"My water just broke."
The chaos that ensued, catalyzed by those four simple words, was unprecedented. The beautiful blonde who'd spoken simply ran her fingers through the long hair coating her shoulders, awaiting instruction. The woman in front of her was momentarily frozen as well, entirely unprepared. The next moments flew by in a rush of lights, opening doors, and quickly spinning wheels. It was hard to find something tangible to focus on when pain coursed through her veins and sweat flooded every inch of her skin not already covered in tears. Clutching the sheets, she dug her fingernails in as she heard the song she'd imagined for eight months, if not much longer than that, the sobs wracking her exhausted body mimicking the strangled cries she heard from the tiny body she'd just produced.
She jolted upright as the sounds suddenly halted, tearing her blue eyes wildly across the room. Someone had dimmed the lights, yet she continued looking for the baby she had heard crying. It took a moment to allow her vision to adjust, a split second longer than it took her to recognize the gentle pressure on her forearm. Whipping her heard to the right, Brittany met chocolate eyes, filled to the brim with emotion – concern, fear, and an overwhelming sadness.
"Britt, honey?" the woman started slowly, testing the water. The quivering blonde whispered but one word before collapsing into her fiancée's arms. Beth.
Impatiently tapping a foot as the phone in her hand continuously rang, Santana didn't allow time for greetings or small talk when she heard a breathy voice on the other end of the line.
"Q, you need to come back to New York."
"Hello to you too dear," she replied shortly, her voice seething with frustration. "You know as well as I do that our last semester just started – no. I can't and won't come back based on your whims Santana."
"Quinn, I need you to come back." Santana was intent on never needing anyone. She had prided herself for years on being self-sufficient, but this was out of her hands. Each day Brittany's heart cracked further, and she meandered back toward the person she'd been during the holidays. Each hour that passed, the frailty in her eyes grew, overtaking the brilliance that normal flooded the sapphire orbs her fiancée knew like the back of her hand. Each second that flickered by, Santana felt her slipping further from her grasp, and she knew Quinn heard that in her low, shaky words. "Please Q, just for the weekend. I'll buy your ticket. Britt needs you. I need you."
Hearing soft footsteps behind her as she simultaneously got an affirmative from her best friend, Santana flipped around to catch a glimpse of hardened blue eyes that swiftly broke contact and headed in the opposite direction. Whispering a goodbye, the petite Latina ended the call and quickly dropped her phone on the counter, intent on following her fiancée, who she found in the threshold of their apartment, hand outstretched toward the door.
"Britt, where are you going?"
The reply came short and rough, a single word. "Out."
"You can't run away every time something happens Brittany. That's my job," she said quietly, hoping to provoke even a stifled laugh, to no avail. Walking slowly forward, she reached out toward the quivering hand that wasn't holding the doorknob in a death grip, and tried a different approach. The blonde noticed the immediate softening of Santana's eyes, and her walls built upon themselves. "Please, baby, just talk to me. Don't shut me out again." A scoff was all that met her ears.
"That's rich Santana, really. You, the woman who keeps her emotions under lock and key, complete with surveillance cameras and guard dogs, wants me to just open up about my feelings? Right." The blonde's words were harsh, and directed straight toward the flaw her fiancée was most insecure about. They both knew she had come a long way, but in the moment, all Brittany wanted was for someone to hurt as much as she did.
"Please don't go. We don't have to talk. I just don't want to worry about you all night. I don't want anything to happen to you."
"That isn't your decision, now is it? I can choose to walk out the front door if I damn well please," she retorted. The next words bubbled to the surface, softer, almost inaudible, but certainly unwelcome. "It seems like that's the only choice I can make anyway – everyone else keeps deciding for me."
Catching the blue eyes once more, Santana saw her fiancée, her best friend, the love of her life fully broken. Her eyes were dim, rimmed with dark circles, and her hair hung limply around her face. Her body, typically strong, seemed to reflect her inner struggle, as her shoulders were slumped, her feet turned in on one another, her spine barely supporting her thin frame.
"Britt – "she whispered, inspecting her feet carefully, expecting a blow up in return, and not trusting herself to maintain the eye contact she'd sought out. She stood stock still, waiting for a slammed door, a strangled yell, or even fists turned in her direction, ready to lash out. When she chanced a look upward, she was met with an entirely different scene. Tears rolling down her cheeks, Brittany hadn't moved, and was now shaking fiercely, clutching her arms around herself, pulling at the fabric of her jacket as she stared at a spot directly above Santana's left shoulder. Slowly, as if she were trying not to startle a vicious animal, the smaller girl moved forward, unable to determine what reaction she would provoke. "Britt?" she repeated, a question this time, hoping to secure a reply. The trembling blonde in front of her merely crumbled in response, dropping to the floor, as it seemed had happened many times for the two of them in this spot particularly.
Falling into familiar patterns, Santana quickly came to rest next to her fiancée, who clutched her t-shirt fiercely, her words a skipping record through her tears, repetitive and all the while utterly heartbreaking. Please don't leave me. Please, please don't leave me. Cooing into her neck softly, lush lips repeated words back to her, hoping to sooth the aching sobs rushing in waves through Brittany's body. I'm not leaving. I'm not going anywhere.
A flash of realization flooded the forefront of Santana's brain and the words bubbled out of her mouth before she had a moment to process them. "Why would you think I would leave?"
She turned to the heaving blonde in her arms, who mustered up whatever reserve of strength she possessed, looking up into chocolate brown eyes, swimming with concern. "I fuck up everything." Santana's eyebrows drew close together, and she cocked her head to the side automatically, a dead giveaway that the situation at hand wasn't making sense to her, despite her attempts to piece together the bits of puzzle. "I fight with you for no reason, and your grandmother hates me, and I couldn't push that guy off of me, and my dancing has been terrible, and I pull away when I need you most, and – " Her shoulders released a resigned sigh. "I lost the baby." She whispered the last four words, another sob stuck in her throat.
It was the first time since the hospital visit that the typically bubbly dancer had referenced the miscarriage. It was a sore subject for Santana as well, but the petite Latina would never admit that she felt she was suffering a loss too. Brittany was fading away slowly, mourning the loss of a life that would never be. A part of her heart was stolen from her that morning in the too bright hospital room, and both women knew it would never be returned. The situation was far from ideal, that was common knowledge as well, but Santana couldn't help but imagine a little girl (she was sure it would have been a girl), twirling around their living room years from now, her head thrown back in laughter as she was sung to by her two doting mothers. She couldn't help but have imagined the next nine months of their lives, and each day after that, struggling to make ends meet, but ultimately happy. They could have done it, she knew they could have, but they were never given the opportunity to try.
Choosing her words carefully, Santana intertwined the milky white and caramel fingers, tugging her fiancée's body closer to her own. "That doesn't mean you messed up Britt." Fighting more tears, the blonde in her arms nodded emphatically, indicating that it in fact meant just that. "Do you remember what I told you on New Year's, when you pulled me into Kurt's guest room?" Brittany shook her head side to side this time, slowly. "I wanted things to be different. I said I wanted this to be on your terms. Maybe that's what this is. Maybe someone, somewhere up there decided that you deserved a pregnancy that wasn't tainted with memories you shouldn't have to relive every day. Maybe I'm the one who was supposed to carry our first baby. Or maybe God knew that I already had a handful with you and having a mini-Britt would be too much for me to worry about while I was doing my residency," she said the last suggestion with a slight giggle, hoping for a positive response, which her fiancée thankfully granted, in the form of a twitching grin. "Can you imagine me coming home in scrubs to a tiny, bouncing you, rattling in Spanglish, while I try to memorize every disease known to woman? I'd never get anything accomplished, because it's hard enough to tear my eyes away from you most nights, much less a pint-sized you."
A comfortable silence washed over the two women, both imagining the scene in their mind's eye, picturing what their future would have been with a mixed sense of longing, regret, and surprisingly, hope.
"We're going to be okay Britt, I know we will. We have been through hell and back in the past five years, and if that has taught me anything, it's that what we have can't be touched – it can't be broken. Maybe we didn't plan for things to happen like this, but I know, with everything I have, that if we face this together, we'll come out on the other side stronger. We'll keep living, without ever forgetting this moment, the life that we never had the opportunity to help grow, because we weren't meant to, and when we do have kids, we'll tell them about their older sister, who was just like her mom. We'll tell them about their sister, who was the epitome of an angel, who God had to keep in heaven to watch over them. We'll tell them how loved she was, even though we never had the chance to meet her. We'll tell them all of that."
When Santana finally finished, her chest significantly lighter, she found Brittany's eyes, crinkled with a soft smile, brimmed with fresh tears. "Their big sister?"
Blushing, the Latina nodded. "I know we would have had a little girl. I could feel it."
Curling into her fiancée's side, Brittany nodded as well. "Yeah, me too honey. Me too."