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 73rd cycle. Now cycle 74!

"What Awaits"
(Older) (Quinn,) Santana/Brittany
Trinity series
(all series now listed under the communities tab in my profile)

Santana's mother had said something about the third time being the charm, but her future grandchild clearly had another idea in mind, because their third dash to the hospital had been the same as the first two: a false alarm. The baby was not coming yet.

By the looks of it, Santana seemed sure she could take the baby into finally coming for real. If it was listening though, it didn't care what she had to say and would stay put for as long as it wished to.

"It won't be long," Brittany would promise her, smiling as she sat next to her and laid her hand over her wife's very round stomach.

"Easy for you to say, I swear it's like time's slowed down by half," Santana breathed out.

"Do you want me to get you something?" Brittany asked.

"No, I'm good," Santana insisted. "Stay here," she requested, and Brittany gave a short nod: she would stay right there, for as long as Santana needed her there.

It really wouldn't be long now, a day or two at the most, and the more they reminded themselves of this fact, the more anxious they grew. They were about to be parents, the two of them. It was almost too crazy to believe, especially when held up against the fact that, only a year ago, they had been thieves. Their lives had gone from absolutely wild and strange and dangerous to exceedingly ordinary.

Admittedly, they'd known even as they were going through the process of trying to get pregnant that their lives would have to change once the baby came, and even before then. But they also knew that they would not have changed as much as they actually did if it hadn't been for their losing Quinn. The day she'd died was the day Trinity had ceased to exist. There was no point even considering whether or not they would carry on without her. This enterprise had been her creation, and she was the whole reason they had started doing it all. Now that she was gone, they couldn't do it anymore. They had to move on, and this baby they were about to have was all the more reason for them to do it. They gave themselves entirely on to providing the right environment to raise their child in and let the rest disappear.

It wasn't as though their old lives had gone quietly into the night. There had been several times where they'd been watching the news, or reading the paper, and they would see something, a story. It didn't have to be the biggest story, the front page, the bold headline. It could be something so small that it would go right by and most people would either skip it, or read it and not think too much of it. But Quinn would have thought plenty of it. They'd had some jobs that had been built out of small, supposedly insignificant stories. The people involved didn't think them insignificant, and a lot of the time, those were the jobs they felt the proudest of. Whenever they would come across those stories, they would still feel a sort of stir, a feeling like they should try and do something. But they would look at each other, and they would remember, and they would let it go. Quinn was gone. Trinity was dead. There was nothing they could do.

Remembering all this, remembering when they'd been Sneak, and Optic, Brittany would look at her wife and see how nervous she looked, whether or not she'd say it, and she would find her braver now than she did when they would be on a job. This was the real thrill, these last few months. She'd never felt invested in anything as much as she did, watching their child grow inside her wife's belly.

"Where'd you go?" Santana's voice pulled her back, and she realized she must have been staring into nothing for a while.

"A good place," Brittany smiled, leaning closer to her stomach. "You're going to have the best mama," she whispered. "Better than that, you're going to get two. Isn't that lucky? Two mothers, and we're going to love you so much. We love you so much already," she corrected. "We can't wait to hold you, so anytime you want to come and see us, we're ready for you." She paused, waiting, then looked up to Santana. As exasperated as she'd been before, now she just smiled.

"If it had been me, I so would have come out," she promised, and Brittany laughed. "So do you think we are? Ready?"

"As we'll ever be," Brittany confirmed. The nursery had been finished just a week before. It was almost unrecognizable from the room that had once been Quinn's. They knew it was the right thing to do, that if Quinn knew they would want to use her room she would say to go for it, but there had still been a moment of hesitation, of concern that they were moving too fast, even though she had been gone for months already. They had packed her things with care, storing some, shipping some to her mother back in Lima. The bare room had been appropriately empty. And then with time, it had been transformed into their child's future room.

"I guess I can go through a couple more days of this," Santana smiled, watching Brittany's lithe fingers dance atop her belly.

"So can I," Brittany smiled to herself. She hummed a song, she couldn't even tell which one, though it had probably been playing on the radio when she woke up; those tended to stick in her head all day long. "I think this one likes music," she spoke after a minute.

"With us for mothers, I wouldn't be surprised," Santana chuckled.

They went to sleep soon after, feeling that tonight wouldn't be the night either, although they'd thought the opposite before and been proven wrong three times, so who knew? Whether or not the child came that night or the one after that, it didn't matter. They were ready to be its mothers.

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!