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 86th cycle. Now cycle 87!

IT'S THE FIFTH ANNIVERSARY CYCLE OF GLEEKATHON! - Five years! Five years! *insert flailing* Okay, not quite, but by the end of this cycle, it will have been five years of daily stories (sometimes twice a day! ... and for seven very frightening days a couple years back, three times a day!). It will also be the end of this crazy ride. I started thinking about ending gleekathon months ago, and I wanted to finish my ongoing series before that happened. It made it so I could finish out this fifth year, and it couldn't be any better that this cycle is actually ending on October 22nd 2014, which was the day it began, in 2009... Now here we go!

This story is 'Additional Scenes' for From the Dead, a Trinity series story originally posted on April 2nd 2014.


"Speak, Simon"
(Older) (Quinn,) Santana/Brittany, Spencer (OC), Winger (OC)
Trinity series

He had taken too long, and there was a click, followed by a voice, only a few words before he managed to spring on to the pad and silence it.

"I'll call back later, just thought you should know…"

It had been enough. When he got his head to turn back and let his eyes fall on the two women, the astonished looks on their faces said it all. They had recognized that voice like it was calling from the other side, the voice of Spencer Lowry.

For a minute and then another, none of them had said a word. Winger tried to say something but couldn't for the life of him figure out where he could even start. Brittany had stood in place for a moment before turning and moving to sit in the nearest chair she could find. Santana was giving no mind to Winger. She kept looking at the phone, as though she could make sense of it all if only given the chance to sort it out. Then she'd gone and pressed at the keys, and soon the voice played out again, for all three to hear the full message.

"I'll call back later, just thought you should know everything is back in place, without incident on this end. We'll be in touch."

It was as cryptic as Winger would have expected it to be. Spencer wouldn't dare speak anyone's name, or bring up anything remotely specific. Frankly, Winger was surprised he hadn't just hung up when the machine had picked up. But now here they were, and there was no chance Santana and Brittany would leave it alone. He hated himself for having let the others down, even if this had been an accident. He had been sworn to secrecy, knowing just how difficult it would be on all of them, those were kept in the dark, and those had needed to put them there. When Santana turned back to him, he flinched.

"You have every right to want to hit me right now, but if you could not, that would be…" he rambled off as fast as he could.

"I'm not going to hit you, Simon," Santana sighed, and he still didn't unclench, knowing what it usually meant when she used his name. "Actually, I might, unless you explain to me what the hell is going on here and why a man who's been dead for over a year is calling you, I'm guessing, not for the first time."

"Because… he's not dead," Winger quickly replied. There was no point hiding anymore. "He calls, not often, maybe once every few weeks, or months. I've been keeping tabs on those people out there who would have been after them and their loved ones unless they weren't under the verified assumption that they were both dead and buried, in order to assess whether or not the danger is still out there."

Silence resumed again, as both women took in this information and finally reached the conclusion that they had not yet reached, even after hearing Spencer's voice on the phone. Both of their faces gave the same impression of trepidation and cautious hope.

"I really saw her, didn't I?" Brittany stood slowly. Winger could only nod as he saw tears on her cheeks and Santana's, too.

"They came to me a week before they… before they staged the whole thing. They asked my help to generate a pair of fake identities that would stick, all the papers, the back information… They told me they were going to make off like they'd died, and I had to pretend like I didn't know they weren't, to everyone, including you. They didn't tell me very much, insisted it would be better off that way, I guess in case anyone came looking for them."

"And you just did it?" Santana asked, and he moved around to the other side of the counter, in part to put a barrier in between them.

"Like I had much of a choice." He tapped quickly at his keyboard before turning the screen around. "Meet Alexandra Archer and Thomas Walker, the first out of Madison, Wisconsin, the second out of New York City, by way of Edinburgh. I took those pictures the very day they came to me, made the changes they asked me to make."

The two women had approached the screen, drawn to it. Quinn's picture had been made to turn her blond hair red, just as Brittany had seen it a week before, when she'd been sure she had spotted her.

Somehow knowing that, at the time when these pictures had been taken, their friends had already made up their minds and knew they would be leaving within a matter of days, looking into their faces was more telling than anything Winger could have said. Spencer had just that bit of pain from his back still hidden in his eyes, but a determination to see this through no matter what. And Quinn… They had known her long enough, in high school, in Glee Club, and when they'd become Trinity, too long not to see it. She was trying to keep a straight face, as Winger took her picture, but there was so much sadness in her, and they knew where it came from.

This wasn't about Winger and how he'd kept this secret from them. He'd done it for her, for Spencer. He had been a good friend to them, and he'd done what needed to be done, to keep them all safe. When it came down to it, today was about good news… Quinn was alive, Spencer was alive…

"Where are they now?" Santana asked Winger. He must have sensed he wasn't in trouble anymore, with how he came back around to them.

"They can't come back. Not yet, a-and I couldn't tell you that it would be anytime soon, so maybe it's better off that you left it alone. If they were here, what do you think they'd say? You can't go after these people. You're all out of the game now, and you've got a kid. The last time you went up against those guys, you all barely made it out."

"I get that," Santana assured him. "I still need to know where they are." There was a flicker in Winger's eyes, and she caught it. "What?" He hesitated, but then…

"I've been keeping tabs on them, anyone searching for their names, the real or the fake ones, and I found something, a, uh… an application, for a marriage license."

"They're getting married?" Brittany smiled.

"If you want to know where they are, I'll tell you. I know you'll just want to go and see them, so if you're going to do that, then might as well make a good day better."

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!