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 69th cycle. Now cycle 70!

GLEEKATHON FOURTH ANNIVERSARY CYCLE - It's October again, which means another year of Gleekathon is about to wrap up! At the end of the month it will have been four years since I've started doing my daily stories! As always, I will be celebrating this with a special cycle of stories to touch on my favorite stories I've done throughout the year. There will be two installments each on Thursdays, Saturdays, Mondays, and Wednesdays. The remaining days will feature, as they have in the last several months, new chapters of the latest story in my Doctor Who/Glee crossover series. As far as the anniversary stories go, it will be as I've done before, taking those past stories and either doing a prequel, sequel, POV swap, genre swap, alternate ending, or additional scenes.

This story is an ALTERNATE ENDING to "Take a Look" a Trinity series story originally posted from December 29 to December 31 2012.

(This is a shift day, which means there will be two stories posted today!)

"With Our Own Eyes"
(Older) Brittany, Santana, Quinn, Spencer (OC)
Trinity series extra
(all series now listed under the communities tab in my profile)

Seeing Brittany on stage again had been as much of a wish fulfilled for Santana as it would be for her wife. She knew all the struggles she'd gone through over the years, with the school in Boston and everything part of it. With where their life had gone after that, with Trinity and their secret work, that they could have finally surpassed what was taken from her was more than they could have hoped for. Now they were married, with a beautiful baby girl, and Brittany was a star dancer as she was meant to be. This was her first lead performance, yes, but Santana had high hopes.

She wasn't sure what had made her look back, someone coughing, or an itch at her back, or just a feeling. But at one time she had looked back and… With all her work as Optic with Trinity, it had been her job to be observant, to catch something with barely a sweeping look. Something had registered in her mind, in that split second she'd looked back, and as impossible as it was, she had to look again and confirm for herself that it wasn't what she thought she'd seen.

Just as she was about to look again though, the show had ended, and the audience rose to its feet and started applauding. Santana blinked, getting up with the rest of them and turning back to look at the stage, at Brittany as she stood with the others and took her bow. It had to have been her mind playing tricks on her, nothing else, because it couldn't be…

There'd been something in Brittany's look, only a second before she managed to rein herself back in and hide whatever was going through her head and carry on smiling. That smile was too shaky to be real, she had seen something that had affected her, and while Santana had to concentrate both on applauding and on comforting their crying child, she couldn't help but ask herself if the thing that had spooked Brittany was the same thing that had spooked her.

As soon as she could start heading up to find her wife, she saw Brittany was sneaking down from the stage, too, so she hurried to her. "Britt…"

"I saw her, she was there…" she sounded frazzled.

"Britt…"

"I know it was her, I know it's crazy because she's dead, I…"

"Britt, I saw her too," she spit it out before she could be cut off again, and Brittany finally looked at her.

"You did?"

"Come with me, right now."

They went through the side, knowing it would be easier to sneak out and not get caught in the flow of the exiting audience. They couldn't miss her, they had to find her, if it was really…

They made it out into the lobby just in time to see the woman with the red hair in the long blue coat, the one they'd seen… and she wasn't alone. There was a man there with her, holding her, and if they had doubts as to whether it was who they thought it was, when they saw him, they knew it wasn't a dream. The man holding the woman in the blue coat, who would see the trio there behind them, was a short-haired but still very recognizable Spencer Lowry, which could only make her…

"Quinn…" he kept his voice down, and the fact that he would speak her name, even this way, especially here, told her what had caught his eye. The woman in the blue coat turned around, and there she saw them, her old friends, and their daughter… staring back at her in utter shock, as though the dead had risen. In her case, that wasn't too far off of a description.

None of them moved for a while, none of them spoke. The audience was exiting, and somehow none of them seemed to realize the star of the show was standing there, frozen. The door would finally swing shut again, ushering out the last of them, and then Brittany would be the one to take the first step, to walk across the lobby to come and stand before her, the one she'd seen just as they were to take their bow. It was really her, she knew, but still it wouldn't be real until she could feel her. She stopped in front of her, feeling her hand tremble even as she reached forward and touched her cheek. She gasped… she was really there… Brittany cried, then put her arms around her. Quinn hugged her back, though she was careful, and it took Brittany a few seconds to understand what she was being careful about.

She pulled away, looking down. With the coat, she couldn't see it, but then Quinn wasn't about to lie about it. Santana had just managed to come forward when the blue coat was opened and they saw… Their not-so-dead best friend was pregnant. Quinn looked at the girl in Santana's arms, reached to take her hand and got a smile, before Santana could pass her to Brittany and turn back to hold her near. Quinn could feel her shaking, the same way they all were, but in Santana she felt what she guessed was the urge to yell, superseded by the overwhelming need to embrace her.

Quinn hadn't meant for this to happen. Despite her best instincts, when she had discovered, quite by accident, that Brittany would be starring in this show, she had made her way back across the country on her own to see her, even if they couldn't meet. Spencer of course had followed her, figuring out her plans. She was only going to watch and then return home like she'd never been there, but that plan had now changed, because they'd been found out. Now they had no idea what they would do. They couldn't very well make them forget that they knew she wasn't dead.

"I think we need to talk."

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!