So hey, everyone! I wrote this today because Christmas is coming up and I'd just like to remind you all that this time of year can be exceptionally difficult for the lonely and therefore, an extra effort at making someone's day can go the longest way possible. You are never alone; do not ever be afraid to ask someone for company. It is the cheapest thing we, as humans, can offer and it is the richest thing we can appreciate.
If I don't update Lumiere before Christmas, let me say now that I hope you have the most wonderful day. And thank you again for all your continued support as I continue to mumble along with my love for these characters, even though they are not mine and even though the rest of this fandom seems to have sadly disappeared.
It had just turned 4.59pm when you finally found her.
Curled up in a tight and shivering ball, she was dangerously frozen and horrifically underweight. It hurt your heart too see her so broken like this, with her dark hair hanging loose from under her grey hood and her young hands clutching the material desperately around her ears - to keep out the chill or the pain, you couldn't tell. Either way, it sent a rip of hurt right through the centre of your chest and for a small moment, you forgot how to breathe.
And then when you did, the air was so cold that your lungs screamed in agony and your heart hurt even more.
It was starting to frost around you as you took in the area you'd found her in. Looking at the way she was sunken achingly against the park swings, you guessed she'd most likely been on her way to the cemetery and had got too cold to carry on. You knew she probably hadn't eaten all day and in her usual spontaneous franticness, had obviously left the house without a coat, scarf or hat.
You heart ached again.
(You wish she didn't take after you so much.)
Without wanting to startle her, you approached slowly, flinching at the way the grass crunched loudly beneath your feet. You thought she'd heard you but as you got closer, you realised she was crying and didn't even hear you. They were silent, even though her whole body was shaking doubly as bad with her shivering and her clutching.
(Her hands must be so numb.)
"Little lion?" You dared to whisper, folding your arms over your chest and creeping further forward. "It's only me."
She brought her left hand from her hood and covered it over her mouth before letting out a splitting cough. You clutched your own hand to your chest.
"Dandie?" You tried again, bending down to where she was and hating how your voice shook in time with her body. "Look at me. Please."
She spluttered again, her eyes closing with the force of it. You couldn't take it any longer, so you removed the leather coat your wife had bought you your first Christmas together and placed it around the shoulders of your freezing daughter. She seemed to only realise you were present at that moment and when she looked up at you, her eyes were more sorry than you think you'd ever seen them.
"It's okay," You whispered, reaching forward and cupping her face with your palm. "Can I sit down with you?"
She nodded, so you bent down beside her and ignored the way the frost from the grass dampened your jeans as you settled down to her right.
The whole time you'd been looking for her, you felt like the moment you found her, the words she needed to hear would just fall out of your mouth as naturally as the sun rises in the morning. But as you sat there, your bones vibrating from the coldness your daughter was emanating, and your chest turning with the sound of her shakily steadying breaths, you realised you had nothing.
They don't teach you this at school. Your own mother never talked to you about situations like this. At pregnancy club, you were never told how to react when (or, rather, if) your child got sad. Got more than sad.
Got depressed.
You clenched your eyes shut because you felt like the world's biggest failure. That your child was desperately sad and you didn't know how to stop it.
Aren't you meant to take the pain away from your children when they're hurting?
"I'm-I'm, I'm sor-" She sharply shook out before her sobs caught her and forced her to inhale again. She coughed, spluttered and tried again. "I'm sorry."
You found the tissues your wife had so intuitively placed in your pocket before you left the door two hours earlier and pulled one out, trying so hard to dismiss the way your hands were shaking in the sharp air. The way your daughter looked at you made you pull yourself together and after a deep breath, you placed the tissue right under her eye and held it there, willing your own eyes to stop filling with tears.
After you were sure all her tears had been cleaned up, you placed the tissue back in your pocket and focussed back on her face.
You knew parents shouldn't really have to question it but you asked her anyway.
"Can I hug you?"
She pulled her lips into her mouth before releasing the smallest nod you'd ever seen her do and without waiting for anything else, you brought your right hand to the side of her face, your left to her shoulders and held her right into you, your lips resting on the top of her head, her shakes still very present.
Her cheeks were frozen.
"Dandie," Your voice broke, pressing a kiss into her hair and sniffing back your tears. "I love you. So much."
Her hands clutched at your jumper beneath your hold as she heaved out a breathy sigh that seemed to be too much effort for her. You didn't want to break apart for as long as possible, rocking her slightly back and fourth and making her warm, warm, and warmer still.
"Momma?" She whispered into your chest, resting her ear against your heartbeat.
You remembered that feeling when you were younger, of being so close to your mother that you felt unbreakable. That even though you had a huge cut on your finger or you'd scraped your knee badly in the playground, or even that you'd had a pretty shitty break up with someone you were madly in love with, it didn't hurt anymore because your mom was there and she was hugging you as tight as a person could hug.
When for the shortest moment, pain didn't even exist in your world.
You wanted to be that person for your own daughter right now. God knows how long you hadn't.
"Yeah, little lion?" You answered her, holding her tighter.
She seemed to take a moment to think before taking a breath and pressing her head so she was looking slightly up at you. You turned your chin to look towards her and waited for her question.
"Why is the sky dead tonight? It's Christmas Eve and there are no planes or helicopters or birds anywhere. I haven't seen a single one. It's Christmas Eve, it should be overflowing with life but it's not, it's dead. I can't find anything, it's so dead."
She sounded so angry and yet so sad and again, you hated how you were never taught how to answer these deeper and seemingly more important questions.
You tried in nanoseconds to work out where she was coming from with this question so that she wouldn't think you were confused. You'd spent your whole life deconstructing the order in which your wife had put her words only to discover that she was, or rather is, in fact, the universe's most beautiful kind of genius and maybe, perhaps, your daughter was more like Brittany than you originally thought.
"Sweetie," You began, kissing her head once more and pulling her closer. You tried to think of a way to explain what you thought she was trying to ask you without answering something completely different. "Look at the sky."
She twisted her head so she was looking up. You looked up with her. Suddenly, her seventeen-year-old mind didn't seem so old anymore.
"Tell me, do you see how the colour over there changes from completely black to an almost indigo violet shade, and how just above it, it seems like its almost going a royal navy colour, when what seems like millimeters ago, it was just black again?"
You feel her shift in your hold and turn to look at all the points you spoke about. She didn't say anything but you know she saw them. You had no idea about stars or galaxies or the milky way but you would try and talk about them for your daughter.
"Each millimeter you can see from here is some actual crazy distance out there. Your mom would know.. Maybe billions of lightyears, that sounds like something spacey, right?" You hum your appreciation for your lack of knowledge and hold your daughter closer.
"And within that indigo area, there are three stars which I believe are called Orion's Belt." You continued. "And from my very natural and incredibly vast knowledge of the universe and it's stars, that must mean that there is a guy up there wearing a belt because his pants are too small for him. And since there's a guy up there wearing too small pants, that must mean that there are other guys up there because how else would he have bought his pants if he didn't buy them off someone else?" You paused because this wasn't going where you actually wanted it to go.
Dandie didn't seemed to notice. She just lay in your arms and listened to you. Shaking but listening.
"Dandie," You continued, "there are stars up there that we can't even see with our own eyes. That we can't even see with microscopes. There are planets and other galaxies and other universes so far away, we will never be able to reach them unless someone works out a way to keep us here forever."
The gentlest of winds rustled the empty branches around you and your daughter shivered again.
"You know, there's another planet just like ours somewhere out there with a girl just like you and a woman just like me, probably sitting out on this freezing December night together, watching the stars and talking about us two-"
"But how do you know that?" Dandie gently interrupted, still looking at the stars.
You paused.
"I don't." You settled with, knowing that with your wife, it was always best to be honest, so it probably would be as well with your daughter. "But I do know that this universe we live in is just one tiny baul-baul on a whole massive Christmas tree. There are others out there and probably some much bigger too."
"You sound so sure." Dandie commented, nuzzling her cheek into your chest. "How can you sound so sure?"
"I was told." You replied swiftly, and then added, "At school?"
Dandie giggled very slightly and it warmed your ears more than the sun ever could.
"But Little Lion," Your voice softly echoed throughout the park around you, "do not ever think that there must be airplanes and helicopters and birds flying in the sky to bring it to life. There are stars up there that die just to burn holes in the universe so it can breathe and orbiting planets that rain diamonds to give them the strength they need to hold our own planet up. The sky is alive and you can feel it breathing all of the time, even if you can't see or hear it."
You hiccuped slightly when you went to inhale and Dandie moved so her head was resting back on your chest again. You allowed the following silence to overwhelm the two of you so for a moment, you could just listen to her breathing in your arms. She seemed to appreciate it, clutching your jumper closer to her body and breathing slower and steadier. And whilst she looked to be calming down, the way her eyes were darting around like she couldn't keep all her thoughts together and the fact she wore a permanent frown on her head suggested otherwise.
"I was on my way to John." She barely got out before wiggling her head right into the leather jacket and away from you.
You realised she'd been working up the courage to tell you and was now afraid of what you would say and how you would react.
You remained silent. You weren't sure what she wanted you to say, or if she wanted you to say anything at all. She hadn't spoken about John since he died last year and throughout all of this, you and Britt had really just wanted her to acknowledge him, if only to push her through her grief. But she hadn't.
Not until now.
"I guess that I thought if I visited his grave he'd still be there." She admitted, her voice monotone coming out from under the jacket and her breath shaking with every word. She looked worryingly at you.
"I can hear him sometimes in my head telling me to smile and reminding me to breathe and I thought that he'd be sat on his gravestone with his ankle up on his knee and I thought that'd he tell me off for not wearing a coat or he'd wish me a merry Christmas or that he'd at least tell me what happened when we hit that truck last summer on the I-94 and my seatbelt didn't work properly."
She paused for breath whilst her eyes filled with tears and your stomach churned. She looked so at war with herself, you could barely breathe yourself.
"I just..." She tried again, looking away and then back up at you again. "I just thought he'd be there."
You didn't want to cry but it seemed you were going to anyway. You wanted to ask her how often she had visited his grave, if she had at all, and how long she'd been wondering about her seatbelt not working properly and if she'd even meant to visit him today. But once again, you remained silent because you were terrified she would close up if you even uttered a word.
"Do you see him, Momma?" She asked, burying her head into your chest and holding your jumper even tighter. "Do you still talk to him?"
You closed your eyes because you wished you could tell her that you did see him. That he appeared in your dreams on restless nights or that sometimes, you saw him sat on the kitchen counter when you were making dinner, laughing at the way you sliced cheese rather than grated it, or that when you were missing him, he'd suddenly knock on the front door with a giant bag of nacho chips and a tub of mexican dip because he knew that was your favourite meal to share with him.
But you would be lying. Because you didn't see him and he didn't turn up on your front door at any point, let alone when you were missing him. You couldn't lie to your daughter. Not even to avoid making her even sadder than she already was. You'd learnt that with Brittany from a very young age.
"Listen to me," You said, firmly, sitting up straight and pulling Dandie with you. Right now, she looked like the fragile Dandelion Brittany had named her after, the way she looked at you so vulnerably.
"He's here, okay?" You told her, taking one of her freezing hands and pressing it over her heart. You felt like she wanted to roll her eyes but couldn't because it was too cold. "And I know that it's all a load of crappy, cliched bull crap but I promise you, John's right here. He hasn't left us and he most definitely hasn't left you."
She bit her lip, wondering whether to believe what you were telling her or pretend that this wasn't happening at all.
"Dandie, you have his blood running through your veins, and your heart - your heart echoes the beat of his - scientifically, it always has done. If you're still here, John is still here. I can promise you that." You gripped her hands in yours and searched her eyes for any indication as to what was going on in her mind.
"But what if I'm not still here?" She asked, looking at you like this was a genuine concern. To her, much like it could be to your wife, it was. "What if I died with him?"
You breathed a shaky intake of the frozen air before attempting to reply.
"You're still here, little lion, because I managed to find you."
And then she broke in your arms, like a crumpled ball of sobbing mess, and for the life of her, she couldn't understand why she was crying and what she was feeling and it was scaring her more than she'd been scared before, that these feelings were so overwhelming and so uncontrollable and so demanding.
When Brittany found you, she didn't say or question anything. She merely kissed you on your forehead before removing Dandie from your arms and safely carrying her to the car, covering her with blankets in the backseat. When she returned for you, she bent down to where you were still sitting on the grass and cupped your cheek in her palm, silently thanking you but for what you weren't sure.
You drove home in the backseat with Dandie cuddled into your side, listening to Carter telling his mom all the cool things he could see from the front seat of the car and smiling at the way Daisy held her sister's hand the whole way back.
Your family meant all of the universe to you. And whilst maybe at high school, the thought of being pregnant and having babies and raising toddlers could possibly have sent you into an overwhelmingly severe anxiety attack, the moment the twins were born when you and Britt were twenty-five, the feeling you got from holding the two of them together in your arms made you feel like finally, you had a purpose on this planet. Cliche or not, they gave you every reason to breathe and every reason to stay alive. Jonathan, with his big bear hands gripping onto his sister's fingers and little Dandelion with her yellow jaundiced skin and prickly black hair wriggling around under that big purple light. She was yours and Brittany's tiny fighter. The moment she'd been freed from the UV incubator four weeks after birth, Brittany had held her so close to her chest, rocked her back and fourth and whispered, "brave little lion heart", over and over and over again.
That feeling you got then was so intense and so beautiful and so life changing, it was only natural for Brittany to suggest having another one. And since, once again, Daisy had filled your heart with so much love and affection, you had shocked everyone by informing them you wanted to carry your own.
One year later, Carter was born. Carter, your little main man, running riot around your lives and causing adorable chaos everywhere he went.
You smiled at the mere thought.
When you all got in, Carter rushed upstairs to bring all the stockings down and Daisy, still holding Dandie's hand, took her to the kitchen to show her the Gingerbread biscuits she'd made earlier with Brittany.
And thank goodness for Brittany. Because you think that without her, your family wouldn't have got through Christmas last year the sane and broken way you all did. And without Brittany, you wouldn't have been able to continue with your usual Christmas Eve traditions tonight, like baking Gingerbread biscuits and sprinkling glittery oats around the lawn for Santa to find your house and giving the kids new pajamas to wear that night.
Brittany was, and remains to be, the most important piece of your jigsaw life. She made up more than half of your world and painted it with feelings you didn't ever think you were allowed to feel. She lit up the world just by breathing in it and if you could name the feeling you were feeling right now, watching the way she was spinning a laughing Daisy and Carter in circles as they showed off their fancy new pajamas and simultaneously glancing every so often at Dandie as she lay warm and showered in the crook of your arm, John's old superman pajamas draped over her tiny frame to smile at her, it would quite literally be Brittany.
Because Brittany was her own feeling and she was yours.
I love you, she mouthed at you, turning just in time to catch Carter as he fell into her arms after losing his balance from all the spinning. Daisy followed suit and you laughed at her, mouthing that you loved her back.
Later on that evening, when Carter had hung everyone's stockings above the fireplace and Daisy had put Santa's biscuits, milk and his reindeer's carrots by the Christmas tree, you knocked on Dandie's door to wait for her reply.
"Come in, Momma."
"Hey," You breathed, closing the door behind you. She was brushing her hair whilst sat cross-legged in the middle of her bed. She looked so normal and content, it was hard to believe that only four hours ago, you were shivering outside in the cold with her, talking about the universe.
"How are you feeling?" You asked, not really sure if that was the right thing to do.
She looked quizzically up at you before jutting her jaw out and pursing her lips together.
"Better," She said. "Thanks."
You moved to sit down on the edge of her bed and watched as she dimmed the bedside lamp beside her. When she turned back to you, she patted the duvet next to her as an invitation for you to join her. So you did.
"Thank you," She whispered through the yellow light, her eyes looking sad. "I didn't mean to do that today, on Christmas Eve."
Your heart broke a little.
"No, sweetie," You assured, pulling her in for a hug. "No, don't be silly. We can't pick and choose the days we feel like crap. They just happen, okay? You couldn't help that."
She breathed a sigh of relief into your hair as you released her, your eyes filling up again.
"Get some sleep, okay? It's Christmas tomorrow. You've gotta be up early or the little ones will hate you." You giggled, raking your hand through your hair to tie it up.
Dandie giggled too. "Gee, do I look forward to that."
"Stop it," You laughed, pushing her gently as she fell onto her back. She pulled the covers up around her and grinned at you. "You were once just as excited as them."
"Yeah," She reminisced, looking sad again. "Christmas is fun when you have someone to wake up early with the next day."
Before you could answer, the door opened and Brittany appeared.
"Hey pretty girls," She greeted, padding over and climbing onto the bed without waiting to be asked. She kissed you softly before turning to Dandie to kiss her forehead. "I love you, brave little lion, you know that. Make sure you get some rest in time for tomorrow. And if you need anything in the night: your Momma, a bear hug or even some ice cream from the freezer, you make sure you get it, okay?"
Dandie nodded and smiled, before wishing her mom goodnight. Before you left her, you reached across to turn her light off completely and kissed her on her forehead.
"Goodnight, Dandelion." You whispered, tucking her in gently. "I love you so much. Merry Christmas."
A half hour later, when the outside lights had turned off on their automatic timer, you turned to Brittany as she lay beside you and traced your finger from the top of her temple down to the edge of her collarbone. Even in this almost pitch black darkness, you could see she was beautiful. She had that kind of hair that glowed in the dark and reminded you that she was there, in the bed with you, safe and warm and alive: loving, loving and loving you still.
"Hey, baby?" You spoke into the night air, running your thumb along her bottom lip and sighing when she kissed it in reply. "You think she'll be okay, little Dandie?"
Brittany paused for a moment before reaching over to your face and cupping your cheek as gently as she always did. You'd got fairly self conscious lately about the every growing wrinkles on your coffee skin but your wife seemed to comfort that with just a tiny touch of her magical palm.
"As long as we don't go anywhere, she will be just fine." She replied, pulling herself closer so her face was inches apart from yours.
You found yourself repeating Dandie's words from earlier. "You sound so sure. How can you sound so sure?"
She smiled through the darkness. "Because you and I, Santana, are the best parents that this world has ever created. Life can throw us as many lemons as it likes, I'll always make lemonade out of it and you, baby, you will always make tequila shots - and because we create the best of both worlds in our lovely, unique effortless way we do, there's nothing that can stop us. We planted a tree the day we first met each other and since then, we have watered it and grown it and decorated it with lights and string and ribbons and bows. We've made the strongest of strong Christmas Trees and when a branch form our Christmas Tree hangs slightly lower than the others, have we ever snapped it off? Have we ever taken it down to get a new one? Have we ever done anything about it but let it be?"
You shook your head because your wife was a genius.
"Exactly." She said, tucking your hair behind your ear and leaning forward to languidly kiss you. "Our tree is perfect and our family will be just fine. We've made it through one year, we can make it through another."
"I love you so much, Brittany."
"You can't even comprehend how much I love you, Santana." She instantly said back, kissing you again. "Now get some sleep, we have a ten year old and a nine year old who are going to wake us up in roughly six hours."
"Goodnight, Britt." You said, kissing her cheek and pulling her close to you. "Merry Christmas Eve."
"You too, my gorgeous love, you too."
Please spare a thought for all those without a family this Christmas and love your own family extra hard. Merry Christmas, to all of you. x