Brittany felt her heart leap at the words Bamboo spoke, and she attempted to subtly shift her gaze to Quinn and Sam, both of whom stood with mouths agape, attempting to figure out the meaning of what had been said. She told me you'd come resonated in her ears, and Brittany clenched her jaw, needing to gain some composure before trusting herself to speak. Sensing the struggle of the alien who owned her heart, Santana took two big steps forward, abandoning the role she'd been meant to play, figuring that Bamboo's declaration meant all bets were off, that there was no more pretense of being lost in the woods, that she could comfort Brittany, if that's what she needed. Gently, the brunette pressed her hand against the panicky alien's lower back, and she felt Brittany lean into her touch, felt Brittany's gratitude for the silent support.
"Who?" Brittany finally spoke, half-expecting Quinn to beat her to it. "Who are you talking about?"
"I was told to never speak of this to anyone." Bamboo turned his wary eyes to Santana and Mercedes. "They are not your kind, am I right?"
"They're with us." Brittany found her voice getting stronger, and she searched blindly for Santana's hand, every cell in her being relaxing when sure fingers entwined with hers. "You're right, they're not our kind, but they can be trusted."
"We need to go somewhere else. There are too many ears around here for what I'm about to tell you."
"The five of us." Brittany was firm, and Bamboo simply nodded, leading them over to an old Ford Bronco.
Silently, Sam lifted the seat, and the four girls squeezed into the back, Quinn behind the driver's seat, right hand extended, in case she needed to react quickly. After Mercedes took her place in the center, Brittany pulled Santana onto her lap, needing the girl as close to her as possible, feeling unbearably anxious that they may be moments away from gaining answers to the ever growing lot of questions that swam about in her head. With Brittany's arms secure around her waist, the bumps in the road jostling her whole body, once Sam and Howard climbed into the front seat (with Sam checking back at Mercedes, Brittany noticed), Santana slipped her hand under Brittany's jacket, running fingertips up and down goosebumped sides, trying with all her might to help the girl who held her so tightly, so protectively.
"I love you." Santana mouthed, catching glistening blue eyes. "I love you a lot."
"Thank you." Brittany murmured into the soft skin of Santana's neck, feeling a nervous pulse beat into her mouth. "I love you too."
Howard Bamboo kept his eyes trained on the road, finding it difficult to believe that the moment he'd been prepared for by the woman who raised him was finally happening. He had expected them to come, he'd heard the descriptions of them, of what they'd look like in the stages of their life, present and future, but he'd never expected them to come with humans. She (the form she took with him was always a she, and he believed she was naturally female, though he knew the being sometimes acquired a male alias) was hesitant around all humans, having taken to him simply because he was a motherless child, and in having him with her, she was more easily taken in by the community they'd joined, but she never trusted another but him, not with the her deepest secret, her secret that, if revealed, could compromise her very existence.
When they reached an isolated spot, a place where the only lights were those that came from the headlights of his truck, Bamboo cut the engine and climbed out of the car, grabbing the small flashlight from under his seat, and using it to light a path ahead of him. He watched as the three, and their two humans followed him, paying particular attention to the taller of the girls, and the way she clung to the lighter skinned of the two humans. He'd heard the woman who'd acted as his mother murmur things, back when he was a small child and supposed to be asleep, things he had long forgotten, thoughts that reignited in his mind when he watched the way the two of them interacted, thoughts that made his skin prickle when he caught a glimpse of strange yellow light that emanated forth from the human, even from under a scarf and jacket.
"Where are we?" Brittany asked, still holding fast to Santana's hand, bringing her closer to Quinn, Sam and Mercedes.
"Nowhere of importance." Bamboo answered, understanding the undertones of the question. "Just away from where anyone will hear us speak."
"How did you know who we were?" Quinn asked, voice cracking slightly, even after the initial shock had worn off. "Who are you?"
"I am not one of you, if that is what you're asking." He replied, and she nodded. "But it was one of your kind who raised me. Ana'í, we say, in the language of my adopted people."
"Ana'í." Sam repeated, and Brittany nudged him with her elbow, surprisingly playful, for the situation, when she thought he was thinking of Na'vi, and Avatar, and whatever else he'd gleaned from his fascination with that movie.
"It means alien, or foreigner, depending. But for she, and you, it's the latter."
"Who?" Brittany repeated, trying to let the circling of Santana's thumb on her wrist keep her from shouting her impatience.
"I'm getting to that." He responded simply. "The ana'í that you're seeking, she found me when I was six weeks old, on the steps of a fire station near Santa Fe. She had assumed, considering where she found me, that I was a Native American child, and for that reason, she took the alias Shima Dehaaya, and she changed her face to suit the name."
"She can change her face?" Sam asked, touching his own.
"Yes. She is a shapeshifter, I've seen it with my own eyes, how she can go from one form to another. But from what she told me, you are not like her." He shook his head. "She took me here, and she called me Howard, she told the others that I was her son. When I grew older, it was apparent that I wasn't a Navajo after all, but when they began gossiping, she told them that my father was a foreigner, and that's where I got my features. In school, they called me ana'í, in the other sense, and when I was even older, they started calling me Howard Bamboo, because they weren't very creative with their nicknames, and the name stuck."
"Okay, as sad of a story as this is, can you get to who she is?" Quinn bit her lip, impatient, and Howard glared at her.
"It is all part of the story, you will wait until I get to the point. It was around the time that they began teasing me in school that I started noticing that my mother- because that's who I thought she was still- was different too. She tried to hide them, but I noticed her abilities, and when I was thirteen, she sat me down, and told me that she was not of this Earth."
"What did you do?" Santana squeaked, although she wasn't sure she was allowed to speak.
"What would you do, if someone you cared for told you that they weren't who you thought?" He asked her pointedly, and she peered, ever so slightly, at Brittany. "I said nothing to no one. She told me that her secret could get us both killed. It was a big responsibility for someone barely past a boy, and she kept me mostly in the dark, because the more I knew, the more danger I was in."
"But she told you about us?" Brittany looked at Howard, and he nodded.
"Two years ago, a police officer came to the reservation. He began asking questions about 1947, and I'd never seen her the way she was then, like a caged animal. The next day, she told me about the three beings that she was waiting for, the ones who had to seek her out on their own. She drew me detailed pictures of what you each would look like, she made me memorize your faces, and then she lit the paper on fire. The next day, Shima was dead."
"She's dead?" Brittany gasped, heart sinking, and Santana pulled their joined hands to her heart, trying to offer comfort, though she wasn't sure how she could.
"Shima Dehaaya is dead, yes. But a month after we buried the body, I was out in the forest, at the stream where I used to fish, and a woman I'd never seen before appeared beside me."
"She changed her face." Quinn finished, knowingly.
"Yes, she created a new identity, to keep that man from finding out who she was."
"He thinks it's you." Sam revealed, certain it was Hummel who'd been there.
"Let him think that. I am as human as they come. If he comes for me, he will find nothing."
"But who is she?" Quinn crossed her arms over her chest, looking much like an indignant child.
"I have revealed enough to you, she will reveal the rest."
"She's here?" Brittany continued squeezing Santana's hand, keeping it where it lay, the beat of her heart and the hardness of the necklace soothing.
"No. I will go to her, and in two days, at sundown, she'll meet you out in the desert, near the rock formation twelve miles south of Roswell."
"Two days?" Quinn exploded, and Sam grabbed her arm quickly, fearing her reaction. "No! We came all the way out here, you need to take us to her now!"
"I'm afraid I can't. These are the instructions she gave me, the orders she wanted me to pass on to you when you came."
"But-"
"Quinn, leave it." Brittany snapped at her, not wanting anything to compromise their opportunity to meet the mysterious being. Turning back to Howard, she gave a single nod. "We will be there."
"I will tell her." He promised, and when the phone on his hip rang, he answered it. "Yeah, boss, I got 'er with me. Just drivin' back down now. I'll be 'round soon." Hanging up, he saw the way they all looked at him, questioning his speech patterns. "We all play the roles they want us to, don't we? She taught me to act like an idiot, if they think you're smart, they ask you more questions. We need to leave now, I have to get back."
Howard would answer no further questions on the ride, and Brittany was fairly convinced that he didn't actually know the answers. It seemed like the elusive she had kept him mostly in the dark, and Brittany, playing with Santana's hair, as her head rested on her shoulder, felt sad for him, having been raised by a woman so full of deep, dangerous secrets. When they reached the furthest point on the vehicular trail, only having a few minutes left to walk back to their camp (Howard, knowing who they were, was unconcerned about them making it the rest of the way), Brittany stood before the man and offered her hand, shaking it in gratitude, a gesture that both Sam and Quinn followed suit.
Brittany expected Quinn to blow up on the walk, after Brittany had snapped at her, but she didn't say a word, she simply waked a few steps ahead, lost in her own head. It was after midnight by the time they made it back to the clearing in front of Brittany and Santana's tent, and the silence between them all still hadn't been broken. Having nothing to say, Quinn nodded a simple goodnight, and after giving Santana a look of concern, one she quickly shook off, Mercedes followed suit.
"Good night, Britt." Sam put an arm around his sister, and she reciprocated fiercely, pulling him into a full on hug. "Hey, you okay?"
"Yeah, I'm okay. Just overwhelmed. In two days, we're going to have all of the answers. She's real, and even if she had a motive behind it, she took in a baby thirty-six years ago and raised him. It seems like he really cares about her too. I feel a lot better about this than I did."
"She definitely seems a little less murdery now." He tried to joke, but thick with emotion, it got caught in his throat. "I hope that's true, and he's not just some kind of decoy. It's going to be a long two days."
"You've got that right."
"Night, Santana." Sam pulled away from Brittany and gave her a small wave, silently asking him to take care of his sister, a request she nodded her response to.
"See you tomorrow, Sam."
Brittany was fidgety when they went into their tent, and as much as Santana wanted to take the girl in her arms, she could tell she needed time to process, so she sat cross-legged on the bed and watched as she paced a six foot space. Brittany felt a tingling anticipation course through her veins, one she could only liken to waiting for Santa as a kid, amplified one hundredfold. It was happening, she was going to get answers, she was going to know where in the universe she came from, she was hopefully going to know why things seemed to keep getting stranger and stranger, she was going to meet someone who remembered the forty-seven crash, if the pictures proved true, and it was a lot to take. After a good ten minutes passed of running questions through her head, Brittany turned toward Santana, having almost forgotten that it was late at night, and the human girl needed more sleep than her. She was sitting there on the bed, dark eyes watchful, once again wearing Brittany's sweatshirt, once again turning the glowing pendant over in her hand. Relaxing at the sight, and smiling softly, Brittany sat down on the bed and crawled into Santana's arms.
"Mmm, feels good." Brittany hummed as Santana rubbed circles on her lower back and dropped gentle kisses on her hairline. "Sorry, that was just a lot more overwhelming than I expected."
"You don't have to be sorry, Britt. It was overwhelming for me, and I'm not even someone that the ana'í has been waiting for."
"She knew what we look like. I don't understand, she knew what we looked like now, not when we were in those incubation pods, I don't understand how she'd know that, and why she wouldn't just come find us in the first place."
"There has to be a reason she didn't. Maybe it wasn't safe, I don't know."
"I guess." Brittany sighed. "It just seems like kind of a crappy thing to do, leaving us to fend for ourselves. What if you hadn't been shot? What if Hummel hadn't shown you the pictures of those bodies? Would it have been another ten years before we realized she was even out there?"
"When people say this to me, I kind of want to haul off and slap them, because it's cliche, and I think kind of a cop out, but maybe everything really does happen for a reason. It's totally a shitty catalyst, me getting shot and you almost getting caught saving me, but if it brought you to finding who you really are, I think it's okay."
"It brought me more than that, Santana." Brittany tilted her chin up, searching dark eyes that reflected the golden light.
"I know." She hesitated for a moment, knowing that Brittany was already overwhelmed, but also that she couldn't keep a development as major as what happened in the woods from her. "I need to tell you something."
"What?" Brittany's face registered alarm, and Santana squeezed her hand, reassuring Brittany, as much as herself, that it was okay.
"Something happened with the necklace." She slowly turned the chain so that Brittany could see the unbroken links, and watched as blue eyes widened in uncertainty and confusion. "I-I don't know how it happened, Quinn, she-"
"Quinn?"
"She saw me outside of our tent last night." Santana confessed quietly, having forgotten that Brittany didn't know about that. "I didn't know that she was there, and she told me in the woods earlier that she knew I had the necklace."
"So she was spying on us."
"No, yes, I don't know, she says she wasn't. But she was surprised that I could touch it, obviously, and then I went to check the pins, because I was so nervous about losing it...and there were no pins."
"Okay. Okay." Brittany took a deep breath, fingering the chain, trying to find any sign of give in the metal, but coming up short. "How is this even possible?"
"I have absolutely no idea."
"Are you okay? God, I keep exposing you to more and more things that you shouldn't have to handle."
"It's my choice to be exposed to it, Brittany, and if these are the choices that mean I'm with you, I would make them a million times over." She caught both of Brittany's hands and held them over the chain. "I freaked out in the woods, I thought maybe the necklace was going to try to kill me, but Quinn was really rational about it."
"Quinn?" Brittany gave Santana a skeptical look. "Quinn was rational? She didn't throw a fit about you having the necklace to begin with?"
"I know. I know that sounds even crazier than almost anything I've ever seen, but yeah, that's what happened. "You said last night that you thought there was something special between us, and I don't know, I kind of think she's realizing that too."
"This whole day has been just surreal." She attempted to manipulate the chain, but the molecules proved impossible to shift.
"That's an understatement." Santana moved to lie down, and Brittany lied beside her, kissing her softly. "I think maybe the best thing to do is go to sleep and figure everything out- including what I'm supposed to do with a stolen necklace stuck to my neck when we get back to Roswell- in the morning."
"Okay." Brittany closed her hand around the yellow stone, feeling, for some reason, like she needed to cradle it like that. "Good night, Santana."
"Good night, Britt." She closed her eyes, and several minutes passed, wide awake.
"I love you." Brittany whispered into the darkness, unsure if Santana was still awake, but she was, and she'd heard, smiling and moving impossibly closer to her alien.
"I love you too."
Despite Brittany's reassurances to Santana that they would figure it all out in the morning, she didn't sleep much, instead, she took to worrying the chain between her fingers, entirely confused about why it couldn't be removed, and what that meant for her girlfriend's safety. Though Howard Bamboo and the fourth alien weighed heavy on her mind, her immediate concern was the miraculously healing metal, a concern, unfortunately, that she knew may not be abated until the meeting in the desert.
The next day began with a flurry of activity, taking down tents, packing everything up, and racing to get the bus at ten o'clock. Before they left their little oasis in the woods, Santana and Brittany kissed several times, held each other close, unsure whether or not Brittany would be able to come by that night, especially since Santana was supposed to work, and she knew that afterwards, her mother would be all over her, checking her bruises, and demanding to spend time with her. Knowing they had enough to hide, Brittany did a final once over of Santana's sensitive skin, making Santana pout a little as she healed a lingering silverish mark below her ear (Brittany's favorite spot to put her lips on, she'd decided, anxious as she was to get her lips on other parts, once they weren't surrounded by chaos). With a final peck, they parted ways, Santana glancing quickly over her shoulder as she and Mercedes went first, and Brittany, feeling sentimental, drawing a heart over her face, while ignoring some sarcastic comment from Quinn.
Rather than get dressed for work in the locker room of the diner and risk one of the other girls (or Puck, since he was known to peek through the crack from the kitchen, a habit that had earned him a handprint on his cheek on more than one occasion), Santana came down from her bedroom in her uniform, taking special care to tuck the pendant deep within her cleavage, and, a task far more difficult, to hide the conspicuous chain. Sunday evenings were always busy at the Intergalactic Diner, and though she and Mercedes split the dining room with two other girls, they had hardly a second to speak to each other, hardly a second to even breathe. At a quarter-to-nine, when the final round of tables began trickling out, Santana was cashing out Sunshine's tips and sending her home. Preoccupied by the numbers she was mentally crunching, she was caught by surprise when she looked up and found Hummel standing over her. Resisting the urgent desire to grab for her chest, Santana sucked in a deep breath and painted on her most convincing fake smile.
"Good evening, Sheriff."
"Evening, Miss Lopez." He tipped his hat, and she could tell that his smile was as false as her own. "Heard you went on that camping trip this weekend, did you have a nice time?"
"I did, sir, thank you. It's a shame Kurt missed it, Mercedes and I had a great time." She tilted her head in the direction of the other waitress, and Mercedes offered a small wave in return.
"Well, you know my boy, that's not really his thing. Funny though, I wouldn't have taken you for the camping type either."
"Just trying new things out, college application time, you know? I really can't have too much on there." Santana shrugged, and Hummel simply hummed a response, letting more than a minute pass without speaking.
"Bunch of you went, right? I know Paul Karofsky's son was talking about how him and a bunch of the football guys were going when I saw him down at the station last week. And Evan Pierce told me his two were headed out there."
"Yeah, I think they were all there, I'm not sure, Mercedes and I weren't exactly the most well suited for it, honestly, and we sort of kept to ourselves." Santana tried not to stiffen at the mention of Brittany and Sam, tried to keep her twitching fingers from seeking out the gem that almost seemed to pulsate with her heartbeat. "I don't mean to be rude, sir, but we're starting to close up. Was there something I could get for you?"
"Oh, right. Let me get a cup of coffee and a slice of that Screaming Alien Cherry Pie." He requested, and Santana held back a shudder, hearing him say the words screaming alien.
"Right away." She grabbed his thermos and sashayed over to the coffee pot, filling it up as quickly as she could, before dishing the pie into an aluminum container and setting both back down in front of him. "Here you go, Sheriff. You're all set."
"I still have to pay." He reminded her, and she simply shook her head.
"On the house tonight, it's all going to get tossed in twenty minutes anyway."
"Well alright then, thank you very much. You have yourself a good night."
Tossing a few dollars in the tip jar, Hummel tipped his hat and was out the door. When the last of the customers finally went home, Santana sent Sunshine and Harmony on their way, and started counting out the register, while Mercedes worked on filling the sugar shakers. Once Puck and Nick, the dishwasher, were cleaned up and out, Mercedes locked the door behind them, and sat down at one of the counter stools across from Santana, bringing with her the bin of clean silverware to be rolled.
"That guy has got to be fucking kidding me. Evan Pierce told me his two were headed out there." Santana mimicked, gritting her teeth. "He has no right to casually mention Brittany, not after he basically called her a murderer, after he went and started poking around the Reservation."
"Oh, don't I know it?" Mercedes rolled her eyes. "I think he's convinced that he has to play nice with you now, especially since we know about his alien hunt."
"Well he sucks at it. He's got his son playing narc, he asks me about Britt, if he has any plan for me to ever warm up to him again, he should try leaving me alone."
"You're not ever going to warm up to him though."
"Still, he doesn't know that." She pressed her hand against her chest, just making sure her permanent jewelry was still hidden.
"What's up with you doing that all night? I kept thinking you were having a heart attack or something."
"My heart isn't in my boobs, 'Ce, gorgeous as they are." Santana teased, then looked around cautiously, before tugging her necklace free. "This would be the necklace that Britt and the others stole from Hummel's office."
"Oh, good, you're back to being insane, I was starting to get worried. Why are you wearing it? Here. In Roswell. Where Hummel is onto us."
"I don't actually have a choice in the matter." Santana muttered, though having accepted that it wasn't going to kill her, she actually loved having it on her at all times, loved the honor of wearing something Brittany had given to her, something from an entirely different world, dangerous as it may have been. "It sort of fused itself back together around my neck, and Britt couldn't get it to budge."
"What the hell? What about Sam and Quinn?"
"They can't get close enough to try. It, um, it burned them when they tried."
"And I'm just now finding out about this?" Mercedes shouted, and Santana gestured up to the ceiling, indicating that her parents were up there and she needed to keep it quiet.
"It actually wasn't really a thing until last night. Britt had it hidden with the papers in my wall, she didn't want to leave it here, so she gave it to me to wear on Thursday. Wasn't a big deal until the safety pins that held it together were gone. And since then, we kind of met the fourth alien's gatekeeper, and have been at work all day, so..."
"You are so damn nonchalant about everything. I swear, next week you're going to have been abducted by a gang of rival aliens while I'm in calc, and I won't hear about it for a week."
"Shut up, 'Cedes, I've been dying to talk to you. I have so much to tell you, stuff that isn't alien related too. Well, I guess it's kind of alien related, since it has to do with Brittany."
"You are incapable of saying her name without smiling, you're so love sick."
"Does it still count as love sick if I've told her I love her?"
"You did what?" Mercedes' jaw dropped. "Oh, girl, we need to finish off this chocolate pudding pie, and you need to spill everything."
"Everything?" Santana raised an eyebrow suggestively.
"You guys did it too? What the hell? When did all this happen?"
"Friday night, and it was incredible. Also, 'Ce, you can say sex, just so you know. The word isn't going to bite you."
"I've decided I've lost all knowledge of who you even are anymore. You are so shmoopy now."
"Shmoopy? Seriously, you have got to stop hanging out with your grandma." Santana chuckled, and Mercedes flicked whipped cream from the pie at her. "Don't you want to know if she loves me back?"
"Maybe if I lived under a rock for the past ten years. Of course she loves you back. Tell me everything, just do me a favor and skip past all the graphic details of your lady sex please."
"Ew, like I would tell you that anyway. The details are way too hot to exist anywhere but my mind. I'll start after we had the best sex I've ever had, like, times a billion, and Brittany saw her home planet for the first time."
Although Santana appeared full of bravado, when she'd actually began telling Mercedes the story of her first I love you's with Brittany, her cheeks colored and she felt almost shy. She wound up skipping parts of the story, thinking they were just a little too emotionally intimate, even to share with her best friend, and she preferred to keep them for herself, to cherish them within her. Mercedes was strangely gushy while she listened, and by the time she was done speaking, Santana could tell she had a story to tell, a story she wouldn't even needle her about keeping to herself.
"Sam kissed me." She admitted, casting her eyes down.
"What? When?"
"Yesterday, right before we met you and Britt to go into the woods. It lasted about fifteen seconds, until Quinn decided it would be fun to ruin the moment."
"She saw you? And she didn't absolutely lose her mind?"
"I mean, she did a little, but I was shocked that she didn't scream down the whole campground. If she'd seen you and Brittany kiss for the first time, she probably would have."
"She's acting so weird lately. Brittany said she's still acting the same with her, but I'm pretty sure she knows we had sex, and she's been almost nice to me, and she didn't go crazy on you?"
"I hate to say it, but she really dislikes Brittany, more than anyone else."
"Yeah. I know, and I hate it. How do you even hate her? She's just so...so everything." Santana nearly swooned, then checked herself. "So back to important stuff, you kissed Trouty Mouth? And your head wasn't swallowed?"
"Seriously? Oh no, you are not calling him Trouty Mouth. Where did that even come from?"
"Hey, I like the guy, but you can't deny that his mouth is gigantic. If I had to choose anyone in Roswell that was an alien, I would pick him."
"You are such a bitch. Leave him be, he's sweet, and he's a great kisser."
"And I'm shmoopy."
"You absolutely are infinitely more shmoopy than me."
"Whatever. I'm in love, I'm allowed to be. So did you see their planet yet? Or the stars?" Santana closed her eyes, almost allowing herself to fantasize about the beautiful things she saw when she kissed Brittany, thoughts that quickly turned from yellow sand and rainbow stars to something significantly less G-rated.
"No, it was a four second kiss. He was nervous, I think, about meeting Bamboo, and he just pulled me in."
"That's actually kind of cute. I give him credit, I didn't think he had it in him."
"Says you, whose girlfriend spent years giving pining looks to before suddenly amping everything up to warp speed. If Sam is anything like his sister, maybe I should expect a marriage proposal soon."
"That would be insane, and then you would get to see Quinn flip her shit."
At home, Brittany and Sam had dinner with their parents, then retreated to their separate bedrooms, unsure how they were even supposed to talk about the major happening the following day. Attempting not to think about it, Brittany flopped back on her bed, checking her phone, and smiling a little at the picture Santana had set to her lock screen, the two of them pressed cheek to cheek, sitting outside their tent on Friday afternoon, how much they loved each other sort of apparent, even before they'd spoke the words. Looking at the time, and seeing it was just after eleven, she considered calling Santana, having grown accustomed so quickly to falling asleep beside her, that she was certain, coupled with her thoughts of Howard Bamboo and the ana'i, that she would never be able to fall asleep on her own. Eventually deciding against making that phone call, and forcing herself to stop looking at the window and contemplating climbing out, Brittany got up, changed into her pajamas, and after coming out of her bathroom, she flicked off the lights and crawled into bed. Almost an hour passed of lying there, wide awake, when the phone rang, and Brittany nearly rolled off of the bed in an effort to get to it quickly.
"Hi." Santana breathed, before Brittany could even say anything. "Were you asleep?"
"Not even close."
"Yeah, neither was I."
"Well I figured, since you called. Unless sleep calling is a habit of yours that you've never told me about."
"I meant like I wasn't even close." Santana muffled her laugh with blankets, and Brittany smiled to herself, picturing her buried all under the dark comforter on her bed, cuddled up to a pillow. "I tried, after talking to 'Ce for awhile when we were closing up, and then my mom when I came upstairs, but I'm missing my new favorite pillow."
"Oh, is that all I am to you now?"
"I mean..." Santana covered more laughter, and Brittany clicked her tongue. "You are pretty comfortable, but I also wish you were here for other reasons."
"Other reasons, huh?"
"Yup, many other reasons. There are plenty of other things we could be doing, rather than just lying here not sleeping." Santana wound up yawning loudly at that exact moment, putting a stop to Brittany's revitalized consideration toward going over there. "Sorry."
"We really should sleep, you know? Tomorrow is going to be...I don't even know."
"I'm with you, Britt, no matter what happens, okay?"
"I know, and I love you even more for that. But Santana, the same deal applies as when we went to April's. If something happens, you take Mercedes and you run." Santana just sighed, and didn't respond. "Santana."
"Brittany."
"Please don't do this. I can't have you come if I think you're going to do something dangerous, and I really, really need you there with me."
"It's even harder now, to think about running away and not knowing what is happening to you." Santana twisted the chain around her neck and frowned.
"We are both safer if you run. We don't know who she is or what she's capable of. Just please, I need you to make me this promise. I'll always come back to you, remember?"
"I know you will. It's just..." Santana started, then stopped, knowing the argument was pointless, and hoping there was no reason even for the discussion, hoping that the fact that Howard Bamboo, a human cared for the being, was proof that she wouldn't try to hurt any of them. "Okay, I promise."
"Thank you."
"I know this is seriously lame, but do you think...do you want to stay on the phone until we fall asleep?"
"Yeah, I totally do."
The next morning at school, Brittany was jumpy, trying to focus on her classes, and not think about what would happen later. By third period, as she sat in Spanish, listening to Mr. Martinez drone on and on about the proper conjugation of the future perfect tense, she thought she was going to go crazy (esta noche, yo habré conocido ella, she repeated, the only verb she could think to conjugate, to meet). Normally, she was intently focused in that class, not because she knew that Santana occasionally spoke Spanish to her parents or anything, but her mind kept wandering off to some far off yellow planet, and a certain yellow pendant stuck around the neck of the girl she loved. She itched to start making a list of questions, feeling like she had so many for the only alien who'd been alive in 1947, the only alien who /had/ to remember the place they came from and knew why they were on Earth, but she couldn't exactly sit in class and write down things so dangerous. When her phone in her lap buzzed, she looked down, grateful for the distraction, and smiled inwardly when she saw Santana's name.
I'm still not totally convinced Terri Delmonico won't be showing up this afternoon.
What did she do now?
She brought an insane scrapbook of every detail of her wedding to show me. She told me when I get married, she'll help me plan mine. She's not even a real person.
She's obsessed with knowing if you're dating someone.
I'm aware. It's creepy. But I do wish you weren't a secret. If I could, I'd tell both worlds that I love you.
"Señorita Pierce. Is everything alright?" Mr. Martinez called her out, and Brittany blushed from head to toe, knowing that'd she'd totally been grinning down at her lap after seeing that last message.
"I...just feeling a little flushed." She managed, and she heard Quinn snicker from the back of the room.
"If that's the case, you need to head to the nurse."
"No, no. I'm fine." Brittany tried to protest, as appealing as sitting in the nurse's office with Santana was (even with crazy Terri Delmonico).
"You don't look fine, you're very red. If you're ill, we can't have it spreading. Please take your things and go see Miss Delmonico."
As she gathered up her belongings, feeling like a complete fool for essentially getting kicked out of class, Brittany's skin flared hotter, and she tried to get out of the room as quickly as possible. When she walked into the nurse's office, she couldn't stop her smile as seeing Santana leaned over a giant scrapbook, blueberry muffin in one hand and her hair twirled in the other. Terri was talking a mile a minute, and Santana was piping up with noncommittal answers, though Brittany knew as the days passed that her sympathy for Terri and her seeming lack of any real life, or even a grip on reality, was turning into a strange sort of fondness. Wanting to announce her presence, Brittany cleared her throat, and Terri snapped to attention, as she watched Santana slowly turn her head, perhaps already knowing that she was there.
"Oh, it's just a student. I got nervous that you were someone important." Terri looked back down at the book in front of her. "Just, sign your name on that paper and sit down for a minute or something. Let me finish what I'm doing."
"I..um...Mr. Martinez sent me here because I felt flushed, but I think I'm fine." Brittany tried not to let her gaze fall on Santana, but she was sure she could see just the slightest hint of a smirk.
"Are you a medical professional? I mean, I'm not either, but they let me wear this white coat, so I'm more qualified that you." Terri snapped back, huffing reluctantly away from her wedding planning. "Name?"
"Brittany Pierce."
"Brittany Pierce." She repeated, pulling a file, and Brittany was sure that the sense of interest she heard was simply a result of Santana's repeated jokes about Terri being the fourth alien. "Here, have an ice pack, lie down and put it on your head."
"Okay." Brittany nodded, trying not to brush by Santana on her way over to the cot, as badly as she'd wanted to, for fear that Terri would see how blatantly obvious they were with one another.
"What about her?" Terri asked, nudging Santana. "She's pretty, don't you think?"
"Yes." Santana nearly whispered, her turn to blush, regretting that she'd ever made the small concession of telling the nurse that she was a lesbian (a result of the older woman's desperate attempts to hook her up with every boy who came through the door for the first few days). "She is, but I'm pretty sure she's taken."
"Well are you?" Terri directed the question at Brittany. "Every show I've ever watched has a high school with interesting romantic relationships. This place is pathetic, I need some excitement."
"I am, taken, I mean, sorry." Brittany sat up, wanting so badly for Terri to turn the other way so she could lock eyes with Santana and give her a special smile. "And she's a keeper too."
"About time! She should spend her gym periods with me instead of you, maybe I'd actually get a good story out of her, unlike you and your weird little anecdotes about customers in the diner."
"Wow, Miss Delmonico, thanks for replacing me so quick."
"Get over it, or get a more exciting life." Terri rolled her eyes, then jumped back up a few moments later when the door swung open again, revealing a well dressed man with sandy blonde hair and a baby face. "Bryan, honey! What are you doing here?"
"Can't a guy come and take his fiancé to lunch?" The man grinned dopily, kissing Terri's lips, and Santana bit back a scoff at how dorky the guy was (not like she was really one to talk anymore).
"Of course you can, but I still have a few more minutes before this period ends. Want to sit down with us? This is Santana Lopez, head cheerleader who fell off a pyramid. Her father owns that kitchy alien themed diner in town. That's Brittany Pierce, she just got here, and I know nothing about her other than the fact that she has a girlfriend."
"Well then it looks like we should get to know her better before her time here is up. You know how highly I value getting to know the students in this district. Can't make a school work if you don't know the kids, right?"
"I'm pretty much just your average teenager, Mr. Ryan." Brittany tried to sound calm, hating, for obvious reasons, being interrogated, even if it was just about mundane things like school. Santana could hear the panic behind her words, and was frantic, attempting to figure out what to say to deflect attention from her girlfriend.
"Did you know we have cheerleading regionals coming up in a few weeks?" Santana put on the fake, stereotypical "cheerleader" voice that she used on occasion when she was playing a role. "If we win Nationals this year, it'll be my fourth consecutive national championship. Then I should be a shoe-in for a scholarship at UNM."
"Hmm, interesting, Miss Lopez. Are you a cheerleader, Miss Pierce?"
"No, I'm not. I kind of just do my own thing."
"Oh, a loner type." Bryan smiled widely, far more interested in that than Santana's cheerleading (not that Santana blamed him, it wasn't all that exciting). "I was like that in high school too. What are your plans for college?"
"I, um, honestly haven't really figured that out yet."
Try as Santana did to help Brittany, Bryan Ryan kept directing the attention back to Brittany, and even her attempts at flirting (which may or may not have gained her a glare from Terri, and a sort of amused jealously from Brittany) were unsuccessful. Santana figured, from the way he'd said he was a loner in high school, that maybe the popular kids had bullied him, and she figured that was why he was more interested in hearing from Brittany than from her. As the period ended, never before had either girl been so grateful for a ringing bell, and saying goodbye to Terri and Bryan, Santana made the casual observation that she and Brittany had their next class together. Though they couldn't exactly hold hands and run through the hall together, Brittany smiled to herself at the simple pleasure of actually getting to walk her girlfriend to class, and when they parted ways for their respective seats across the room, she physically had to restrain herself from pressing a kiss to those gorgeous lips.
When the day finally finished, and every one of the five members of the alien alliance were entirely on edge, they met a few blocks from the school, planning to split up among the two cars (though there was room for all of them in one car, no one thought leaving a lone car in the parking lot if their visit with the fourth alien ran late was a great idea). It didn't take much discussing for them to arrange themselves, Sam hopping in with Mercedes, and Santana getting in the Prius with Brittany and Quinn. Though Quinn grumbled about it under her breath, she relegated herself to the back seat even without Brittany asking, and with a nod of gratitude toward the other blonde, Santana climbed in front and held fast to Brittany's hand, rubbing circles on the inside of her wrist to calm her unvoiced nerves. Much like the aliens had been for the past forty-two hours, there was silence for the majority of the car ride, punctuated only by Santana's occasional murmurs of encouragement to her girlfriend, and Quinn's request to make the radio louder so she didn't have to hear it.
The sun wasn't quite setting when they arrived at their destination, and looking at Brittany, who stared directly at it, Santana was sure that she was willing it to sink. Coming up behind her, Santana wrapped her arms around Brittany's waist, and stood on her tiptoes to rest her chin on her shoulder, wanting to be as close to her as possible. They stood like that for a long while, just taking in Sam and Mercedes speaking softly to one another, and Quinn absently blowing up small rocks. Brittany was beside herself, barely able to control the bubbling sense of excitement and fear. Both wanting a distraction, and needing to touch Santana as much as she possibly could, in case something went wrong and they were separated, she turned around, cradling her cheeks in sweaty palms and pressing soft kisses to her lips and face.
"I love you." She whispered, not wanting to share their intimate moment with the others.
"I love you too. And I won't break my promise, Britt. I know that you're worried about it. Just don't break yours either, okay?"
"Never."
They didn't exchange more words, they just emotionally wrapped themselves up in each other, tuning out all but their shared thoughts, and the height of the sun in the sky. Just as it dipped low, the orange light kissing the cracked earth, a figure emerged from the shadows, slowly approaching them. Subconsciously, Brittany stepped just a hair in front of Santana, and the others fell into a line with them, the two humans protected in the middle. Santana found Brittany's hand and clasped it tightly, feeling fearful for the first time, and also feeling like she needed to be emotionally strong to avoid spooking Brittany further. When a tall blonde finally came into view, Brittany sucked in a breath, feeling a plethora of emotions as she caught the first glimpse of the woman Howard Bamboo had called a shapeshifter. It didn't surprise Santana at the appearance of another blonde, and she thought, perhaps, that the woman had chosen that particular form in order to be more relatable to the teenagers who stood before her.
"Well damn, don't you all look like you're waiting for your execution." The woman spoke, and Santana could hear Brittany swallow nervously. "Didn't realize meeting me would make you all so miserable."
"You came." Quinn was the first to find her words, wide eyed and more tentative than Brittany and Sam had ever heard her.
"I've been waiting for sixty-seven years for this moment. When Howard told me you'd found him, it was my happiest moment on this planet."
"You knew what we looked like, why didn't you find us?" Quinn accused.
"Well that's a complicated question, one that would be a lot easier if you were able to remember why you were here in the first place. But from the looks of things, you've managed to accomplish what you came for, even without finding me first."
"Stop speaking in code!" Quinn nearly stomped her feet, and Brittany shot her a glare, wanting to ask so much, but not trusting herself not to simply resign to incoherent babbling.
"I'll tell you everything you need to know, but you need to all prepare yourselves, because this isn't an easy story to hear."
"Can you tell us first who you are?" Brittany asked, looking directly into the strange blue eyes before her, the blue eyes that didn't reflect back the same humanness that she knew her own, and the eyes of Quinn and Sam did, the eyes that were haunting, full of secrets, somehow, without emotion, and full of everything Brittany ever wanted to know.
"Well my dear, I thought you'd never ask." She smiled wryly, like she was holding an excitement deep within her, an excitement that didn't translate into human body language. "In this form, I'm Holly Holliday, substitute teacher. But I guess this temporary identity, this role I have to play, doesn't matter to you, does it? What you want to know is who I am on our home planet. The one whom all of you are intimately connected to."
"Are you..." Brittany felt her heart in her throat, like she'd been so fearful of meeting the alien, that she hadn't even let herself think she may have been somehow connected to them beyond simply their race. "Are you my mother?"
"Your mother, no." Holly shook her head. "I am theirs."
The woman's gaze shifted to Quinn, and so distracted by this feeling of elation for Quinn, that she finally had someone connected to her, Brittany didn't realize that the other face Holly set her gaze on, the one who stood beside Quinn, was most definitely not Sam.
