Sorry for the delay on this chapter. I've had a messy couple of weeks at school and I'm a little sick. I lost all my notes and so I threw myself into that Halloween two-shot. But I'm back now and I'm trying to get this story back on track.

Thank you to everyone who's continued to read/alert this story. Your comments have all been amazing and I'm glad people are enjoying this fic. A special thanks to umbrellaleg, go-sullivan, and RansMuse, whose very recent reviews inspired me to get my act together. :) As always, let me know what you think.

Chapter Eight

"Ye live not for yourselves; ye cannot live for yourselves ; a thousand fibres connect you with your fellow-men, and along those fibres, as along sympathetic threads, run your actions as causes, and return to you as effects."
Reverend Henry Melvill

Rachel wasn't sure what to do with herself for the rest of the day. She was distracted and it showed; she was pretty sure she took a quiz at some point, but she couldn't be certain. When Quinn, who was in most of her courses, tried to talk to her afterwards, she shrugged the other girl off. Rachel spent most of her class time finding buried memories of her and Santana as children.

Glee came and went and it was all Rachel could do to remember to sit upright as Mister Schuester wrote single-word life lessons on the board. As he wrote "perseverance" in large black letters and went on to explain himself, all Rachel could hear was a nine-year-old Santana saying that she hated boys and wanted to just be with her best friend forever.

"Rachel?"

Blinking rapidly, Rachel was aware of eyes on her. Everyone in the choir room was looking at her expectantly. "Yes?"

"Did you have any ideas for Sectionals?" Mister Schuester asked.

Rachel glanced at the board behind him, seeing a list of songs that other had presumably suggested. She stared at it blankly for a moment and swallowed thickly. She always had ideas; she had whole files marked with potential songs meant to fulfill certain lessons she expected Mister Schuester to bring up at some point. As it was, Rachel could recall none of them. "No," she said simply.

She saw a look of worry pass across the glee club teacher's face. There was movement within her periphery and when she looked over, Quinn was shaking her head and turning to share a look with Brittany.

"Are you sure?" the teacher asked.

He was trying so hard to pull something out of her, but Rachel knew he was only going to be met with disappointment when he realized that there was nothing inside her to grasp. She nodded at him and with a sigh, he opened the floor back up to everyone else.

"Sectionals are important, you guys," he said. "We want to win Nationals this year, not just for us, but for Santana, too. And this?" Mister Schuester leveled a pointed look at Rachel. "This is the first step towards getting us there."

If she were a lesser person, Rachel would have rolled her eyes at the man in front of them. They all knew how important Sectionals were, Rachel included. She had promised a heartbroken Brittany that New Directions would win Nationals, and she fully intended on keeping that promise. And not just for Brittany, but for all of them. They all needed this.

In her head, she and Santana were babbling about Valentine's Day cards and candies, decorating little brown paper sacks with their names on them in glitter. Santana drew a heart on Rachel's bag and put a smiley face inside it.

And then a thought struck Rachel. Maybe she could do even better than winning Nationals in Santana's honor. Maybe she could bring Santana back to them. Stranger things had happened, after all. So why not this? she wondered.

The man with the universe and all its secrets written across his face and in his eyes said that she couldn't, that she could never. But Rachel Berry was never one to stay firmly within the bounds of what others said she could do.

She had two childhoods in her head and she figured that if that could happen, if dead people could suddenly be alive and she could chase moonlight in nightmares down the sidewalk and hear voices of another her with another life, then anything could very well happen.

Rachel remembered a life and a childhood with Santana and she remembered a life and childhood without her. She knew which one she wanted.

Rachel is six and she has on her favorite skirt. She stands alone on the playground at recess watching the other kids play together in groups. A boy runs past her as she tries to decide whether or not anyone would play with her. He hits her shoulder as he passes and she yells at him. He retaliates by pushing her down. She scrapes her knee as she lands awkwardly, dust sticking to her skirt. Dirt clings to the wound and it sting. She cries and no one cares.

She's eight and she sits under the big tree near her house after school every day. She eats oranges and tries to smooth down her hair as an autumn wind blows. The leaves swirl around her, falling across her legs and getting caught in her hair. Eventually, hers dads tell her they have to leave and she stands up awkwardly, dropping the seeds she held on to the ground.

She's nine and she tells her fathers that she doesn't want a birthday party. No one would come.

She's ten and she makes straight 'A's. She performs better than anyone else in her lessons and her instructors rain praise down on her for her talent and her determination. She sits in the park and sings alone, glad that at least she has her voice; at least she has music. It makes her feel almost as good as what she imagines having friends must feel like.

Rachel felt eyes on her again and she remembered that she was forgetting to pay attention. When she glanced around, no one seemed to be paying her much mind. No one was looking at her at all actually, but she couldn't escape the inexplicable feeling of someone keeping an eye on her like they expected her to do something.

Rachel shook her head, trying to clear it. She needed to see Santana and she needed to see her soon. Rachel just had to get back to the cemetery as soon as possible and talk to the other girl. There were so many things that she needed to know, needed to ask.

Could Santana remember her the way she could remember Santana? Could she remember them just as clearly as Rachel could? Was her heart suddenly aching in her chest and a lump building up in her throat when she thought of long childhood years spent kissing underneath falling leaves and whispering promises about forever? Because Rachel was hurting and she needed to know if Santana remembered.

There was a faint wetness across her left cheek and she reached her hand up, finding a tear streaked down her face. Students around her began to stand up and she joined them. Glee club was officially over for the day and Rachel left quickly, wiping her face and hoping she could make it outside before anyone stopped her.

True to their word, Rachel's fathers put together a schedule that would allow them to keep an eye on her. It made her feel like a child instead of a seventeen-year-old. She protested their attempts to coddle her, but ultimately had little say in the matter.

Leroy kept the radio low as he drove Rachel home after glee club rehearsal. The music was a low hum as it filled the car. Inside her head, Leroy was supervising a six-year-old Rachel and five-year-old Santana as they try to cut out perfect stars in golden construction paper and stick them on Rachel's walls.

"Daddy?" she started. "I'm sure you remember when we lived in Cleveland?"

He smiled. "Of course I do, sweetheart. Why do you ask?"

Rachel bit her lip and glanced out the window. The day was grey and cloudy. A light breeze blew up the leaves collected on sidewalks and lawns. "Did I ever have any friends?" she asked eventually, knowing already what his answer was going to be.

Leroy sighed. "You know that you were never very close with any other kids," he said gently. "But that wasn't your fault, it was theirs."

Once, she would have nodded with him. But now it felt like a lie, something insidious that creeped over her conscious mind and tried to settle in her thoughts and she almost did nod. It sounded right, what he said. It sounded true and familiar, but somewhere in the places she was finding inside herself, it felt utterly wrong.

She was almost overcome with a need to yell at him suddenly, scream that he was lying, that they all were. "There was a tree, wasn't there? In the park, near our house?" Rachel asked instead.

"Yes, an oak, I think it was," Leroy answered. "You liked to sit underneath it and eat lunch."

"Oranges," she supplied, more to herself than to him.

"Oh, god, those oranges," he chuckled to himself. "You made us put an orange in every single lunch we took to the park and you would only eat it under that big old tree."

Rachel nodded. She could recall what he was telling her, could remember things as he explained them. But her thoughts were slippery and faded away into other memories. She heard herself as a little girl, encouraging Santana to carve their initials into their tree.

No one else had these memories, though. No one else could remember what she could. They all had different lives for her and Santana. Suddenly everything that Rachel was sure that she knew about herself felt like a lie. She said nothing else and the rest of the drive was spent in silence.

She spent the afternoon in bed, her thoughts a mess of thoughts and memories that she didn't know what to do with. Rachel drifted in and out of consciousness, her eyes snapping open every time she was about to doze off. It tired her more, to rest yet not sleep, but it was more of a respite than Rachel had gotten the previous night, leaning against her bedroom door waiting for the sight of a young and very dead her to catch up to her from the cemetery.

So Rachel rested, watching the sun slowly set outside her window. It slipped past the edge of her windowsill eventually, bathing the room in a soft orange glow. When night fell, she was off.

Rachel decided to skip crawling down the tree outside her window. She hadn't gotten caught sneaking into her home through the front door, and she knew her house well enough to know every loose floorboard and squeaking hinge. Rachel didn't know why she had insisted in climbing down the tree in the first place. Her arms and legs were littered with scrapes and bruises and the door seemed like a much less hazardous option.

Outside, the night was cool. Condensation collected atop the grass and the sidewalk and leaves stuck to the ground. Rachel tightened her coat around her body and walked toward the cemetery quickly. The wind caught her hair, swirling it across her vision, and sunlight and warmth felt like distant memories. All she felt was the fall cold, seeping through her coat and her skin until it chilled her to the bone.

Rachel hesitated at the gate to the cemetery. Her hand was on the latch and as she went to raise it, she stopped for a moment. Her heart beat frantically in her chest and she took several deep breathes, letting the oxygen flood her lungs with each inhale.

"You coming in or what?"

Rachel jumped back, her eyes widening. Santana stood before her, smirking a bit at her reaction. The taller brunette's hand wrested atop the metal pole on the little gate and she absentmindedly brushed her fingers over it.

"Yes," she stuttered, her hand shaking a bit as she gripped the catch on the gate and pushed it open. Rachel blamed the cold for her inability to still and ignored the sinking pit of fearful anticipation building up in her stomach as she stepped into the cemetery.

Rachel had an electric lantern this time, an old camping one she found in the garage before she left. It gave off more of a glow than the flashlight and Rachel held it up, watching it bathe her surroundings with light. There was nothing around her but Santana and death, but it was okay because the death wasn't her. Not this time anyway.

Santana's brows furrowed. "You okay?" she asked. "You look like you're waiting for like, zombies or something."

"I just might be," Rachel muttered.

The other girl shot her a look as they walked further into the cemetery. "I might be dead, but I'm not going to kill you," she said.

The leaves underneath her feet didn't crunch like they usually did. They were soggy and slick and her shoes slid across them more than once. "Where did you go last night?"

Santana shrugged. "I don't know exactly. I blinked and then...well, I opened my eyes and it was morning and you were gone," she answered. "I usually just kind of remember stuff, like have dreams, I guess?" she said, her answer more of a question than anything else. They reached her grave and she eyed it warily. "I'm getting sick of looking at my own fucking name."

Rachel stared at the tombstone as they stood in front of it. Santana Marisol Lopez. She heard an eight-year-old Santana in her mind, explaining that "Marisol" was made up of the Spanish words for sea and sun. "You were named after your grandmother," Rachel whispered to herself.

"Yeah," Santana nodded. "How did you know that?"

"Santana," she started. The wind blew, rushing past her ears. "I need to speak with you. I don't quite know how to say this. I'm not entirely sure how to start, but it is rather urgent and if you would answer me truthfully before you dismiss me entirely, I would really appreciate it."

The taller girl rolled her eyes. "Shit, Rachel, I don't know if I can age, but I really don't want to find out. So just say whatever you need to say," she sighed.

"We were friends," Rachel said quickly. She licked her lips and carried on because she needed to know. She needed to know if it was more than a dream. "When we were little girls, we were best friends. I helped you with your homework and you protected me from bullies. We held hands and had sleepovers and baked cookies. We had matching headbands," she finished, an uncomfortable weight settling in her chest while her heart waited.

"What are you talking about?" Santana demanded, crossing her arms. "You didn't even live here when we were kids."

And her heart cracked, splintering off into pieces that fell and stabbed into her other organs. "No," Rachel said. "And neither did you."

"Um, yeah, I did," Santana responded like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

The smaller girl shook her head. "No, Santana, think about it," she pleaded. "Please. Really think about it. I need you to remember."

At that moment Santana hesitated, her arms dropping to her sides, and it was all Rachel needed. She had cycled through various stages of probable craziness and she needed a great many things, but nothing felt as urgent and important as this. The world was pressing down around them, two teenagers standing in a cold and dark cemetery together, and this was what Rachel needed more than anything. She needed to know that Santana remembered them the way that she did.

"I can't remember things that didn't happen, Berry," Santana whispered, ducking her head as she shrugged. She didn't meet Rachel's gaze.

The smaller girl reached out, gripping her arm. "No, Santana, you have to remember," she said. Her voice cracked. "You just - you have to. Just remember."

Santana's eyes slipped shut as she looked away. Her eyes closed, but she didn't go anywhere; she just stood in front of Rachel shaking her head. "You kissed me," Rachel whispered softly, running her hand up Santana's arm and bringing it to her cheek. Rachel let the coldness of Santana's skin nip at her fingers as she ran them over the taller girl's cheekbones. "When we were nine, you kissed me like it meant something."

The wind howled around them, picking up the edges of the wet leaves on the ground and making them flutter. Rachel glanced around before looking back up at Santana; everything was picking up around them and she desperately wanted to void a repeat of the previous night. "Please open your eyes," she said. "I don't want you to disappear again."

Santana took in a shaky breathe and when she opened her eyes, they were watery. Wetness clung to her eyelashes. She was crying, real tears edging out of her eyes this time instead of whatever dry sadness she had been displaying before. "It did mean something," she cried quietly.

Rachel wiped some of her tears away gently, biting her lip as she felt herself start to cry, too. Relief flooded her for the first time in what was probably weeks. Santana remembered and Rachel decided that it was enough, that if the world was ending, if that's what this whole mad nightmare was – just the world ending – then she would take it if Santana just remembered her.

"I just - I can't," Santana sputtered, sobbing. "Fuck, I didn't know - I didn't." The taller girl closed her eyes again, squeezing them shut to stem her tears. "There was a man," she gasped. "And I didn't - I didn't know."

"It's okay," Rachel said immediately, watching Santana's face contort in pain. "It's okay," she said again, dropping the lantern to hold Santana's face between her hands. "Look at me," Rachel whispered.

When Santana opened her eyes finally, they were dark and deep. "He killed me," she gasped out, grabbing Rachel's arms and letting the other girl caress her cheeks with her thumbs. "He killed me twice."

She leaned forward, resting her forehead against Rachel's and they cried together. Tears coated her cheeks and Rachel shivered as Santana's gasps hit her face in bursts of cold air. "It's okay," she said to both of them. "We can fix this."

"You won't."

She tightened her grip on Santana and kept her in place. When Santana's sobs died off and her tears eventually dried and she tried to pull away, Rachel kept her there and didn't let go. Santana stopped struggling and so they stayed like that.

Santana wrapped her fingers around Rachel's wrists, holding them tightly. "It did mean something," she murmured, "when I kissed you. And that night when I called you - I," she paused, biting her lip. "It meant something, okay?"

Rachel nodded, her forehead rubbing against the other girl's. She leaned up and pressed a kiss to the corner of Santana's mouth because she needed it; they both did. "I'm going to bring you back," she whispered out into the night air. "It's impossible," her mind said. "I promise."