A/N: Thank you guys for all the reviews, both here and on twitter. I know several of you have lots of questions and hopefully this chapter will answer some of them. I decided, now at 4.15am that I would upload this chapter, it's not a lengthy one, but I went for quality (I.E Answers) over quantity. I get that there are still lots of unanswered questions, but I promise as this story progresses, they will be answered. Any questions, please feel free to PM me, or find me on twitter. The address is in my bio. And please leave a review, let me know what you guys think. Thanks once again to all those who do review, and have reviewed consistently. You guys are my motivation. Enough from me, here is your 4am update, enjoy! :)
"Santana, I don't even know what to say to you. How could you take somebody's child away from them? How could you make that child live a lie for the first five years of her life? How can you keep telling lies to people about her and you and your relationship with her? Who are you?" Brittany asked, a jumble of thoughts escaping her. She'd been left shocked by Santana's revelation and now she felt lost.
"If only you knew what I've been through for that little girl to be safe, and stay safe, from the moment she entered my life. She is all I live for. I would do anything to protect her. I would kill for her! I would die for her! I love her more than her real parents ever did and you want to say that I'm a bad person for that? Then you go right ahead. If you want answers though, Brittany, you need to stop judging me and my situation, and listen to what I have to say." Santana replied. She was pissed off that the woman she had come to care about was being so flippant and blase about something she knew very little about.
"Santana a woman would never just leave her newborn child! It just wouldn't happen! A mothers instinct is to protect and love her child and you want me to believe that the people who hired me didn't do that? That they just abandoned their baby? Why? Why would anybody do that?" Brittany asked.
"You want the truth Brittany? The real truth, the full truth?" Santana asked.
Brittany nodded. She wanted answers from the brunette, she needed to know everything before she decided what her next move would be.
"Then you need to sit your ass down, and keep your mouth shut! Now, I know that sounds harsh. Hell, it is harsh. But if you want the truth, everything I know, If you want me to trust you with the safety and future of my little girl, then you need to shut up and listen and not judge. Do you think you can do that?" Santana asked, looking the blonde directly in the eye.
Brittany had been pacing the room, she felt so much tension in her body, and pacing helped. But she wanted answers, and she was willing to do whatever Santana wanted to get them.
"Okay." Brittany said, as she made her way towards the sofa and sat down facing Santana. She thought about sitting next to the brunette but knew she couldn't face being that close to her knowing that a lot of hard truths were going to come her way.
Santana took a deep breath. She really did like Brittany, she'd grown really fond of the blonde. If things had been different, she would probably have asked her out on a date by now, who knew where that might have taken them. But things weren't different, Brittany was here for Anna and Santana had to set the record straight. Brittany was working from a lie, and Santana didn't want the blonde to do that anymore. She wanted her to have the truth and make her own decisions from there.
"When I was nineteen years old, I was recruited by the government. I underwent tests and training and on my twentieth birthday I joined the CIA. My role mainly was intel, find out as much as I could by tailing someone my bosses had found. Someone who was a threat to our country and the American people. I was good at it. I did it for two years and I enjoyed it a lot!" Santana began. She was sitting on the edge of her seat, head hung, wringing her hands. She was opening herself up, whether it was safe or not, she wanted to tell Brittany everything, and it made her feel vulnerable.
"When someone I was tailing made me, I should've known straight away. I wasn't a rookie, I'd been doing the job long enough. But I didn't and I walked right in to a trap. I was held hostage for three days, beaten, tortured and worse. That was the biggest mistake of my life, being caught like that." Santana found herself welling up at the memory.
Brittany sat on the opposite sofa, watching Santana. She could tell the brunette was in pain reliving these memories, and she started to wish she'd sat closer. Regardless of her confusion and her anger about the situation, she still felt like she needed to comfort Santana, to help her get her story out. Instead the blonde just sat patiently and listened as the brunette went on.
"A group of terrorists planned to blow up the Statue of Liberty, I'd found out the best intel about it whilst I was captured, but I couldn't get that back to the agency. On the day the attack was planned, I was left with a sentry. Just one lone guy. He was supposed to kill me. Put a bullet in my head and end me right then and there. Instead, he decided he'd have a little fun with me first." Santana stiffened when she said it.
Brittany could tell Santana was mentally reliving the whole situation all over again. It pained her to see the brunette in such distress.
"His biggest mistake turned out to be my biggest advantage, when he threw me down on the bed and unzipped his pants, his head wasn't in the game. I used that to my advantage, in a heartbeat, I grabbed the combat knife from his vest and I lodged it into his neck. I'll never forget the look on his face. That was the first time I killed a man." Santana said, as a lone tear escaped and rolled down her cheek. She reached up and wiped it away before it could fall.
"Santana, he ..." Brittany began but Santana stopped her.
"Brittany please, I need to do this my way. I need you to just listen." Santana pleaded, looking up to take in the blonde's piercing blue eyes.
Brittany nodded, as much as she wanted to be there for Santana right now, Santana needed to be inside her own head, and feel as little emotion as possible.
"After that day, I requested a transfer. I couldn't be blindsided like that again. If I was gonna go into combat and face the danger of these guys, it wasn't gonna be to gather intel. Three weeks later, I became a part of a team known as The ATO. The Assasins of Terrorist Organizations. When somebody collected all the relevant intel we needed, we went in and we took out the teams of people that were planning the terrorist attacks. It was that simple."
"Santana, where does Anna fit in to all of this?" Brittany asked, wondering where Santana was going with this story.
"Five years ago, we recieved intel of a terrorist group calling themselves The Family. The intel was that these people planned to attack in a pretty clever way. Several members of 'The Family' had gotten themselves jobs at factories and shipping departments and even one in the office of one of the biggest bottled water companies in the United States. They planned to poison our bottled water, and ship it all across America, killing thousands of American people. The office worker who re routed everything so that the poisoned water was distributed, was the second in command at the organization known as 'The Family', she was also Anna's mother." Santana looked up, she wanted to make sure Brittany was taking this all in.
"Anna's mother was a terrorist?" Brittany asked in shock and disbelief.
"Was and still is." Santana explained. "She used Anna, she never wanted a child, she was never planning to be a mother. Being pregnant made her and her husband less suspicious. They led what seemed to be ordinary lives to the outside world, but there was nothing ordinary about these people. If Anna had been raised by them, she wouldn't be far away from being recruited into 'The Family'. They start training their members from the age of six, filling their heads full of propoganda bullshit, trying to make them hate the country they've grown up loving. Anna is safer with me than she ever was with them, and she is more loved now than she has ever been."
"What am I supposed to do with this information, Santana? She's still their daughter. They hired me to find her." Brittany pleaded, standing up and moving towards the brunette.
"When I found Anna, I was looking for her parents. I'd been sent to kill them, to reduce the risk of threat to our country and maybe to close down 'The Family'. I went into that house, and I was supposed to kill anybody I came across. Male or female. Old or young. They left her Brittany, they cared so much about their seven week old baby girl, that they left her in a utility closet to save themselves. They didn't care about her enough to take her with them. When I found her, she was lying amongst towels, with a paper bag not far from her. She had three outfits and a few loose diapers in that bag, Brit. That's how well looked after and cared for she was by them!" Santana felt herself getting emotional. She didn't like to think of Anna's life and what her conditions had been like in the two short months before she'd found her.
"They left her behind." Brittany echoed, sitting next to Santana and taking the brunettes hand in her own. "She wasn't kidnapped and taken away from them like they led me to believe."
"No, Brit. She wasn't. I was supposed to kill her. But looking down at her, into those innocent, beautiful green eyes, I knew I could never harm her. And when I decided on that day to save her, I dedicated myself to her, to protecting her, loving her and raising her to be a good person. She has been my daughter ever since, and I changed my whole life for her. I left the CIA a few weeks after I decided to keep and raise Anna as my own. They helped me to create a new identity for her, and we moved to a new city."
"Why are her parents coming after her now? And how do they know where she was, or that you kept her and have been raising her?" Brittany asked, looking into Santana's brown eyes.
"I don't know any of that yet, Brit. But what I do know, is that her parents have come to finish something they started five years ago, and maybe they wanna recruit her while they're here." Santana replied. "And that's the scariest part about it, I don't know if they are using Anna to get to me, or if they're using me to get to Anna."
"Well, whatever their plan is, I'm on your side. She's a good kid. And you're a good person. I don't want anything bad to happen to either of you." Brittany answered, as she pulled Santana in for an unxpected hug.
Things were about to get crazy and complicated and Santana was glad that she'd decided to tell Brittany the truth. She wasn't sure what it was about the blonde, but Santana knew she'd be a pretty good ally to have. Once again, when it mattered most, Santana's instincts hadn't failed her.