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 79th cycle. Now cycle 80!

"Caught Up"
In Gen1!World: G1!Rachel, G2!Santana
Berry-St series
(all series now listed under the communities tab in my profile)

This had been the longest night of Rachel's life.

Already her day had been a tough one to get through, but it had all come down to one moment to make it exponentially worse, and that was when Santana had passed out, as she and her counterpart from the Glee-less world traded places. When this one had woken up, she hadn't just been a 'lost puppy,' as Rachel had taken to calling those who had their first jumps with no knowledge of anything, she'd been a lost wolf on the prowl. Rachel tried to put herself in her place, to think about how she'd felt in those first moments after waking from her first jump, but at least she'd been on her own. This other Santana had woken up cradled in the arms of a girl she wasn't even friends with, much less girlfriends with.

She'd accused Rachel of having drugged her and kidnapped her for some sick fantasy of hers, and she'd tried to get away. That she was still a bit off balance had at once kept her from doing this and convinced her even more that she'd been drugged. Rachel had to talk fast, so she did. She told Santana how she had just been thrown into another world, an alternate universe. Already she could see this was not going to be enough, so she went right for the thing that would at least get her attention. She got her phone out and called Matt Rutherford, and then she tossed the thing to Santana, whose reflex was naturally to catch it and put it to her ear.

When she heard the boy's voice, her old friend who'd been killed in that accident the previous fall, her entire face had changed. She wanted to believe that this was a trick, but if it was, then it was both cruel and eerily spot on. Whatever he'd said to her though, he must have convinced her he was the real deal though, because Santana played along. She did not mention his being dead. When the call was ended, she held out the phone for Rachel to take back, and then she stood there, in complete shock. The first words out of her mouth had been 'I need a drink,' and in this circumstance, Rachel had not refused her.

Santana had ended up sleeping over. Rachel had given her the bed, while she took the floor. There she'd been, telling her Santana about Quinn hadn't been able to help herself, that she'd just let herself be kissed because it'd be easier for her, and now here she was, afraid of innocently sharing a bed with a girl who looked, sounded, and smelled like her girlfriend, even though she knew it wasn't her.

The next morning, she'd woken up, sore despite her best efforts to construct herself a bed on the floor, only to find that Santana was gone. She wasn't just out of her room, she wasn't in the house at all.

She'd found her again at school. She was walking around, taking in her surroundings, discovering this other world, just as she'd been told. When she saw Rachel, she let out a sigh. It was really real.

Rachel had done her best to brief her on the life of this world's Santana, the one she'd have to pretend to be. It hadn't taken long for her to realize Rachel knew a whole lot about her, so Rachel had had no choice but to reveal the fact that they'd been secretly dating. Rachel hadn't been sure what the status of this other Santana's discovery of her sexuality was, but by the looks of her now, she would have estimated she wasn't too far from where her Santana had been, in the beginning of their relationship, which was cautious and a tiny bit afraid.

She moved on from this subject by telling Santana about Glee Club. If she was going to be her, she was going to have to join them. They were going to have to coach her, too, though Rachel suspected she wouldn't need as much as some of the others had done.

It wasn't until lunch time that she was able to pull their group together, those of them who knew about the swaps, to inform them of this latest development. Kurt was still out from school and would likely remain that way for a few more days, while they made sure there was nothing wrong with him, but he wasn't the only one of them there. They were very welcoming of Santana, which Rachel imagined might have had something to do with the fact that they'd been dealing with her Santana all this time. This one had quickly latched to Quinn and Mike, as they were from her world, and she could talk to them about how she'd learned of Matt, that he was not dead here.

Even then, by the end of the day, Santana had come back to see Rachel, catching her on her way out of school. Rachel wasn't sure what she'd say, if she'd chew her out again.

"So this has to be throwing you off, right?" Santana said. "You were going out with her, the other… the other me." Rachel said nothing, but she nodded. "You… you really care about her." Rachel couldn't help but smile, if sadly so.

"I love her," she declared, and it was the first sort of smile she had gotten off of that face she loved in over a day.

"Woah…" was all Santana could muster to say, and it made Rachel laugh. "Sorry, I just…"

"It's confusing at first, a lot of headaches, and then it's scary how much it starts becoming part of who you are, starts making sense."

"How can any of this make sense?" Santana chuckled.

"Not so much at first, but more and more, and then you start saying things that would have sounded ridiculous not long ago, except now it just rolls off the tongue." She looked at her, and the more she'd gotten the chance to look at her, the more she did see this one didn't look like the other, at least not to her. She may have had her girlfriend's face, but she wasn't her. "Look, I don't know if it'll be weeks, or months…" Please don't let it be years… "I will get you home. I promise."

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!