The Day The Princess Came For Tea

by PoppieJoy

"My mother taught me that strength is something you choose, Sir. I'd like to prove that to you." A one-shot written through the eyes of Brittany's daughter, explaining to the court that Santana is the most perfect parent any kid could ever wish for.

I have absolutely no idea where this even came from. I think it is all a reaction to a variety of different things. Mostly to do with my country. David Cameron has decided he is passionate about same-sex marriage, yet he stated last year that gay kisses should be banned on television. It is also a reaction to recent reports about how hard it is for same-sex couples to prove their home is a safe and loving environment for kids to be adopted into. And I was planning on doing something for Brittana week so here it is.

I am also flailing at the Brit Santana duet. Jesus.

Disclaimer: I do not own Glee, which is a shame, because although I would need to hire much better writers than myself, I would try and give Brittany at least one more line than she has had this season.

Please review if you have the time. Enjoy x

A statement by Miss Tahnee Jane Pierce referring to Case 167, Your Honor. Direct relation to Miss Brittany Susan Pierce, with side unrecognised adopted relation to Miss Santana Marie Lopez. Miss Pierce's and Miss Lopez's marriage is not recognised in this state. Statement written against Case 167, Your Honor.

There are things in life that you are told to prepare for, or that you naturally understand from the day you were born. Like how high school is the most judgemental, difficult and up-and-down experience you can ever go through. Like how there is war in Afghanistan. Like how love can be the hardest and most complicated emotion to ever exist and understand. And how it is so hard to find and even harder to keep. But the one thing I never expected in this fickle, broken and messed up world, is that once found and once cherished, even this emotion cannot be displayed or shown to the world the way it deserves to be.

Just because they are the same.

But what you, Sir, don't seem to realise, is that they are not. You only see what is on the outside, but have you even thought to take a glimpse at what is on the inside?

I doubt you have.

My parents are not the same. My parents are so different. Let me count the ways in which they demonstrate this:

Mom likes to take the trash out two days before it is meant to because she is worried she will forget.

PiPi likes to put the trash out at the last minute because she thinks it makes the house look ugly.

Mom likes to take baths in the morning and showers in the evening.

PiPi likes to take showers in the morning and baths in the evening.

Mom likes to cook my favourite food when I've achieved something good at school.

PiPi likes to watch Disney movies all evening with me when I've had a bad day.

Mom likes peanut butter and jelly.

PiPi likes peanut butter and syrup.

Sir, I could go on forever. I could tell you every single difference between them. But that's not the reason they make such good parents. Their differences are unique; they are what gives them their characters and they styles. But you cannot tell me that they are bad parents because they both have to wear a bra, or that once every month, they both have to stock up on pain killers and heat pads. You cannot tell me that they are bad parents because they both enjoy shopping and have the monthly manicure and pedicure. You cannot tell me that they are bad parents because they both have their tongues pierced and they both have a bunch of meaningless tattoos swirling up the poles of their spines.

You cannot, Sir.

And they don't, by the way. PiPi has her tongue pierced, but Mom only has her ears and her belly. And likewise, PiPi is the one with the tattoos, but they are beautiful and every single one in the hidden contours of her body mean something incredibly special to her.

Mom is too scared of pain to have one done.

A little bit of ink and a tiny piece of metal does not make someone unfit to be a parent. It doesn't, Sir. Mom and I met PiPi after she had all of these things done. She was already painted out and expressing herself the way she felt most comfortable. Mom didn't change her and Mom definitely didn't make her 'the way she is'.

PiPi just is.

Mom just is.

PiPi and Mom just love. They just love each other. And that's more than so many other people in this world can say. Don't you think so too, Sir?

I met PiPi when I was four. Mom was twenty. I remember the moment I met PiPi. It was at home, in Ohio, where Mom and I lived at the start. PiPi was dropping Mom home from work. (That's where they met, Sir. They met at work. Nothing special, right? Nothing out of the ordinary, and definitely not something that anyone would deem unnatural and twisted.) Mom hadn't wanted to introduce me because she knows the reaction she gets from new people when they see that I'm her daughter and not her little sister.

But she needn't have worried.

PiPi bent down to my four-year-old level and simply said, "You are even more beautiful than your Mom is and that's quite remarkable."

I thought she looked like a Princess, Sir. That's where she got her name. PiPi. She was beautiful. She had these deep brown eyes that Mom always think look black. She wore a red hair band to keep her long dark hair off her eyes. Mom always says that PiPi's hair is like the shadows of her heart. I never understood what she meant but I do now.

Do you?

I like to think it means protection. That PiPi is everywhere in Mom's heart and even the shadows and the dark places are filled with the person she loves.

PiPi spent a lot of time at our house, Sir. Sometimes I would fall asleep to the sounds of Mom and PiPi giggling as they helped my Grandma and Gramps cook dinner. Sometimes I would wake up to the sounds of laughter coming from Mom's room and when I crawled in, she and PiPi would be having a pillow fight and I would always join in.

PiPi and I always won.

The first time I saw PiPi and Mom kiss was the day they took me to the park for a picnic. We stayed there all day. After lunch, all three of us lay down on the picnic blanket and picked out shapes from the clouds. Mom said she saw a heart and PiPi said she saw a smiley face. They leant over me and touched each other's lips. I remember giggling and leaning up to kiss both of them at the same time. They giggled too.

PiPi was only eighteen, Sir. She was eighteen, the same age I am now, and she handled Mom and my situation far better than many other people could.

PiPi nicknamed me Fizz because she said I had a "fizzy butt."

"Honestly, Tahnee," She would laugh, bending over on her knees because she was out of breath, "I swear you have like the world's fizziest butt or something."

"Fizzy butt, PiPi?" I would ask, twisting my head and scrunching my eyebrows together.

"Yes," PiPi would reply, pulling me in for a hug, "You never stop going places."

We used to have adventures, PiPi and I. Mom called them our 'Princess Fizzy Times'. It would always consist of PiPi hiding some sort of treasure, usually a chocolate bar or some form of candy, and dressing up as a pirate, telling me in the coolest pirate accent that we had to find the treasure before Evil Captain Mommy found it instead.

We always found the treasure.

Mom and PiPi used to read to me, too. Like, all of the time. I know every single story ever written on this planet. You question me, I will answer you instantly.

Romeo and Juliet were "star cross'd lovers."

The boy who eats all the chocolate cake in Matilda is called Bruce Bogtrotter.

Whinnie The Pooh is terrified of heffalumps and woozles.

The stick that Pip is hit with in Great Expectations is called 'Tickler'.

Dr Seuss calls falling in love "mutual weirdness."

The dog in Nicholas Spark's The Lucky One is called Zeus.

I could go on, Sir. But that is not the point of this account.

Growing up, even before we met PiPi, Mom always used to say that the reason I didn't have a dad was because he was a "bad man" and that he wasn't with her because he didn't love her. I would always tell her that a lot of my friends had dads that didn't love their moms but they still saw them. Then she would always tell me that my friend's dads probably made them through love with their moms but that I was made just through love from Mom.

It was confusing for me when I was little. Mom hates that she didn't know how to explain it to me. But I never got too down about it because we met PiPi. Even though I sometimes thought that maybe I was only half a person because I was made with only half the amount of love my friends were made with, I still never questioned it too deeply. Because the moment we met PiPi, I knew that Mom had just been waiting for the right person to come along who could give her – and me – that other half of love.

So just because PiPi is not a dad, does not mean, Sir, that she is incapable of providing that half for me. Because it's the best half I could ever have hoped for.

When I was ten, I asked PiPi what the scars on her arm were from. She told me that they were because her heart didn't agree with her head and that when it happened, she was silly and never told her parents. It was because of this that I made it through high school.

A kid like me – a kid born into a single parent life, where her Mom was raped and didn't actually want her and where her father was a horrible person who didn't want her either – could easily drown in issue after issue after issue.

But I didn't.

And you want to know why, Sir? Do you want to know why I didn't drown?

I will tell you why.

I didn't drown because I was complete. I didn't drown because I had a Mom who liked to cook me a whole deboned chicken and fries simply because I signed my name up for the cheerleader try-outs and the Glee Club auditions. I didn't drown because I had a PiPi who bought me the comfiest flannel pyjamas that she too had bought for herself and who liked to snuggle under the sofa blankets in the living room in front of Lady and the Tramp together because the girl's at school had laughed at how I had two moms instead of one mom and a dad. I didn't drown because I had a Mom who would let me put the loudest music on in her dance studio and just go crazy down there because the teacher at school had told me my work wasn't good enough and my grades were way below average. I didn't drown because I had a PiPi who always wrapped me up in her and Mom's duvet cover and let me bounce on their bed to Can't Touch This because the kids at school had told me I was ugly. "Nothing and no-one can hurt you when you're wrapped up in your duvet, Fizz," PiPi would tell me. I didn't drown because I had a Mom who studied dance at college at the same time as managing a kid she never planned on having and at the same time as working at the cafe and at the same time as dealing with the hate she got for falling in love with the best person anyone could ever fall in love with. I didn't drown because I had a PiPi who worked so hard at the cafe and who worked so hard at the grocery store and who studied zoology in her spare time, so she could take both me and Mom to Florida on a summer-long trip on the ocean, and at the same time as dealing with the hate she got for falling in love with the best person anyone could ever fall in love with and learning how to manage a kid she never expected to have at such a young age.

I didn't drown, Sir, because my parents are the strongest, most stable people you will ever meet.

I didn't drown, Sir, because my whole life, I have been surrounded by the one thing any humane person can wish for any child.

I didn't drown, Sir, because I was surrounded by love. And I still am surrounded by love.

I know that I will always be surrounded by love.

PiPi had a hard time growing up. And sometimes that can lead to that person showering their children with gifts and material things that they will never need. That could easily have happened with me. But it didn't. It didn't happen because PiPi didn't want me to turn into one of those teenagers that expects the world on a silver platter. However, she also didn't want me to be one of those teenagers, like her, who finds comfort in the edge of a razor.

I am not promoting this behaviour. I am not, nor will I ever be, saying that this kind of self-harm is the right thing to do when you are in that kind of desperation and depression. And I know that you think that because PiPi went through this and that she did all this nasty stuff to herself, she is an unfit mother and should not be given the right to become a parent. But because she has been though this, she is the strongest, most brave person I know and will ever know. As ismy Mom. And you, or anyone for that matter, can never change that.

Besides, whatever you say and whatever you do, PiPi will always be my parent. She will always be my mother. She will always be one of the two people who wish the best for me and who stands beside me, holding my hand and loving me unconditionally. You cannot take that away from me, however hard you will try. And I have no doubt that you will. But you should know – and you rather need to know – that who PiPi is to me is no-one you will ever have in your own life. Because how can you? How can you, Sir, be granted the gift of an exceptionally loving, caring, protective and most selfless person, when you are trying your utmost to take that away from someone else?

How can you sit there so eerily calm as you are, and tell me that my mother, PiPi – the one who has been there for me ever since she has known me – can no longer be that person? How can you just scan the notes in the folder before you and tell me that this woman, who has worked her goddamn hardest to help my raped and single Mom raise a little girl she never planned on having, is not allowed to love me the way every child deserves to be loved, and then simply move on to your next case without giving even a second thought to what effect this may not just have on me, the child, but on PiPi – this amazing woman who has done nothing but provide for Mom and I the whole time she has known us? Imagine if you had brought up a young child for fourteen years and then suddenly, you are told you are not good enough for them, and you are not allowed to bring up anyone else? Just because you are in love with another man? Sir, how can you merely take one glance at my beloved PiPi, and just ignorantly see the tattoos and the piercings and the scars? Can't you see the selfless, beautiful and solid woman she absolutely is?

Would it make any difference if PiPi had clean, pure, white skin without even a trace of ink and holes, a cross dangling from the nape of her neck, down in between her conservatively covered chest, her long hair tied up into a simple clip and her makeup no more than a scraping of mascara and blusher? Would it make any difference if PiPi had no holes in her ears, told you she prayed every morning and every evening, and visited Church each and every Sunday? Would it make any difference if PiPi – my PiPi – stayed at home every day whilst my Mom was out at work, to cook big, wholesome chocolate cakes and hand wash our families clothing and bed sheets because that's what a fit and good mother does?

Let me tell you exactly what PiPi's tattoos mean and let me tell you what her scars have done for me and for my life.

Tattoo number one is the fingerprint of her twin sister who died when they were two.

Tattoo number two is the name of her twin sister.

Tattoo number three is the Latin word for 'Help'.

Tattoo number four is of a butterfly because they turn into something beautiful.

Tattoo number five is the Spanish for 'Keep fighting, keep surviving.'

Tattoo number six in an image of Bob Marley because when she was sixteen, if she put his music on, she didn't feel like she wanted to cut anymore.

Tattoo number seven is a songbird because she says the song reminds her of Mom.

Tattoo number eight says 'I will love you forever and a thousand days' because that's what she said to Mom when she proposed.

And tattoo number nine reads 'PiPi'.

And in terms of PiPi's scars, each and every one has taught me something completely different, yet equally important. The few scattered on her right wrist tell me that if ever I feel overwhelmed by school work or studying, I tell my parents, so that they can help me assemble a realistic plan of action to get it done and to get it sorted.

The collection lined like soldiers on her right upper arm tell me that if at any point I don't understand how to get through a situation, I go straight to them, so that they can curl up with me on my bed and talk about all the different options I have.

And the word 'Love' that PiPi has scarred on her left thigh teaches me the most important lesson. That scar tells me that should I doubt that I am loved by anyone in this scary world, and if it any point should I feel lonely and like nobody understands my feelings, I must let myself feel, and cry if needs be, in front of my parents because I know that they will never ever judge me and they will always remind me how much they both love me.

Sir, I ask you, when you were a little kid, did you ever wonder whether your parents still loved you? Even when you bit your cousin's arm because he stole your teddy bear one Christmas? Even when you slapped your mom because she told you that it was too cold to go swimming in the lake? Even when you slammed your bedroom door shut because you couldn't go out to the beach party with the person you're really interested in?

Sir, I never doubted my parents love for me, even when they did all of the above. I knew that they only had my best interests at heart. I know that if they hadn't told me 'no' when I bit my cousin's arm, that I would have done it again after. I know that had I gone swimming in the lake that winter, I may well have developed pneumonia and my parents would have gone through the thousands of hospital bills and all the worries that come with it, just to keep me safe again. I know that if they had let me go to that beach party, I would have felt even more betrayed that my boyfriend of the time got caught sleeping with my best friend under the pier. I'm glad I wasn't there to witness them at it. If I had been, I know that I would have done something or said something that I would later regret. I found out because my other best friend rang me and when I spoke to Mom and PiPi about it, they suggested I speak to my boyfriend and best friend face to face.

And so I did, Sir. And I'm glad I did. Because it was the right thing to do.

PiPi's scars are because of who she is. Every day, she battled with her feelings and I know now that if I am ever battling with my feelings, I have her to go to and to speak to. I have her to tell me that I'm beautiful and that my boyfriend doesn't deserve someone as loyal as me. I have her to wrap me up in my duvet and tell me nobody can touch this. I have her to take road trips with and to turn the music up full volume when I can't take my life at that moment.

And I have her to love my Mom.

Because, Sir, I have never seen a love quite like their's. And yes, I am biased, because they are my parents. But I know, through my friends and my peers at school, that it is not the same as every parent, together or not.

Mom's friend, Sugar and her boyfriend, Mattie are in love but they don't rely on one another. Sugar doesn't need Mattie to live and Mattie doesn't need Sugar to live. I'm sure you think that it is unhealthy to need someone as much as my parents need each other, but you must remember that their need makes for the most perfect, balanced and stable home life any kid could ever hope for. Mom doesn't work without PiPi and PiPi doesn't work without Mom.

Auntie Quinn has just got a new boyfriend, Jeff, but they don't act anything like Mom and PiPi. And I know from experience that when you get a new boyfriend, there is that honeymoon stage where you can't keep your hands off each other and all you want to do is be with each other. Auntie Quinn and Jeff have not been like that at all and I know they are not like that at home either because Quinn's daughter, Beth, tells me that they are not. She always jokes that they act like "an old married couple" but every time she says that, I want to laugh.

Because yes, they do act like an old married couple. But not in the way my parents do.

Beth was also born when her mom was sixteen. Except Auntie Quinn wasn't raped. So Beth and I are the same age.

I love Beth, Sir, I really do. She's my best friend and I don't think I could live without her.

(She was not the one sleeping with my ex boyfriend under the pier. That was Finn Hudson's daughter, Kendra.)

But Beth struggles. She has a lot of issues. Her parents are still really good friends, even though they are not together, and Quinn and Jeff love each other.

So why should my parents be attacked? Is it just because PiPi is a woman?

They love each other, Sir. I am one of, if not the only, stable eighteen-year-old in senior year at school. And I know that's because my parents are so in love.

Mom can't keep her hands off PiPi. And PiPi can't keep her hands off Mom. They are always hugging, always kissing, always making sure they know the other one loves them.

The other day, Mom washed PiPi's jeep, so that when she drove the visitors around the animal park, it would be sparkling and completely clean. PiPi didn't know until she got up early to go the next morning. To thank Mom, she got the dolphins at the park to fly out of the water in a heart shape, so she could take a picture and send it to her.

These little things prove to me that my parents are so much in love that I simply cannot understand how you could even consider the absurd possibility that they are unfit to adopt another child together.

I will not refer to Mom as Miss Peirce and I will not refer to PiPi as Miss Lopez. Because that's not who they are to me. I don't love those people. I don't even know who they are. I just love Mom and PiPi. And I will continue to love them for the rest of my life, even if you refuse to let me and any other young child born into this broken world, do so.

Mom and PiPi have been the best parents I could ever have wished and hoped for, and for all the lonely, desperate and unloved kids out there in this world, I strongly pray that you look past this damn society's view on my parent's marriage and just see their love. Just see their spark and just see their connection.

Because you don't have to simply see it, Sir. You can just feel it.

Statement closes Case 167, Your Honor. Judgement must be passed and established in the next twenty-four hours unless a requested extension is submitted.

Please review if you can beautiful readers! Love Poppy x