of fire dragons and singing stars

chapter seven

Rachel and Santana stood outside the doors of McKinley after all the Glee Club members, and just about all the other inhabitants of the school, had left for the day, each feeling strangely unsure of herself, as though Marley's out-of-nowhere appearance had somehow shifted the ground beneath them. Rachel was still confused by the warring emotions of jealousy and admiration towards Marley that she had been experiencing practically since her first sight of the girl, while Santana was plagued with questions about why Marley was there at all and not back at the dragons' Skyhome, and what her presence meant.

"Well, it's been a very interesting day, hasn't it?" Rachel said, blowing out an exasperated sigh, annoyed with herself for being so out of sorts. She tried to smile at Santana, but her lips refused to curl upwards, instead tightening into a thin line.

Santana was equally unsettled, albeit for different reasons. Yet she knew that part of her role as protector included keeping Rachel's spirits up, so she hid her own confusion as best she could and tried to lighten the mood with a joke. "Of course it has. After all, it's not often that you meet an awesome bad-ass chick who also happens to be a super cool dragon, right?"

Rachel laughed in spite of herself. "This is true." Then she sighed again, looking down at her feet, to one direction, then the other, avoiding Santana's concerned gaze. She knew somehow that Santana could almost see inside her, like she had the ability to just tell what she was thinking, without anything being said. It should have felt reassuring, but instead it made her oddly uncomfortable.

"Hey. Tiny. Listen," Santana ventured, her voice gentle. Once Rachel lifted her eyes, she continued. "I know things seemed weird with Marley, but...look, I can't say too much about her - but I can tell you that she can be trusted."

Rachel stomped her foot, huffing in annoyance.

"How do you do that? Just – just know what I'm thinking like that? And meanwhile, I can't tell how you're feeling at all? It's...it's...unfair, is what it is!" she fumed. "And why can't you say anything about her? What is she, some kind of dragon secret? I thought I was important to you, Santana – but apparently not, if you can't tell me why you were staring at her in the choir room as though you were looking at a ghost."

Santana bowed her head, eyes closed, pinched the bridge of her nose as though she felt a headache coming on.

Her voice was soft, but edged with pain, the pain of a memory she'd had no wish to recall, when she spoke again. "Because, Rachel...as far as I was concerned, she was a ghost. I never thought I would ever see her again."

"What? Santana, why -" Rachel began, bringing her hand up to touch Santana's cheek, but the dragon-girl gently intercepted her wrist and cut her off.

"No," she rasped, her eyes suddenly hard and cold for a moment. Then her expression softened, and she let Rachel's hand drop, not missing the look of hurt on the smaller girl's face. "I'm sorry, Rachel, but I...I can't. I can't talk about her. It's been a long time, and a lot has happened, but...I just can't. Has – hasn't there ever been someone in your life that really meant a lot to you, and then something happened and suddenly everything changed?"

Rachel thought for a moment, feeling the echo of an old ache as she reached back into her memory, recalling close friends she'd had through elementary school who had abandoned her in junior high as the popularity they sought required them to leave Rachel behind. She'd been devastated time and again as one friend after another changed themselves to fit in with the crowd even as Rachel steadfastly refused to do the same. It was painful to relive those feelings, even dulled as they were by time, and she supposed she wouldn't want to talk about them either.

"Yes," she replied quietly. "More someones than I care to admit, actually. So...you don't have to tell me about it – about her – now, Santana. But...promise me one thing? Please?"

Santana simply nodded in response, half-lost in her own memories.

"Promise me that you will tell me, one day. Because if she's important to whatever's going on with me, and you, and everything else you haven't told me about yet, then I'll need to know, eventually. Can...can you do that?"

There was something in Rachel's voice that broke through Santana's mental fog, something made her back straighten and her skin prickle when she felt it. It wasn't solely the emotion in it, no; there was the inaudible but unmistakable vibration, so soft that none but the most attuned would sense it, of power. The power to erase fear, cleanse doubt, heighten focus and clarity. The power of command.

Power that could shake the world, when shaped into music.

A shiver tickled Santana's spine with icy fingers. This was the second time she had felt the barest touch of Rachel's potential, and it made her shudder to think of what the girl would eventually be able to do, once she was able to understand and harness her power.

"I swear to you, Rachel, I'll tell you. I'll tell you everything...just not now, okay?" She raised her arms above her head, stretching wearily, feeling her small, light bones slide beneath her soft skin and taut sinews. By the First Egg, she needed to shift and let her wings and scales feel the air rush against them again.

Rachel pursed her lips. "Okay. Fair enough." She looked at her watch. "And now I think we really should be heading home. My fathers will be home from work in a couple of hours, and I've got homework to do, so let's start walking."

"Walking?" Santana's mouth curled into a sardonic grin. "Oh, no, no, no, tiny. I've got a much, much better idea."

Shadows gathered, as though the light was drawn out of the world, so that no one but Rachel would see, and in moments, where a girl had once been, a dragon stood in its place.

Ah! Gods, but that feels good.

Rachel giggled. "I'm sure it does."

Santana's great head and shimmering eyes angled down towards the tiny singer, and something like amusement filled the dragon's voice as it spoke in her mind.

You have no idea. Now, please tell me you're not afraid of flying.

Laughing, Rachel hung her backpack from Santana's serpentine neck and climbed on. The dragon's scales were warm beneath her.

If you say 'up, up and away,' I'm dropping you into a tree. Just so you know.

"I would never say that."

Good.

"However, I would say, 'Onward, noble steed!'"

Santana's silence told the girl what she thought of that.

Then the wind banished all thoughts from both their minds as they flew.


And elsewhere, in another place, one without boundaries, borders, definitions, a place that would be perceived by all but the most knowing eyes as merely a gray, swirling haze on the edge of our existence, there was a ripple of something that the entity ensconced within it had not felt in several thousand years when Rachel's power touched it: fear. A soundless, wordless scream of fury roiled the gray haze, and it curled in on itself in its rage and hate, sending out waves of force to hammer yet again against the spell that had stood in place for millennia, keeping it immobile and impotent and unable to wreak the havoc that was its sole purpose to create, denying its vengeance against the universe that had birthed it.

And the tiny crack it had managed to create over the course of a thousand, then a thousand more years, lengthened still further, widened still more. The fear, the sharp, stabbing pain of it, ebbed away, faded, consumed, as all things were, in the face of its overwhelming spite.

If the thing that lived there had possessed a mouth, it would have smiled.