A/N: Hey, guys!

dagleek: Aw, thanks. I try. *looks away bashfully* Well, I guess that depends on what kind of Brittana you want. Maybe this chapter will hold you over for a little bit? :) Oh, and to your P.S. Haha, that they do. The thing I find funny is that apparently some students think that the TAs don't know that the undergrad students are trying to take advantage of them (intentionally or not). The student who e-mailed me was clearly trying to get me to do his paper for him, as if I'm dumb enough to tell him exactly what to write in the paper. I mean, I'm all for helping, but come on...I guess he gets an "A" for trying? ;)

Anyway...here's a new chapter for you guys. I hope you enjoy it! :)

Will came to slowly. Standing made his head hurt, and he swayed on his feet. There were no voices close by, but he could hear muted shouting from somewhere. He rubbed his face with both hands, and they came away bloody. Gingerly he searched for the cut and found it just along his hairline. He went to the little mirror in the water closet. It was broken, but only half of it had fallen to the floor, smashed to silvery dust. He bent forward to look. The cut wasn't bad. He turned on the faucet to wash up, and the water gushed, and then failed.

Turning around, Will saw that the towels had fallen to the floor, the shelf collapsed. He reached for one and brought it up, intending to wipe his face. Then he saw a sparkle in the fabric at the last instant and lowered it. It was full of glass shattered so fine it was like sugar. He looked up. The light fixture had fallen.

Will stumbled out of the bathroom and looked around the kitchen, his thoughts spinning. No water. They couldn't open without water. So it hadn't just been a rock blast at the quarry up on Telegraph Hill. He set down the towel slowly and headed for the front door of the restaurant.

"Excuse me?" someone said from behind him. "We are asking all help to stay. We have several hundred guests who have nowhere to go tonight, and their rooms are turned inside out."

Will turned around to see a heavyset man he recognized vaguely. Someone from the office behind the lobby. "I have a wife and two children," Will began, preparing himself to argue.

"Then you must go home sir, and quickly," the man said. He turned and went out through a side door.

Will watched him go, astounded, and then pushed through the swinging doors into the dining room. He stumbled, astonished at what he was seeing. All the windows were broken along the street. He could see frantic crowds outside, people going every which way—or simply standing and staring. The noise was unbelievable. People were shouting in five or six languages.

Will gathered his wits and made his way out the doors. He turned up Montgomery Street and began to run. If the brick and stone buildings had come down, what had happened to the wooden houses up on Dupont Street and California Street? His wife would be frantic, he was sure—she had a hard time handling messes—and his kids terrified.

It was difficult going, zigzagging around people pulling their children's toy wagons filled with their goods, people crying—some of them hysterically. One woman sat on the curb in front of a collapsed house, weeping as if her whole family had been inside. Will didn't ask. He didn't want to know.

The hills got steeper, but he forced himself to keep running, stumbling to a halt only when an automobile came barreling around a corner, the driver wearing goggles and a dashing scarf. A man dressed in military clothes sat beside him, pointing and shouting.

Will stood, gasping for breath as the careening vehicle went past. Then he glanced down the hill at the city below. It was unbelievable. Half the town had been destroyed, it looked like. He could see City Hall in the distance. This side of the front façade had collapsed. Only the metal on the dome shone in the morning sun as usual. The rest of it looked like a giant birdcage of steel girders. He straightened, still breathing hard but about to turn and go on, when something else caught his eye.

Out in the Mission district, there was a thin plume of smoke rising skyward.

Will began to run again.

Brittany had taken the lead, and Santana let her lead her down an alleyway to skirt the worst of the wreckage on Market, and then followed as she cut back to the street through a narrow path separating two tall buildings. Through the shattered ground-floor windows Santana could hear men arguing about a damaged printing press—glimpses of the machinery told her that the building housed a newspaper.

It was astonishing how quickly Brittany walked, Santana realized, how little the rubble seemed to trouble her. The brunette had released her hand when it had become impossible to maneuver through the wreckage any way but single file. Santana now walked behind the blonde who was quickly finding a place in her heart, watching her make her way through the chaos as fast as any man could have done. The diminutive Latina had to push herself to keep up with the taller girl. Brittany's white-linen hemline was darkening with street dust, but Santana did not once see her bend down to examine it. She hadn't cried, either, Santana realized, following her around a pile of brick and mats of woven wire embedded in shattered slabs of cement. Or screamed. Not once.

Santana found herself wondering if the remarkable woman in front of her could ride, but knew the blonde would think that she was insane if she asked such a question at a time like this. She shook her head, admitting to herself that she would certainly have a point. But Santana wanted to know, desperately. She had been fascinated with the chambermaid from the first time she had seen her through the door, she just never allowed herself to consider whether she could love someone her father was sure to disapprove of. She was pretty sure that she could. Santana looked at Brittany's straight back and lovely neck. She wanted to know everything about her. She wanted to meet her parents.

"This way," Brittany said, half turning to make sure Santana had heard her. The blonde was gesturing toward another narrow passage between two huge buildings. The side of her face was smudged with dirt. Her hair was a mess, the two loose braids disappearing beneath the collar of her coat. And she was beautiful. Santana stared at her, mesmerized.

"What, Santana? I can go alone if you—"

"Can you ride?" She couldn't believe she had actually asked. Santana watched her eyebrows rise, two perfect arches. She looked as amazed by the question as she had imagined she might. Then Brittany frowned and looked straight into her eyes.

"When I was ten I passed myself off as an exercise boy. I worked for nearly three years out at Ingleside track." She paused, her chin raised high and proud. Then she took a deep breath. "I slept in spare stalls."

Santana was shocked as much by the cold, angry tone in her voice as by what she had said. She stepped back, her left foot half hitting a brick and throwing her off balance.

Brittany waited until she had righted herself. "I can go on alone from here," she said, in the same sharp voice. "I thank you for—"

"An exercise boy?" Santana interrupted her a second time, positive that she had heard her incorrectly. "Surely, you must be joking?"

Brittany was blushing, a fierce, wonderful pink spreading across her cheeks. Then she whirled and was walking fast, disappearing into the passageway. Santana hurried to follow, looking upward, disconcerted by the closeness of the walls. The sky was a bluish-brown slit above their heads. The dust was hanging heavily in the air.

Without warning, Brittany spun around. The brunette barely managed to keep from bumping into her, and scraped her shoulder on the building, arrested by the maid's direct cobalt eyes. Brittany stood and faced her for a long moment. "Is something—" the Latina began.

"I was the best," she said pointedly, cutting the other girl off. "The best they ever had, Paddy said. They only made me quit because he got drunk and told someone that I was a girl."

Santana looked into her angry eyes and could only nod. Brittany lowered her head. Santana wanted to touch her, to hold her, to tell her that whatever had made her so angry, she would straighten it out, smooth it over somehow. If Brittany missed riding, she could give her a horse and they could go riding together…But before she could shape her impulse into coherent speech, the blonde had turned away from her again, the hem of her coat swinging with her steps. Santana hurried to catch up, distracted from the full impact of her words by the madhouse noise of the crowds, the stinging dust.

As they emerged from the narrow passage, Santana saw a new expanse of ruin. The city around them was like a kicked anthill. People filled the streets, shoving past each other, going in opposite directions, streaming around an overturned wagon, the horse dead in the traces.

"That way," Brittany said hollowly, pointing.

Santana took the lead again, as the crowds thickened around them, holding her hand tightly to make sure that nothing separated them.

Arthur set the boy down and half-listened to the woman's thanks. She had taken him only two blocks out of his way. Her husband, she assured him, would soon be back to find them. This, she pointed at a pile of rubble that slanted from a height of about fifteen feet at its apex to a few inches deep at the curb of Howard Street, was their home.

Arthur nodded vaguely when he realized that the woman had stopped talking. Then he walked away, shouldering past a group of people standing in the middle of the street, his thoughts on the hidden packet of counterfeit money. If it was gone, he was going to have to change strategies—and fast. Rachel might pity a man down on his luck, but her father definitely would not. He cursed the earthquake. Why did something like this have to happen when he was so close to realizing his plans?

At the corner of Folsom Street, he looked back. The woman was standing patiently stroking the little boy's hair, glancing up the street every few seconds. That must be the direction her husband would be coming from. There was something in her posture, in the eagerness of her glances, that made Arthur envy her husband for a second, and then pray, very briefly, for his safety.

Arthur started down Folsom, walking as fast as he could. He glanced at his watch, and then shook it to see if it was broken. Almost six o'clock? How could that be? He stepped up his pace. It had been almost forty minutes since the ground had stopped shaking. Anything could have happened in that amount of time. Anything. If Brittany saw him poking around, she'd recognize him and know his name. This one at least. Maybe he should leave the packet right where it was and let the fake bills be found, if that's what was going to happen. But he hated to. If Mr. Lopez whisked Rachel home and this didn't work out, he was going to need a stake.

It was then that Arthur looked up, trying to see if the houses all the way down Folsom were as destroyed as the ones he was passing—and he caught his breath and stared. A blackish pillar of smoke was rising. It was down around Fifth Street, or maybe Sixth. He looked at the piles of lumber that had been houses on either side of the street. This whole part of the city was going to go up like God's own bonfire. He began to run.

Brittany was out of breath, coughing on the haze of dust as they finally broke free of the worst of the crowds toward Sixth Street. Brittany saw other women running as well. They all looked terrified, dirty, and unladylike. She knew that she looked no different, and it bothered her. She knew it wouldn't have if it hadn't been for Santana's hand on hers. Brittany didn't want the other woman to see her as dirty and common—and the fact that she cared angered her beyond measure. Santana would never see her the way she wanted her to, no matter what.

"How much farther?" Santana asked.

"Not far," she answered without turning her head. "Another six or seven blocks." The words came out timed to her breaths. She negotiated the corner, turning onto Sixth, and then glanced up to meet her dark eyes. "If you want to go back—"

Santana shook her head. "I will make sure you're all right. Then I'll go back and try to find my father and Rachel." She looked past her, pulling the blonde out of the way of two big men dragging a piano down the sidewalk. The concrete was ruining the carved feet of the instrument. A string of six or seven children followed, each and every one of them crying.

"Ay, dios mio," Santana muttered once they had passed.

Brittany glanced at her again. She was looking down the street. The rising black smoke seemed so much a part of the destruction and chaos around her that it took her a moment to understand. When she did, she turned back to Santana. "But they'll put it out. The firehouse is right down there—between Folsom and Shipley. They'll see it."

The Latina nodded and she glanced at the smoke again, and then hurried along, lifting her skirt and coat to free her stride. The journal swung against her leg at every step, reminding her of Arthur and her humiliation at believing that he had cared for her. She quickened her step again and felt Santana match her pace.

"It's Zizes' Bakery," she said woodenly, when she realized that the heap of rubble she was looking at was the place where she often bought bread for Mrs. Sylvester on her way home. The whole neighborhood seemed unfamiliar, strange. She looked around, her heart racketing inside her chest. Everything was different. Ruined. Most of the houses had collapsed or stood askew on their foundations.

By the time he reached the ferry, Marco Lopez was frantic. The first load of refugees were gibbering like startled sparrows to anyone who would listen. The city was a ruin, the streets were buckled, the mint was wrecked, and half of the financial district had collapsed.

Marco shouldered his way through them as they disembarked, and then rode the little boat, his eyes glued to the peninsula across the water. He recognized some of the other passengers, but no one he knew well. Richard Fitzgerald, a respectable Main Street saloon owner, stood next to Finn Something-or-other—Marco wasn't sure of his last name, but most everyone in Oakland knew his face. He was a do-nothing drunk and gambler only made half-respectable because his wife, Elizabeth Mason, came of good honest stock. Marco looked around. He didn't see her, and now that he thought about it, he hadn't for a week or two—not even in church. Maybe she had finally left, gone to her sister in the city after all.

The destruction on the other side of the bay became easier to see the closer they got. As did the spires of smoke. Marco counted three. It was hard to tell exactly where they were coming from, but he kept trying anyway.

As the ferry breasted the choppy waves in little lurches, the conversations around Marco wilted into a tense silence. The passengers all stared at the city that had been a white and shining beauty a few hours before.

Arthur reached the boardinghouse out of breath and sweating. He ran up the steps and called out once before going inside. The building was askew on its foundation, and Arthur had seen enough collapsed houses in the neighborhood to be grateful that was as far as the damage seemed to go.

He took four quick strides across the front room, and then turned to go up the stairs, moving as silently as he could. At the top of the first flight, he glanced back down, daring to hope. So far, so good. He went upward again and knocked softly on Brittany's door, waiting until he was sure she wasn't inside before he pushed it open.

The beat-up armoire had fallen, and the bed had been jounced from the wall and sat at an angle across the center of the room. The window was broken; glittery crescents of glass stuck in the gaudy curtains.

Arthur ran to the bed and lifted it, grunting as he tipped it onto its side. His packed of papers was still there, jammed tightly between the slats. He freed it and turned to leave.

"Hold it right there, young man," said the old woman standing in the doorway. She was pointing a pistol at his chest. Arthur felt sweat spring out on his forehead. Then he smiled.

The old woman cocked the gun.

Rachel sat at the dining room table. The Changs were devising a plan of action. Rachel only half-listened, staring out the window that looked out over what had been San Francisco's beautiful downtown. Now it overlooked a smoking ruin. The glass in this window was intact, but the bay window in the front room had been broken and was now letting in distant screams and shouts and the unceasing barking of frightened dogs.

Rachel stood and walked to the window to look down to the street. The sidewalks were filling with people. Carriages were lined up along the curbs. Chinese houseboys were running back and forth carrying trunks and packing boxes. Rachel tried to feel the excitement and agitation that everyone else seemed to be feeling. But she couldn't. She felt an eerie kind of calm instead, as though there were a pane a protective glass between herself and the panic, the fire—the earthquake itself.

"Rachel will come with us, then?" Mrs. Chang was saying.

Her husband nodded. "Unless Marco makes it here in the next few hours and decides differently. We can leave word with Lee, and we can leave a note on the door. I'll cable him in Oakland from Sacramento when we get there just to be sure."

Rachel didn't turn from the window as she listened. But she was making a decision inside the strange silence that filled her heart. She was not going to go anywhere with the Changs. If Papa didn't come, she would go alone to the Palace Hotel and find out what had happed to Santana and Arthur. Arthur would be there waiting for her if he was alive, of that much she was certain. So would her sister.

"Rachel?"

"Yes, Mrs. Chang?"

"Come away from the window, child. It's unseemly to watch like that. People are barely dressed and hardly at their best."

Rachel turned, her eyes lowered. "Yes, Mrs. Chang." She left the dining room and walked back to the bedroom she had slept in and closed the door. This window faced Chinatown, and she could see the rows of collapsed wooden buildings in the distance.

She had never been to Chinatown. Papa had always said there were things a girl should not see there. Prostitution, he had meant, and probably the opium dens she had heard about. But other people had gone there and come back with wonderful descriptions of exotic, beautiful women, shops full of herbs, and savory food. Now she would never see it, Rachel knew. It was gone. The closest she would come to it would be her time spent with the Changs. Although both of them were Asian, they tried to keep themselves from being associated with Chinatown as much as possible—though they still adhered to many aspects of their ancestry.

She saw faint spirals of smoke rising from the wreckage, but that didn't bother her. San Francisco was equipped with one of the best and most modern fire departments of any city anywhere. It wouldn't be long before they had the fires out. But then what? Where were all the people whose houses had collapsed and been ruined going to go?

Maybe Papa would let Arthur come stay at the ranch for a while, until he sorted out what he was going to do next. Maybe, Rachel heard herself thinking, we would decide to marry, a "whirlwind affair," as the papers called it when it happened to tycoons or famous stage entertainers. She smiled. A whirlwind affair, and then a wedding.

Rachel still felt the odd calmness surrounding her, insulating her from the ruin of the city. It wouldn't be long before Papa came. They would go find Arthur and Santana. Then they would all go home.

Santana could hardly believe what she was seeing. Every block led them into worse ruin and more fires. The streets here were blocked off with shattered wood and tumbled foundations. The destruction was very nearly complete. And the human wreckage was almost more than she could bear to look at.

There were people dead in the piles of splintered boards and slabs of plaster and roofing tar. Here and there she could hear the screams of some poor soul trapped under tons of lumber and stone. She did not call Brittany's attention to these cries, but she knew that she had heard them when her hand tightened on her own.

The people on the street were a mixture of workingmen and their families and the sort of people that one never saw during the daytime. There were women who might be tavern entertainers—sad-eyed, hard-faced women; and a few younger ones, still pretty but with a sullen anger in their bearing and eyes that made her want to insist that Brittany turn around and leave this place now, to protect her own goodness.

But the blonde beauty seemed less shocked than she was as they walked. Brittany politely excused herself to undershirted Irishmen and Italians who eyed them quickly if their wives were nearby and more slowly and carefully if they were not. She exchanged nods with the slattern girls in her path and the old rheumy-eyed alcoholics who sat hunched along the curbs. The way she handled herself was amazing to the darker-skinned woman.

Santana was about to ask her how much farther they had to go when Brittany raised her hand, lifting Santana's with it, and gestured. "Thank God it hasn't collapsed."

With a relieved smile spreading across her pretty face, Brittany let go of Santana's hand and began to run. The Latina had to sprint to catch up, marveling again at how well she picked her way through the broken cobbles, fleet as any deer. Santana slowed to let her lead through a narrow place where the street itself had sunk on both sides. Running behind her, Santana saw that her braids were coming undone. Her hair is as beautiful as the rest of her, she thought, smiling to herself.

A gunshot startled Santana out of her thoughts; Brittany stumbled to a stop.

"Which house is yours?" she asked the taller woman. Brittany pointed, an unreadable expression on her face. "That's the house where the shot was, I think."

Brittany nodded and then started forward again, walking slowly, her head tipped to one side, listening.

"Brittany?"

"Shhh."

Santana could see her trembling, and she tugged at her sleeve. "I'll go take a look."

But she simply shook her head and kept going. The brunette followed her to the door, and then pulled her gently aside and went in first, an overwhelming need to protect the blonde spurring her on. There were no voices, no footsteps, no sounds at all.

"Mrs. Sylvester?" Brittany called.

There was no answer.

"Mrs. Sylvester!" Santana shouted.

"I'll check her room," Brittany said, and Santana let her lead the way, glancing around for something she could use to defend them if she needed to. Passing the front room fireplace, she picked up a poker and held it close to her side.

Brittany pointed at an open door, and they advanced toward it slowly. The room was empty. The bed stood in the center of the room. A tall old dresser had crashed forward. There was broken glass of a hundred different colors on the bare wood floor.

"She collects little painted figures. Cheap ones from the bric-a-brac places," Brittany said.

Sudden footsteps pounded on the stairway and Brittany whirled toward the sound, but Santana caught her arm and ran ahead of her back down the little hall to the front room. A man was coming down, his face averted, one arm raised as if to shield himself from a blow. Santana heard Brittany gasp. The man cursed as he leapt the last six or eight steps and sprinted for the doorway.

"What are you doing here?" Brittany cried out, but the man didn't answer. He was out the door and down the steps before Santana could even react.

"That was Arthur Abrams," Brittany said slowly, as though trying to figure out if what she had seen was real or not.

"My sister's suitor?"

She nodded slowly, her face a confusion of emotions.

Santana stared at her. "Do you know him? Why would he be here?" Brittany shook her head without answering, and then started up the stairs. Santana could only follow her as she climbed straight to the third floor and stopped in the doorway of a room that the Latina instantly knew was hers. It smelled of the same blossom-scented soap she had smelled on her skin.

"Brittany?"

She still wouldn't answer her. She was staring at the fallen armoire. Her bed had somehow landed on its side, and the bedding was sliding off of it. As Santana watched, her pillow slumped toward the floor, and then dropped as the blanket fell away. Brittany was staring at it. Santana could almost read her thoughts in the quizzical expression on her face. Why was the pillow falling now?

Brittany walked around to the far side of the bed, almost tiptoeing. Santana watched her, the poker gripped tightly in her hand. Brittany stopped suddenly, staring at the floor. Her face went white. Santana took three quick steps around the end of the bed. An old woman lay on the floor, her eyes staring sightlessly at the ceiling. A pistol lay discarded next to her. There was a large, dark pool of blood staining her waist and the floor directly under her.

"Mrs. Sylvester," Brittany whispered. "Oh, my God, no." Then she turned and ran down the stairs. Taking one last glance at the dead woman, Santana followed. Without warning, Brittany stopped halfway across the front room, dropping to her knees. She began to cry. Santana knelt beside her and put her hand on her shoulder. She could feel Brittany's whole body shaking beneath her fingers. Santana stayed quiet; she had no idea what to say to her. She remembered crying like this only once in her life, alone behind the barn after her mother had died. She had no idea what she ought to do, but she knew what she must not do. Interrupting her would be wrong. So she sat still, silent, her hand on her shoulder, waiting.

Brittany's sobs gradually drew farther apart and Santana could hear her taking quick breaths between them. Finally, after a long time, she seemed to feel the other girl's hand on her shoulder and she turned and hid her face against her chest.

"She was like a grandmother to me, like…family," Brittany mumbled slowly.

Santana stroked her hair away from her tear-soaked cheeks and rocked back and forth slightly, aching inside. She would have given anything to take her pain away. She held Brittany close as she began to cry again, slower and softer this time.

A/N: Okay, so since a few people have asked for more Brittana, or have wondered when there will be more, and I can only assume the other readers of this story, however few of you there may be, are wondering the same thing, I feel I should probably explain myself. If you don't care, obviously you may skip this next part (it will be quite massive, and I apologize in advance for anyone who actually reads it). :)

1) I want this story to be different from others in the sense that I want there to be more of an emphasis on their emotional connection before the physical part of their relationship starts. I know, as Brittana fans, we want to see them together as soon as possible, since we will obviously never get any sort of Brittana satisfaction from the actual show. However, there are tons of other stories out there with that, so if you want Brittana smut and lots and lots of physical interaction, I think you've come to the wrong story, and I apologize for wasting your time.

2) Please keep in mind the time period of the story. This is 1906! If I had set this story in 2006, then, yes, I would have had Brittana interacting more and getting together much, much earlier. However, I'm trying to be real to the time period. This was a time when women had little to no say in whom they married, and their opinions were not valued very highly in general. Colleges only taught women skills they would need to be good wives and mothers, or nurses or teachers (for small children); occupations deemed fitting for women. Women could not vote at this time either. The courtship traditions were rather frigid, often with two people marrying only for familial ties and after only meeting briefly. The thought of the existence of homosexuals was taboo (can I get a big, fat "duh"?) and even non-existent in many places. So, keeping all of this, and much, much more in mind, I think you guys can understand why Brittany would not act on her feelings for Santana right away - hell, she didn't even act on her "feelings" for Arthur because it was customary for a woman only to reveal her feelings after the man has expressed his - and why she would be wary of Santana's motives. As for Santana, while in my story she is much more open to the prospect of her feelings for Brittany, she does have the class issue to keep in mind, and the fact that one never assumes she's gay, so it might have taken her longer to figure out than it would for say, someone in 2012, where homosexuality is becoming increasingly more socially acceptable and we can gain access to lesbian info and...images, etc, practically anywhere, especially with the internet. And, both being "proper" young women, they are more internal than they would be 100 years later, since, again, they were brought up in times where women were still believed best if they were subservient to men.

3) Also, there's an earthquake. Which means that opportunities for physical intimacy are going to be rare for them. They cannot simply make-out in the middle of a crowded street. Lord knows what would happen to them if they did that in front of the wrong people, especially in a time of such panic.

So...yeah. Sorry for rambling on and on, but I felt it was necessary, just so you can understand the reasoning behind the snail's pace Brittana is progressing in this story. I completely understand your...eagerness, and I can only hope that this chapter helped assuage your Brittana desires for now? :) If you hold on for one more chapter, you might be a bit happier about it. :D Maybe. I can't read minds (I would love that superpower, though. Ooo! And telekinesis. But I digress...). ;) You guys are all awesome. Just putting it out there. :)

Anywho, I hope you enjoyed this chapter! :D