A/N: I know, I'm horrible at updating! I'm sorry! I've been super busy lately, so when I finally did have time I lacked the motivation to just sit down and write. But it's done now! Ok, so this chapter is the second meeting between Brittany and Santana,and we're going to be jumping back and forth between POVs.

*Fun fact, I really did/do refer to my best friend as "sunshine condensed into a person." If you met her, you'd understand. I thought it would fit Brittany perfectly. That is all. Enjoy.

Brittany's eyes flicker open and stare into the darkness of the cabin for just a moment. Her bed was basically a roll of blankets that she spread out in the main room each night, and cleaned up each morning, so she could easily see that there was no light filtering in under the door yet.

She can't help but grin when she remembers that Santana had promised to meet her at the creek again this morning. Groaning, she struggles to her feet.

Everything aches. Her back, shoulders, and legs are stuff and swollen with welts. The damn bucket handle had broken yesterday while she was carrying water inside for dinner, and the entire bucket had spilled all over the floor, soaking the rugs and making a mess of the hearth. Her father roared at her to clean it up, and continued to explain to her why this wouldn't have happened if she wasn't so god-damned useless while she cleaned. Afterwards, he'd driven the point home with a belt.

She shakes her head at the memory. She deserved it, she should've felt the handle start to give, and caught it.

Stretching the kinks out of her muscles, she rolls up her bed and leans it in the corner. She should have quite a bit of time, her father usually didn't wake up until after sunrise. Silently stealing across the floor, she edges the door open and slips out into the cool morning air.

...

Santana curls her toes into the spongy moss by the side of the stream and tightens her hold on her knees. The air is damp and not exactly warm, but it's refreshing, and she finds herself looking forward to the day.

She didn't forget, did she? Of course not…

Squinting, she struggles to detect any movement in the trees. Seeing none, she decides to crack open her book while she waits, since there's just enough light to make out the letters now.

"At length, I spied a little cove on the right shore of the creek, to which with great pain and difficulty I guided my raft…"

Completely absorbed in the paper and ink world, she's startled by a loud splash just in front of her. Closing the book on an old hair-ribbon she's using as a bookmark, she looks up to see Brittany grinning as she makes her way across the stream. Her stomach flips.

Why am I so excited to see her? I only met her yesterday.

And yet, the sight of her new friend, face flushed from running, dress splashed almost to her waist, cheeks rounded in an ear-to ear smile, sets her nerves alight. Brittany flops down next to her and meets her eyes. "Hi," she breathes.

...

Brittany had thundered through the woods, ignoring the sting of branches scraping her legs, and sending birds chattering to the treetops in an effort to reach the stream as quickly as possible. She didn't slow when she reached the water and saw Santana sitting on the other side, hunched over something in her lap. Her dress ends up soaked in her haste, but she can't bring herself to care.

I didn't make it up! There's a real live girl, my age, sitting here, waiting to talk to me, to be my friend!

Plopping down beside her, panting from the run, she meets dark eyes and chokes out "Hi."

Santana's smile stretches wider than Brittany thought possible, when she answers, "Hello."

They both sit there for a moment, not knowing what to say.

Brittany glances down first.

"What's that?" She asks, gesturing toward the book Santana is clinging to.

"Oh! Robison Crusoe."

Brittany looks at her blankly.

"It's a book about a sailor who gets shipwrecked and has to live on a deserted island by himself, I just started it last night. I take it you've never read it?"

Brittany's face flushes with shame and she leans away, fiddling with her hands in her lap.

"I can't read."

"Oh," Santana's face falls, then brightens again. "Well, I'll teach you! I'll read this one to you, and teach you letters, I bet you'll be able to read it by the time we finish this book! My aunt used to be a teacher, she even has some old elementary school primers we could use."

Brittany watches her eyes shine with excitement as she waves the books for emphasis, and can't help but smile a little. "That would be perfect. My daddy just never had a chance to teach me, I have to take care of things, not much extra time for learning. He always meant to, really, he just never had a chance."

She doesn't want Santana to think that her daddy didn't teach her because she was stupid. Then she'll never want to be friends.

...

Santana couldn't believe that Brittany had never had a chance to learn to read! She couldn't imagine her life without it, it would have been miserable. For so many years, her only friends had been carefully constructed in her head out of letters strung together by someone else's thoughts; now that she had a real, live breathing one, she wanted to share her paper and ink friends with her.

There's something flitting through the cerulean depths of Brittany's eyes, something shameful that she is trying to hide, and Santana wants to know what it is. She wants to know why Brittany seemed to insist that her father really had wanted to teach her to read, and just "never had the chance." It seemed odd to her that a father wouldn't make time to teach his only daughter something as simple as the alphabet.

"Do want me to start reading to you today, and we can worry about a real lesson tonight?"

She uncovers the book she'd been clinging to when a blonde head nods enthusiastically.

"Alright, well, so far a sailor from England names Robinson Crusoe has been washed ashore on an island, the sole survivor of a shipwreck. He's constructed a raft and started to explore the island he's stranded on, and scavenge anything useful from what's left of the debris…"

Santana reads until the golden light of an early morning sun filters through the branches around and floods into the clearing they're seated in. Realizing how late it is, Brittany practically leaps o her feet, before her face pinches and she gasps in pain. That's when Santana sees them. Pink and purple, raw welts stretching across both Brittany's bare legs, on display with the short dress. They look like they continue up under the skirt, and from the way her back is hunched, Santana guesses the cover up to her shoulders as well.

"Brittany," she whispers, setting the book on the ground and standing up next to her friend, "What happened?"

Her friend is stooped, trying to keep the stiff flesh of her back from moving too much, so her normal height advantage is lessened until it's almost nonexistent. Santana tilts her head up and is surprised to see her friend's eyes shining with tears.

"It's nothing. I just, I made a mess yesterday because I wasn't careful enough, and…I deserved it. It happens sometimes, it's fine. I'm fine"

Santana wraps her arms gingerly around her neck. Who would want to hurt this wonderful girl? For God's sake, she's like sunshine condensed into a person! What could she possibly have done that would warrant being beaten until she was stiff all over?

"It's not fine Britt. Your dad did this? I know that sometimes kids get whipped, but this? Let me see, come on."

Brittany stepped back and turned around, sweeping her hair over one shoulder to uncover the buttons running down the back of her dress. Fumbling with the tiny buttons in cold fingers, she slowly opened up the back of the tattered dress, pushing it off pale shoulders, or what should have been pale shoulders. Santana only has four buttons undone when she stops to take a shaky breath.

...

Brittany doesn't know what her back looks like, but she knows it probably isn't good from the soft gasp she hears from behind her. She wants to leap to her daddy's defense, explain that it was her fault, make Santana understand that she deserved it, but something told her that it would be useless. So she just stands still and feels her friend's fingers skimming gently along her back, barely brushing skin as she follows the map of welts across her shoulders and upper back. She relaxes a bit when she feels buttons being fastened again, thinking that perhaps now it was over. She could avoid talking about it again.

Suddenly she stiffens, feeling warm breath stirring the hairs at the base of her neck. She breaks out in goose-bumps as she feels Santana lean closer and closer, until her lips are pressed gently over the mottled, purple bruising directly under where her last button would be. She immediately misses the contact when she feels her lean back and fasten it. She turns around and meets dark eyes that look infinitely deep. For a moment, there are no walls, nothing she's hiding, and all Brittany can see is tenderness, and a little of her own inexplicable shame and pain reflected there.

There's nothing really that can be said, so she breaks their eye contact, glancing down and her filthy feet, and murmurs, "I'll see you tonight, after supper?"

"Yeah," Santana replies, equally as softly.

She turns slowly, and begins the trek home, which, judging from how high the sun was now, was not going to end well.

...

Santana stands and watches the trees for a few moments after Brittany is out of sight. She had never seen anything like that inflicted by someone who claimed to love the recipient. Bar fights? Sure. Gang violence? No problem. But a father beating his daughter until her entire back was the mess of mottled, raw flesh that she'd just seen? She can't comprehend it.

For all his shortcomings, and they were numerous, her papí had never once laid a hand on her, let alone laid into her with a belt. She shivered. There was something going on in that house, and she was going to find out what she could, hopefully tonight.

With that thought in mind, she turns back toward her aunt and uncle's home. Her home.

A/N: So What did everybody think? Poor Brittany. Hopefully I'll be posting again ASAP, but no guarantees.