Ratings and disclaimers from Chapter One apply.
A/N: There is an uninvited guest in this chapter whose name was mentioned in Chapter 15. Warning up for an inexplicit and very short allusion to sex that wasn't strictly consensual.
The party was set for 7:00 and Brittany and Santana squared it with their parents by telling them that there was something Jewish going on with Rachel and they'd be home by 10:30 at the latest. Neither pair of parents believed them for a second but they gave their permission.
Although both Santana and Brittany were excited, neither of them expected much because, after all, Rachel and her dad hadn't had much time to do anything except maybe make or buy food, which would have been cool enough for both of them.
When they walked in the door they were met by Eric, Jacob, Rachel, Quinn and Judy and led down the stairs to the family/entertainment room, where they both immediately realized they'd underestimated the power of gay.
There were three enormous banners reading Mazel Tov!, Congratulations! Felicidades!
There was a spinning disco ball. There were hot and cold appetizers on a cloth-covered table, punch and soft music playing in the background.
Santana was completely stunned but she was the first to speak, as usual. "No. Like seriously. You have a disco ball?"
"Hello?" Jacob said as he enveloped her in a hug, "We're gay. As are you evidently. Mazel Tov!"
"Thank you, Jake."
He pulled away from her to hug Brittany and said, "You won't believe your cake, Brittany! I can't wait for you to see it!"
"There's a cake?"
"Of course there is! After we have appetizers and you dance with me, we'll have our dinner and then the cake."
"Wow! It's like a real party."
"Well, it's small but it's a party!"
"It's perfect," Santana said.
As they all made the rest of their greetings and congratulations, Santana looked at her Brittany, her Quinn and at her mom and at her hobbit and her dads and then looked up at the spinning disco ball. Life was spinning…and she felt tears sting her eyes and closed them. Spinning was good.
They'd had a few glasses of punch, eaten appetizers and made everyone laugh with their dancing, with which Jacob occasionally heartily took part. But he was thinking, as the consummate party planner he was, that it was nearing the time to put his entrees in the oven for the thirty minutes it would take to cook them.
That's when they heard the doorbell ring.
"Anyone expecting anyone?" Jacob said.
They all shook their heads no.
"Then I'll get it," Eric said.
When he opened the door, he found a tiny, very beautifully dressed woman he knew to be in her 70s, holding her clutch purse in one hand and a cane in the other.
He knew who she was even though they'd never met.
"I apologize for making this unannounced visit to your home, Mr. Eric Berry," She said in her heavy Russian accent.
"Not at all, Ms. Irena Sokoll. What brings you here?"
"My Brittany, of course. There is a party for someone most important to me. I am not invited but I have come to read tea leaves, so to speak."
He opened the door and allowed her in.
As they descended the stairs, everyone but Brittany was a bit over-awed, even Santana, who always felt a little fear around the woman, although she, too, had known her since she was five.
Brittany grinned and said, "Wow! Hi, Ms. Sokoll."
"Hello, malyshka."
"Thanks for coming."
The older woman shrugged, "With this news you tell me? Who could stop me?" She looked up. "This thing—this ball? It can stop spinning surely."
Jacob rushed to stop it.
"Thank you. No music. I am Russian. I have lived it and you can rarely please me with it, I promise this."
Jacob hastened to turn off the music.
"May I take a seat, Eric Berry, Jacob Berry?"
They both nodded.
She gave a ghost of a smile as she sat and said, "I know all of your names and much more about all of you than you'd believe. My Brittany has loved Santana and Quinn and Rachel nearly all of her life. She tells me everything always."
"Most of you don't know me. You know I am Irena Sokoll. You know something of me as anyone knows people in Lima, Ohio or even in the public eye as I have been all of my life. Still you know nothing. Next to no one does except for my Brittany and my Michael. And I have not even told them what I will tell you now."
She placed her purse and her cane on the seat next to her. She patted her cane. "This is an affectation, if you do not know. I am very able. I do not need a cane. But it has a short dagger concealed in it. You think what? A taser might be better for such a small woman. Yes. Of couse. Perhaps more efficient but to stab someone seems so much more personal, no?"
No one had any idea what to say to this except Brittany, who said, "Totally."
"Look at your eyes! I am not a witch, I assure you. I am more so that crone who sits on the path in a fairy tale and tells the characters something they need to hear for their journey. You see?"
The woman had everyone's complete attention.
"How to start. Perhaps it is as easy as dance. I will say I love to dance but I was found and forced to dance from the time I was four in the days when Russia was Mother Russia. You understand? You children, perhaps not. But your parents will know I mean Communist Russia. I had no choice." She shrugged, "And of course, I was groomed for Bolshoi. I was brilliant."
She glared at them as if daring them to disagree but they only nodded.
"When I was twelve, in one of the very rare times I had respite from my classes, my training, I went to a park across from our studio, which seemed like a prison, believe me. I met a man there. A man nearly as old as I am now. We talked and we fell in love. And I know what you think, with your American minds. No. Not that sort of love. He was a good and decent man. He was only kind to me. We tried to meet nearly every day or every other and sometimes we played chess, sometimes fed pigeons or sometimes just talked. The only thing ever said that you might be stupid enough to find improper?"
She stared at the floor for seconds before she continued, "He said we must have been…how did he put it…disjointed in time somehow. That it was so very unlucky we were not the same age. I remember that day like even today. It was very bright and the sky was so blue you would not believe it with no clouds and it was so cold and it was so bitter and sad and true. What he said—I could somehow almost taste it. I knew what he felt and meant and I know he knew I knew and felt it too. We did not say anything else. We smiled at each other and just threw bread to the pigeons. Remember this was in the days when we were lucky to have bread. I could not eat it to keep my weight but he seemed to have it always. You understand?
Everyone nodded again.
"It one day happened—as life does. I got a notice from someone I did not know and I rushed to hospital and he was dying. And I remember crying…" She shook her head because her eyes were welling, "Bolshoi when I danced there? You never cry. Even in agony, no crying. Smile even when your feet are bleeding. May I have a glass of punch?"
Rachel rushed to get it for her and Irena thanked her for it.
She took a sip and continued. "He told me a man in a yellow hat would wait for me in the park and there would be a note from him that I must read and burn. I said yes and he said, 'It is the man in the yellow hat for Curious George, Irena my love.' "We smiled at each other and he said, "'Are you not curious? Go. You will understand. Now and in the future. I love you and go. Please. For me, if not for you.'"
She shrugged again. "So I told him I loved him and I left and I did not watch my love die."
"I met the man in the yellow hat three days later. He gave me a letter and said, again, "'Burn this.' I agreed."
"My love told me he had left me all of his estate—but it was in America and his solicitors would hand it over to me and he knew I would know what that meant. He did not write it but it meant that I must defect. He promised me it would be worth it. What he did not write was to trust him and leave my parents and my home and everything. I did trust him. He told me one other thing. He wrote at some point I would wonder where to go next in my life and to close my eyes and hold a pin and stab it in a map. He said I would find the next love of my life there."
She took another sip of punch.
"So I defected, which was not easy or happy and what you Americans would call a very big deal that you children are too young to remember. He had not lied. He was nearly a billionaire and it was all left to me. So I was rich and could dance only because I wanted to for the first time in my life. Of course the New York City Ballet was only too happy to have me but after my career ended, I took my love's advice and stabbed a pin in a map and so it is. I am in Lima, Ohio. Where I found the one other love of my life."
Brittany smiled. "That's so totally cool. Who is it, Ms. Sokoll?"
Santana looked at Brittany and felt, through and through, she'd never loved her more. "Britts, she means you."
Brittany stared at Irena for a long time and then said something no one in the room expected, "I am so completely honored. Thank you so much. I love you so much, too." She knelt at the woman's feet.
Irena waved her hand, "The honor is mutual and I know you know what I mean."
"Of course I do, Ms. Sokoll. Like totally. But you know me. I think I'm really a checkers person and could we feed ducks?"
Irena laughed, "Of course! Then we are, what do you say, cool?"
Brittany hugged her and whispered, "Totally and always."
Jacob said, "Okay! I'm going to put the entrees in the oven. Ms. Sokoll, I hope you'll stay for our dinner."
"Irena and yes."
"Great."
"Jacob?'
"I have more to say of great import. Will your preparations need time?"
She looked so serious that he fidgeted. "They'll be thirty minutes cooking time but I can be back on a nickel."
As he scampered up the stairs, she said to Eric, "I presume that means less than five minutes?"
"Exactly."
"Ms. Sokoll?"
"Ms. Fabray. I'm Irena to everyone except the children in the room."
"Irena. How, exactly, do you know us?"
"I've taught Brittany and Michael dance since they were five years old. Santana has, naturally, been part of my life exactly as long. And your daughter doesn't know me but she's the third in all of this although she's always considered herself first, hasn't she?" She stared at Quinn, "Look at me, little girl."
Quinn did.
"You were pregnant at fifteen and you bravely carried your child to term and gave her up. I applaud you. I know that must have been wrenching. Would you imagine it was easy for me to leave everything and everyone I knew and cause an international political incident when I was fifteen years old?"
Quinn stared at her and swallowed before answering, "No ma'am.'
"It was not. It had to be done. For my life. To give me life. As you gave your child life. Surely you must understand giving a child life when you could so easily not have was brave. There is something that changes when you choose to go through suffering, not around it, Quinn Fabray. I defected from Russia to the United States when I was younger than you are now, when I would have had a life you would not believe because I was already a national superstar in my country. How do you think that felt?"
Quinn began to rock back and forth gently.
"I am asking you honestly. As I was. A fifteen year old child in the Bolshoi Ballet running from my keepers and my country and my family asking sanctuary from the United States. How do you think that felt?"
Quinn lifted her chin—being cornered always angered her. She said woodenly. "I don't know. I guess it must have sucked."
Irena laughed loudly. "Sucked describes it. Imagine the paperwork! You would not believe it!"
Quinn laughed but then her voice quieted, "I'm sorry. I'm trying to act brave and I'm saying stupid things when that's not how I feel."
"It is nothing, Acting brave works. I am saying I have just met you but I know you better than you think."
When Jacob rushed back downstairs, Irena said, "And now I will read the tea leaves."
In everyone's estimation except Brittany and Santana's, this was weird. Irena could be spooky and they both knew that.
The woman sighed, "As we all know, Brittany and Michael are going to Juilliard."
Rachel couldn't help herself, "I thought they only had pre-auditions."
Irena waved a dismissive hand, "Of course they will be admitted. I say so. You want to go too, do you not?"
Rachel nodded.
"You are admitted. It is done."
Rachel shook her head violently, "What?"
"You are in. Brittany has been sending me links to your MySpace videos for a very long time and I have forwarded them to the people who exist and I have threatened dark things and demanded your admission, which they have accepted. You must do the paperwork but it is done."
Jacob burst into tears and said, "Jesus Christ!"
Eric, who was tearing up as well, said, "Honey, you're Jewish."
"Who cares? Our babies are going to Juilliard!"
"Look at me, Rachel Berry."
"Yes, Ms. Sokoll."
"All freshman students at Juilliard must live in their dorm for one year. Brittany will not tell anyone she is married and you will be her roommate for that year, do you understand? It will be good for this Latina wife of hers to learn patience for her woman, I promise you. She is impossible."
"Ms. Sokoll!"
"Am I wrong?"
Santana crossed her arms over her chest. "No—but register me completely pissed."
"When not, my beauty?"
Santana smirked, "I always knew I was your fave after Britts and before Mike."
"You are my love's love. You get special privileges."
Santana laughed even as Rachel said, "And me?"
"Of course, you. Aren't you always first and foremost? Always? Brittany will finish her four years at the school. She can never physically be a ballerina as I was, which is where real money is to be dancing. Look at me—look at her. She is physically perfect and capable but no. There are no ballerinas shaped like her. We speak of this. We understand this. She is destined to be a world-class back-up or Broadway corps dancer for a very limited time—perhaps age 35 or 40 if she is lucky enough not to be injured. You must remember we true dancers are elite athletes and prone to disaster. I would not leave her unprotected so she will develop her other tremendous skill as a choreographer during her school training. Both she and Michael will, who will be at school for four years, as well. You will be there for at least one year, perhaps two and then you will quit to be on Broadway."
Rachel shook her head again and thought vaguely she might have ear mites, "What?"
The woman shrugged again, "I know people who would put you in shows now but you are too immature at this point."
"I am not!"
The woman gave Rachel a withering look. "I was in the Bolshoi when I was twelve, child. Do you know what happens to a girl when she wants to get ahead? Or even worse needs to as I did—for myself—for my parents? I do know—I have been you but not you. You would be doing things you would never imagine. Believe me this would happen. I have never loved anyone except Konstantine and Brittany but I've lived through sex with men I don't even remember countless times to assure my place before I was 15. So no. I have never willingly had sex of any kind. But I see the look in your eyes and can see you want what you want far too much, you virgin girl. This will never happen to you. Never. You will spend your first year with Brittany and I will look at you at 19. You need three years and then I will give you access to the people who want your talent now. But no. Not yet."
"Who are you to make that choice?"
Brittany shook her head, "Rach! Are you listening? Don't!"
Irena waved her hand at Brittany with a wry smile, "I am fine, malyshka. Who am I? Who are you, Rachel Berry?'
"What?"
"Who are you? You are nothing. You are no one. You can be and I believe will be but not yet. Who am I? I have been a prima ballerina at the Boshoi and in the New York City Ballet. I have been the best one can be in my field. I am an established artist who has suffered for it. Brittany has told me how Quinn and Santana have treated you. When I was training in the old days in sweet Mother Russia, you would beg and whine like a dog to be treated as nicely as they have treated you at their very worst. You will go to Juilliard. You deserve it or I would not support you. But believe me, the reason I'm ensuring your placement is for Brittany. Although this is true, it is no hardship to help someone I know is worthy of artistic assistance. You could get the placement on your own. I believe this. But you are such a greedy, obsessive child. You do know that about yourself, no?"
She smiled at Rachel—but it was not a happy smile.
"You should thank me, not question my judgement. Who am I? I let myself be raped time and time again before I was even 15 and not because it got me where I wanted to go which would be your goal and not to be a star, which I was already. Giving myself to men when I was a child gave my parents extra food in the good old days, as you people say. Would you ever let that happen to you solely for a role? At this moment? I look into your greedy eyes and I don't even wonder. Tell me I am wrong."
Because Quinn felt a horrified sense the woman was only too right, she stood up and said, "Just step off. Don't. I don't care about the fucking Bolshoi or what the fuck-ever—you don't hurt my girl. Who are you TO HURT MY GIRL?"
For the first time in her life Brittany stepped squarely into Quinn's space in a menacing way. "Stop yelling, Q, and don't curse at my teacher because I love you and don't want to hurt you but I can and I will."
Santana stood and said. "Times two."
"Brittany, Santana, this is fine. You ask who I am, Quinn Fabray? Who are you to curse in your elders' presence or a guest in another's home? Sit down, little girl."
Everyone reluctantly took a seat as Judy said, "I'm so sorry, Irena, for my daughter's behavior. I'm frankly shocked."
Irena shrugged. "I am not. Young love. These things happen. And your daughter, how do you put it? She is a mixed bag of tricks right now and even she knows it. There is deep truth in what I have said and that is why your daughter is angry. Let us forget that outburst and not be maudlin. I have plans. Santana I have known forever. Quinn, I know you from my Brittany. Where do you two wish for college?"
Santana said, "NYU or Columbia."
"Me, too."
"I know your grades. Brittany tells these things. Columbia I can promise on two conditions."
They stared at each other and then at her.
"You will continue to compose music, Santana."
"What?"
Rachel's short question was waved away. "Santana is a truly gifted popular music composer. She shares it with her love and with me. For me? It is like hearing a rabid dog in my ears but I know quality, of its sort, when I hear it. She, too, will not finish college. She will loom large in the music business."
Irena stared at Quinn. "You will go to Columbia and study whatever deadly and sensible thing you believe will be good for you like business but you will minor in theater."
Quinn laughed. "Are you kidding me?"
"I am not. You have been acting all of your life. And now my Brittany tells me you are learning to stop acting, which is the only way to be an actor and a human. I have known great actors who were great humans. They knew the difference. Have you looked in the mirror? You are one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen. Use it for money, child, in a way that is artistically and personally respectable."
"I don't want to act."
"I did not say you had to. I said you had to minor in theater in order for my ensuring Columbia. It is as easy as that. I hold the cards. Say yes and it is done."
Quinn swallowed, hard, and said, "Yes."
"That was difficult for you, was it not?"
"Very."
"Bullies never like to be bullied, do they?"
Quinn glared at her, "No."
"It is merely fear, child. It will go away. I know this. I see it will happen for you."
Everyone in the room nearly stopped breathing.
"How?"
"You will stop acting and you will start living. You are already on your path and you will find it will be easier and easier just to breathe. I have felt it in myself. You will too. This I can promise you."
Quinn smiled at her, "I apologize for cursing at you. It was disrespectful and unwarranted."
Irena grinned, "A little warranted—I was poking at your love with a sharp stick. She is very strong—as strong as I was at her age. But I wish someone had given me strong medicine in my past. No half measures with Rachel. I will not have her defiled by her ambition. It is a danger for her until she is older. And now, although this punch is delicious I need vodka—does it exist in this house?"
"Of course," Jacob said.
"Excellent. We should all have a shot of it."
"But—"
"These children can handle one or even two shots of vodka—after all this talk? It is good for them, occasionally. It thins their blood."
Although he knew they had the vodka, Eric was incredibly surprised they had enough shot glasses for the toast.
He and Jacob brought them down with a chilled bottle of Stoli and poured them.
Eric handed them around, "Madame Sokoll, the toast?"
She lifted her glass, "To Brittany and Santana who were paired before they were even born, as God intended. And to all of us who love them and will support them in their union."
After they tipped their glasses, everyone smiled.
"You see? I told you. Vodka is good. In moderation and without carrots, Rachel."
"Quinn! You told you her?"
Irena shrugged again, "Of course not. Quinn told Brittany and I know all. A second round. I am Russian. It will not hurt them."
Eric filled their glasses.
Irena shouted, "To Rachel!"
"To Rachel!"
"Dad?"
"Baby?"
"Turn on the disco ball, please."
He rushed to do so.
As it spun, Rachel said, "To all of us."
They looked up at the lights and the magic of just existing.
Jacob said, "Almost time for food!"
Irena responded, "This is good. I am as hungry as a bitch wolf. I don't know what will happen if I don't eat soon."
Brittany said, "You'll be okay."
"You have always been a hopeful child."
Brittany answered quietly and used her name for the first time, "I'm not your child, Irena. I am more than that and thank you."
They looked at each other and Irena said, "Just so. Am I not lucky?"
"Me too."
And as the ball moved and cast flickering light upon them all, they drank.