"From The Ashes"
7. What We Want
A week had passed since Brittany had spoken to her sisters. Since then there had still been no contact, one way or the other, between Boston and Lima. Brittany looked resigned to let some time go by, let the dust settle, as Santana would say. She couldn't bear much more heartbreak.
Having Santana there had been the surest cure there could ever be to make sure that she had a reason to be happy. They would go to work together, and Brittany could see that just as much as having the job was helping her, the fact that she was there and they were working together had given Santana new love for her waitress position. It wasn't like waitressing was her life's passion all of a sudden, far from that, but there was something about having Brittany to back her up that made it far less of a chore to last through the day.
To say there had been no contact wasn't quite right. Three days after she'd spoken to her sisters, a number of boxes had been delivered to the apartment. They held Brittany's belongings, the ones she had shipped home back when she was still supposed to go. They were accompanied with a note from her grandfather, saying he thought she might need these. She knew that he was still on her side, although it was particularly difficult for him in that it brought back memories of how he and her father had fallen out of touch for over twenty years, and now he was seeing the rift being created between his son and his granddaughter, like history repeating.
Now Brittany had more to add to the apartment, their apartment, and it had begun to feel like home, not just Santana's apartment but both of theirs. If they had been padding their way around titles and statuses, there was no doubt left. They were together, girlfriends and roommates.
That night they had called dinner in and gone to sit on the fire escape, letting what little breeze there was in the summer air find them. "We should really invest in air conditioning," Santana sighed as she came through with the bag and handed one container to Brittany.
"It's not so bad," she shrugged, and Santana stared at her in complete disbelief. "I like our showers," she gave her a scrunched up smirk, and now Santana laughed.
"Leave it to you to find the bright side."
They had found silence for a while, eating up after a long day at work. Santana would look at Brittany, finding her more and more lost in thought. She would stare out at the city, what she could see of it, but her eyes looked so far away, like they were staring all the way to Lima. She hadn't really brought up the subject all week, and she didn't want to. She still had the temptation to ask her if she was sure, if she didn't want to go back home and try to work things out with her family. Brittany knew already that, if she went or not, she would never be upset with her, not about this. But she had stated it before, more than once, and she was certain she wanted to stay. So Santana didn't have to ask about that. It was both past and present. For now the only thing they could look to was the future.
"What do you want to do later?" Santana had asked. Brittany looked at her, mid bite, and she chewed and swallowed, thinking.
"I thought we were going to have a shower?"
"No, no… Well, yes… But I don't mean later today, just… later, you know, after we get our diplomas and all that."
"Oh," now she understood, and she thought again. "I don't know… I always thought I'd be dancing, with Sherry Weston's company… That was kind of the plan."
"Maybe it's time we found a new plan, for both of us," Santana told her. Brittany stood, moving so they could be sat side by side, looking up at the sky. "I could really do with a shooting star right now…" Santana breathed.
"What if we went somewhere else? We could leave Boston." Santana turned her eyes to look at her.
"Where would you want to go?" she asked, and Brittany shrugged.
"I'd like it if we weren't so far that it made it impossible to go home, to Lima… if we ever get to talk to them again, I mean." The fact that the sadness only barely grazed her and didn't stick to her was proof enough that she was starting to recover, and Santana was relieved by it. So she considered their options.
"Well, if we get to choose this time, I gotta say… New York sounds interesting." Brittany met her eyes with a smile. "Like the sound of that?"
"Yeah," Brittany nodded.
"And, you know, there's every possibility that if we went there we could end up having a few friends handy." Brittany looked about ready to ask her who Andy was, so she continued. "Rachel is all but guaranteed to end up there, maybe Kurt, too, who knows who else… Would be nice to have some familiar faces around."
"Then we should do it," Brittany declared.
"Hold on, don't start packing yet. Like I said, we have to finish with school here first, not to mention we'll need money to make this happen."
"But that's okay, because we have time to earn it while we're still in school and working at the diner," Brittany understood.
"Exactly," Santana told her, and she was presented with a hand. "What are you doing?"
"We have to shake on it, promise. When we have our diplomas and we have the money, we're going to move to New York." Santana looked at her, blue eyes full of hope and fire all over again, and she planted her hand in hers.
"It's a promise," she told her, squeezing her hand. They didn't know what would happen with both of their families, but if there was one thing that was for sure, it was that they would rise up, both of them, always hand in hand, always together.
THE END
