Author's note: So I finally realized how to approach this fic. I did not want it to be exactly like Color. So I woke up and realized what I was going to do. I once saw a play, and I don't remember the name, about a failed relationship. The woman starts at the beginning of the relationship and walked forward, the man starts at the end of the relationship and reminisces back (Or like memento the movie). I realized that that's what I want to do with this. I want to take Santana's POV from the beginning, and Brittany's from the end and have their memories meet right in the middle, when they were happiest.
When Santana and Brittany first met, it was the first day of kindergarten and everyone was introducing themselves. It wasn't anything special, all of the Glee kids, save Matt who moved to Lima in the third grade, was there. The teacher went around, asking all the kids to say their name.
"I'm Noah Puck...Puckerman." Noah said, struggling to pronounce his last name. The boy had curly dark hair and a nasty habit of flinging spitballs at the blonde sitting right next to him.
"My name is Quinn Fabray." The girl spoke with no hesitation. She sat up straight and folded her hands, though every now and again she would whirl around and yell "Stop that! It's not very nice!" to Puckerman.
"My name is Rachel Berry and my daddys say I'm a star!" Rachel announced to the teacher. She sat nearest to the chalkboard with a grin on her face. When the teacher set her name tag down, she immediately dove into her pink rhinestone backpack and fished out gold star stickers. She promptly put on her name tag.
"Why do you have two daddys?" A little boy in the corner asked.
"It's because...it's because they're...um...hom...hom..."
"Alright class, let's move on!" The teacher said, sensing a very touchy subject coming on.
"My name is Kurt Hummel." The little boy said. He looked a little sad to Santana, like something was constantly bothering him. He fidgeted uncomfortably and kept glancing at a tall boy in a lumberjack vest.
"My name is Finn." The lumberjack vested boy announced.
"Finn...?" The teacher encouraged. The boy shrugged and went back to picking his nose. The teacher heaved a sigh and shook her head. She put down his name tag, which no one could read at the moment, and went onto the next girl.
"Tina Chang!" Tina announced. In kindergarten, Tina had only one last name. She lived primarily with her father but after her father got remarried when Tina was in the second grade, he hyphenated his last name to match his new wife's.
"We have the same last name! My name is Mike Chang!" An Asian boy exclaimed.
"Are you brother and sister?" Rachel asked.
"No..." Tina replied. "But...how do we..."
"A lot of people might have the same last name, or first name too." The teacher explained. "It doesn't mean that you're related. Some people even have the same first and last name." The kids oo-ed and aaah-ed in understanding. She quickly moved onto the next one.
"My name is Mercedes Jones." The next girl announced proudly. She smiled as widely as she could. The teacher put her name tag down on her table and proceeded to the next one. She looked down at Santana and smiled.
"And what's your name?" She asked.
"Santana Lopez." Santana replied.
"Ahaha, you have a funny name!" Noah Puckerman laughed, pointing at her. Santana felt blood rush to her face.
"Nuh uh!" She shot back but Noah kept laughing. Even though the teacher put him in timeout right away, Santana wanted to cry. Why couldn't she have a pretty name or a normal name like Rachel, or Tina? When Puck ran away from the corner, it started a commotion that interrupted the introductions. Santana cried softly at being teased and she sat on the ground, wiping her tears away while Puck struggled to get out of the grasp of the teacher. The other kids dispersed and played with the toys while Santana struggled not to wail.
A girl came up to her, one of the girls who had yet to say her name. She leaned over Santana and tilted her head curiously.
"Why are you crying?" She said, pronouncing the words imperfectly by swapping the "r" with "w"s so that it sounded more like "cwying."
"I'm not crying!" Santana insisted.
"Nuh uh, I can see you crying." The girl responded.
"I'm not crying!" Santana shouted angrily. She just wanted to be left alone. The girl stuck out her hand and Santana eyed it, not sure what to do.
"I'm Brittany. Brittany Pierce."
"So?" Santana demanded in a way that suggested that she wanted to be left alone. But what Santana really wanted was a friend to sit down next to her, to give her a hug and tell her that her name was pretty. Brittany did not do the first two things. She shrugged and turned around to join the other kids but before she left, she said,
"I like your name." It was the last thing Brittany would say to Santana for a few years.
Brittany was an outcast at the beginning. All the other kids thought that she was weird, that she was too happy and airheaded. When she told the teacher a story about how a mouse came to her bed and started playing the harmonica, everyone laughed at her.
Santana too, thought the girl was strange and avoided her. Brittany didn't have friends in the beginning even though she was bright and cheerful it never seemed to bother her. She talked to her imaginary friends and had a better time than the other students sometimes. Santana once tried to approach her, she was the only girl who had tried to comfort her the first day of Kindergarten but Quinn quickly warned her not to.
"Ew, that girl's weird. She's always talking to her imaginary cat." The Quinn said, wrinkling her nose. "Let's just play with our dolls instead." Santana cast one last glance over at the blonde, serving tea to her "friends" and joined Quinn in making sure that Barbie came home in time to make dinner for Ken.
For two whole grades, Brittany Pierce played and sat alone. She was entirely fine with it. The teachers tried to integrate her into other peoples' groups but she shrugged and simply returned to her own devices.
Second grade rolled around and the night Santana's father stormed out, the Halloween that Santana would remember forever and would make her come to hate the holiday, passed by. For children that age, candy was currency, it was better than getting a quarter for being good. Halloween was a time to get as much candy as possible and trade the very next day. The teacher allowed them a half an hour to trade various Mars Bars for M&Ms, Snickers for Milky Ways and Nerds for Dum Dums. Even Brittany joined in, sporting a big pumpkin bag of goodies.
It was Santana who sat alone with no candy. The teacher took pity on her and gave her a couple of Hershey's kisses from her desk. Santana eyed the two kisses, not feeling so good. Her father hadn't returned and her mother barely got up in the morning to send her to school. Santana looked over at the other kids, laughing, trading and ignoring her. In their economic world, kisses were like pennies, no one wanted them they were so plentiful.
"Want a Mr. Goodbar?" Santana's head shot up. Brittany was offering her a Mr. Goodbar, possibly her favorite kind of candy. It wasn't just a fun size either, it was an entire bar of it. Santana took it, wide-eyed.
"But...this is yours."
"It's ok. I got lots. And mommy said that I should be nice and share." Brittany replied before turning back around.
"Wait!" Santana said. She didn't have much to offer but she wanted to try anyway. "Do you want a kiss?" She asked, holding up one of the Hershey's kisses.
The other kids were busy staring at Puck's mountain of candy. The teacher was trying to reign them all in to continue her lesson. Those that weren't trying to get freebies from Puck were trying to get in last minute trades. No one saw.
Brittany walked around the desk and pushed aside Santana's hand holding the chocolate. She leaned in and pecked her on the cheek. Santana dropped the candy and pushed her chair far away from Brittany, her eyes like saucers. Brittany merely flashed her a smile.
"It's what my mom always does." She replied. The teacher yelled for all of them to get back to their seats and Brittany skipped off, leaving Santana rubbing at her cheek to get rid of the cooties.
When Santana got home that afternoon, she hadn't eaten the Mr. Goodbar. Instead, she stashed it away in her desk drawer. For some reason, even if she really, really wanted to eat it, she couldn't bring herself to do it. Instead, she lay on her bed and listened as her mother downstairs talked on the phone angrily. Santana closed her eyes and imagined that maybe she was angry because her father hadn't come home to take her trick or treating. Maybe she was yelling at him to get her a cupcake on his way home from work. And he would be back just in time to tuck her in at night. As she thought about her father coming back, her eyelids slowly drooped and she dozed off.
She awoke to shouting and crashing from downstairs. She sat up quickly and curled into a ball, wondering if someone had broken into their house. But then she heard the voices and recognized one of them as her father. She hopped out of bed and flung open the door. Her father stormed past her and into her parents' bedroom. Santana carefully walked out and followed. When she walked in, her father had pulled out a suitcase and was throwing all of his clothes into it.
"Daddy?" Santana whispered. Her father turned around and his gaze, etched with anger and frustration, softened.
"Hey princess." He said, opening his arms. She ran into them and he sat down on the bed and bounced her on his knee.
"Daddy...where are you going? Are you going to Disney World without me?" Santana asked. Her father smiled.
"No, princess." He replied. "I'm...I'm going away for a little while."
"How long?"
"I don't know princess." The door opened and Santana's mother walked in. She put her hands on her hips.
"For God's sake, just tell her, don't coddle her, she needs to know." Her mother snapped.
"I don't want to hear it!" He yelled back. Santana looked from her mother to her father.
"What's happening?" She inquired. Her father stroked her head in the way he only did when something was wrong.
"Honey..."
"Your daddy's leaving, Santana, probably for good."
"Why?" Santana demanded, panic rising in her chest.
"Mommy and daddy have been fighting a lot, and that's not good for you." Her father explained. Santana gripped her father's shirt.
"I don't want daddy to go!" She yelled.
"Honey, we don't want to fight around you. It makes you scared."
"I'm not gonna be scared no more!" She yelled. "I promise!"
"It's not just that baby..." Her father sighed. "We just need some time apart." Santana began crying.
"I'm sorry I asked to go trick or treating! I'm sorry!" Santana sobbed, burying her face into his shirt. Her father hugged her and stroked his hair.
"No, princess, I'm sorry." He whispered. There was little he could do to comfort her.
He tucked her in for the last time. She listened to her mother and father talk a little. They weren't yelling at each other anymore and she pressed her ear to the door and listened in. She heard her name mentioned a few times, she heard her father get up from the kitchen table and she heard the door opened. The two of them exchanged goodbyes and the door closed. In the driveway, the car started and drove away; Santana listened until the hum of the engine was nonexistent.
In the next few days, Santana prayed to God that her father would come back, that it was a bad dream or something along those lines. Maybe it was a really bad joke. But her father didn't once show up. He made two phone calls and of those two, only talked to Santana once.
"I love you, Santana, you'll always be my princess. When you get older, you'll understand that maybe two people aren't meant to stay together." He said. Santana asked her mother why two people couldn't stay together.
"Money." Her mother responded. "Your dad didn't have enough for us to live off of. He spent it all on what he wanted."
"Is money really that important?" Santana asked. Her mother sighed.
"Money, whether we like it or not, is the most important commodity in life. Without it, we can't buy you toys, or take you to Disney World, or do anything fun." Her mother said.
"If daddy had money, would he have stayed?" Santana asked. She thought about her piggy bank, that she had almost three dollars in change. Maybe that was enough to bring her father back.
"Maybe." Her mother replied. "But I don't think so."
With that still fresh in her mind, Santana went to school the next day. Her teacher handed them all a sheet of paper with a couple of questions on it. Santana looked down and read off the letters slowly.
"If you could have anything." Her teacher read. "What would it be?" It was supposed to be a writing exercise. Write a couple of short sentences to explain what in life you wanted. One girl wanted a pony, some of the boys wanted tanks. When it came to Santana, she replied,
"I want money." She didn't write anything else. She didn't explain why she wanted it, she didn't know it either. The teacher told her to write couple more sentences explaining what she would do with money if she had it. She shrugged. "Bring my daddy back." She wrote. The teacher didn't ask her to read it out loud after seeing what was written. Instead she turned to Brittany.
"Well? If you could have anything, what would it be, Ms. Pierce?" She said with a smile.
"Nothing." Brittany held up her paper for the teacher to see. There was nothing written on it.
"Brittany..." The teacher forced a smile. The blonde had always been a bit of a handful to deal with. She floated through life differently than any other kids she had taught. She was always spacing out, still talking to her imaginary friends, not caring about anyone or anything.
"The point of this assignment was to write down something you wanted." Her teacher said calmly. Brittany nodded.
"I don't need anything." She announced. The other kids weren't paying attention anymore. They never did when Brittany said something weird, this case was no exception. Except that Santana looked over at the girl with wide eyes.
She'd heard about Brittany's family, mostly through Quinn. The rumors ranged from plausible to absurd. She was apparently so poor, they had to live on welfare. Brittany's clothes were all donated clothes. They lived in a cardboard box under the bridge. Brittany had to walk a bajillion miles to get to school.
Santana didn't know which of the rumors to believe. But she did know that Brittany brought peanut butter sandwiches every day, that her parents didn't own a car, which was why she could never go to any of the events that the school hosted, and that she never had any new clothes. So it puzzled her that this girl, who had so much she could ask for, didn't want anything at all. She thought back to the Mr. Goodbar, still sitting in her desk untouched and wondered why, if Brittany was so poor, she would give away candy.
At recess, Santana approached her. As usual, Brittany was running around in the grass, arms spread, making faint airplane noises.
"Why don't you want anything?" Santana demanded.
"She has cooties! Ewww!" Quinn yelled. Santana ignored her.
"I don't want anything." Brittany said.
"But my mommy said that money is the most important thing in the world. You don't want money? Quinn says you're poor, which means you don't have any." Brittany shrugged.
"I'm happy." She replied.
"But you eat icky peanut butter sandwiches every day. There isn't even jelly!" Santana argued.
"I like peanut butter." Brittany said simply. "You don't like peanut butter?" Santana shook her head.
"I like it. But...you don't have any friends! Do you want a friend?"
"I have lots of friends." She said, pointing to her side. "There's Billy the goat and Mandy the moose." Santana opened her mouth to respond that they weren't real when Brittany pointed to her. "And you." Santana faltered.
"I'm not your friend." She said quickly. Brittany grinned.
"Yeah you are. I'm your friend. I like you." The blonde smiled sweetly. Santana looked at her feet and dug a hole in the ground with her shoe. Quinn in the distance was shouting for her. Puck and his friends were yelling that Santana was going to get cooties from playing with Brittany.
"You wanna play?" Brittany offered. Santana looked up across the open field and then back to the clustered jungle gyms that the other kids were clambering all over.
"There's no swings or anything." Santana pointed out.
"We can make up our own game! Here, what about this one?" She reached over and touched Santana on the arm. "Now you have to try to touch me! But I'm running away." Santana burst into laughter.
"That's tag you dummy!" She said. Brittany tilted her head.
"What's tag?" She asked.
"It's when I touch you and I run away and you try to catch me!"
"Really? I call it 'run away'." Brittany pouted. "Well, how about we play pretend? Make believe? My mommy really likes to play that game with me." Santana took one last glance at the other kids beckoning her to join them. She looked back at Brittany, her hand extended expectantly, the hand that was, no doubt, covered with cooties.
Then again, this girl shared her candy. Santana offered a timid smile and took her hand. Brittany held it firmly and together they ran into the open field.
