Just another 19(!) year old girl: Hi Mary! I'm so glad to hear from you, after all you were a big part of the squad that made these chapters possible. It was a bit of a sliding door moment when a few of you beautiful unicorns encouraged me JUST at the right moment. I had something to say but needed a little bit of help to say it, and from what you guys gave to me I managed to add around 50k (in 3 chapters) to the story. So I'd say your words were perfect, and I'm the one that should be thanking you! I'm not superhuman, but all the other writers might be :) I'd never heard Komorebi before but I absolutely love it. I will try to work that one into conversation. I love Japan and the Japanese people they are SO nice, I've been there and I felt like I could even leave money on the ground and a nice local would run after me and return it, they are just that kind. Sending so much love back, from all of us, and a very Happy Birthday for when you turned 19 :) I wish I could buy you a butterbeer :)

P.S I will do that! Another ride that I can't believe that I managed to get on was the Snow White Mine Train in DisneyWorld, Shaylen took me on that because I just HAD to see the dwarves at the end no matter what, and the in-ride picture of me holding onto her in sheer terror is hilarious. I guess I'm not a thrill seeker, haha.
P.P.S Gosh that would be a chaotic YouTube channel :P I think that would come out like the Fondue for Two show, haha. I guess 'never say never' though right? After all, I never thought that I would be able to do this update.

Guest: You're so welcome, and thank you so much for what you said. It means so much to both Santana and I, that we can reach out to people this way. Sending you our very best thoughts and hoping that your struggles become much less. You're definitely not alone in how you feel. Also, I can't believe you read it in just a week, that's incredible!

becauseofbooks: Hi J, what a lovely thing to say :) I'm not sure I've ever been called an artist before. That's something I usually think of "Santana" as, because her draws these incredibly powerful pictures when she gets the time, but now that I think of it you're right there can be art and power behind words too :)
I think you might be the youngest OG reader that I know of. I knew of a couple of 15 year olds at the time, but being 13 back then, wow that is young! But you know, I understand what you mean because when I was that age there was nothing written that I could get a hold of at the time that showed a person of my age struggling. And that's a shame, because 13 year olds are smart and mature enough to not be talked down to, or have subjects/content watered down. Sometimes it's even what they need. I'm so glad that what I wrote helped you back then, that really means the world to me. I'm wishing you the absolute best with your psych degree, you've got this, and if I can say something to you that was once said to me - I think you will go far. Lots of love right back at you. :)

LaurylBerrington: Oh, I'm so glad that I was able to pull you back in here to read it all over again, it's always so special to have stayed in someone's mind after such a long time. You're so very welcome, thank you, and I'm wishing you the very best too :)

Unpredictable: I will tell her that, thank you so much. And, please know that what happened to you was absolutely not your fault either. It doesn't matter if it was 'less' than what "Santana" went through, it is still just as valid. Your experience is just as important, and so are you. Sometimes when Santana struggles with the word victim, I remind her that to be a 'victim' is also to be a 'survivor.' You survived, you were stronger than what tried to hurt you, and for that you should be so proud of yourself...
In Santana's case, "Puck" changed little by little, like she told me once that she doesn't know exactly where to draw the line. He was a nice guy at the start, then he was awful, but when did one become the other? It's so confusing when that happens because when he started changing she was already invested in him, she loved him, thought he loved her too, and so she thought that what he's doing surely had to be right. She was so determined to make herself feel *okay* about it, that she ignored her own needs and feelings, and in doing so she did start to feel like a zombie, which sounds quite similar to what you mentioned, like someone who was being remote-controlled.
I bet I'm not the only one here who would say good on you for getting out, and also that you did well to get through this chapter because I knew it would be a VERY hard read for anyone with any kind of similar experience. You are far stronger than you know.
And thank you for that beautiful wish for us. I completely agree, and appreciate so much that you feel that way. You take care, okay?

XxZxX: Oh my goodness we have so much in common, I'm so glad that you could relate to my words and experiences, to me that means I've done something right!
And hindsight is 20/20 right? "Santana" always says that. I feel the same, if I'd told my younger self that I would go on to actually survive spending my entire 20s without Santana I would never have believed it, no matter what anyone said. I think we always just do the best that we can at the time. I really hope you like this update, and I'm a bit sad too that it's the last one, for now anyway, life is unexpected and maybe I'll be lucky enough to have a reason to come back :)

Valiente21: Hi Val :) the pleasure is all mine, I will miss getting to read your thoughts through these reviews! Once again you are right on the money with your comments, I really loved what you said about unconditional love, because it is so true. You really would think that making any kind of connection with someone after 10 years apart would be impossible, but you know what? That was what Axel said when he first saw us together, he waited until he and I were alone and he said "Hey, you know she has an unconditional love for you, right?" He thought that that was beautiful. It really is a beautiful and special thing, one that I appreciate every day.
I really wasn't sure how everyone would take the last chapter because it had such dark content, but I feel like you were able to look past that and see all the positives and that's not an easy thing to do. Thank you so much for being proud of us. I really hope that this chapter does not disappoint. Sending you love from both of us, you take care.

Miara848: Hi Miara :) First I am SO happy that you got into your Master's program. You really deserve it! We are so, so happy for you! And literature! Do you write stories too, or do you prefer to read them? It's so crazy that I'm writing about this topic right now, and you're about to specialize and study it. That's so amazing, I'd love to read your coming thesis. I think you really will make a difference because you care and you're very intelligent, a winning combination. I met you when you were really young, but you've always shown so much insight and maturity.
I've personally encountered very little on the topic of child sexual abuse. For something that happens so (sadly) often, there isn't a lot out there in the mainstream, at least that I know of. I read the books of Jaycee Dugard when I was trying to understand what had happened to Santana. And on the subject of just girlhood, I really liked Mara Wilson's autobiography, she was really down to earth about her experiences growing up. She played Matilda, back in the day. Feel free to hit me up anytime and I'll tell you anything and everything I know about what books are out there, after all I'm a librarian now, or more likely hopefully I soon will be :)

Don't feel embarrassed at all, I think I especially tried really hard to portray any even tiny positive thing about him (I think) because I didn't want to be a sore loser, you know? Because they were together then, and she wasn't with me.
In those early chapters it was SO tempting (and easy) to write nasty things about him and have everyone hate him, but at the time I felt like that would be petty and I didn't want to be that person. So I went the complete opposite way and tried to include anything and everything that seemed remotely nice, and give him all of the benefits of the doubt.
It's so hard to work out if you hate someone because you're jealous, or if they are genuinely awful and worth hating like he is. He always made me feel like I had a problem with jealousy, like that he was the kind and patient one, and I was the immature jealous kid that wouldn't let Santana be happy. I still catch myself wondering if I'm a jealous person to this day sometimes, and I think that comes from all the things he used to say to me. So what I'm saying is that if you thought he was a bit nice then it wasn't your fault, it was mine, because I was no doubt trying SO hard to put him in the best possible light, and it wasn't like I could remember the real terrible stuff back then either.

Also, we're wicked proud of you for coming to terms with being a bi-corn, that was all you, but if we helped a little on the way then that means the world to us :)
Oh and koala hugs, omg, have you ever held one!? They are SO soft, like teddy bear soft. I have, but I'm pretty sure Santana hasn't, I must remedy that!
*sending you all the koala hugs back and also some bicorn strength ones too, because bi-corns truly are awesome *

P.S. Thank you for saying that it wasn't Santana's fault, every single voice who tells her this makes an impact.

P.P.S I will miss you too! This couple of chapters went SO fast. But I won't be far :)

P.P.P.S (and this is my last one, I swear :p) I really hope that you like this chapter :)

broken-timemachine: Hi my friend :) Thank you so much as always for your kind words and support, it really helps so much to have another voice (more than just mine) saying that it wasn't Santana's fault, because when she has doubt I can say that's it's not just me that sees it. It gives weight to it I guess, having others with the same opinion behind me.
You know I'm going to have to watch Glee all over again and see if I can FINALLY see the Puck character for who he is. I couldn't see it when I watched the whole thing (or as many seasons that had been out at the time) while to writing this story, everything he did just seemed normal to me. All will be well if I can now correctly identify him as a piece of shit. I don't think that the "Puck" we knew used to use protection either, something about it 'ruining his sexual experience.' It is SO wrong that the show didn't portray him as a villain if he did things like that! Feel free to vent though anytime, and you take care, I hope that you like reading this one :)

acewritergirl: OMG, I loved your comment. Now you won't know what I mean until you've read all the way to the end of this chapter, but I laughed SO hard because I got this image in my head of you coming up to us, and then like a hero in an Olympic torch relay race, placing a certain penis on 'The Puck Pile.' Let it burn, right? :) I should write you in as a guest star :)
Also it means so much to me that you feel like my thoughts are understandable, for so many years I had zero ability to communicate any of my thoughts at all, and to be told that I've reached the point of universal understand-ability is so important to me.
I've got my fingers crossed on that one too, especially if it means I get to see more of you guys :)

siwon666: You are an absolute champion. I was absolutely terrified to upload that last chapter for so many reasons, the biggest being that I wondered if everyone would feel like I did okay in handing those conversations with Santana. When she first opened up to me it was a super tense moment, like if I screwed up and said anything that (even by pure accident) sounded like judgement, then she would most likely close back up and never talk about the events of the last chapter ever again. I wrote the conversations exactly as they happened, and I knew you guys would be fair and honest and tell me whether you thought I had said the right things or not.
And so while I was pacing around like a tiger in a cage after uploading it, you were the very first responder on the scene, the very first person to reassure me. Thank you for getting to me so quickly. I remember letting out the biggest breath that I had been holding when I first read your review. And you're proud of us? That's so very kind, I won't ever forget that :) I really hope that you like this chapter. Sending you lots of love from both myself and Santana.

Also if Flor is out there somewhere, I just wanted to tell you that I'm thinking of you and I miss you, and I hope that you are smiling right now and living out all your dreams. Sending you my love :)

I also just wanted to say that I'm so sorry to anyone I lost touch with over the years, especially in the time when I was not well on the mental health side of things just after I finished the story. It's a shame that I am not able to remember much of 2014, because I received so many beautiful letters then.

And just like the last chapter, there is a trigger warning because we do talk about "Santana's" past sexual abuse in the process of her healing.

You guys, this is a really long one!

Thank you to my beautiful and talented friend, Julia for providing me with music while I edited this. :)

Oh, and if you want to listen to it while you read, the song I feature in this is Adele's "When We Were Young."

Chapter 30 – Platinum

Brittany S. Pierce, Present

I didn't notice it right away, but sooner or later it became clear that she had fought a kind of war, and won.
In a way, what she had gone through was not unlike stories of being kidnapped and held in captivity. I once read a book called "Caging Skies" about a Jewish girl in WW2 who was locked up by this guy for years, as he had told her that his side had won the war and it wasn't safe to leave.

Puck told Santana many similar things.

He told her that nobody and nowhere was safe but with him, especially in those early days. Everyone else was 'against them' or 'out to get them' and would 'put him in jail' and didn't 'understand' them. Puck controlled her, emotionally, physically and financially. He manipulated her into losing all of her friends and family. He separated her from everyone. Santana was so young at the time that he was able to convince her easily that this was real love.

She told me: "Sometimes people believe that they are showing love by caging people up, but it's not real love. It is just this thing pretending to be love. And, it can feel so much like it is real love, like this person wants to keep you forever, keep you safe, stop other people from hurting you... that has to be love, right?
Except that it really is just selfishness on their part. They don't want to keep you forever; they want you there when it is convenient for them. They don't want to keep you safe; they want to stop you experiencing anything else in case you decide you like it better and want to leave. They don't care about other people hurting you; they only care about them stealing you. But, I swear they do it thinking it is the right thing to do, and that's what love is. But it's not."

I find that when this conversation comes up, people talk a lot about the psychology of the manipulator, but what about the dark side of what happens to the victim?
When you go through an experience like this (especially at a really young age) it changes you. You learn certain behaviors, and you do things that you would never have done otherwise, in the process of just trying to survive.
Feeling powerless, Santana would look for ways to exploit Puck to 'get him back.' Make no mistake, he completely deserved it, but all the same, revenge is never a healthy thing to be lost in. She said that she spent over $100,000 of his money on stuff she didn't need. There were many times that she was put in difficult situations and acted callously, pretending she didn't care about other people. She ended up copying some of his traits. She was after all, around him 24/7.
It is very sad when this happens, because it's like a little bit of evil bleeds into the victim. When it's all over, that person then has to go and 'unlearn' everything, and it's so hard.

When I saw Santana I could see that she had done that. The traces of Puck that had been in her last time I saw her, were now gone.
When I told her that, she was self-aware enough to know exactly what I meant.
And then she cried. She hadn't been sure if she really had been strong enough to overcome it.
You did it, Santana. You won the war.
I am so proud of you.

Brittany S. Pierce, December 2020 – April 2021

"Brittany, do you remember why I ran out into the street one night while I was living in New York? I think I remember a phone being thrown through a wall. And then I remember screaming my head off, and people trying to help me. Puck chased me for several blocks and then dragged me back home. Why was I screaming? And whose phone was thrown, did he throw his, or did he throw mine?"
Santana had stopped what she was doing to turn around and ask Brittany that question, as soon as she saw her walk back inside the farmhouse.

It was early in the morning. Brittany had been running around outside, laying out the grain for the chickens and ducks, and then collecting their eggs which was one of her absolute favorite things to do. Her cheeks were flushed, and her hair was wild from taking care of the animals at triple excited levels of speed. Twenty-five eggs today, the girls had been laying well. She had been hoping that today would be the day that one of the ducks would let her give them some love but no, she would have to continue to woo them, and hope.

She set down her basket of eggs gently on the table, and turned to Santana, giving her all of her full attention.
"I do remember that. Let me think a moment and get back to you?" The question that Santana had asked was clearly an important one.
Maybe we'll have another breakthrough today, Brittany thought.

"Okay." Santana went back to cleaning the table. At least there were no mice around right now. Mice plagues were unfortunately just the farm life. She had seen one the other day, and Brittany had fallen in love with it Cinderella-style and named it Gus-Gus. Axel had removed the mouse and taken him to a very nice burrow outside where he would be safe from Loki the cat, and Santana was now keeping everything extra clean just in case, sweeping and vacuuming with extra gusto.
Brittany had told her that Gus-Gus had friends named Jaq, Bert, Mert and Mary, and under no circumstances did Santana want to meet them.

This style of conversation between them was now easy and familiar. Their last days together during Brittany's first visit had shown steady progress. Santana would reveal her half-memories, and found that most of the time Brittany knew the rest of the story, often able to repeat back entire conversations from the time, verbatim. Memories of all kinds kept returning to Brittany in abundance. Sometimes it even hurt, like too much was trying to squeeze back in her brain at the one time.

Santana knew without a doubt as soon as she heard Brittany speaking using the tones of other people's voices (and sometimes even Santana's own) that everything she was saying was completely legit. She called it a kind of 'magic' that Brittany could do that. Brittany thought the fact that Santana could cook and had every practical life skill ever known to mankind was a kind of magic. They were happy to 'argue' over whose magic was better, Santana said Brittany's was, and Brittany wholeheartedly believed in Santana's.

When Brittany's memories came back in the form of more dreams or nightmares, she would run into Santana's room and they would sit up late into the night going through many tears and tissues remembering forgotten scary and sad times together.
It was a completely different experience for them both. Memories returned to Santana in skeleton form, like they had decayed over the years. Brittany's came back as if they had been in the freezer all this time, and she could recount the events like they had been yesterday. Santana found that through Brittany's clearer recollections she could flesh out her own skeletons to resemble something more solid.

It was nearly Christmas now. After Brittany had gone home in July, they had continued to deconstruct the past through calling each other, though it had to be during a spare minute when Santana didn't have exams or excessive amounts of homework. Santana's school schedule didn't allow much time for socializing, though they always spent as much time together as they could. As soon as she knew that she would have no classes or work experience placements over Christmas due to COVID, Santana had called her and asked if she could please come and stay with her for the Christmas season in December?

Brittany was glad to be back, and had re-entered the farm life with much enthusiasm, remembering all the things she had learned from last time.
Her family had laughed when she had come home raving on about rain and tank water, chicken feed and cooking lessons, but honestly she had truly enjoyed herself. Maybe she was a farm girl at heart too.

Something she hadn't mentioned to her family was that she had also learned how to roll cigarettes. She hadn't smoked them herself. After all, Santana (and Axel) had only told her a billion times over to never ever get started. She just rolled them (at first) to see if she could, and then to help the rest of the household out at times when they had their hands full. She was opposite handed to Santana, so she did it the reverse way to how she did. They had been pretty impressed with her first attempt; it had actually been usable. Santana said that her own first attempt had looked like a German sausage. She had learned how to use a lighter too. There was a certain art to it, especially when the safety was on. She had never held one before, and making the flame was kind of fun.

She knew that Santana wanted to quit. It was a true addiction that she now regretted starting. But in all the times she'd tried, she found she couldn't cope without them. Axel hated it that Santana was now as addicted as he was. He had started when he was a child and didn't hold out much hope in quitting, but he had never wanted the same for his partner.

Brittany just accepted them both as they were, knowing that they were doing the best that they could do right now. And so, she rolled another for Santana when she asked, and thought over how to phrase her answer to the aforementioned question.

"It was your phone, not his, and he was the one that threw it. You told me this not long before you left. He threw it hard enough for it to go through the wall because you were texting Sam, after he had told you never to talk to him again. You were about to go back and visit your mom in Lima, and you started texting some of us to say you were coming. He went through your phone, saw the texts, and went crazy. You were scared, so you took off running. You hadn't been living in NY for very long, and it's huge. You didn't know your way around, and it must have been scary running through the streets without knowing where you were going. You met some nice guys though, they offered to help you, but Puck caught up with you and forced you to tell them that you were okay. He was really annoyed with you at the time, like he was completely gaslighting you and acting like you were crazy. Like you were the one that had the problem. He overpowered you and dragged you back home."

Suddenly it all came flooding back. "Thanks, Britt. That all sounds right. He was pretty pissed when I flirted with Sam. Even though he was bringing home girls to sleep with like every other night."

"I know, right? I don't blame you for trying to get him back."

"At first, he even kind of encouraged it, like he got off on me being with other guys. I'd tried saying no when he brought other girls home, but no seemed to mean nothing, he'd either force me to join in, or I'd spend the night under my desk listening to them have sex. So decided that if he got to do that, then so did I. Sam was so innocent, and so safe. I'm so sorry now that I ever brought him into it. But we're good now, he's even friends with Axel."

"I'm glad. You know, I do remember that time when you came back to visit. You were sad but you found me on the beach, and then we found a 'good place.'"

"We did. But then I had to go back. He said that if I came back, then he'd be faithful to me. But in the time that I'd been gone, he'd managed to acquire five new girlfriends and a bunch of sidepieces."

Brittany grimaced.

Santana sighed. "I don't know why I believed him for a second, in retrospect. Probably because he knew that I wouldn't come back to his harem. But, by the time I realized that he wasn't going to stop, I was stuck. I was in New York, and I'd burned all my bridges in Lima, fucked things up with you, and I felt like I had nowhere else to go."

"You always have somewhere to go," Brittany said, looking up and meeting her eyes.

"I know that now, but back then I felt so lost. You saw me try to kill myself again in your dream, didn't you?"

"Yes, I did."

"I'm not sure why I did that."

"Because you found out about all his girls. That was a lot. And there was no one around that could help you."

"That makes sense. I smashed my prom photo, and that time it was definitely me who threw it."

Brittany nodded, she remembered smashing the photo as-Santana in her dreams. But she had never known why the other girl had hated that photo so much. She voiced the question out loud.

"Oh, I hated prom night," Santana answered. "And, I was terrified to go home because I knew what was coming. That was one of the worst nights of my life. I just wanted to be with you. Not even doing anything, just with you. I felt the exact same way the night I came back to New York. I smashed that photo, and then I tried again, the same way as I had before."

"Another two thousand pills?"

"Something like that. I'm not even sure. I had built up a tolerance to them because of how many I took on a regular basis. So, to actually overdose I had to take a lot. I used to take twelve pain pills, twelve times a day in high school, every other day. I used to walk home and buy a bag full at a time because the store down the road at the time had no limit. I guess I was trying to self-medicate?"

"I knew you were taking too much, but I had no idea it was that many. But, maybe it saved you in the end because you were so used to them?"

"Maybe it did. I didn't tell you because you would have tried to stop me. When I overdosed in New York, Puck barely seemed to care. I think he just got me ipecac from the drugstore."

They let the ghosts of the memories hang between them for a moment. Brittany took a few deep breaths to try and calm the rage she felt at Puck. Santana seemed calm, just thoughtful. Her anger over the situation had truly faded, a long time ago.

Brittany wasn't there yet.
Still feeling the need to 'do something' with all her adrenaline, she spoke. "Santana, I want you to know that I have evidence."

"What?" Santana looked around wildly, as if Brittany were about to pull out a ghost from her hat.

"Way back when we were fifteen, way back at the start of all this he used to talk to us on MSN Messenger sometimes, do you remember?"

"Kind of, maybe?" It rang a bell, but Santana couldn't recall any details.

"We hadn't known him that long at the time, but he worked fast. Within a couple of weeks of him knowing of us, he was dating you, and I was suddenly hearing from everyone had he wanted to sleep with us both. I thought that was really weird. While he'd spent some time with you, he hadn't even met me in person yet. My mom had been on another ground-Brittany-for-her-every-move kick at the time."

"She did that a lot," Santana agreed. That, she could never forget. Being banned from Brittany all the time had been hell.

"Right? But anyway, it was after school one day and you were chatting to me online, and you invited him into the conversation. That was hardly a big deal in those days because you pretty much always invited guys into our conversations, and then we'd do the 'you-go/we-go' thing and flirt in front of them because we were hot shit. And those guys always thought it was about them, but really we just liked the flirting with each other part, or at least I did. I could care less about who else was there."

Santana laughed. "Yeah, that sounds very familiar."

"Well, when Puck came into our conversation, we starting doing that. I didn't really see any difference between him and just another lame teenage boy, until he started talking about putting us in handcuffs and tying us up. He used all these pretty graphic sexual descriptions. He went on, and on. Honestly at the time my eyes just kind of glazed over because I didn't understand much of it. You told me it was normal. So, at the time I kind of thought it was just another boy thing."

Brittany paused for emphasis and gathered her breath. "But here's the thing, I've read the law. It says that 'exposing people under sixteen to inappropriate sexual content' is a punishable offence. He did that. He also stated in the conversation that he was twenty-eight, and was well aware that you were fifteen, and not only that but he talked about being your boyfriend. The age difference clearly turned him on, so he even bragged about it."

Santana nodded to encourage her. She wasn't sure where this was going. What had Brittany been up to?

"A couple of days later I had this really bad feeling, and maybe some clarity? I came back online when you weren't there. I threatened him. I told him that he better not hurt you, or else."

"That was very sweet Britt."

"The gist of it was pretty much just me comparing him to a shark, but all the same I actually think I rattled him more than I let on. At the time he laughed me off and said I was being silly and jealous and that you were happy, and I should just let you be happy. He said that me doing this was 'cute.' But all the same he never talked to me online in places that could leave a paper trail ever again."

"Was that around the time when he stopped me from calling you? He totally cut us off for a while."

"I think so. But anyway, that day I saved all the conversations I'd had with him up until that moment in a folder on my computer marked 'evidence' in case I would ever need it, because I had a really, really bad feeling. Back in those days you could go into your MSN computer files and download like a non-editable page of all contact had with a particular person so far, including group chats, so it has you too. It's very official. It's actually called an XML document, whatever that means. It has his name and email address all over it. Plus the date down to the day, hour, minute and exact second that the conversation occurred. It's solid proof via a simple check of our birth certificates that it happened when we were underage, and through the comments he made that he knew it. I've carried it everywhere with me over the years, from computer to laptop, to USB. Even though many times I thought that maybe I was just being silly, something told me never to delete it. I have a photo as well. You're fifteen in it, and he's kissing you."

"Okay, now I'm impressed. It was very smart of you to keep a record, Britt. I can't believe you even have that."

"I know he's not in the country right now. I've been tracking him. He's hiding somewhere in Europe, but if he ever comes back, I'm sure that we have enough to get him at least checked out by the police."

"I bet he still has underage nude pictures of me as well," Santana said. "If we got them to take us seriously and they investigated him, they would surely find something."

"Me too. I'd put money on it. So if you ever felt like it was the right time to press charges against him, we could do that."

"But you're still friends with his sister, right?"

"Doesn't matter," Brittany's tone was firm and final. "The right thing to do, is the right thing to do, even if it makes other people mad. I'd be right there with you, and I'd support you the entire way. I'm not saying that you have to do it, I'm just saying that if it ever felt like the right time, and like it was something you felt like you needed to do, you do have the option. It's not too late."

A few days later while peeling some vegetables in the midst of another cooking lesson, Brittany had another flashback, and this time she was the one with the questions.
She dropped the peeler on the table.

Santana looked over at her face, and then put down hers too, and waited for Brittany to tell her what was on her mind. They took the moments as they came, talking them out right away as they happened, then they retired them and moved on together. She was confident that this time would be no exception.

"Santana he used to get you to do 'pretend' rape role-plays with him, right? And then one time it was … even more real… because you were crying and shaking. You got lost in it. And then he even asked if you wanted to stop which he didn't normally do, but that time you said no?"

Santana nodded, sitting down on one of the kitchen chairs. She knew that seeing her like that would have scared Brittany.
"Yes, there was definitely a big 'rape culture' in that house. Lots of rape porn and 'role-play.'" She punctuated the word with air quotes. "I actually submitted to that idea pretty easily."

"You kind of used it as a new way of self-destructing?" Brittany guessed.

"Something like that. And it required no decision on my part. In fact, I wasn't even supposed to be making the decision. I didn't have to decide whether to have sex, or whether I liked it - because that wasn't the point. In fact, quite often I wasn't allowed to like it."

Brittany suddenly closed her eyes. "He hit you here?" she asked hesitantly, touching Santana's face.

"Yes." It helped to have it out in the open. As Brittany said, you were as sick as your secrets.

"You're going to take my whole cock because that's all you're good for." Brittany said all in a rush, the words coming out almost on top of each other.

"Yes." Identifying the beast within the blur-that-had-been-her-mind was hard, but it was definitely helping. "He used to say that a lot. Then he'd swear at me to stop orgasming. This was just after he'd just been telling me that I liked being fucked, and that he was going to make me cum because I couldn't help myself. Of course, that made the confusion even more confusing, and the more that I decided that I wasn't okay with it, the more drugs he'd give me until I submitted."

Brittany still had her eyes tightly closed. She moved her fingers up to Santana's mouth. "He peed on you here," she said quietly. "You didn't like it."

"No, I didn't like it. But he did that many times."

Brittany leaned down and hugged Santana. "It doesn't make me see you any different."

"I'm glad it doesn't." She hugged Brittany back, like she was a lifeboat in a dark sea. Together they held each other, and Brittany closed her eyes, listening to a song playing in her head. She wondered if Santana could hear it too.

Everybody loves the things you do
From the way you talk to the way you move
Everybody here is watching you
'Cause you feel like home
You're like a dream come true

Brittany opened her eyes and looked Santana over. Her eyes had lost her focus. Santana had warned her that every now and then she could completely 'lose her shit' and start covering up windows and screaming. Brittany didn't want her to get anywhere near that kind of feeling on her watch.
She knew when Santana needed to get pulled out of the past. She was doing extremely well, and getting the timeline of her abuse straight in her head seemed to be helping her a great deal. But she knew that everyone needed regular breaks to recharge. No matter how strong they are, she thought.

Peeling these onions would have to wait.

She grabbed Santana's hand. "Hey, let's go looking for Santa again? I think we've still got a few more boxes." Or maybe a few dozen.

The hunt for Abuelo's Santa decoration really should not have been this hard. After all it was huge, hardly a needle in a haystack. It took up about half of a large-sized moving box, all on its own. Yet, it had proven impossible to find.

Santana hadn't celebrated Christmas in roughly about eleven years. And, it had been even longer than that since anything had 'felt' like Christmas to her. She'd had a fuck-Christmas attitude for a while, but Brittany and Axel could tell that it was all for show, and had decided to team up to surprise her with a Christmas tree.

Axel had found the perfect tree and had hidden it as a surprise in the back of his work van. Not wanting such a pretty tree to be bare, over several very late nights Brittany had made dozens of decorations out of pipe cleaners, beads, foam and glitter. She was experienced with crafts from her time working at the clinic.
Santana had loved them. They had both made themselves dizzy spinning themselves round and round the tree, while trying to wrap it in tinsel.

"Yeah, that's a good idea. I hope we can find him. I still can't even believe that I actually have a tree this year!" Santana said, cheering up slightly, and letting Brittany pull her over to the next room.
The farm still had a large assortment of moving boxes that had never been unpacked in several corners of all the rooms. Some belonged to Santana or Axel, and some others had belonged to Maria who had abandoned most of her belongings before she had moved away and got a job on a cruise ship. Most things that Maria wanted had already been reclaimed. Neither she, nor Santana had any idea as to what was in most of what was left.

"I'm so glad that you loved the ornaments that I made," Brittany said, a little shyly.

"I really do. The reindeer was even anatomically correct." Santana smiled at the memory. Brittany had created a 3D model of a reindeer completely out of pipe cleaners, and had not forgotten his antlers, nor his genitalia. "Only you would do that Britt!"

"Accuracy is everything," Brittany told her. "And Abuelo's angel looks just perfect at the top."

"It really does."

The angel was the catalyst that had begun the treasure hunting in the first place. Its location had been known, kept in a special box in Santana and Axel's room, though as soon as they had pulled it out, they had both wondered why Santa wasn't in there too. In the same box as the angel had been some cards and drawings that Brittany had given her over the years. Brittany had been floored. She had been so certain that Santana would have thrown them all out a very long time ago. She was still learning new sides to this woman. She'd had no idea that such a side existed that was so sentimental.

Together, they lifted down another box from the stack, and with well practiced teamwork they knelt down on the floor and sliced the tape open.

"Santa?" They asked at the same time, peering in.

"No, no Santa," Brittany decided, after poking around a bit. Opening a box every time conversations got too heavy was one of her better ideas, and Santana hadn't seemed to have caught on to it yet. Or if she has, she hasn't said anything, Brittany thought.

"This is a 'school' related box," Santana concluded, looking it over. She pulled out an expensive looking silver desk clock which featured the emblem of their high school. "Why do I have this?"

"That was given to you by Mr Macauley," Brittany told her. "He was your language arts teacher, in our Sophomore year. He really believed in you. When we found out that he was leaving the school suddenly, we went to his office to say goodbye, and he had just been given that by the principal for his excellence in teaching. He didn't want to leave without giving you something. He gave you that gift, to let you know that he thought you were smart and talented and that he never wanted you to give up on your gifts."

"I'm so glad we're going through this together, Britt, because I would never have known that, but that's so nice." Santana smiled. She did remember Mr Macauley, he had been her all-time favorite high school teacher. Brittany hadn't ever been lucky enough to be placed in one of his classes. If she had, he may well have encouraged her too. The teacher that she'd had that same year had failed her on every single creative writing task that she'd tried.

They dug a little deeper. There was a stack of cards that Brittany didn't recognize. She could see large sprawling writing, clearly done by the hands of very young children.

"Wow," Santana said. "These are cards from my classmates in first grade, before I moved schools and met you."

"Wishing you good luck and stuff?"

"Yeah!"

Brittany opened one and read it out. "Hi Santana, good luck at your new school, I hope Lizzie will be okay. Love Jessica"

Brittany giggled. She knew perfectly well who Lizzie was, it was a badass plastic 'Whiptail' lizard that Santana had carried around in her pocket as a child. She had sworn her eternal love to Brittany back in the day by giving her its twin. Both girls still had them.

Brittany picked up the next card, and trying not to laugh read it out too. "Dear Santana, at your new school make lots of friends and I hope Lizzie gets a boyfriend."
The next couple of cards all said something similar. Unable to hold it back, Brittany shrieked with laughter. "Santana look at this! You had an entire class convinced that a plastic lizard was real!"

"Sounds like me," Santana laughed with her.

The next box was an 'Abuelo related box' and so they spent the rest of the afternoon looking at history. It was full of all kinds of interesting things, like vintage pencil sharpeners in the shape of old-fashioned cannons and ships, and books that dated way back to 1899. They had fun making up stories and predictions about who the items had belonged to, many of their guesses coming from what they'd already learned through searching other boxes earlier that week.
It was amazing how much history could be uncovered about the life that this man had lived, before he had married Santana's Abuela. Some of the items that they were holding had clearly passed through many generations. Her grandfather had fathered many children, some who had sadly died young.

They followed every trail, piecing together as much new knowledge about him as they could. Brittany was sure that if he had lived to see Santana as an adult, he would have told her all of this himself, and more. It was very sad that he'd been taken before he'd had a chance. Santana had told her once that she'd give anything just to spend one more day with him. This wasn't as good as that, but it was as close as they could get.
Brittany was glad for that. She could see that reconnecting to the past, and to her family and loved ones was another form of healing for Santana, and so she was all for it.

Leaving no stone unturned in their quest for Santa, Brittany sliced open a box that claimed to be 'kitchen stuff', and then after a minute of digging her eyes went wide and she handed Santana an old photo album without words.

"I had no idea this even existed!" Santana exclaimed in awe. For looking back them suddenly, was Santana smiling widely as a child, in the arms of her Abuelo.

Brittany felt lucky and honored that she had been the one to find it.

It had always been thought that there would never be any more photos of him to be found. Santana had a folder on her computer where she kept all the pictures that had been scanned for his funeral, but it had been close to fifteen years since any had been added.

In the bottom of a box was a piece of paper that Santana had held onto ever since she was a toddler. On it, "I love you, Tana" was written by her Abuelo to her, using an inking set that they had obviously been testing together. Under it, she had written "I love you" back. It was beautifully done, especially considering the fact that she had probably been no more than three years old at the time.

"We need to frame this," Brittany said smiling.

The next day they had gone into town together, hunting for the perfect frame. The eighth store that they tried finally had it, and Brittany had bought it for her for Christmas. With great care the message had been mounted and framed, and was now on the shelf behind the fully decorated Christmas tree.

Santana stood in front of it staring at the tree, and then reached out a finger and gently touched the photo.

But if by chance you're here alone
Can I have a moment before I go?
'Cause I've been by myself all night long
Hoping you're someone I used to know

You look like a movie
You sound like a song
My God, this reminds me
Of when we were young

"You've done really well this past couple of days," Brittany said, her feet making gentle little footsteps on the hardwood floor as she came to stand behind her. She knew that Santana would know what she meant.
"This is what defines you, Santana. Not Puck, not the abuse, not any of that shit. It's this. It's the love you have for your grandfather, it's the seventeen cards that you received that all mention the fantasy life of a plastic lizard, and it's the fact that you kept my drawings even though (a) they were really dumb and (b) you didn't know if you'd ever see me again. It's that deep as all fuck story you wrote when you were five about a tiger losing his stripes. That's the real you, and it has always kept you from ever getting truly lost. Never forget that."

"I feel like we've kind of switched places, Britt."
Santana had been in a playful mood all morning, and had been telling her funny stories about the farm animals while they did their chores. Then she had let Brittany pick some flowers around the farm to press in some big old-fashioned printing press contraption that they had.

"How so?" Brittany asked.

"Well, back in high school I was always kind of more the dominant friend that looked after you, and now I feel like we've switched roles. I feel like you're more confident than me now."
Santana said it smiling, like she only found it interesting, and didn't believe it to be a bad thing.

"I don't think that's necessarily true Santana. Maybe for now? But I'd look at it more like that we 'can' switch roles, rather than that we 'have' switched. You'll get your confidence back."

"Maybe." Santana shrugged.

"Let me know if you need me to come to your session, yeah? I'm happy to join in."

"I think I'm okay for this one, but when we get to talking about Puck I'm gonna need you there to be my memory."

Brittany nodded, then backed out of the room and closed the door quietly, leaving Santana to spend the next hour talking on ZOOM with the counselor at her college. She had been going to these sessions for months now, and often felt like they were more frustrating than they were worth.
So far the counselor had suggested multiple clinics and psychologists, all of which were way out of Santana's price range and far, far away from the farm.
Today, the counselor had recommended 'Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing' (EMDR) therapy. The idea of it was that she was to recall a traumatic memory and change her bodily sensations around it.
Santana didn't think that this was right for her, and once again the suggested clinic had been too far away.

She had been through this exact same scenario many times over the years, coming to the same dead end every time that she had tried to find help. There had seemed to be no real help available to her, and it had been frustrating. She had felt isolated like there was nothing she could do to get better.
But now that she had Brittany, it was different. She was starting to believe that between the two of them, they might really find a way forward.

Brittany had gone into the kitchen while Santana was in session, and now she was sitting perched on top of the kitchen table eating some kind of pink candy. She looked up guiltily when Santana walked in, and the other girl wanted to laugh because she knew that the expression was because she hadn't shared it. She could read Brittany like a book.
"Britts, just enjoy the candy you sugar addict, you know I've got another fifty more of them in a drawer somewhere."

Brittany visibly relaxed. "Okay, I will. How was your appointment?"

"It was fine, we talked a lot about diet again."

Brittany nodded. Santana's eating habits weren't great. They never had been. In high school she had pretty much permanently abused diet pills and laxatives. Just like her mom, which was where the pills had come from in the first place. But all the same, she'd still eaten more than Brittany who had a tendency to stop completely at times and eat nothing at all. Santana had always been the only one who understood that it was less about how she looked, and more about having control of her body, the habits forming at a time when having any control over her neuro-atypical brain had seemed impossible.

Seemingly reading her mind Santana asked, "When you wrote that story, did you tell them about your anorexia?"

"Kind of. I hinted at it, I guess? Like it's there if you read through the lines? It's really hard for me to talk about."

Santana had been incredibly supportive every time Brittany said she felt overwhelmed and needed to eat in her room. Sometimes Brittany's throat would just say no and eating turned to choking, and she never liked doing that in public. It could take over an hour sometimes to get a meal down but she had to do it. Slipping up and skipping a meal once, was always a slippery slope to skipping lots of times, and she didn't want to do that anymore.

Santana really admired her for it.
"I don't have that," she had told her. "I don't know where you found that drive to take care of yourself but I still don't have it yet."

Santana grabbed a pink candy to match Brittany's and then sat down beside her.
"My counselor and I don't agree on exposure therapy," she admitted. "She says it's outdated and that it doesn't work. I've been to so many therapists and counselors who tell me that I mustn't talk about my abuse for fear of setting myself off, and getting upset et cetera…"

"They're the crazy ones then, Santana. How can anyone get better if other people act like their abuse is apparently too horrifying to even talk about?"

"I don't know! I like what you said about confronting the whiteboards much better. I hope that this isn't happening to anyone else like me. These therapists can fuck you up worse than anything."

"There's good ones out there though."

"I know, and she's not bad. It's just…"

"It's just extra hard when you need help this much, right? Kind of like being thirsty for water in a desert. This is a really hard and sensitive thing."

"Yeah. There was only one thing that she's ever said that I've ever liked and resonated with. She said that my PTSD is 'complex', and I don't know how she meant it, but I agree. It is complex because it occurred over so many different years, and because I have so many conflicting feelings about it."

"It's also complex because you're in a later stage of it," Brittany added. "What works for a person fresh out of the situation and just starting the process to heal, isn't going to work for you."

"I completely agree. I feel like I've dealt with the fact that it happened now. I've dealt with the fact that he hit me and pissed on me and raped me, and I'm okay. I can say those things out loud now without crying. It took me years, but I can do that now. It's something else that's still fucking me up."

"It's something complex," Brittany reasoned. Something at a Santana higher-order-thinking level.

"Yes, exactly."

Brittany suddenly clutched at her head.

Santana looked at her, worried. "Migraine?"

"Probably." Brittany groaned. "I don't usually get the 'my head is like lead' feeling like this, unless it is going to turn into one soon."

"You want me to do what we used to do when we were kids?"

Brittany nodded. Santana had owned a picture book when they were little that had taught them how to do a pressure point head massage. It had been all in child language like 'pretend your fingers are butterflies' but honestly it had always worked.

Santana stood behind where Brittany was sitting, and Brittany closed her eyes while she worked on her head. "That feels really good, San, thank you so much."

"It's probably all the crying that's brought this on."
They had joked that when Brittany had visited in July it was like a solid week of crying, and ten years packed into so many days. This visit hadn't been much different. It was definitely some unusual circumstances, and Santana was worried that it was finally catching up with Brittany.

The 'magic finger' massage had helped to postpone Brittany's migraine long enough for Axel to take them both to see some Christmas lights as a surprise. The 'Winter Wonderland' was on a neighboring farm, and the owner had spent three and a half months setting up the lights and displays for the public.

Brittany had never seen quite so many lights in just one place. She had skipped around merrily taking photos.
You wouldn't think that somewhere out in the middle of nowhere there could be a place this festive, she thought.
She felt so lucky, because way out here, few people would ever get to see it.

They took pictures of one another posing with some of the huge reindeer and snowmen. In every single picture they were all smiling brightly, overwhelmed with sheer happiness just for the fact that they were all together, in a beautiful place.
Nobody wanted to be the first one to suggest going home.

After a half hour of exploring, and another fifteen minutes of trying to find excuses to stay, Axel eventually loaded them both in the car, and then sped away. There were no speed limit signs on the back country roads that he knew so well. Brittany kind of thought that he drove like Cruella De Vil, but in a good way. She joked that she felt like she was on that Radiator Springs Racers ride at Disneyland.

Later that night, it became obvious that so many bright lights and too much fun had been a lethal combination to Brittany's impending migraine - although she had no regrets. Within the next hour she had resorted to her strong medication, and was now sitting at the dinner table trying to keep her head up.

Santana and Axel were both fussing around her. The both wanted to help, but they weren't sure what they could do.

"I didn't drive too fast, did I?" Axel said quietly to Santana. "When I turned around and looked at her, she looked like she'd had kittens."

"No, she was fine." Santana told him. "That was her happy-scared face, not her scared-scared face."

"Kittens?" Brittany asked. She peered between her own legs, as if such a glorious dream could be possible. If only she were capable of producing cats then there would be no stopping her. Her house would be full of them.

After taking a second pill, Brittany had been full of giggling antics making dinner.

Santana had been in hysterics when Brittany had rolled up the basil, and then pretended to smoke it instead of cutting it up ready to put in the meal. She'd apparently had way too much practice rolling cigarettes lately.

She hadn't been able to stop herself from making the observation that on her meds, the other girl reminded her a lot of the teen-Britt of their high school days.
"Britts, I feel like you're about to start looking for ducks in hats again and smashing up snowmen. You're all random like you used to be."

"They had it coming," Brittany mumbled, remembering those damn snowmen of so long ago who had taunted her with their icy love affair, and lack of teenage heartbreak.

Every now and then, Axel would blow a smoke ring at her from across the table, because he knew that she couldn't resist trying to catch it and spin it on her finger. She was sure that she could do it just like Alice did with the colorful smoke letters in Disney's Alice in Wonderland. So far he couldn't do any other letters other than O, but Brittany was sure it was only a matter of time before he got all twisty somehow, and made the rest of the vowels.

"A E I ohhh youuuuu" Brittany drawled, blue caterpillar style.

Three pills in, and Brittany found that she had that floaty feeling, the one that made her unsure of how to close the fridge door because she couldn't work out how much pressure it needed to shut properly. She felt like a ghost, like her fingers kept passing right through it. She could no longer feel any pain, but she could also possibly no longer feel her feet.

She knelt down to check they were still there. Thankfully they were. Now that she was on the floor she had the perfect view of Santana's little feet, she was glad to see she still had hers too. They were like little mice feet. Ooh, mice meant mouse holes. Could Santana's house have a mouse hole that led somewhere exciting? Like to some kind of Wonderland?
She shrugged, turning away. Who would be interested in something like that if they got to hang out with Santana? Not her. She was staying right where she was.

Santana cleared away the plates stopping behind Brittany to rest a worried hand on her shoulder.

Feeling Santana's hand, Brittany lit up. Sometimes that meant dance with me.
"Do you want to dance, San?" She could remember running through empty corridors at school, with Santana managing to spin her around, even though Brittany was taller. She was up off the floor in seconds attempting the move.

"Woah, Britts" Santana steadied her, gripping her arms tight, making sure she didn't fall over. "I'd spin you around any day but today, honey."

"Please?" Brittany begged.

Oh god, not the puppy dog eyes, Santana thought. She still couldn't refuse those eyes anything.
"Okay Britts, you win." Time had not revealed any kind of explanation for why Brittany had that effect on her. She was all out competitive by nature; she loved to win and was even known to flip tables when playing board games.
But Brittany was the exception, and always had been. She'd still let Brittany win any battle.

Both girls giggled as Santana spun Brittany around in exaggerated slow-motion, completely supporting her and making only the tiniest movements possible, no chance of a fall.

"I've tasted blood and I want more" Brittany sung after completing the circle.

"More, more, more" chanted Santana. She could never resist doing that part. Why was Brittany singing Toucha Toucha Toucha Me? Had they danced to that song before? She felt like they had, maybe many times. Yes! They had.

Brittany's smile lit up even brighter knowing that Santana remembered. She kept singing while Santana guided her to a chair and braided her hair for her, knowing that Brittany would have absolutely no chance of doing it herself in this kind of state.

"Creature of the night!" Brittany finished, tipping her head back to look at Santana, her forehead gently brushing against the other girl's chin.

Santana smiled at her, though her forehead creased with worry. "Okay, into bed now, darlin," she said, making sure that Brittany got safely to her bed without falling over her own feet. She tucked her in, making sure she was warm under the covers then she turned down the light. Standing in the doorway and seemingly lost in thought, she watched the other girl for some time, as she waited for her to fall asleep.

Brittany didn't move until late in the evening the following day.

"Why didn't you wake me up?" she said to Santana. The meds had completely knocked her out. She hadn't wanted to miss an entire day. What had she missed out on? Had they not missed her?

"Was I supposed to?" Santana said, confused. "I checked on you. You looked very tired."
She had been ready to take Brittany to the hospital if need be. She had never seen someone have a migraine like this.

Brittany looked up at her. She could see now how worried the other girl had been. It had completely slipped her mind that Santana hadn't gone through this with her a million times like the rest of her family had, and therefore wouldn't know what to do. It hadn't even been that bad of attack, she'd had much worse. But Santana didn't know that.

"Usually someone just wakes me up. It's okay, you didn't know," Brittany reassured her.

"I really didn't know," Santana stressed, still sounding upset.

"It's okay. I'm not mad at you, I'm just embarrassed."

"Why ever are you embarrassed?"

Brittany swallowed. "I need to change the sheets," she said quietly.

"Oh Britts, it's not your fault. You were knocked out for pretty much an entire day."
Santana was sweet and supportive, helping her change the sheets straight away, and then when Brittany sat back down on the bed moping, she brought inside a baby duckling for her to play with.
After some much coveted duckling cuddles, Brittany felt better. The pain was less now, and her mind was clearer. She no longer had that thick-headed drugged-out feeling that came with the pills.

She wished that she could talk to Shaylen, but she knew that the best way to support her partner right now was to give her space while she did her final exam. It was an incredibly hard one, and Brittany knew that she was so stressed out and needed the time and space to focus. She would do anything for her, and this was no exception. They were still separated by COVID for now, and though it was very hard, she was worth it.

Brittany moved the baby duckling to her other hand. It curled up in an adorable ball and quietened down, pressing its cute little beak against her thumb.
"I think you need to tell your mom Santana," she said suddenly. Coming out of the medication sometimes had an effect of clarity. While she was under, she was also more likely to dream. This time had been no exception. What she'd seen had felt so real.
"I think you need your mom to understand the role she played."

Santana had talked about wanting to tell her mom everything earlier, but hadn't been sure if the timing was right. But was there ever such thing as finding the 'right' timing for this?

"You know what? I think you're right, Britt. I've been feeling so much like I need to do something more, like shout it from the rooftops... or at least tell a counselor. But maybe I just need to tell my mom."

Maria had come to visit almost straightaway. She had been immediately concerned when Santana had said that she had something serious to discuss with her.

As the moment for her to arrive had drawn closer, Santana had gradually succumbed to her anxiety, and was now non-stop pacing around the room, nearly wearing a path through the floor. She hadn't slept the previous night.
"What if I'm just making something out of nothing?"

Brittany's tone had been firm, filled with unwavering conviction and support, "Trust me. It's not nothing. Your feelings and your pain are very valid. You can do this. Your mom has been trying really hard to understand you these days, let's both give her a chance."

Maria had arrived in a flurry of perfume and fear, and after exchanging the typical pleasantries, Brittany had left them to it, knowing that this was something that Santana had to do alone, and for herself.
As she'd left the room, she'd caught sight of Maria's concerned face and open body language. She more than willing to hear out anything that her daughter needed to say, and so Brittany wasn't worried.
You've got this Santana, she thought.

Santana had slowly unfolded the events of the past in chronological order, telling her mother about Tomas first, which had gone as well as could possibly be expected. Maria had apologized to her daughter for not protecting her at the time.
She hadn't any recollection of what had happened, nor did she recall the time when she had told Santana that she had been 'asking for it.'

"Those words had a huge impact on me and my life, Mom." Santana said, looking at her seriously. "You really don't remember?"

Maria didn't. She didn't remember believing Tomas over Santana either, or realize that it had gone as far as it had. She couldn't believe that she had done those things now. She had changed a lot for the better in the time that had passed.

"I'm so sorry," she told her daughter, emotionally burying her face in her hands. Brittany couldn't help but to hear her crying through the thin walls of the farmhouse. "You are a good person. It wasn't your fault, it was mine."
They may have been simple words, but they were words that Santana had so desperately needed to hear her mother say, for the longest time.

Later on, when it had felt like the right time for Santana to tell her mother about what happened with Puck, she hadn't been able to speak. She had sat frozen still, staring at Maria, lips slightly parted. It was one thing to tell Brittany, but it was yet another to tell her mother. Mothers were an entirely different ball game.

"Okay, I'm just going to say something," Maria said, "Last night I had a dream. I saw you being passed around this group of people, almost as if you were like a prize. And I saw the word 'video.'"

Santana's mouth opened wider, stunned further into silence. Brittany's dreams she could understand, because that was Brittany's thing, and always had been as long as she could remember. They were connected, yin-yang twin style, though Brittany was the one slightly more in tune to it. Her mother had never been like that, and yet she had seen this, she'd had the very same dream.
Santana had nodded, letting her mother know that she was right. She'd been wondering how she would find the words to tell her that, but apparently she didn't even have to.

Maria had then asked how Puck had treated her friends, and with that Santana had broken down crying, buried under her own guilt. She had been inconsolable and sobbing the minute the words had left Maria's mouth.

Maria had hugged her daughter, unsure of what to do. She did what she could to comfort her, and tried her best, reassuring her over and over, though Santana's tears seemed never-ending.
She told Santana more about the times her grandfather had abused her, and then about another time that she had been raped when she was a teenager. When it was finally time for Maria to leave, they felt closer to each other than they had ever felt before.

Everything that Brittany had seen and heard while Santana's mother had been visiting, had made her think.

Ideas were swirling around in her head, and she suddenly felt as if she would explode if she didn't say them out loud. It was almost like something, or even someone was urging her on, telling her that she had to say something, that this was the role she still had yet to play in Santana's life.

I was so scared to face my fears
Nobody told me that you'd be here
And I swear you moved overseas
That's what you said, when you left me

"Santana?" she said urgently.

"Yeah, Britts?" Santana was calm now, sitting on the couch flicking through TV channels, having just finished a snack. She was feeling relieved that she had got through the process of telling her mom. It had felt right, like she had accomplished something. Or dealt with my inner child, something like that, she mused.

"I have another theory. And I think I know what we have to do," Brittany told her.

"Okay, hit me."

"Making a timeline to straighten out the blur was good, but it wasn't enough. It was too simple. It only got you to maybe point A to B of where you still needed to go."

"You think so? And, you have an idea of how to get from B to C?" Santana's interest was piqued.

"Yes. It all reminds me of my thesis that I wrote when I studied psychology. Hold that thought."
Brittany ran and found a pen and paper and drew up three columns, while Santana watched on and waited, wondering what she was up to.

"I feel like you've done so amazing dealing with what happened to you. You've gone through this process in your mind to rework the memories … kind of like this." Brittany headed up the first column with 'Event' the second with 'I felt' and the third with 'Reworking.' It was a simple exercise but she hoped it would work.

"Let's do first one together. So, think of one thing that Puck did that was really awful, and then write it down."

Santana took the pen from her, and wrote under Event: He got me high, and hit me and pissed on me.

"Okay, good. Now write down in the next column how you felt about it at the time."

Santana wrote: used, worthless, sad, angry.

"Okay, now in the reworking column, write down how you feel about it now."
Brittany guided Santana's hand to the right section, and then crossed her fingers and hoped.

I never deserved it, I did the best that I could at the time, with what I had.

Brittany squeezed her other hand and let out a breath she had been holding. Santana gave her a little smile and added: I am still a good person.

"That's perfect, see you did it! Okay, my point is that you can do this now. People at the beginning of their journey with PTSD would find doing exactly what you just did really hard, if next to impossible to do. You've got this. You've dealt with what happened to you. You've dealt with the core, and now you're onto the complex twisty spirals that grew in the meantime."

Santana stared at her, not yet comprehending what she was trying to tell her.

"Most people who have PTSD struggle the hardest with four feelings; sadness, anger, shame and guilt," Brittany started, hoping that she would find the words along the way to explain this properly.
She usually didn't make a habit of quoting things that she had read in her Psych textbooks, but maybe this moment called for it. She had seen that fact written so many times when she was studying, and it seemed to be relevant right now.

"I was sad, and so angry for such a long time," Santana said. "But I'm not now."

"Exactly."

"I was ashamed too."

"Yes, and oh my god, that must have sucked." Brittany exhaled. She tried again, still trying to organize her thoughts. "In that five-and-a-half years that you were with Puck, you made some mistakes, yes?"

"Yes," Santana said quietly. "Huge ones."

"And at the time, and for years afterwards you hated yourself for them, right?"

"Very right," Santana said again. She always appreciated that Brittany told everything how it is. What she had gone through was dark, and there was no point sugar-coating it.

"I remember how you were back then. I saw how you struggled with sadness, anger and worst of all - shame, and I get that. But what about guilt? They say it's one of the core four emotions." Suddenly Brittany knew exactly where she was going with this.

"Isn't feeling guilt just pretty much the exact same thing as feeling shame?" Santana asked. She genuinely wanted to know.

Brittany shook her head. "No, it's not. I studied this back then. When you do something wrong and you make a mistake, I truly don't believe that you can feel both shame and guilt about it, at the exact same time. The difference is that when you feel guilty about something you can say - 'I made a mistake' and then you usually try to fix it, or at least make the best of it it. When you feel shame, you think - 'I am the mistake' and then you shut down because it hurts too much. I remember when you completely shut down. I lost you for a while."

"That's very true." Santana knew all too well that she had shut down from everything, and from everyone, for the longest time.

"But you got past that," Brittany said, clearly having a light bulb moment. "You took some time, you healed, and you understand now that you truly aren't a bad person. You aren't any kind of mistake. You've just made some mistakes, and you can fix them. I think that people with PTSD must have to conquer feelings of shame before they can reach their guilt. And so, that's what I think that you're still struggling with. You've reached the guilt part, and it's hard. It must be the final, and maybe even the hardest layer to this. Or, at least the most 'complex' part. This is why you cried like that with your mom when she talked about how Puck affected other people. That's why you still don't take of yourself very well. This is what you still need to overcome."

Santana took a moment to process this. "I think you might be right, Britt, because the main reason I always felt like a horrible person is because I feel like I 'helped' him hurt people. He manipulated me into helping him have sex with underage girls, and convinced me to try and manipulate my friends. It makes me sick that I had any part in it. It was so very many shades of wrong."

Brittany gently took the piece of paper and flipped it over and then drew up another three columns, intending to write an adjusted version of the headings she had before. She eventually settled on 'Guilt event' 'I feel' and 'Reworking.'
"Try it this way, San?" Brittany asked hopefully.

Santana nodded with some determination, but then looked at the piece of paper unsure of where to start.

Brittany realized she was going to need some help. "Okay, tell me something that still really gets to you even now, but not the hardest one ever?"

"Okay," Santana agreed. It certainly wasn't hard to think of an example "You know our friend, Maddy?"

"Maddy from high school?"

"Yeah. This happened maybe in our senior year. This was before I knew what Puck was really capable of. I invited her over to my house to hang out with us, and Puck wasted no time getting her in handcuffs. She was freaking out, and crying. It was midnight. I had to get her out of them, and then find a way get her home."

Brittany could picture it all happening. It definitely sounded like something Puck would do. She wrote it down. "Okay, probably stating the obvious, but how do you feel about it right now?"

"Guilty as all fuck," Santana said.

"Okay." Brittany put her pencil in the reworking column. "The best part of this is that you got her out. Nothing too terrible happened. She was never raped. You protected her. And I remember what Maddy was like then, she was going through this 'I'm looking for trouble thing.' Like, she used to call us all the time and brag about how much weed she'd smoked, and how much alcohol she'd drank, and how much sex she was having. It was kind of a cry for help."

Santana nodded. This did put it in perspective somewhat. She hadn't remembered that until Brittany had said it. Maddy had initially seemed a lot like Quinn in high school - very pretty and perfect, with a nice family, and faith in God. But all families have their dark sides, and she'd still been handed her own share of shit to go through, which had lead to a teenage rebellion and eventually she had gone completely off the rails.

"I feel like she pulled her head in after that. Look at it this way, Santana. What if she'd gone looking for trouble somewhere else that night, and you hadn't been there? Something way worse could have happened, with an equally dangerous person to Puck, just without you there to protect her. After that she was more careful, and eventually she got her life together, and you know what? She even has two kids now, two little girls. She's really happy. I just don't think that that night ranks as high on her importance scale, as it still does on yours."

"I've never thought of it like that. I never thought that I might see these moments as far bigger than other people still do. I never meant to hurt anyone but I've always felt like I had, like I freaked out so many far-more-innocent kids. Sometimes I felt like the devil with all the innocent souls that I collected."

"Honestly Santana, it must have been so confusing for you at the time, because what you felt was okay for you, wasn't okay for everyone else. You protected other people with far higher standards than you protected yourself." Brittany waited until Santana was watching and wrote down 'devil' and 'hurtful' in the reworking column and then crossed them out and wrote 'protector' and 'self-sacrificing.'

Santana stared at it. Clearly she had never thought of any of this that way before, and it was going to take some time to process.

"You'll get there," Brittany said gently, and she held Santana while she cried.

Let me photograph you in this light
In case it is the last time
That we might be exactly like we were
Before we realized
We were sad of getting old
It made us restless
It was just like a movie
It was just like a song

"You know what I wrote in our story?" Brittany whispered to Santana.

"What?" Santana whispered back.

Axel was snoring like a truck beside them, and they were determined to keep their voices low and not resort to turning on the lights for any reason, so not to wake him. He had to wake up and drive the long way to work in just a few hours.

Night had spread through every room of the farmhouse, and it was pitch-black dark as far as the eye could see. Brittany had tiptoed into the main bedroom, and now she was lying side-by-side facing Santana, their faces inches apart to keep sound from needing much space to travel.

"Well, you know how you always told me that nothing lasts forever? Like nothing 'gold' ever stays?"

"That's from a poem," Santana told her, reciting it softly.

"Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay."

"You never told me that," Brittany murmured. Santana had always been deep, it didn't surprise her that she had loved that poem, even as a child.

"You never asked." Brittany felt her shrug in the darkness, more than she saw it.

"Do you still believe that?"

"Yes. Of course nothing lasts forever, Britt. You know that."

Brittany pulled out her phone from her pocket, and the screen illuminated a small halo of light around their heads. "I don't know that," she whispered. "Because I don't think it's true. I called one of my chapters 'Some things last forever.' Because some things really do."

She loaded it up and showed Santana the words she'd written all those years ago. They may have come from her brain in a time when she was younger, barely an adult, but they were still one of the most honest and profound things she'd ever said about her life and experiences.

"When I said to her "I'll never forget a moment I spent with you," I never lied.

Sometimes, things do last forever, sometimes in a way, people even stay the same forever.

But only if you're me.

I could always promise her for sure that I'd never leave her, no matter what life has in store for us. Because you never really ever leave someone if you can see and feel every detail of them clearly in your mind, do you? I'll always have that, so no matter what, she'll always have me."

Brittany felt the sudden heat from Santana's tears on her own cheeks.

"Do you really see me like that?" she asked.

"Yes. It's not like I remember every single event to ever happen to me in my entire life," Brittany explained, "but, I do remember all the ones I spent with you, because yes, it's just like the poem - those moments were gold. I hold onto 'gold' moments with a 'gator death grip. Some people don't, and that's okay. Everyone has their own way of finding comfort. But because I have the brain that I do, even things that were twenty years ago still feel like yesterday. And I mean it feels, like it were yesterday, like every emotion and feeling stays with me for all time. I use that. It's inevitable that I remember the bad stuff too in the same way, and that will creep in and make itself known no matter what. But I try to make it different, because I don't hold on to the bad. The good ones, the 'gold' memories that I made with you, I keep them all in a heart shaped box in an iron fist. They will never leave me, and so neither will you."

"But what if you can't remember everything clearly like that?" Santana said, her voice catching the slightest of tremors in spite of herself. "What happens then?"

Brittany thought about it for a moment. "Then you look for what is stronger than gold."

"What do you mean?"

"Like love. It's true that moments don't last forever in the in the physical sense, but the love created in those moments can. Love when it's real, is stronger and rarer than gold. In fact, it transcends 'gold.' Like, real love must be ... 'platinum'," she said in a burst of inspiration. "Platinum is a metal that's purer and more precious, yet more durable than gold, isn't it? And so, things that are stronger than gold must be 'platinum' and will therefore find a way to live on forever."

She paused.

"Hold onto gold when you can, but when that fails; know that you can always hold onto platinum" Brittany told her, her voice hushed yet intense.

Santana smiled in the darkness, feeling salty tears pool sideways. She liked Brittany's interpretation of the poem, switching the colors to the metal equivalent. Platinum was indeed a stronger metal than gold. Brittany could be right. After all, love was what had brought them back together.
"Maybe I can even support that with a law of physics," she joked, "If we assume that true love is like a kind of energy, and we know that energy cannot be created or destroyed, only transformed, then we can surmise that true love remains, even if it takes on a different form, but in that way, can last forever..." she trailed off.
She had started that rant as a joke, but as it had gained momentum as she realized that what she was saying felt right.

Brittany hummed her agreement, and as she exhaled gently her breath nudged wisps of Santana's hair, which tickled her as it rose and fell wherever it pleased, as if it had a mind of its own. When Brittany suddenly giggled, Santana knew a piece had blown over and reached her nose.
"You're so smart," Brittany told her.

"So are you," Santana said easily. "You know Britt, it's not entirely a sad poem, it has two sides. Losing something gold may be tantamount to tragedy, but the impermanence of life is what makes it meaningful. It reminds me to be grateful for what I have while I still have it."

When there was a moment of silence, she didn't need to be able to see Brittany's face to know that it would be making that thoughtful expression she knew so well.
She reached up through the darkness and with one finger touched the tip to Brittany's nose. She knew exactly where it was. She would never need a map, nor her sight to find any of Brittany's facial features, she knew them by heart. She felt Brittany scrunch her nose a little under her finger.
"No?" she asked directing the question more to Brittany's nose than the rest of her.

"No, you're totally right, " Brittany spoke up. "Life isn't permanent, and we definitely should be grateful for what we have today. I could die tomorrow. And then you could lose me in body, but wherever I went I would still love you. Don't forget that. You said yourself that that kind of energy cannot be destroyed. I'd just make some kind of deal with the gods of the afterlife to make sure that you could still see and feel every detail of me in your mind, so that you would never feel as if I'd left you."

Santana swallowed thickly, feeling tears sticking in her eyes again. "I wouldn't need that deal, Britt. I can already do that," she whispered.

Brittany smiled. "That's because we're platinum. I'm gonna prove you wrong, San. No matter what, I'll be around forever. Some things last forever."

Santana couldn't help but to smile, and when Brittany met her eyes in the dark, they were soft, softer than she had ever known them.

"I'm counting on it, B."

"Today is the day!" Brittany called, sticking her head in Santana's room. "I feel it in my bones."

Santana was sitting up in bed checking her phone, but she couldn't help but to be amused seeing Brittany materialize in her room, dramatically marching on the spot and calling for action. "There's not going to be any ducklings today, Britt, I can assure you of that."

"Oh no, this isn't about ducklings. It's much more important."

This got Santana's attention. What on earth could be more important to her friend than ducks?

"It's time to burn the 'Puck Pile,'" Brittany announced. "Are you up for it? Let's rid the house of evil, exterminate the vermin, cast out the unclean spirit!"
She made her fingers into pistols and mimed taking out an invisible target.

While going through all the boxes they had taken care to separate out anything that reminded Santana of Puck. Photos, cards, concert tickets, and anything else that had belonged to him, with the exception of anything that Brittany thought looked remotely incriminating. That kind of stuff belonged in the 'evidence' pile for safekeeping.
The rest they had shoved it all in a chest with the intention to burn it.

"It does seem like a good day for an exorcism," Santana agreed.

"The power of Christ compels us!" Brittany shot back in her best 'The Exorcist' impression.

"You're up early though."

"Well, my bed was shaking and I couldn't sleep. Far too much evil in the house."

Santana laughed. "Who let you watch that movie anyway?"

"Absolutely nobody," Brittany answered, for there wasn't a single soul out there who was in favor of her watching horror movies.

"I couldn't sleep either," Santana admitted. It had been another night of tossing and turning, and she was starting the day already tired.

The 'Puck Pile' had grown to be a formidable size, and according to Brittany was unclean and oozing hate.

Looking at it now, Santana agreed. It was a physical compilation of her worst memories, and it made her sick to look at it. Maybe Brittany was right and having the items around (even though they had been buried in boxes) really had been having a lingering effect on their environment.

Together, they each found a lighter and lit the pile, holding hands as they watched the first items succumb to flames.

The letters went first, the ink of the words burning in front of them.

"Fuck you sideways, you huge creep," Brittany said as the flames soared, engulfing a photo of him quickly, burning out his face first.

Santana was quiet as she watched everything unfold. She held Brittany's hand tightly.

"Goodbye," she said simply, her voice little more than a whisper. It was all that she needed to say.

They both sat down and listened to the crackling noises of the fire eventually die out. There was a comfortable lull as Santana rested her head on Brittany's shoulder, and they took in the new world. The farmhouse felt fresher now that it lacked the items that had held so much vitriol.

"You know, I could fall asleep here," Santana whispered to her.

Brittany put her arm around her, drawing her protectively closer. A sideways glance revealed the other girl's peaceful expression, the most untroubled she had seen her in a very long time.

She didn't want to make a sound in case she shattered the moment. There was a silence, loaded with the ghosts of memories. On the surface they held regrets and a kind of longing, but if you squinted hard enough to see through the layers it was possible to see something far more solid, culminating into a rough kind of new acceptance for everything that had brought them to this moment, no matter what.

"There are just too many coincidences, Britt." Santana mumbled suddenly, speaking up from her comfortable resting place.

"Hmm?"

"Well, the fact that you actually did your thesis on reworking guilt memories for one."
She knew that Brittany had been selected for that topic by the senior psychologist in charge of her course, who had always hoped to find a student willing to explore that area of interest. If that wasn't fate, then she didn't know what was.

"What does that have to do with anything?"

"It just feels so crazy, like this was all somehow planned out. That you did a degree in psychology, that you were chosen for that thesis, that you remember everything, and that you're here at the same time and in the same place with me, right now. I really don't believe in coincidences."

"Or leprechauns?"

"No, they might be real."

Brittany could see where she was going with this. "Kind of like 'the powers that be' wanted me to help you someday, so when they were 'making' me they were kind of like 'hey, let's make Brittany autistic so she remembers everything' and then all that other stuff?"

"Yes, just like that."

Brittany thought about it. "If someone is guiding us, then it makes total sense why your mom and I both saw your life in our dreams. And, I really do believe that I was meant to help you. I feel like you're meant to do something really important with your life, Santana."

"Do you know what it is?" Santana said softly, her eyes half-closing again.

"Not yet. But one day we'll know, and then we'll look back on this very moment, of us sitting here, and we'll wish that we could just whisper it into our ears."

Santana was silent for a while, and Brittany thought she had fallen asleep. Her breathing had evened out some, and her grip on her arm had slackened.

Brittany was happy to just sit here and let her rest a while. It had been an incredibly long and tiring week.

"You could whisper to me... what you think it is," Santana mumbled, the words barely audible as she traveled in and out of sleep.

And so, Brittany did. She told Santana that ever since the moment that she had met her, she had always felt like she was going to do something to change the world.
That everything that had happened to her wasn't fair, but it had made her the person that she is today, and that that person was who she needed to be, in order to do what she needed to do. She told her that her life mattered, and that Brittany was honored that she'd been a part of helping her find herself again.

She thought back to the definition of 'unicorn' that she'd once created as a child.

Unicorn (adj) - a state of being, characterized by independence, confidence, and total acceptance of your own individuality.

"You're 'unicorn' now Santana," she whispered. "It was a long road, but you made it."

When she was sure that Santana was really sleeping, she cupped her hand over her mouth and whispered into her palm her own guess as to what she thought was to come. It was her prediction of what she thought Santana might do, and the impact that she thought she'd have. Then she uncurled her fingers and blew it gently into the other girl's ear. What she said was a secret for now, just between her and the wind.

"So how did your vet placement go last week?" Brittany asked, sinking down on her mattress. She'd just answered Santana's call, and because they had a tendency to talk for several hours once getting started, she had decided to get comfortable and lay on her bed.

"It went really well! And I got through every day from the morning to the evening without smoking, Britt. Can you believe that? I wore the patches though."
She said it as though that made it less of an achievement.

"But that's what they're there for. That's fantastic, you did so good!"

"I think I'm really ready to quit. Weed too. Lately I just don't feel like I need it anymore. I have barely looked out the window, or done the paranoia thing in ages. The hardest part is Axel, because he isn't quitting, and he keeps offering me smokes and I keep feeling bad every time I say no."

"You've got this Santana." Brittany readjusted the phone in her hand. The connection of the call was strong today. Santana's voice was clear coming down the line, sounding as if she was in the same room. Christmas had come and gone, and the start of 2021 had flown by so fast.

Santana was back at school, and her life was crazy busy, but she tried to fit in a phone call whenever she could. She had been keeping Brittany up to date with all her school dramas, of the intense schedule of having to fit twelve hours of learning into each day, every day, and of the gigantic lists of responsibilities she now had. She had told Brittany that had this happened a year ago she would have 'lost her shit' and be rocking in a corner. But it was like she had more space in her mind now, and she was actually getting through this.

"Britts, I've got to tell you something. I had a dream last night that my Abuela's house was covered in four thousand different colored snakes. They mostly had aposematic warning colors, like all bright and fluro. You were there. We were cutting their heads off like they were beans. They kept trying to bite the dogs and Loki. I think we must have been counting them as we killed them, and piling them up in the backyard. There was a red and black one on the back stairs that kept sneaking up and trying to bite me, and then that's when I woke up."

"That's all you remember?"

"Yeah, what do you think it means? I feel like it means something."

Brittany thought about it a moment.
"Well, I think it means that you're getting better, San. You're healing. I think four thousand snakes means that you've got four thousand problems, and a bitch ain't one."

Santana laughed.

"But seriously, I think it's a dream representation of your complex PTSD. The snakes were such bright colors because overall you're aware of your problems now. Plus, the fact that you dreamed of snakes is actually super positive because snakes are associated with rebirth and change, like of shedding skins of that. Dreaming of spiders and being trapped in webs would be so much worse. And like, if you dreamed of bunnies, well that wouldn't represent much of a threat, would it? But snakes, yes, they are big scary things, but that kind of scary has the potential to change form, like when we do the reworking thing, like healing. And you were ripping their heads off in the dream and piling them up one by one, like you're piling up the 'snakes' in your mind, and conquering them by ripping the heads off. I think that's kind of like you're organizing all the bad shit in a better place in your mind, without burying memories down so deep that they give you flashbacks. You can still see them, they will always suck because they will always be 'snakes', but they can no longer harm you."

"Wow," Santana said. "I had maybe guessed some of that, but that just makes it so much clearer."

Brittany found she had more to say. "I also think that you're still worried that the 'snakes' could still hurt other people, that's why you were scared of them hurting the dogs and Loki. And then there's that very specific red and black snake that can still hurt you. We still need to identify it, because it wasn't in bright colors yet. And we will get there. I think that's what I think the dream was telling you. It means that we need to work out what the last snake is, but also… please know that you're on your way. You've truly made some really important progress lately with your healing, and you should be so very proud of that."

Brittany could 'hear' Santana's smile on the other end in the happy little hum that she had made. She could tell that the other girl was proud of herself too.
"So how have the flashbacks been? Have you had any lately?" she asked.

"None at all! How about you?" Santana sounded instantly worried. Looking out for her friend was just what she did, and it was never going to change.

"Me too, I've been flashback free. I haven't had one of those recurring dreams in a while either.

"That's so great, Britt. I wish I could have you come over," Santana sighed, "I don't know when I'll next have time to get you here, I miss you so much."

"I know, but you've got to kill this degree of yours, yeah? I'm behind you all the way. We'll just wait it out and hopefully I'll see you over summer. You're gonna be okay?" Brittany knew that Santana had always struggled with physical distance from her loved ones, but she seemed to be coping much better with it now.

"Yeah, I will be. I miss you, but I'm so much better than I used to be. I think it came from realizing that I'm not close to so many of the people around me, so why should I be distanced by people who are physically far away? Distance doesn't always mean a lack of closeness."

"Very true. I think love always transcends distance somehow. All kinds of love. It can be between family, friends, or lovers. It doesn't matter. So long as it is true."

"So long as it's platinum yeah?" Santana said through a smile.

"Always." Brittany agreed, her tone light-hearted and hopeful. She wasn't sure what would happen next, or where they would go from here, but this moment felt like a checkpoint, like they had achieved something together. Both were in a better place now than before, together and apart. It was kind of wonderful to think about.

"I'm not so worried about the future now Santana, I know you're going to be okay. And no matter what - tomorrow, the day after, and the day after that, it's just going to be another day that I love you."

You still look like a movie
You still sound like a song
My God, this reminds me
Of when we were young

3 Million Things

1. I am SO proud of "Santana." She really did so well didn't she!? I knew all of you unicorns were cheering her on the whole time :)

When I came into things, she was in a complicated place with her PTSD. Time had helped, and being in a more stable situation, and working towards her degree had done wonders. This seems to be the foundation of any kind of healing, she couldn't have done next the part she did with me if she wasn't in a safe situation. She didn't know how far she had already come by herself. I do remember back when she couldn't say anything that had happened out loud without crying and shutting down, unless she was drunk/under the influence of substances. I am prouder than I can ever even attempt to say, that she had all the above conversations completely sober. And so we figured out that the dreaded whiteboard full of the darkest memories were all guilt ones, and of how she felt that had hurt other people along the way. These were the 'snakes' that were still eating away at her and keeping her up at night.

And, I really did do my psychology honors thesis on guilt. Crazy right? And I didn't have Santana in my life when I was writing it from start to finish. After it, I had planned to go on and get my master's (and registration) as a psychologist but what actually happened was that after I submitted that thesis I came here, and started ranting about blue roses, haha, and then that was Chapter 1. I was never meant to be a psychologist, and thank god I came here instead of attempting to do that master's is all I can say, I needed to heal too, and yes it was an unconventional road there but then again, I'm an unconventional person.

Lastly on that note, I do stand by the research I did, the way in which you recall memories does matter. The term 'cognitive reappraisal' is more commonly used than 'reworking' but I used 'reworking' because sometimes the psych terms can sound complicated, and in the moment I wanted things said as simply as possible. In the research phase I brought in people who all recalled traumatic events (times where they felt they had done something bad or wrong) and I found that when they were guided to 'reappraise' the memory they were more likely to look at it in a 'guilty' way (I've made a mistake, but mistakes can be fixed) as opposed to a shameful way (I am the mistake, and there's no hope). I never forgot that.
Santana really doesn't have the best access to mental health services with being so remote. And even when she lived closer to the city, I remember she went to some guy who was way out of touch who just made her cry. If you're in the same situation, don't put up with that. Keep looking. You are worth more than you know, and it's okay to need help, we all do sometimes. And it was just lucky that my help got us through, because honestly there are professionals far more effective and knowledgeable, and just overall better than I am at helping out there! It's just a matter of finding them, and not settling in the process. Please don't give up!

2. If you've read the 'Fantasia' chapter, you might remember that I ended that one with Santana saying that line "It's just going to be another day that I love you" because that was something she used to say to me when we were younger. It felt right to say it back to her in that moment at the end of this chapter. I know 'Fantasia' has its minority(?) of fans so I won't delete it at least for the time being. I feel like 'The Reunion/The Battle I Didn't see/Platinum' was just as much of a happy ending as 'Fantasia' though, in its own way. If this even is the ending? I don't even know!
If anything really notable happens no doubt I'll come back and tell you one way or another, whether I write a message through the reviews, or if it actually is important enough to warrant (yet) another chapter.

Edit: Thank you to the unicorn who reviewed and reminded me of a few things. Yes, you are very right, 'Fantasia' will stay right where it is and will not ever be deleted. I've always completely understood that some readers would prefer the typical Brittana ending, while others would want to know what actually happened, and whichever path you choose is 100% okay by me.

3. As I said, the song I used in this chapter was by Adele and it's called "When We Were Young." Santana recently played an even better song for me during the time that had similar lyrics, but I couldn't use it, it was by a local band and using it would totally pinpoint our geographical location. I was happy with using an Adele song though, because I've used a lot of her music throughout this story so it works :)

4. I mentioned Santana had written a story about a tiger losing his stripes. That's totally true. She'd actually made a book of it, completely illustrated and typed on the computer. At FIVE years old. It's the bomb. There were once all these tiger looking things, but only one tiger had stripes, and all the other tigers bullied him so he painted himself solid orange. Then the other tigers changed their mind and started wearing stripe suits. It was all about the fickleness of society. It was deep as for a little kid. No joke. We found it in one of the boxes we were going through.

Oh, and by the way, I still have Lizzie the Lizard's twin. She's right here on my desk beside me at the moment actually!

5. I went to visit Maddy recently to make sure that she was all right. I had no idea that "Puck" had upset her in the past, nor did I know how much guilt "Santana" carried around for it. Maddy has had it tough in life, but she's come through it all okay too. She used EMDR therapy to get through her own stuff, she had an awful ex-boyfriend.
She remembers that moment with "Puck" she told me it happened in Santana's mom's house, though of course Maria wasn't there, she always left her alone in those days. Maddy remembered the handcuffs and she remembers crying, but not what happened after. I was able to tell her that Santana took her out the house before anything else happened, which I think was a relief for her to hear. I was also able to tell her that Santana was really sorry that it had happened. They're all good now. Maddy is willing to testify against Puck if it ever came down to it, and she's also happy now to hang out with us both again, I hope we can all catch up as a group soon :)

6. As for "Puck," right now he is in Italy. He has been traveling to different places in Europe for quite some time, settling and most likely doing evil deeds, and then moving on again. He had two large noticeable tattoos on his left arm, one on his shoulder (usually covered up) and another on his forearm. The one on his forearm is his name, though not the name I knew him as. He has changed it to a word that is related to the place that one day he will burn in. Italian unicorns, please be very careful and keep yourselves safe from this man.

Also if there are any younger unicorns, MSN Messenger was a chat program on the computer in the 2000s. It was made by Microsoft. It was kind of like an early version of Skype.

And, okay... if anyone was wondering what I mean by the "you-go/we-go" thing, it's from the American Pie movies. :P

7. In the end I made about 100 Christmas decorations to cover the tree. Some were simple, but others were super complex. Santana's favorites were the angel I made to represent her grandfather, and of course the snowman. And probably also the well-hung reindeer, haha. We never did find Santa though, but it was okay we framed Abuelo's message so it was like he was there with us, and that was much better than Santa :)

Oh, and my migraines, everything associated with that is very embarrassing to write about and never shows me in my best light to say the least, but I just had to, because Santana was so lovely to me while I was sick, and I just had to write about her kindness no matter what.

8. I still would love to get this story published, and present it to Santana someday before I die, haha. I think that she'd like that too. I always wanted to get it to a publish-able standard, but the monumental task of it all has always felt daunting. And I guess I have never properly had the time, like when I was working at the clinic I had zero time, and then at some point I had that breakdown, and then after that I did my Master's degree.
I feel like editing the Glee out of it would take a lot, and I also think it is currently too long. I know what I'm like, I tend to ramble on, and I don't want rambling to take away from the message, and the best parts. Plus, I think a fair amount of it just needs to be written better. So the whole thing would need to be edited, and cut down, and maybe I'd need to take all the pop culture references out? I know nothing about writing and publishing, I don't know if it's okay to talk about things like TV shows and other people's song lyrics in a novel without getting their permission? I've just not felt up to the task, I never ever start something if I don't know if I can finish it, I'm definitely an obsessive finish-er.
Back in the day I couldn't even sort out the first step: working out what our names would be. Well mine, anyway. I don't know what I'd call myself if not Brittany. Santana's name is a no brainer. I am 100% certain that her name in my novel would be Savannah. You have no idea how many times when we were kids that she used to sigh and say "Oh, I wish my name was Savannah", so it feels right to pay tribute to that. She still likes it to this day too, it would still be in her top 3 names at least. But as for me, if not Brittany, then maybe Briar? I'm not sure that sounds quite right. I'm up for any suggestions!
So that's where I'm at with that. It's still a dream to publish it, but I don't know how to accomplish this yet, plus I can't be really sure that we are at the right end point yet, I mean we could be, especially because we're both 'unicorn' now, and that's really the story I wanted to tell... I had really wanted to show the road to being unicorn, and I can't believe that actually happened.
But is this truly the end of that road? I'm not 100% sure yet.

9. I went back and forth about changing 'platinum' to 'titanium' the whole way, because then I could reference the Sia song, and people are probably a bit more familiar with titanium being a strong metal. But no, what I said in the moment was 'platinum' so I'll stick to it. And anyway, platinum is as rare and as precious as "Santana" herself is.

10. Just the other day Santana called me and told me again how much better she was feeling (as if she could barely even believe it) and I said "that's because you ripped all the heads off the snakes and laid them out in your Grandmother's yard," and she laughed, because it is so true. That's what we did. She's going to be all right now. I'm sure of it. :)

We are still looking for that red snake though. Who knows, it might even be found in here, somewhere in the words of this story!
It's possible that the red snake may have something to do with Santana's guilt about hurting me, because I've always been super close to her heart, and hurting me upsets her more than anything. We haven't had a conversation about the ways that I was hurt during those times yet (and I haven't shown her the sad Britt chapters), because I didn't want to focus on that. But, if that's what she needs to talk about, to get all the way better, then I will. We can confront those chapters and build those last few bridges between us and talk it out. And if that's not the red reptile, then at least we've ruled it out :)
Time will tell. I've said this before, but that's the beauty of stories yet to be told :)

Take care for now Unicorns, though I won't be far. I'm sending you all my love and good thoughts. Thank you so much for reading and taking this journey with me, and for every single act of kindness that you've given me, you know I'll hang onto it all, and I'll never forget. :)