A/N: Well, here's part 2. I'm not too sure about it but I'll see what you guys think. Thanks for the reviews!

Warning: abuse & not-too-graphic rape but if that is a trigger for anyone than I recommend not to read the nightmare scenes

. . .

"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."

- Philip K. Dick

Carol Hudsen watches in concern as her only son – though she's starting to rethink that theory now that Kurt's become a part of her life – ambles around the kitchen, half-heartedly grabbing various foods to eat. Normally, when her son has the night off from friends and homework – or, rather, just chooses not to do any of his homework – she can spot him piling up mountain loads of unhealthy foods that make her cringe to take back to his room and gorge himself on whilst playing one of those horrible shooting games on his playstation. She has become used to this routine, along with the rare moments of peace she can find with Burt to sit on the couch, cuddled up together, and watch some old romantic movie for the next couple of hours, because of it.

But this isn't like what she has come to know, Carol can tell that much. She can see the sad undertone in her baby's eyes and the way in which his enthusiasm for one of his favourite past times has been lost. It makes her gnaw on her lip in worry and fight back against the uncomfortable clenching around her heart.

"Finn, honey, you alright?" she tries, watching him from her position on the couch besides Burt.

"Yeah, I'm fine," he says, tries to smile, and walks away. She sighs, watching him go. Carol turns back to Burt and sends him a questioning look, hoping he will have the answer to this mystery. "Something's the matter with him but I can't work out what it is. He was fine when he came home from school."

Burt shrugs his shoulders but not unsympathetically. "Want me to go talk to him? It's probably got something to do with that Santana girl."

Carol frowns at this, never having heard the name Santana before in her life except for when her late husband had told her about some great guitar artist she hadn't ever bothered to listen to. "Who's Santana?"

"Just some girl that was over earlier, a friend of Finn's from Glee club. Don't worry," he adds, seeing her immediately worried expression – she hasn't after all forgotten the near panic attack she had been given when Finn told her he had gotten Quinn pregnant, even if that had all been a lie, "nothing happened. They just had a bit of a disagreement. Nothing too bad."

Carol nods and sighs. "Do you think you could go talk to him then?" She wishes she could be the one who knows what's going on, who could talk to her son and comfort him but she knows that, for this, Burt is the best choice. As her boyfriend nods his head and gets up off the couch, disappearing after Finn into the boy's room, she wonders why he can't just go back to being that little boy again, the one who cried over tripping down the stairs. All she had to do then to make things better was place a bandaid on his knee and kiss it better.

But bandaids and kisses haven't been the solution for anything for quite a while now.

. . .

He's there, in front of her, completely unaware to what awaits. Santana hates him even more for that ignorance, that innocence that wasn't allowed to her. In some ways, she always knows what is coming, and it kills her.

In a haze, she bends down and retrieves that gun from her boot, raising it in deathly still hands and aiming it at Garry's head, not a single tremble.

He doesn't notice.

Her head falls to the side as the beast above her does what he wishes. The pains, the violations . . . they're all just fog in her mind. She can feel everything but she's somehow, mercifully, become disconnected, cloudy to the effect. Her hands contract at her sides as he thrusts particularly hard and she jerks in response. Cloudy or not, the storm's still very much there, thundering beneath the surface, and she can feel the metaphorical rain and wind on her skin. Staying still, she knows the storm will pass soon enough, but she wonders whether running will get her out of the onslaught faster . . .

If she could only run.

. . .

The trip to his sister's bedroom is a slow one, as Liv's words play over and over again in his head, mixed in with the undeniable worry (oh, how he wishes he could deny) he feels for Santana. Puck hates to admit that the little girl's words hurt him, or that he even sort of believes them, and he wants to go back in time and handle the situation better. But if there was ever a way of doing such a thing, he would have found it and used it a long time ago; there are too many mistakes in his past not to want to fix them.

He hates that he yelled at her, hates even more the fact that he let out that secret to her even if he can't remember doing it because that was the one thing he had wanted to keep from her more than anything else. Liv was never ready to know something like that – the truth about their parents – no matter how grown-up she liked to act he knew she was still just a kid. And all Puck had ever wanted to do was protect her, in the way that he couldn't protect his mum, in the way he had never been able to protect Santana.

The knowledge that he failed hurts more than anything else that night and Puck sighs, wishing he could just go back to the careless life of a jock he had grown accustomed to. It takes him sometime to remember that, while he had been careless, he had never really been innocent, and that's the thing he really wants.

"Noah, what's going on?" a tired looking Mrs Puckerman asks, coming out of her room. Her face is lined with worry, aged well beyond her years, and he feels the burden of that age also weighing him down. He remembers her being beautiful once, before all that stuff with his dad, but it's only just a memory now, just like so many other things.

Puck frowns, wondering whether to tell her the truth or to save her from that worry. "Liv says Santana's having nightmares. I'm going to go check on her."

His mum nods, accepting this without further explanation and with ease; she's had her own fair share of nightmares, Puck knows, to expect them from others. "Did I hear arguing?"

He thinks he should tell her that Liv knows, that one of them is going to have to talk to her, but he can't quite get the words out. All his mother has ever done is try to protect them and he thinks it's not too much to ask that he does the same in regards to her. He'll talk to Liv, somehow, apologise for yelling and try to comfort her about the situation. Maybe he'll even be able to convince her that what happened to Ma was all a lie, though he thinks Santana would be better at that than him – she always was a good liar. "Nah. Liv just got a little upset but Quinn's taking care of it."

Mrs. Puckerman's mouth moves into a thin line and she glances down the hallway worriedly, obviously debating on whether to go check the situation for herself.

Puck shakes his head and pats her arm. "Seriously, Ma, it's all fine."

Even as she nods her head, offers him a small smile and moves back into her room, he doesn't think she believes him. He's grateful for the fact that she tries to pretend anyway, though.

Sighing, Puck continues on his walk towards Liv's room.

. . .

Finn sighs, watching as some cartoon flashes across the screen of the T.V. in his room, not really paying any attention and finding himself unable to get the conversation from earlier, over at Puck's, out of his head. He can't wrap his mind around it and he doesn't actually think he wants to either. None of it makes any sense, and even though he's used to things not making sense this is somehow worse.

He hates himself for not just giving up his bed for Santana the moment she went over to it and preventing all of this from happening. He could have just gone and popped some pop-corn, vacated the room for however long he wanted, and everything would have been fine. No-one would have gotten hurt.

He hates taking responsibility for things because he hates being the bad guy, but Quinn's accusations have left no room for him to deny that he isn't, in some way, responsible. Still, he hopes against it.

There's a knock on his door and Burt steps in, looking slightly uncomfortable. Finn wonders why people bother to knock when they're not going to wait for an answer anyway. He's not upset, just . . . confused. Everything's confusing to him right now.

It's kind of a blessing in some ways.

"Hey, everything OK?" the man asks, stepping further into the room. "Everything all good?"

Finn nods his head, not looking at him as he stares at the grilled cheese sandwich in his hands that he still hasn't touched. He doesn't really feel like eating now and had only gotten the sandwich to try and distract himself from the situation at hand. It didn't work.

"Mm," Burt grunts and takes a seat beside him on the bed. "Your mum thinks differently and, I gotta say, so do I."

Finn doesn't answer and fiddles with the sandwich. He wonders whether Santana is alright, because Quinn and Puck barely told him anything about her state of being, and he fears what's going to happen when they see each other again at school. He thinks she might hit him. He thinks he might deserve it. "Do you ever . . ." He makes a hesitant stop, pauses, and thinks about what it is he's trying to say. Getting his thoughts in order is proving to be most difficult. "Do you ever feel like maybe you did something wrong, something really bad, but you didn't actually know that it was going to be bad before you did it? So you don't really know how exactly you went wrong or how to fix it?" He thinks that's what he's trying to say and is surprised at the accuracy of his words, how much they're not jumbled up. He thinks that, to most people, his words usually sound stupid.

Burt shrugs, unbothered by the unusually deep question from the football player. "Happens every time I talk to a girl: there's always something you can say to upset them – though, don't tell your mother that."

"Oh," Finn murmurs, again toying with the sandwich. He thinks of the hurt in Santana's eyes as she left his room and the rage in Quinn's as she advanced on him, and hates himself slightly. But even slightly, right now, seems like too much. "I think I did something bad."

. . .

She's eight-years-old again, being taught to play piano for the first time, and, with a quacking motion, she pushes a finger experimentally down. Sound erupts in the deathly silent structure and she almost flinches in response.

Santana bites her lip, and presses hesitantly at a second key, gnawing on the tender flesh beneath her tooth as she wonders at the sound. She feels calm almost, at ease, and, with a faint smile pulling at her lips, she places two hands over the keys. Already, her fingers know the actions they'll need by memory.

Gently, they begin, fingers snaking out in all directions as she searches for a tune she remembers. Vaguely, as the music rises up and surrounds her, she thinks heaven might just be this: a dusty, dark old room with a piano in it, and she wonders whether that makes her dead.

...

Santana can't breathe. She's in the exact same position she's been in ever since her back hit the ground, and the man's still there, towering over her. Only now there's another one, off to the distance and wearing the well-known face of her stepfather. He's holding in his arms a struggling Brittany, his hand firmly round around her neck, and in that instant she forgets that this is a dream.

She forgets it completely.

Santana reaches out a hand towards her friend, flingers grasping and tearing at thin air, but she's still being held down and it's impossible. She's still being mercilessly ravaged and she's still in the most amounts of pain. But all she can see is Brittany, her blue eyes having widened and searching her own for help.

She hates that she can't give it.

"B . . ."The word falls from her lips, dead lyrics before anyone can hear them.

. . .

Puck's long since learnt that it's best not to wake her. The first and only time Santana stayed the night to sleep beside him after a fuck, she ended up tossing and turning in the sheets, whimpering and moaning – and this was not in the good way. So, Puck had done what any decent person, or at least half-way decent one, would do. He woke her up. And she nearly killed him for his efforts. Seriously, he was wearing a black eye for weeks.

Lesson learnt: let sleeping Santanas lie. There's like a proverb or something about it and everything. Actually, he thinks there was something about it in Harry Potter . . . not that he reads Harry Potter, or any kind of book that actually has words in it. Nope, not him.

So, here he is, sitting on the chair at Liv's desk and watching as his friend twitches and groans in sleep. Her hands are curled into fists around the sheets that drape her form as if she she's trying to hold onto something, something that has already slipped away and she knows she has no chance of getting back. Puck wants to reach out to her, to comfort her – what decent human being wouldn't? – but he doesn't know how, he never did. It's Brittany who's skilled in the art of soothing the wild beast inside Santana, with a touch, a kiss, a smile. Puck can do all of those things too, and more, but he doesn't think they'd quite measure up.

They never have.

If a stranger asked Puck what he feels for Santana he would reply with a simple, "She's good in the sack." No more, no less. If someone like his mum asked him, he would tell them that he's reasonably close with Santana because she's been his friend since kindergarten. No more, no less. Quinn, he would say Santana's a great sexting partner, but is nothing compared to her divine perfectness (he has in fact already said this once, after she hit him over the head with a cantaloupe). No more, no less. If Matt (the only other boy who has actually been Santana's boyfriend for a time) asked, he would share in the solidarity of their two man club and profess that he still has feelings for Santana that go beyond friendship. No more, no less. If Brittany asked, he would say that he loves Santana because the idea of anyone not loving her best friend would be nothing short of a blasphemy in the blonde's eyes; in fact, the idea of not loving everyone would be just unacceptable for her. No more, no less. If Santana herself asked, Puck would quite calmly and quite casually tell her that he hates her, has always hated her. No more, no less.

The thing is, not once would he be lying, in any of those responses.

His feelings towards Santana are complicated at best and he has a hunch that they will remain so for as long as he can still have the ability to feel, which sounds like a pretty damn long time. They haven't always been that way, of course; and sometimes Puck longs for the days of childhood when he just felt simple friendship towards the girl. Well, apart from that one time when he was angry with her for stealing his crayon and refusing to give it back (that had been the beginning of a 'beautiful' friendship.) Though, in a way, he does long for those days as well, because if having your crayon stolen is the worst thing that can happen to you, then that's a pretty cool deal. A lot better than the one he's got going for him now, at any rate.

He sighs and takes his eyes off Santana, unable to look at her any longer as her face screws up in obvious pain and she lets out a groan. He wonders whether, if he starts playing with crayons again, Santana will try to steal them like she did back then, in kindergarten. He wants her to, just to show him that she's still that same girl, but he doesn't truly believe that she would, not really.

. . .

Santana opens the lid of the piano stool, an unknown compulsion driving her to do so. Maybe she's looking for the sheet music her mother kept hidden away in the stool for safe keeping but she's been happy so far playing songs from memory so she doesn't understand why that could be it.

It's not. Upon opening the lid, she finds that there's nothing in there. Not a thing. Just a big, gaping darkness that seems to go on forever. An abyss.

Frowning, Santana reaches a hand into the darkness, crinkling her nose when she finds only softness to the touch. There's the smell of turkey and thanks-giving pie as well, wafting up from the hole and swallowing her. Slowly, it draws her in.

Tentatively, Santana lowers a second hand into the stool, again finding that softness and being unable to deny that she rather likes it. It reminds her of pillows and ducks and Brittany, and therefore a feeling of safety overwhelms her. Less cautious now, she lifts first one leg in and then the other, until she's completely inside the belly of this thing she can't work out.

She snuggles inside, finding no walls or limits but still feeling a cushioning surface to hold her up. Decidedly, she reaches up and grabs the lid of the stool, pulling it back over her and closing the lid on her abyss.

...

Her finger trembles slightly on the trigger and her lips press together in a firm line. She wants to do this, wants to do it more than anything, but there's a dark feeling bubbling up in her chest, very nearly engulfing her. She imagines it to be an inky black tar, suffocating in its force, and she wonders whether that's what it will do – make its way into her lungs and drown her from the inside out.

She almost prays for it.

He, for the first and final time, turns to face her and the familiar scorn in his eyes makes a decision for her, a decision she shouldn't have to make. The finger presses, hard and determined, and the bullet flies out, freed from its cage.

Blood splatters everywhere and she allows herself for the first time to breathe. She doesn't feel any different and, for a moment, she thinks that maybe she should. Lowering the gun, she gazes into the gory face of the man who has so much power over her and, distantly, feels her heart harden into ice.

This is the price.

...

The knife plunges into the blonde's stomach and Santana's breath hitches, catching in the back of her throat. No. Again, she flails out with a hand, reaching for the one important thing she has ever known, and yet again finds only air. Brittany's body falls, convulsively to the ground, and blood blooms out to surround it.

Santana can feel the sticky liquid on her hands, in her hair, melding with the blood already on her back and forcing its way in clogging degrees into her mouth. It's chocking her.

She keeps both eyes on Brittany, though, focusing on the way the blue orbs still blink at her, giving signs of life. It's a dying life but a life nonetheless, and the brunette holds onto that much in the way someone holds onto a hand, keeping them from falling from the top of a thousand story building.

Brittany's all she can see. And when the eyes blink shut for the last time, she thinks it might just be the only thing she'll ever see again. Her hand reaches out, desperate, and the darkness consumes her.

"Brittany!"

The plunge back into reality is so sudden and shocking that, at first, she doesn't realize that it's happened at all. Her body is springing into a sitting position, heart pounding and chest heaving as she tries to both catch her breath and remember how to breathe at the same time. Her sides heave with the effort and short gasps slip from her lips as her hands search for the blonde, finding only empty darkness.

The warm, strong arms that wrap around her send jolts of fear down her spine and she flinches before realizing that the hands running through her hair and down her back are gentle rather than violent, contained instead of invasive. Seeking the security that the arms attempt to offer, she burrows within them like a little girl, burying her face in the strong chest in front of her and letting out a scream that she could never have hoped to hold in. She screams into the shoulder of the person holding her and it comes out a strained, muffled noise with no volume. She hardly notices, though, digging her fingers into the muscular arms and letting out another. She has to let it out.

Santana can't tell where she is, who she's with, only that it's not Brittany and that she doesn't know where her best friend is. She wants the blonde so badly, to see that she's OK, that the desire actually causes her physical pain and she lets out a tearless sob that rips through her throat and fills her with shame.

It's only when the words come, dropping from familiar lips, that some sense is finally knocked back into her, propelling her that little step further into reality and clearing the fog slightly from her mind. She knows where she is now.

"Hey, shh, it's OK," a voice, a voice she recognises to be Puck's, murmurs comfortingly in her ear and she feels warm hands smoothing back her hair and rubbing her trembling back in the fruitless hopes of giving reassurance.

Immediately, Santana struggles, the knowledge that this is real, that everything else was just a dream, racing through her and causing a sudden state of panic. This can't happen. She's OK. She can't be anything but OK. She's not going to be crying into Puck's shoulder, she's not going to be weak or powerless like she is in her dreams or at home.

It was all just a dream.

She's OK.

Puck seems to have different ideas, though, for, as she tries to pull out of his grip, it only turns tighter and more constricting, trapping even. "Don't," the voice says but Santana only struggles harder, hands turning to powerful fists to batter at the boy's chest, legs kicking out beneath her in a fury. She wants him to let her go, to leave the room and never come back, so she can bury herself under the covers and try to forget everything like she always does, to pretend again that everything's OK.

She doesn't want him to see her weak.

"Santana, don't," he tries again, not letting go as she fights against his hold. "It's OK. You're allowed to do this. You're allowed to not be strong."

She wonders how he knows, how he guesses that that's her reason, and fears for a moment whether she's really that transparent. Does everyone know that she's not as strong as she pretends to be? Do the kids at school watch her dominating form with wary gazes only to laugh at how utterly pathetic she is behind her back when it's turned? Does Mr. Shue see through her biting comments and promiscuity and think that there's just a scared little girl underneath, only to do nothing about it anyway? There's not, of course, she hasn't been a little girl for a long time, but she wonders whether he still thinks it.

The thought makes her want to die.

"No," she says, still struggling and trying her best to move away. She considers hitting him but knows he'll probably be a massive baby about the whole thing and start crying which will only bring somebody else into the room, somebody else to see her in her defeat.

"Yeah, you can. You're allowed to cry. I mean, seriously, everyone does it – not me, of course, but everyone else – and even though I ain't any good with crying chicks I won't be that bad. I'll keep it a secret and everything, just between me and you." She hates that he knows exactly what to say to make it OK, because it's not OK, it shouldn't be OK. She's not allowed to cry, not over this.

If Santana cried over every single nightmare she has, she would be a wreck. There's nothing different about this one: the rape, killing Garry, Brittany's death, the piano, it's all familiar to her. Seriously, her mind definitely lacks in creativity. So, really, it shouldn't shake her up so much. She should be fine. She shouldn't want to break down in a ball and cry.

But it was so real. All of it. It's always so real.

Santana can remember Brittany's lifeless eyes more clearly than she can even remember her own name. She can still feel the blood on her fingertips and the hot liquid filling her lungs and suffocating her. She can hear Brittany's last gasp, falling from the blonde's lips like the final pebble down a ravine, ringing in her ears.

It's tormenting. And she can't fight it.

Defeated, Santana goes limp, allowing him to hold her, to comfort her, and to try and chase away the demons that will never quite leave her. He holds her tight, trying to soothe with words but failing because he doesn't know the language like Brittany does, the language her best friend's always known without even trying. But he's there, solid and trying. He holds her while she breaks down and that's enough. The knowledge that she's not alone is enough, she hopes it's enough. But she doesn't cry, she can't ever allow herself to cry over this.

. . .

A/N: I put Finn in this chapter because I wanted to check up on how he was doing. Personally, I don't think any of this is really his fault but that doesn't mean that he has to think the same thing. I was also a little worried about the vulnerability Santana was showing with Puck after she woke up but I think I might have made it work in the end. Anyway, tell me what you think. Bad? Good? Take your pick.