Hey everyone! This is a story in response to the prompt Santana's parents die in a car accident, leaving her to care for her one-year-old brother all alone. She starts to have panic attacks routinely, convinced that she could never be strong enough to care for her brother, and that she was a terrible role model for him from the angst meme over on LJ. I hope you all enjoy it :)

I don't own Glee or any of its awesome ;_; I just bring them out to play now and then!

-Dru

"Fuck, shit, cock."

The two year old next to her momentarily raised his eyebrows but was otherwise too sleepy to have any other sort of reaction to his sisters' outburst. Santana shoved the car seat over, almost forgetting that her little brother was sitting on the floor of the backseat until the stream of obscenities had left her mouth.

"Shit…I mean…shoot. I'm sorry, Adam." She reached down to awkwardly comb her fingers through the toddler's dark, curly hair. Slightly irritated (but, again, too sleepy to really care) Adam half-heartedly pushed Santana's hand away and rested his head against the seat of the car. This was fucking ridiculous and Santana knew it. It was nearly midnight and there she sat outside of her mother's apartment complex, struggling with a car seat she had no idea how to install properly, with a half-conscious two year old sitting on the floor of the backseat. Real fucking smooth Lopez, her mind kept saying.

Santana's mother had left nearly 3 years ago, leaving Santana in the custody of her grandmother. 6 months after that she had met Rodriguez (the shithead) and got pregnant with Adam. Santana knew her mother was in to drugs, known that she had chosen them over her own daughter and had later chosen them over her own son. Rodriguez had left during the pregnancy at which time Santana's grandmother stepped back in and worked tirelessly to keep her daughter clean, for the baby's sake. When Adam was born, Santana wasn't really sure how to feel. His eyes were light, like Rodriguez, but the rest was purely her. She loved him, sure, but her mother wasn't much a part of her life anymore.

When Santana had first gotten the call that her mother had been killed in a terrible car accident while under the influence she hadn't believed it. Rodriguez had been her passenger and it was clear what the two of them had been up to. Her mother had left Adam in the care of Santana but since she was only 17 at the time, he had gone to Santana's grandmother. Who had become horribly sick and seemed to only be getting worse as the days went on. Santana had panicked (really and truly panicked) when the flurry of doctors had descended upon her talking about things like a last will and testament and what she planned on doing after her grandmother was gone. They tried being optimistic, but Santana knew they were things that needed to be talked about because the unthinkable was about to happen. Again.

"I just…I need some time," she had pled desperately.

She had taken Adam and ran.

Her grandmother died a few days later.

No one knew it, but Santana had been staying at her mother's old apartment. A neighbor (with a young daughter of her own) watched Adam while Santana went to school. In return, Santana cleaned her apartment on the weekends. It wasn't long before Santana ran out of money to pay the rent and here she was today, with no where to go and unable to see past the next five minutes. Adam yawned and batted at Santana's hand again.

"Nana, sleepy," he declared. "Bed."

"I know you're tired, buddy," she whispered back to him, finally able to click the car seat in to a seemingly un-wobbly position (it was rare that Santana had ever gone out of the house with Adam without help from their neighbor who had, until recently, had Adam's car seat installed in her own car.) She hated leaving without saying goodbye, or letting Adam say goodbye, but she needed to leave and now. She knew she wouldn't have been able to take any more heartbreak. Adam whimpered and with his last bit of energy climbed up on to the empty space near his car seat and finally succumbed to exhaustion. As soon as the utter silence bled in to the small car, Santana started sobbing. For her mother, her grandmother, Adam, and herself.

"Shit," she snapped under her breath, taking her hand away from her face only to see that the back of it was coated in blood from her nose. She practically expected the fucking universe to just implode right then and there and she had to let out a pathetic sort of laugh despite herself. The heavy sobs had left the high schooler heaving and she barely noticed the gentle vibration of her phone as it rang against her hip. She quickly fished it out of her pocket, knowing who it was without even having to look at the caller ID (not that she could with new tears clouding her vision so rapidly).

"Hello?" she managed, softly, searching for something to stop the gush of blood from her nose. Adam's fuzzy giraffe blanket was the only thing within reach, and if circumstances were different, she would have felt like complete and utter shit for grabbing it and pressing it against her face.

"Santana!" concern, panic, and relief all at once flooded from the other end. "Santana, where are you? It's been like…2 hours. Are you alright?"

"Yes…Rachel…I'm…I'm okay." She was more okay now having the crazed singer's voice to cling on to but she wasn't quite ready to admit that. "I just had some trouble with Adam's car seat. I'll be over soon." A quick huff from the other side.

"I told you, you should have let me come!"

"And then what? We'd be sitting here looking like complete idiots together, that's real nice." Santana cradled the phone against her shoulder as she repositioned herself in the car, grabbing hold of Adam and setting him in to his car seat, a sudden urgency to just start driving and never stop taking hold of her. The other side of the line had gone quiet.

"…Rachel?"

"You've been crying," she blurted abruptly. Santana could quickly tell Rachel was fighting back emotions of her own and her face grew hot with frustration.

"Yes, okay. I've been crying. But, fuck, Rachel. Don't you think I've earned that much? Huh? What else do I have to lose? Do I have to lose Adam? Do I have to lose you? Do I have to lose Brittany? What the fuck. Could I cry then?"

Santana was practically screaming in to the phone and Adam awoke with a start. He looked like he was about to start crying himself but even in the dark he managed to see that Santana was bleeding and instead his eyebrows shot up in question again.

"Owie," he reached out and took hold of Santana's wrist. "Nana? Ow? Ow, Nana."

After that he just started repeating her name over and over again. Nana, Nana, Nana. He grabbed at his giraffe blanket and when he saw the blood that now coated his tiny hand, he started to cry.

"I'm sorry," Santana breathed; unsure of whom exactly the condolence was for.

"Santana, I'm scared. Please, just come." Rachel said it all so quickly that it sounded like one word, as if she was afraid of setting Santana off again. She grabbed the blanket back from Adam which only made him cry louder.

"We'll be there soon."