A/N: Final chapter! However stay tuned for tomorrow's (separate) story, as it's a semi-sequel to this :) Merry Christmas Eve!


"A Christmas Carol"

5. The End of It

Up until then, she'd been following what these so called ghosts told her to do, out of some effort to be rid of them: she was humoring them, nothing more… But this was a whole other story. "Now listen here, Casper, I've been pretty accommodating while you and your buddies have been taking me left and right all night, making me see what I lost and what I've done or will do to my daughter, but I've had enough."

"Your voice just got loud," Ghost Santana stood tall, crossing her arms before herself.

"Yeah, it does that." Sue turned to find Ghost Emma had returned.

"Always shouting," now Ghost Kurt appeared back as she'd first seen him.

"You three, sit down," she pointed to the couch. The ghosts looked to each other, decided they were better off to quietly do as told. They sat in the order they had come.

"She's kind of moody right now," Ghost Santana explained to the other two.

"Oh… I can make tea," Ghost Emma offered.

"I don't think that's…" Ghost Kurt shook his head, putting his hand to her arm.

"Quiet!" Sue called, and the ghosts all faced forward at once. "You," she pointed to Ghost Santana. "You still have a question to answer. Are my daughter and her daughter going to be okay?"

"She still thinks she's in charge," Ghost Santana rolled her eyes, while the other two bit their lips not to laugh. "Look, all we're doing is try to help you, and you're not being all that thankful."

"She's right," Ghost Emma spoke in hushed tones while Ghost Kurt silently shook his head in reprimand.

"Help me with what exactly?" Sue frowned.

"You know for an educator you do show some trouble with learning," Ghost Emma suddenly asserted herself, sounding every bit like her non-ghost counterpart.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"For years you've been making your daughter lie about who she really is, whose family she belongs to. Thank your lucky stars she's who she is, that she's kind, that she loves you so much as to perpetrate this whole story… so she could be near you," Ghost Kurt stated.

"But now she's got this new family. Her father, stepmother, sisters… Will Schuester, the Glee Club… I can understand, someone like you, having to consider someone else coming into her life and offering her so many chances to just be herself… that wouldn't be easy, it'd mess with your head… most of all being that a lot of it is because of what you've done," Ghost Emma picked up the talk. "But you love her, too, and you try… in your own way… to make things better for her. Except your methods kind of have this way of… bringing as much harm as help…"

"This is about consequences, Sue," Ghost Santana rounded it up. "Actions have consequences. A lot of the time you can't know ahead of time what those consequences will be, but in your case I'd say you had to know something very bad could happen. I'm guessing you weren't thinking that far ahead though, were you? That what you did now could alter who one person grows up to be, that it would affect someone that hasn't even been born yet, like Susie." The other two ghosts looked at her, clueless. "Granddaughter," the one with insight to the future provided, to a chorus of 'awww' from past and present.

"What happens to her?" Sue brought them back on track. "Susie… What happens if I change something?"

"She stays as she is, she gets better, she gets worse… she ceases to exist… How do you ever know for certain?" Ghost Santana shrugged.

"But if I do nothing, then that's how she stays, that's how they both stay…" Sue shook her head, pacing.

"Not necessarily," Ghost Emma piped in, hand half raised as though she'd been called on during class. "I… Well, you'll see," she waved it off.

"Are you beginning to understand?" Ghost Kurt resumed the conversation.

"Suppose I do. What happens now?" Sue asked.

"That is entirely up to you," Ghost Santana nodded. "Hopefully we've given you some perspective. So many things about your future I didn't even begin to cover, but I think you got the parts that matter the most… to you," she bowed her head.

"Now this is the part where we go away," Ghost Kurt got up, followed by the others. "And you wake up." Sue frowned, unsure what was happening, but then…

Her eyes were met with the glare of early morning daylight. Sue looked around and saw she was back in her bed. She sat up, waiting for… something, anything that would tell her what had just happened. Was this real? Was it a dream?

"Better have been a dream…" she muttered under her breath.

So she had gotten up, went about things like it was all business as usual. Soon she was at McKinley, back in her office with Becky, following through on the aftermath of what they'd done to the choir room, the night when…

They heard the music, faint in the distance, and they went out looking for it. They reached the teachers' lounge where they stood in the door and watched… There was the Glee Club, standing there, singing joyfully to the audience of the faculty who got up to make donations from time to time. Despite all she'd put them through, they were still standing, and why wouldn't they: they had each other and…

What if it wasn't a dream? She saw Brittany wasn't there, so what if she was laid out somewhere, her leg in a cast, even though her mind persisted that this wasn't how it had happened, that she would have been informed, by one person or another, if her daughter had been in an accident… After she'd left the teachers' lounge and sent Becky on her way, Sue tried to reach Brittany, calling home, Joe's, Joseph's, her cell phone… nothing. She knew if it was that she had her cell phone it was entirely possible it was silent and she just didn't know, but then at the same time what if something was wrong…

But then she heard a commotion, so many voices talking and this odd sort of mechanical sound, all coming from the choir room. She could see Beiste just walking away from there, with an odd look on her face, so Sue went up to see as well… and there she was… Her girl, her beautiful girl, vibrant and full of life and standing on both her feet… She was fine, the ghost had lied, she wasn't hurt… although wasn't she? The hurt may not have been physical, but she knew that under the façade of Brittany the Cheerio there was a truth she kept all to herself. Maybe it was all the years of practice at holding that secret that made her so good at it. But underneath there was that hurt that all came right back to her and what she'd done, the hurt that made her daughter decide to spend Christmas with her father and his family instead of her. Suddenly, real or not real, everything she'd seen the previous night felt so very real.

It wasn't even seeing that her leg wasn't broken, which would mean she hadn't had the accident and hadn't come to that realization like how she'd seen with the ghost the night before… it wasn't that which made her so relieved to see her now, no… it was the look on her face, the look of hope and happiness… After seeing that empty woman she had grown up to be, having lost that hope, seeing her like this again… She couldn't stay, not there, or her emotions would have gotten the best of her, in front of everyone… So she'd gone back home. She sat in that living room, trying to decide once again if it had been real or not. She looked to the trophies, tried to remember which ones the ghost Santana had touched and/or moved, but she couldn't tell. She looked to the cushions on the couch but had no way to see if they'd been sat on… Did ghosts even leave impressions like that? So many questions, but not a single answer…

"Mom?" the voice drew her back to reality so suddenly, and she hadn't heard the door… was this another ghost? Then there she was, in the living room with her.

"Brittany, what are you…"

"I saw you at school today," she started. "I wanted to go talk to you, but you'd left… Did you see what Santa brought Artie?" she beamed, still barely able to stand still at the thought.

"Yes, I… that's very generous of him."

"Santa is very generous," Brittany confirmed, then paused. "That's why I'm here."

"Oh?" Sue wasn't sure what else to say.

"I'm sorry I reacted the way I did, about Christmas…"

"You don't have to apologize," Sue shook her head. "I should be the one to…"

"Why?" Brittany asked. Sue hesitated.

"I'll tell you later," she promised, standing up and carefully approaching. "May I?" Brittany smiled.

"Do you have to ask?" she hugged her mother, and her mother hugged back. "Oh, but wait…" she pulled back. "There is something you… we can do," she smiled.

"What's that?" Sue asked.

"Make Christmas again… with Mr. Schue and the others in Glee Club? Santa might be too busy with Christmas and everything to bring our tree back in time, so…"

"Yes, probably," Sue agreed, breathing out at the sight of her daughter standing there so happy. She didn't expect this to be a permanent fix, with all that had and still needed to happen, but under the cover of Christmas she wasn't about to complain. "I think we can arrange something."

THE END


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