Chapter 12

Jesus Christ this is so short and bad but:

a) I started this the other day and then stopped, and once I do that I can't really get back into the chapter the same way UGH

b) I've spent my whole day getting absolutely nowhere with the most tedious, boring assignment which is only worth 10% of the module anyway and I feel like that's gonna be consuming my life until Friday by the looks of things.

Praying for all my readers right now, I hope you're managing to stay safe and healthy (both mentally and physically!) at these traumatising times!

By the end of the day, she was sick of it. She was sick of everyone looking at her differently. She was sick of the catcalls, and she was sick of feeling paranoid every time someone looked at her, every time she passed someone talking. Her skin crawled at the thought of what they were saying. Part of her wanted to know everything, but the other part of her didn't.

So, here she was, at the end of the day, in front of her locker, feeling a new kind of alone as a group of Cheerios down the hallway were staring at her, clearly gossiping amongst themselves, indefinitely about that stupid commercial.

She didn't even like that group. But at least before all this, they respected her. And now, here they were, treating her like a stranger, insignificant, mocking her and she couldn't do anything. She didn't have the energy to fight back. She was too scared and too exhausted and so, so done with this already.

"Hey."

Santana jumped at the voice behind her, turning swiftly to face the blonde. She gave her a feeble smile.

"Hey."

"I missed you last lesson," Brittany uttered quietly. "You okay?"

Santana nodded. "Same."

"Are you sure?" Brittany didn't look convinced. The latina sighed.

"Yeah. Well, I'm having to tell my parents tonight, so I'm not really looking forward to that…"

The blonde nodded understandingly, but she still looked sadly at Santana, so the other girl looked away and tried to busy herself with clearing a few things out the way in her locker. "I saw you looking at those girls. Don't worry about them. They're stupid anyway."

Santana smiled.

"I thought you'd banned the word 'stupid' from your vocabulary?"

"Yeah, well, they deserve it. They are stupid. And you shouldn't be worrying about what everyone else is saying anyway."

The latina shrugged, looking away and breaking the eye contact. "Yeah, well, I am. And I can't seem to help that."

Brittany sighed and leaned against the locker next to her.

"Why can't you see yourself as beautiful and amazing and perfect as I see you?" she asked sadly. "I have so much love for you that I could give you half of it so that you could love yourself and it would still be too much love for me to handle."

Santana bit her lip, feeling her eyes well up but she managed to push them back and, unable to find the words right away, she shrugged. She felt sad about what Brittany was saying, but she couldn't find herself able to do much about it. She felt numb, like her thoughts weren't quite making sense and she couldn't bring herself to say them, anyway.

The numbness somehow managed to transform to fury and she slammed her locker shut as she remembered the one reason why all this crap was happening in the first place.

"We should get to the choir room," she said eventually. "I saw Shelby earlier and she said something about joining back together for a lesson, and we don't want to be late for another Berry solo."

Brittany sighed, watching her stride away, and trailed after her, a feeling inside that this lesson probably wasn't going to be as good an idea as Mr Schue or someone probably thought it would be.

Still, she kept her fingers crossed as she followed after her girlfriend, not wanting to uncross them out of fear for Santana, hoping from the bottom of her heart that things would go back to the way they were before, but happier.