Disclaimer: I don't own Glee, its characters or any intellectual property.
Author's Note: Thanks to everyone who commented on previous chapters. I appreciate the encouragement. Read/Review!
The past six months with Rachel and Kurt allowed Santana something she desperately needed: space. She was an unfettered spirit, free to walk through the streets of New York. Stepping outside, she could escape her past and forge a new future. Isn't that the point of such a grand, monstrous city? It provided the chance to transform oneself? Though New York was loud, crowded, and filled to the brim with life, Santana felt able to breathe easier here, for the first time in what felt like forever.
Santana's past residences didn't allow for a lot of growth. Lima, itself, was a stagnant cesspool of memories. When she had returned to Lima just after the break up, she found the city to be claustrophobic. She knew all the shops, constantly recognized people on the street, and felt stifled by the burden of familiarity. If anything, Santana desired complete anonymity. It was simply too painful to encounter old acquaintances while she was in town. They all asked her if she and Brittany were still together or if she knew that Brittany was now with Sam. Santana was sick of having to answer that question or acknowledge the sad truth that Brittany had moved on.
Lima once had fulfilled that elusive ideal of "home" for her. It was somewhere where she always felt welcome and wanted. Santana realized too late that the main reason why this old town had held that position, residing in her heart as the place she felt the most like herself, was because Lima always meant Brittany. Brittany was the closest thing to the concept of "home" that she'd ever experienced before moving in with Rachel and Kurt. But now Brittany had moved on, shaking the foundations that Santana had relied on for so long. Thus, the constantly loud, bustling loft, with her roommates, was starting to contort in her mind—transforming from a just place to sleep at night to a place where she felt needed and accepted. The refurbished warehouse living quarters had begun to fill that much needed, vacant space within her. She felt so alienated from Brittany that she found herself clinging to the small family that she and the other two had forged together. The more time she spent with them, the more she felt able to be herself. Santana had to find new ways to feel like herself, rebuilding who exactly she was, since she'd defined herself so long through who she was with Brittany. Amazingly enough, Kurt, Rachel and the city itself, had all done those things for her.
The differences between Lima and New York were stark and immediately apparent. New York was a totally different world in and of itself. It was a vast jungle of buildings, transit systems, and people. Lima's population was roughly forty thousand people, where as New York's was closer to 8.2 million. In the Big Apple, the odds of running into Brittany, let alone someone who knew Brittany even existed, were unfathomable. Only two people (Kurt and Rachel of course), out of those millions and millions, knew who she was, deep down inside. Aside from that, Santana was just another face in the crowd. When she walked down 5th Avenue, she wasn't "that lesbian cheerleader who got outed on TV" or even "that bitch whose ex is now dating that guy with the huge lips." She could just be "super hot chick in leather boots, strutting like she owns this street." She appreciated this escape.
Santana's new life provided much needed emotional space by allowing her to easily blend into the crowd- but it also provided actual, physical distance between her and her past. She should have known from her first step on campus that things would never have worked out in Kentucky. It was in too close of a proximity to Lima and Brittany. At the time when she left for college, she'd never considered that this could ever be a bad thing. How could she think that being closer to the love of her life would be wrong?
But life threw her a curveball. As fate would have it, the lack of physical space was a detriment to her college experience. While Santana was in Louisville, she could barely concentrate on her classes. Instead of focusing on her piles of work or new cheerleading routines, she was busy thinking about what time Brittany's Cheerios practice ended or how late the Lima Bean was open. Santana knew she was only four hours away. She'd mapped out the miles that separated them (roughly 236 miles—but who was counting?). She had to force herself to sit in class and will her aching body not to get up and drive home. While cheerleading practice and studying kept her busy, there was always time to fight her desires to leave Kentucky.
One time in particular, just after she and Brittany had broken up, Santana sat at her desk all night, clutching her keys in her hand. She ignored her sleeping roommate (who she hated) and just felt the cold metal teeth dig into her palm, harder and harder. She waged an internal war for hours, her mind churning over her options. Half of her wanted to gather her belongings and go home to Lima (and Brittany) for good. She hated her classes and was quickly losing favor with everyone on the cheerleading squad. Once she was home, she'd figured, she could work on fixing their relationship, rebuild what she'd stupidly broken. The other half of her knew she had to stay at school and earn the scholarship that she'd been awarded. She was perpetually stuck between what she wanted to do and what she needed to do. Santana wanted to make Brittany proud, more than anything, even after they'd broken up. But she needed to see Brittany… to smell her hair again…. To apologize and admit that it was stupid to end things.
Inside, Santana blamed herself (perhaps hated herself might have been more accurate). Why did she possibly think that it would benefit her future with Brittany to give them space to see other people? How on Earth would that yield positive results? All Brittany wanted was more communication and time spent together—and instead Santana broke things off. Jesus, she'd known it was a mistake about twenty minutes after it happened, but Santana was positive that she was doing the right thing. All she'd wanted was to erase that look of loneliness on Brittany's face. However, erasing it by ending things was a horrible idea.
The months after the break-up proved to be some of the most difficult weeks of her life. Dealing with the aftermath of ending things with Brittany was almost as hard as the act itself. Santana, while understanding her error and regretting it, refused to jump back into a long distance relationship. Refusing Brittany backstage during the McKinley production of Grease truly tested her resolve. She'd done it because she knew it was the right thing at that time (so she'd thought). She'd needed to get to a place in her life where she could be with Brittany, physically and emotionally. Timing was everything, she told herself again and again.
When she'd finally made the decision to drop out, Santana was deliriously happy with the notion that she could return to Lima and be with her ex. When everything else seemed to be falling apart around her, she knew that she had Brittany. The pain she'd dealt with when they were apart was only calmed by the belief that they'd be back together as soon as Santana could manage it. Once they were a couple again, they could make plans for the future. Brittany would graduate and they could move away from Lima—together. This thought kept her going until that possibility was dashed with a phone call.
Tina didn't have to say much, just simply blurt out the stupid portmanteau that Brittany and Sam were called. With just a couple syllables, Santana felt everything she'd been hoping for, planning for, living for melt away. Brittany had moved on. Brittany was with someone else—become someone else's girlfriend. Brittany kissed someone else's mouth and fell asleep in someone else's arms. She sent cute texts to Sam now. She held his hand. She fucked him. Santana threw up outside the library as the full weight of Tina's words washed over her.
To Santana's credit, she put up with Kentucky for the longest possible time that she could before she'd allowed herself to drop out. Even then, she felt guilty only because she worried that Brittany might be disappointed. However, that fear of how Brittany felt was quickly transformed to something else upon discovering that she and Sam were together. The night after she found out about "Bram" might have been one of the worst days in her life. It was just as hard as the hours she spent alone in her bed post-break up. To her credit, Santana had kept Snix at bay. She hadn't said a word, no calls to empathetic friends, and no outward signs of anger or disbelief. Instead, she simply climbed into her bed and just lay there. She cried hard, hard enough to really scare her with its violent forcefulness. She sobbed for hours, even when she was so tired that she thought her heart and lungs could never work properly again.
Santana was upset, to say the least, but still labored under the belief that things weren't over. Perhaps, she worried, she would always think that—and waste her life pining away after Brittany. She would always fight herself to deny that thought, even though it was all in her head. She was convinced that if she tried hard enough, things would work out. But things didn't end up the way that Santana pictured. With the rejection she'd sustained from Brittany backstage after her "Diva Week" appearance and then her self-imposed exile from Lima—things didn't look so bright anymore. Everything served as a reminder of what she'd lost. This is why the space between her and the past was so critical. It also helped that she couldn't easily get back to Lima to make a fool out of herself again- considering it was almost 600 miles away. Absence makes the heart grow fonder… right?