually has to attend Saturday detention, like a total loser. This was a scene straight out of The Breakfast Club, and she had scoffed at that movie the first time she saw it. If she ends up getting stuck with a bunch of ragtag losers of Lima who all just want to share their inner pain and become bestest friends in the way the Glee club seemed to love so much, Santana was going to make herself sick over the sap of it. She knew the typical Saturday morning detention crowd- losers in the likes of Rick the Stick, the particularly aggressive football players, the Skanks, and the wannabe Goth crowd. Not a single one of them whom she even wanted to look at, let alone have to sit with for an entire Saturday she could have been sleeping or shopping or making out with someone during or SOMETHING.
It was her junior freaking year. She was sixteen years old and it seemed completely unfair for them to begrudge her having a sense of humor and just doing what everyone else would have done if it even occurred to them. Plenty of kids got in fights, did drugs, and the Slushies were a daily occurrence- hell, Santana herself had never gotten in trouble for fighting or slushying people before, and now she was getting in trouble over a stupid PRANK?!
Okay, it wasn't strictly nice to paint a bunch of tampons and hang them up in Emily's locker after her little incident of having her tampon fall out from the top of the cheer pyramid and roll across the floor. Maybe between Sue's yelling and the cheerleaders and football players going hysterical over it, until Emily was hyperventilating and in tears, that wasn't exactly nice. But when had Santana ever played nice deliberately with anything? If you were going to be that much of a loser, you deserved all the mocking you could get. And she was popular, and a cheerleader. It was her job to mock. Emily needed to toughen up if she wanted to be a cheerleader or she'd make all the rest of them look bad.
Fine, she may have gotten a lot of paint on the locker and on Emily's textbooks, which technically was considered vandalism. But still, how lame was it that she actually had to pay for it with her time instead of her dad's money?
Santana entered the classroom with an extreme lack of enthusiasm, her steps practically a shuffle, eyes narrowed, face darkened into a scowl as she scoped out the other kids present. Throwing herself into a seat towards the back, she slouched down, one hand propping up her chin. There were several skanks and football players, as she had predicted, and Tyler Phillips, a kid who always wore black metal t-shirts, had been reprimanded several times for wearing plugs in his ears and not taking out facial piercings, and always seemed to be writing in a notebook. She rarely heard him speak, but all the kids claimed he was some kind of Satanist or something, sacrificing babies and killing cows or something. She didn't care if it was true or not, it was a good thing to spread around and laugh about, at any rate.
But the weird thing was that Rachel Berry was there too. Santana half smirked at her, eyebrows raised. What the hell was Miss Goody Goody doing in detention? Accidentally hit someone in the eye by waving her hand too enthusiastically to volunteer an answer?
This was going to be one extremely long afternoon.
88
Detention was something Rachel Berry had never envisioned for herself, she was a straight A student, the top in all of her classes and never missed a single day of school unless she absolutely had to for some unavoidable reason. Yet there she was, walking through the quiet halls of McKinley on a Saturday morning with her head hung low and her shoulder uncharacteristically slumped. It was a far reach from the usual confidence she walked around with and it certainly wasn't how she had intended for things to go.
Perhaps she was in the wrong for punching JBI in the face and accidentally breaking his nose but he had been invading her personal space and asking to see her bra and threatening to spread awful rumors unless she gave him a pair of her panties. One day he just happened to push a little too far and her self defense classes came into good use when he got a little too creepy. His parents had understood her reasons and JBI himself had been shocked that the so called Glee freak was actually willing to stand up for herself. Normally she wasn't a violent person but she was beyond done with everything JBI had been doing but standing up for herself had somehow landed her in detention and had both of her dads a little disappointed even though they were well aware of everything that had been going on.
Walking into the room she saw the usual crowd and struggled to hold back the sigh that was threatening to escape. Taking a seat in the back she grabbed out a book she had been reading and decided if she was going to be stuck inside all day she might as well finish off her book so she had more free time when she was at home to continue on planning things for Glee Club. Although she was pleasantly surprised when she saw none other than Santana Lopez walk through the door. She wasn't sure if the rumors were true but she had heard about the locker incident although Santana's presence in detention told her that they were indeed very true.
When she sat down beside her she fought the urge to roll her eyes dramatically and instead looked over at her for a moment only to see that she was as bored as Rachel herself was. "What a way to waste a Saturday." She mumbled, she wasn't happy to be there and more than anything she wanted to go back home and head out to the mall where she was planning to pick up some things that she hadn't had time to go and get just yet.
Santana rolled her eyes back at Rachel, echoing her sigh. "You don't think I'm gonna sit here and shoot the breeze with you, do you?" she muttered.
Figured she'd be stuck next to Berry, who would probably try to make her the bestest friend ever, sing to her under her breath, lecture her on Glee related things, or pass notes. If Rachel was badass enough to break the quiet rule to do any of that.
Santana's eyes glazed over as she paid no attention to the detention monitor's bored announcement of the rules, and she started to doodle on her notebook paper, writing her name in cursive. She realized she was writing Brittany's too and quickly erased, glancing to see if Rachel had seen. She is paying no attention when she hears raised voices and looks up. Tyler Phillips is looking at the monitor with his jaw set, his eyes narrowed almost shut, and something about his posture looks aggressive. When she listens up, interested, the monitor is repeating something to him about taking out his facial piercings for the day. Santana rolls her eyes, but doesn't return to her slump. Something in Tyler's eyes tells her things are about to spark.
"God knows, I have better things to do." She said with a sigh.
The last thing that she wanted was to spend the day sitting beside Santana and being talked to all about the Cheerios and how amazing Sue Sylvester was. Everything was just as boring as she expected it to be and all she wanted was to go back home or go out and do something far more interesting than listening to the annoying sighs and tapping of pencils against desks.
Before she knew it the atmosphere in the room had shifted, Santana seemed a little more tense from the glance she caught out of the corner of her eye. Hearing the exchange up the front of the room she stiffened and kept a close eye on Tyler, something was off and his hand slipped down into his pocket. That was when it started, her heart sank and she felt like she was frozen as she watched him pull a gun out on the monitor, she wanted to scream but she could barely move from her spot. Seconds felt like hours after the first shot rang loudly.
No way. No way, holy shit no, she did not just see that. It was a water gun or something, or a toy…a Halloween costume, right? Right?
No one brought a gun to school. Not in Lima, Ohio. Not even a weirdo like Tyler Phillips. No one.
Santana can feel her heart start to race, and she goes perfectly still, her eyes darting between Tyler, the gun in his hand, and the monitor at the front of the classroom. The man too has frozen, and now he's talking to Tyler, his voice shaking slightly, as he tells him to calm down, to put down the gun. But Tyler is standing in a slow, lazy manner, gun held out as he points it at several people in turn. First the monitor, then a skank, then a football player.
Santana doesn't move. She doesn't realize at first she is whispering unconsciously a prayer under her breath, a Hail Mary- years of church with her abuela coming to her without even realizing it. When the gun is pointed at her, she stops breathing, only starting again when it is pointed at the football player two rows up.
But Robert Jenkins isn't about to take this. With a curse, he lunges forward at Tyler, seeming intent on tackling him, taking the gun away- only to stop, jerking, a few feet from him. The noise of the shot doesn't at first connect to Santana. It isn't until she sees the blood start to blossom across Robert's chest and the sudden blankness in his eyes before he falls that she understands what just happened.
He's been shot. He's been shot, and as she watches him twitch, a horrible choking noise escaping his throat from where he lay over the desk, she knew. He was dying. He had been shot, and he was dying, right in front of her. And as she watched, unable to think clearly enough then to reach for her phone or even to run yet, she saw him turn to the monitor, take aim, and pull the trigger again.
Everything was happening in slow motion for Rachel, her heart was pounding loudly in her ears and fear was running through her to the point that tears were falling down her cheeks without her even realizing it. She saw it all happen, she saw Robert Jenkins take the bullet and heard every little noise coming from him as he died in front of her eyes.
Then the monitor was on the ground crying out in pain and before anyone could react the gun was pointed in her direction and suddenly her entire life was flashing before her eyes. Tyler shifted his aim from her to the guy behind her and without thinking about it she reached out and grabbed Santana's hand tightly in her own.
"Come on." She whispered when Tyler was preoccupied with the skank at the front of the room. She knew they needed to get out and it was now or never.
Tugging on Santana's hand she pulled the stunned girl out of her seat and ran out of the room as quietly as possible. They had one chance and that chance was going to last all of thirty seconds. Pulling Santana with her she ran down the hall and heard the door open behind them. She didn't say a thing and ducked into the nearest Janitor's closet blocking the door with everything she could as her heart raced and tears continued falling down her cheeks.
Santana barely was aware of Rachel grabbing her hand, and not until the girl squeezed to the point of pain did she register what Rachel was trying to do. She squeezed back, feeling her knuckles pop, and stumbled, nearly falling as her adrenaline took over and carried her out the door and down the hall. She can hear shots firing, kids screaming, and as they get into the janitor's closet, she helps Rachel numbly, piling boxes and buckets and squeezing with her into the very back corner. She can hear a clicking noise and panics until she realizes it's her own teeth chattering, that she is shivering so badly she cannot stop. She doesn't realize that she is crying until she feels her nose running down to her lip, doesn't realize that she is still whispering a Hail Mary the best she can until she understands a few words of her own barely audible voice, shaking through her chattering teeth. She wipes at her nose with the back of her hand, taking several gulping breaths, and then her arms are winding around Rachel Berry on instinct, pulling Rachel into the corner with her, as tightly as she can manage to squeeze them both, holding her hard. She doesn't care then that it's Rachel Berry and they're supposed to dislike each other. She doesn't care about anything except the fact that she's terrified, that she doesn't want to die, and she wants to be holding onto someone real and alive, someone she knows, if she's about to.
Rachel was shaking with the fear and the adrenaline running through her system, everything felt so surreal and like it was all a bad dream. That kind of stuff just didn't happen in Lima, it didn't. It wasn't meant to yet it had. With everything barricading them in her panic rises, small spaces had never been something she liked but she knew it was where they were the safest in that moment. Then Santana was holding her and she was holding her back just as tightly, crying into the girls shoulder and praying as hard as she could that they would make it out alive and she would get to see her dads again. In those dark moments she had never been so scared but Santana was there and she could feel her warmth beneath her hands and that was enough to bring her a tiny slice of comfort that she was craving in the darkness. Grabbing out her phone she numbly sent a message to her dads that read 'school, gun, people dead, help.' After sending it off she turned it off and held onto Santana tighter than ever before feeling as though the air surrounding them was suffocating her.
When Rachel pulls away from her, even in the brief period of time it takes to send a text, Santana's heart leaps, and she grabs for her instinctively, not wanting her to pull away, half afraid she's going to try to leave the closet. She clings to Rachel's arm, her nails digging in, but when she sees the girl is just sending a text, she relaxes marginally. Fumbling for her own, she dials 911 even as Rachel wraps back around her, her own nearly hyperventilating breathing making it difficult for her to form words when the calm voice on the other end answers.
For several moments Santana cannot answer when the voice asks for her emergency. She sputters and sobs, digging her nails into Rachel's arm, and starts to panic, thinking that if she can't calm down, the small space they're in will be flooded with carbon dioxide and kill her even before she can be shot. After a few moments she manages to choke out the school's name before hanging up and burying her face in Rachel's shoulder. She knows her own tears and snot are probably soaking the girl's shirt and that Rachel's are probably getting on her as well, but she doesn't care.
"Don't die," she whispers, and it's unclear to her whether she is talking about herself or Rachel. "Please."
With Santana's nails digging into her arm Rachel finds a strange kind of comfort in it, knowing that she's safer there than they were in that classroom. But the second she was holding onto Santana she didn't care about anything, she just cared about them getting out of there alive and not having to go back there and see the bodies as the shots continued ringing throughout the emptied halls, echoing off the walls and vibrating through the air sending shivers down her spine. She hears Santana on the phone but she can't make sense of the words, all she knows is that if she's going to die she won't have spent her last minutes alone and that they tried so hard to protect themselves.
Although Santana's whispered words break through the panicked haze and hit her hard, knocking the air out of her lungs.
"We're not going to die," she whispered in a voice that didn't sound like her own, a voice that sounded timid and frightened beyond belief.
She didn't believe herself at all, in fact she was convinced that Tyler would find them and shoot them too because surely he had seen them running in that general direction.
Rachel's words are hardly convincing. Santana shakes her head, her face still pressed into her collarbone, arms wound around her waist. Every time she hears another shot in the distance, she jumps, biting the insides of her cheeks to keep back a scream. She can hear feet running past her and suspects that Tyler is chasing some of the kids who tried to run. When she hears a shot closer to her than the others, perhaps in the hallway outside the door, new tears stream down her cheeks, and she almost chokes, finally forcing out the words running through her head.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm sorry I was a bitch to Emily, I'm sorry I was a bitch to you, I'm sorry I was a bitch to everyone, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, please stop doing this, please stop, please."
She isn't sure who she's talking to. Tyler? Rachel? God?
When the shots got closer Rachel was trying so hard not to scream and instead let out a sob that she didn't seem to have any control over. Burying her head in Santana's shoulder she held her three times tighter than she had been and cried harder into her shoulder. Everything was hurting and she felt as though she was going to be sick but she had never been so scared before. Then Santana was apologizing and it was breaking her heart.
Before she knew what was happening a shot was fired through the door and she let out a scream until she heard someone being tackled to the ground and told they were under arrest. It was then clear that the emergency services had arrived and they were right outside the door. Fear shot through her and her shaking got worse as they waited, people knew they were in there now but were they really safe?
"Sorry," Santana chokes out, the word wet and broken against Rachel's skin. She can think of no other word right then, and it seems so important, even a matter literally of life and death to get it out. "Sorry sorry sorry sorry-"
When she hears the voices outside the door, she cuts herself off, trying not even to make any noise with her tears as she grips Rachel, barely feeling the girl's hard grasp. Trembling, she holds her, waiting, and when she hears footsteps moving away from them, Tyler's voice cursing, she presses her mouth into Rachel's shoulder to try to keep herself from making any noise. But then there are footsteps approaching them…did he get away? What if he has a friend? What if-
When a light knock sounds at the closet door, she can't help herself. She shrieks out loud, squeezing Rachel so hard the girl must be in pain. She is still screaming when the man's voice breaks through, calm, official, and definitely not Tyler's.
"Hey, hey, are you all right in there? Are you injured? This is Deputy Carlson, and you are safe. Miss? Are you injured?"
"It's okay." Rachel managed to force out through her choked up and broken sobs.
Everything was piling on top of her and she was certain that Santana's tight grip had broken a rib of two but she didn't care, that didn't matter.
What mattered was the two of them being safe and coming out of it all alive. Tyler was still out there, cursing out the officers who arrested him and saying they all deserved to die. That hit her hard because she knew neither her or Santana should have been there that day and that the others certainly didn't deserve that fate.
Her own scream mirrored Santana's purely out of fear and the reaction thinking the worst in that moment she was on the verge of blacking out from it all. Then the voice broke through she held onto Santana a little tighter trying to breathe and find an answer.
"Fine," She managed to choke out just as a paramedic came to stand beside the officer.
"We need you to open the door," she said calmly.
Rachel just pulled back and looked at Santana before nodding and moving things out of the way carefully never once releasing her hold on Santana and not caring if things fell as she moved them with her foot.
Santana grips Rachel's arm, not having the presence of mind at first to help her. She just wants to maintain her hold, not wanting to break contact for a second. After a few moments she finally starts to help the best she can using only her feet, and when they open the door, she is still holding Rachel, cringing.
The first thing she sees is the officers standing, blocking the door, but rather than comforting her, this scares her further, because she can see the guns in their holsters. Santana gasps, scrambling backward and trying to drag Rachel with her. She can see blood smeared along the floor, someone's body, face down, only a few feet away, and she begins to hyperventilate, tears streaming down her face as her chest hitches, unable to draw sufficient air in. They might be safe now, but she's reached her limit for what she can take in.
Rachel's reaction was no better than Santana's, a shrill scream fell from her lips and she let Santana pull her back into the dark corner. The officers don't move but they do allow a paramedic to come in with a blanket that she wrapped around them.
"Come on, let me get you out of here," she said softly and even though Rachel wanted to hide with Santana they were encouraged to come out. The paramedic pulled the blanket up so they didn't have to see the guns or the blood and Rachel's grip tightened on Santana as they got out into the open space.
"Don't let go," she whispered.
Only with this encouragment, and the paramedic helping them move forward, blocking them from seeing, could Santana begin to slowly move out of the closet and down the hall. She is still shaking badly, and she closes her eyes, despite the fact that she is being blocked from the worst of the sights. She has absolutely no intention of letting Rachel go.
They inch forward, with Santana only occasionally opening her eyes, and when they are finally guided forward towards an ambulance and assisted into the back, a paramedic wraps blankets around both of them, coming forward to take their vitals and examine their pupils, knowing that they are in shock. Santana doesn't let go of Rachel's hand, and when the paramedic briskly and takes her free hand in his, rubbing in an effort to warm and bring her back out of shock, then briefly does the same to her cheeks, Santana feels tears spill over again.
Sucking a breath in, she remains silent, struggling to process what had just happened. She can vaguely see that there are no other students coming out of the building, that there is no one else being guided towards the ambulances lined up, and it hits her suddenly why this might be.
What if she and Rachel are the only survivors?