And this is it, folks! I decided to write from Quinn's POV, not just because I have a slight, overbearing obsession with her character, but because I wanted her to have her own say in the two one-shots I created on Brittana's behalf. She, in my opinion, is a huge part of both Brittany and Santana's lives, be it canon or AU. What RIB have created is a three-way relationship that gets so overthrown, poor Quinn is left to drown in every bad thing that could happen to an eighteen-year-old girl.
So this is to Quinn. And Dianna Agron, (pretty young thing). And also because I like things in three's.
Enjoy x
My Girls.
I haven't seen either of you for what seems a very long time. Longer than I ever thought I could go without seeing at least one of you, let alone you both.
Yet, at the very same time, it feels almost as if we are together right now. Right this very moment. You two with your legs and your arms and your fingers all tangled up with each others, and little me with my journal in one hand and that creaky red pen you bought me in the other, writing amusingly, the smallest and most intricate details of every tiny interaction the two of you so secretly shared.
You never knew.
I know that you are both still sharing those interactions right now, whether you are sat with me on the veranda of my childhood home, or laying softly on the pillows of the calmest pink clouds directly ahead of me, relaxing together in that way only the two of you could in one another's company.
The sun will set in several moments. Just like the first star played peekaboo with my youngest grandchild a couple moments ago. I know that the light above the frame of the porch door will flicker aimlessly whilst the moths and fireflies dancing around it burn themselves with every touch of their precious wings on the heat of the bulb.
That will happen in a few moments.
Moments.
Our lives are made up of moments. And I know that I am not the first person to say that, let alone the first old and supposedly 'wise' biddy, but for you and me and our beautiful family, it's so incredibly correct that it's overwhelming.
Poignant.
That's the word that always lights a candle in my mind when I think of our lives and the moments we had in it.
Santana. We took a boat out to the tiniest island in the middle of my Grandfather's lake during the summer of our junior year and on the way there, your oar broke and I have never seen you laugh so much. You could not even begin to form simply one word because the giggles you were laughing had consumed your whole entire being.
That was our moment because it was the first time you'd ever really let me see you.
Brittany. There was that ear piercing scream that practically deafened you in the early hours of an October Tuesday morning. We were never sure if it had originated from me or from the bundle of life you cradled in your arms. You handed me that little bundle and I have never looked at you with so much gratitude. You held both mine and Ralphie's hands with such strength, I swear in that moment I was absolutely sure that my little Sophie was always going to be okay.
That was our moment because it was the first time I really felt we had moved from the worst chapter to the best.
And that, most importantly, Santana was there to witness it in all her Lima Heights glory.
(I've never looked at the diamonds in your eyes the same way.)
For all the British teacups and lace white dresses and stacked smoked bacon packets there are in this world, I would not take even an inch of one, if it meant losing a moment with either of you two.
That would be worse than the hell my pastor always taught me about at Sunday School.
However short or however long our moments may have been, there has not been a second of one in which I have not taken some time to myself to thank my dear God for bringing you both to me. High School was a bitch, as Jessica says, but it was filled with moments, good and bad, that took me miles closer to reaching where I am now.
With you two. Where I am always supposed to be.
We were those girls that people feared- the ones that made living in Lima and attending McKinley High the easiest thing we could ever have done. But we were so much more - and so much less - than any of that.
We were the three musketeers. We were the three blind mice from one of Kale's little nursery rhyme books. We were the Power Puff Girls on a mission to save the last piece of dignity the three of us had left.
We were best friends.
And as the years went on and Britt and I went through losing one third of us, we came to realise that we were not just that. We were so much more. Something oceans more important.
We were family.
You girls have shown me what a real family is. Through your own families, you have shown me what it is like to have a dedicated father. You have shown me what it is like to have a protective mother. And you have shown me what it is like to have unconditional sisters.
And I will spend the rest of my old lady life searching for ways to make both your lights brighter.
Tana does a fabulous job in making sure the local Cancer foundation receives the money they need every year to save just one more Santana. She sends messages up with the NASA agents and the people she's friendly with at JFK, with her letters to Santana, as the rockets make their way up to the stars and beyond.
Bertie paints all my words from my high school journals into beautiful pictures; it surprised me, perhaps more than it should have, that nearly every picture he has painted centres around the two of you. He has sold several of these paintings on behalf of Cancer Research, Stand Up To Cancer and local galleries in and around Lima.
Lou and Millie have made it quite spectacularly in the land of music. We could not be more proud of them. How they juggle work and their kids I do not know. I just know that their music has sold millions. Music based entirely on the love story of two best friends.
Sophie's wife, Brie, has a brother who works in film and television. He managed to pitch a fabulous presentation to one of the big time bosses at the BBC in London to create a documentary on the life of Santana Lopez.
(You always did wish to be famous.)
The Documentary was a huge hit, especially in Lima and all over Britain. It was so moving that a young director in London picked it up for a movie.
A movie, Girls.
It was named, 'Goodnight', and it won Best Picture at the Sundance Festival.
It has since gone on to achieve recognition at the Cannes Film Festival and the actress that played you, Santana, won a BAFTA award for Best Newcomer.
Sophie, Brie, Tana and I attended the Premiere and it was exactly how the three of us imagined one to be.
I'm sure you were both holding my hands as I walked down the red carpet.
You would both laugh at me for writing that I am tired, but it is the truth, and I am. Being ninety-four is tougher than you might probably think. I still feel like I'm eighteen. I don't feel like I'm on my way to falling asleep forever. Ralphie once told me we would go together, much like The Notebook, but he never managed it past eighty-two. Instead, he asked Jack to promise him he would do it instead. I can't help that in my head I picture the two of us lying awkwardly on my hospital bed, half praying that we'd be okay, half praying that we'd never wake up again.
I tell them all that if I can still write, I can still breathe.
I wrote an autobiography. It was actually more so the ripped out pages of my high school journals, a.k.a, the story of you two. I'm hoping that this letter will get printed right at the back of the book so that when I say what I will say at the end, it will close the most beautiful of stories I could have ever been written in.
My publishers have told me this will happen.
I hope that they are right.
I miss you girls. I have missed you since the day you both fell asleep for the longest time. I wanted to write this to you, so that our family would always have something to look back on with hope and with happiness and especially with love.
We did good, girls. We did good.
Tomorrow marks the day in which a beautiful girl was born. So I wanted to send this to you with that in mind. I wanted to send you this as a reminder of our friendship and our sisterhood and the one girl who made all three of us better people.
(Santana, I am pointing at you.)
You girls will always be the other half of me- the better, more careless and spontaneous half, and I will never forget to use it. Not even when I'm lying on a hospital bed, clasping hands with my best friend's husband and praying that it will be my last night on this planet Earth!
(Because even though I realise this beautiful place we live in holds everyone I care about the most – Jack, the children, the grandchildren – I still, and I always will, cannot wait to be with you two.)
When I sang I Say A Little Prayer For You, I wasn't singing about Finn or Puck or my unborn baby. I was singing about you girls.
(Perhaps this is news to you, perhaps not.)
Maybe when I join you up there, we can reprise it for the rest of the club who are with the two of you.
I love you two. So much.
I'll be seeing you.
Goodnight, Girls.
Thanks for your time, kids. If any of you are arty enough to design a graphic for the Goodnight Trilogy, I beg you for your golden hair that I will be forever happy upon its creation. If not, I found one the other day that made my heart melt. It was made by anenomepirate and it is gorgeous. So thank you to her.
Watch this space for another one shot coming soon.
