AN: Another day another chapter. Thank you for your reviews.
When your daughter and ex-girlfriend or maybe current girlfriend, were staring at you with disappointment in their eyes she knew she had fucked up somehow, and she didn't quite know how to fix it. She hadn't even wanted to go to the stupid barbeque, she didn't do family events. Her family hadn't wanted her there, they had wanted to pamper Bela. "Can I preface this by saying I'm sorry?" Charlie asks hopefully.
Santana stares at Charlie for a long moment, the slightly dopey look which usually made her roll her eyes, simply infuriated her today. The Charlie that she had known ten years ago, might have been an egotistical asshole at times but she hadn't been a coward. "No. You can't, because you need to grow a pair."
Bela blinked and looked at her mother, "A pair of what?" she asked her mother, whispering the comment before looking back at Charlie and narrowing her eyes at her.
Charlie shifted in her seat uncomfortably, Santana clearly had no problem eviscerating her in front of Bela, which meant that this was going to be brutal. "Santana—"
Santana held up her hand immediately shutting Charlie up, "Charlie your family treats you like shit, and you just accept it. You don't deserve to get treated like that, you know you don't deserve to get treated like that. We were right there and you abandoned us to deal with your family all on your own. I expected you to own it. It's been ten fucking years."
Charlie blinked surprised, she had thought that Santana was furious about something else. Something that she had done that had clearly offended them both. How she dealt with her parents was at best passive aggressive, at worst it was full on avoidance. She wasn't wanted, they didn't want her around, and she didn't particularly want to be around them. "I know how long it's been Santana. I've spent my time living it."
"Well do something about it! I never thought I'd see the day where you just rolled over and took it. Like you deserve it. You don't."
"And how should I go about fixing it?" Charlie points out. "I've been doing this for ten years. They don't want me around. I get that. I'm not wanted, what's arguing about it going to do?" Charlie says running a hand through her hair.
Santana grimaced for a moment and then looked at her daughter who was now looking between the two of them, "If you're not going to fight for yourself then I need you to stick up for Bela." Charlie needed to be able to set a good example for Bela, she didn't want her daughter feeling plagued with insecurities growing up, she didn't want her to be unsure of herself. Charlie needed to lead by example. "Stop being afraid of what other people think, I need you to stick up for yourself. I need you to not give a fuck what other people think or the optics of the situation. Your parents—people, care far too much about appearances. What were your parents going to do? They invited you, do you think that they were going to make a fuss. Of course not that would be the height of bad manners."
"My parents—they are always going to think of me of some screw up," Charlie says with a shrug of her shoulders. Quinn would always do what their father wanted, and Frannie well Frannie hated everyone. She was least offended by Frannie's position. She had never called her to begin with even when she was fine. Her not calling was something she chalked up to it being Frannie. "Does it bother me? I'd be lying if I said it didn't, but it's been ten years and nothing has changed their minds. To be honest it wasn't their minds I was worried about."
Santana went rigid her eyes going dark with anger and she barely notices Bela moving back. "You think they could change my mind?" She hisses at Charlie, especially after what they had done several times last night.
Charlie immediately holds her hands up, trying to defend herself, she swallows. Having Santana pissed at her was never a position she wanted to be in and a part of her wants to back down, to pretend that's not what she meant. "I did, I still do. My parents—they're used to getting what they want. It's—odd, they tell people that I don't listen, that I'm a failure, that they have no idea where they went wrong. And it works, I didn't have any friends, willing to stand by my side once they finished. I made my own friends, outside of their influence, but I like what we have right now Santana, I like this. I thought if I antagonized them with my presence then they'd start with the comments and I didn't want all this to stop," Charlie explains. "For the first time in years I feel alive and I don't want to lose it."
Santana stared at Charlie wanting to smack her, at the very least shake her, but Bela was right there. "You think I'd what? Just walk away? Bela is your daughter. She's already stood up to your parents to get something she wanted which was building that arcade together."
Charlie flicks her eyes to Bela who didn't look pleased with these turn of events, she probably wasn't sure what to do with them arguing so openly in front of her. "You did?" She imagined her parents had promised to buy her an arcade of her own.
Bela frowned, she preferred it when her parents were denying that they had feelings for one another, this seemed to be a mess of emotions and she had never seen her mom this mad before, certainly not at Dani. She blinked when they both turned to her. "I wanted to build it with Carlie, it would probably cooler than something that your parents could buy me. I didn't think it was that weird. It felt weird when they kept trying to buy me things."
Charlie smiled and rubbed the back of her neck. "You really want to do that?"
Santana stared at Charlie for a moment with that irritating smile on her face, and twitched and let out a frustrated sigh. "You are the most infuriating person that I know," she snaps at Charlie. She was done with this conversation, she was about to yell some more but glanced over at her daughter and twitched, before letting out another sound of annoyance and turning around and storming away.
Charlie winces and immediately gets up to follow Santana, only to have her daughter, block her path and Charlie pauses and looks at Bela, "She's mad at me, I need to—" she doesn't quite know what she has to do something. Talk to her do something.
"Mom said she was dying—today I think she's super scared. She only gets that angry with me when she's scared." Bela's brow furrows and she looks at Charlie. "I know she has cancer—but my mom's not going to die? Right Charlie?"
Charlie hesitates, there are a lot of questions she's not equipped to deal with. Talking about death is not something that she knew how to handle, she didn't even want to think about it. She wanted to believe that everything was okay—that Santana was going to be okay even with her fatalistic attitude at times. She pauses as the irony hits her and she swallows. "I don't know," Charlie says quietly. "But between you and me, if anyone in the world can beat this, can come back swinging from this, it's your mom Bela. She truly doesn't want to leave you. So we just have to have a bit of faith even when your mom doesn't necessarily have it."
Bela flicks her eyes to where her mom had stormed off to, it was scary. She was scared, she didn't like to think about it, but her mom was dying. She turns to Charlie, "You have to fight too," she announces plainly, watching as Charlie turns to her. "You're the savior, you have to fight for my mom Charlie—"
"I know," Charlie mumbles and awkwardly pats Bela on the head causing her to scowl.
"I'm serious Charlie! You have to fight for her! You're supposed to be her knight in shining armor Charlie," Bela said with a huff. Charlie wasn't listening.
"Bela, your mom doesn't need me as her knight in shining armor. She still kicks ass all on her own, what she needs—she needs someone who stands by her side and has her back, who fights with her instead of turning to run away when things get hard."
Bela huffed and quickly darted to the kitchen and grabbed the pen and ripped off a sheet of paper off the fridge where her mom wrote down what they needed for groceries and she heads back. Charlie clearly doesn't understand what's going on and she needed to explain it to her slowly with diagrams. She draws out two women and shows it to Charlie. "This is you and my mom," Bela explains slowly. "You see the crown on top of my mom's head? She's the queen, and that means you're her faithful knight. I'm the princess right here," Bela said pointing. "You're supposed to save and protect the queen Charlie. That's your job. That's how the story goes. That's how all the stories go."
Charlie stares at her daughter and bites her lip, artistic talent is not one of Bela's strong points and they look like horribly dressed stick people, with labels on it. "So why don't we write a new story? Where the Queen saves the knight and the knight saves the queen? Your mom is a badass Bela. You know that and you know she's the one who is probably going to save me—she's always tried to save me."
Bela made a face you couldn't just change the story, she sighed. "That's not how the story goes Charlie," she mumbles. "I don't want my mom to die."
"I don't want your mom to die either," Charlie says and rubs her neck. "So let's go save your mom our way, not how Disney tells it." Charlie said and she watches as Bela ponders over it before deciding that it seemed to be the best plan of action. "Now, let's go see if your mom still wants to kill me?"
"Probably," Bela says after a minute. "You have to say sorry and mean it. That's what I do when she's mad at me."
Charlie pulled Bela into a half hug, "I don't think that's going to cut it Bela, I think I need to show your mom that I'm not going to run away, when things get tough. I promised her that I wouldn't run away anymore. But not showing up, going to hide instead of standing up to my parents—that was hiding." Charlie explains and rubs her head, Santana needed to know that she could take care of Bela that she wouldn't just check out if the worst came to the worse and Santana couldn't beat this damn cancer.
"You should still apologize now," Bela said as she tugged Charlie upstairs and headed straight to her mother's room. Bela glances at Charlie for a second and let's go of her hand before knocking on the door. "Mom?"
The door swings open and Santana glances at her daughter and at Charlie who immediately flashes her a sheepish look. She scowls deeply and turns to Bela, "You can come in," Santana informed her daughter bluntly and placed a hand on Charlie's chest, stopping her from entering her room.
"Santana, I'm—" Charlie sighs and takes a step back as Santana closes the door in her face. "Sorry." Charlie makes a face at this and sighs. There was a fine line between bravery and stupidity, and trying to force a conversation with Santana right now was just stupid. She sighs and sits out in front of the door and closes her eyes. Santana would have to let her in eventually right?
"We really need to wean you off these fairy tales," Santana said as the credits began to roll. If she lived long enough to have another kid she was going to rethink this fascination with fairy tales. "Can we at least watch something that doesn't have people breaking out into song every five minutes or even better animals that aren't creepy? And completely unhygienic."
Bela rolled her eyes, her mom always said that and nothing ever changed. She picked up the remote to flip through the Netflix queue. "I like fairy tales, I mean look at you and Charlie. She loves you, and you love her. That's true love, even though you're both being silly. But it's okay, Charlie and I decided to write our own story."
Santana shook her head, she was definitely putting a moratorium on Disney Princess movies. She was about to turn her attention elsewhere when she paused and turned back to Bela. "What do you mean you're going to write your own story?" Santana pressed and she was met with a mischievous look on Bela's face. "Bela, what have I told you about attempting to mess with people's lives?"
"You never said not to," Bela points out. She wasn't quite sure that her mother had said anything about it at all. "That's why you should forgive Charlie and we can all go downstairs and watch movies together."
She didn't want to forgive Charlie, "I think I'll pass on the forgiving her. She's saying sorry without even knowing why I'm angry which just happens to be part of the problem." Santana snips feeling her anger growing once more. Charlie had never been this infuriating before, or maybe she had and she just had blinders on.
"She thinks you're mad at her because she keeps running away when things get hard," Bela said as she opens a movie she hadn't seen before and checks it before crinkling her nose and going back. "That is why you're mad at her isn't it?"
The wind immediately deflates from Santana's sails and she makes a face. "Yes, but it's more than that. Charlie wasn't the best person when things ended the first time, even if you take away some of the bad things that she did. But she wasn't afraid. She was confident and she knew how to fight for things that she believed in—" Santana frowned slightly as she put more thought into it. Charlie had never fought for their relationship, she had failed when it got tough and maybe now she was trying but the same problematic behavior was starting to pop up, and it didn't make her feel secure.
Bela nods, still not quite understanding. "I just don't understand why Charlie's parents were so mean to her."
Santana sighed, she had skirted around the issue in front of Bela, who truly didn't seem to understand. Yes Dani had mentioned it to her, and various other people had mentioned it in passing but for her entire life she had gone out of her way to not tell her daughter. Not while she still viewed the world in black and white. "Charlie—" Santana sighed. "Remember the talk I gave you about drugs?"
"Yeah like how cigarettes are bad or you and I shouldn't take medicine, or strange things from strangers." Bela says and watches her mom. "Charlie's parents don't like her because she did drugs."
"Yes and no." Santana said and then sighs. "Charlie did drugs that made her—unpredictable and sometimes it made her very angry and sometimes violent. That's what drugs do they ruin your life, and they turn you into a person that you can't recognize anymore. That's what happened to Charlie."
"Her parents never told her that drugs are bad?" Bela asked frowning not quite understanding.
"I'm sure Charlie knew that. I'm sure her parents told her, but when you're older you realize that things aren't necessarily good or bad. They just are. People know these things, but everyone thinks it's just going to be this one time, or they can handle it. Some people say well they should never have tried it to begin with, and that's where I need you to be. I don't want you to ever touch the damn stuff because it's addicting. Drugs, like the one that Charlie was taking made her feel good. She felt like she could conquer the world and when that feeling wears off you get depressed, and you feel really bad, you go all the way in the opposite direction, so you take the drug again to make you feel just as happy as you did before." Santana explained hoping that she was using language that Bela understood. "I didn't really care, because in the beginning Charlie only did it at parties, and it's not like she was going to parties that often, and that was my mistake. I didn't notice that Charlie had begun to use a lot more than just at parties, I don't even think she realized that she was using a lot of drugs at the time. It doesn't matter now, but that's when things got bad between us. Charlie did some bad things a lot of bad things, but that doesn't make her a bad person."
"She told me that she was a bad person, but I don't see it. She's never done anything bad in front of me." Bela says and makes a face.
Santana sighed wondering how to simplify this part for Bela, "Do you remember when you decided to play with matches and burned the kitchen table? You thought I'd be mad at you."
"You were mad at me," Bela points out.
"No I was furious at you. But you felt really bad about it, because you knew that you had done something dangerous and bad, and it could have hurt a lot of people. I forgave you, because it was a mistake—a stupid mistake, but it was a mistake nonetheless. Most importantly you forgave yourself, you're not beating yourself up over it. Charlie hasn't done that last part, she hasn't forgiven herself. It's like if you decided to ground yourself and never leave your room until you didn't feel guilty. That's what Charlie did. She grounded herself and that's part of the problem. I forgave Charlie."
"Charlie's parents haven't," Bela points out. "Charlie doesn't do drugs anymore though right?"
"No, she doesn't and I'm proud of her, because it is really hard to quit doing drugs but she has, and her parents should be happy and they should be proud of her too. But the truth is, the reason that they don't like Charlie has more to do with the fact that Charlie failed and it embarrassed them. I agree that Charlie needed to hit rock bottom to get her life together, but she has and instead of helping her, instead of coming together like a family should—they abandoned her when she really needed their help. That's not what families do, and no matter what even though Russell and Judy are extremely wealthy, Charlie is your mother. She's still learning the ropes but she is." Santana sighs. "I need her to forgive herself and stop letting other people punish her for her mistakes. I need her to stand up for herself and it's frustrating."
"Well—maybe she just forgot?" Bela said leaning against her mother who wraps her arms around her in a hug. "It's been a long time, maybe she forgot how to love herself and how to fight."
Santana studied her daughter for a moment and then sighed a small smile on her face as she pulls her daughter into a tight hug, "I did a really good job on you," she said giving herself a mental pat on the back. "I suppose we'll just have to teach Charlie how to love herself by loving her and teaching her how to stand up for herself."
Bela squirmed under her mother's grasp for a moment, but she finally settled down and hugged her mom back. "Mom?" Bela asked keeping her voice low, in case Charlie was outside. "Will we ever be a normal family? You me and Charlie? Do you want that? Because that's what I want."
Santana tenses for a moment, "I want that for you as well," she murmurs, she does it's what she's always wanted but she wasn't sure if that was going to happen due to her illness and because—well, she's not sure she even knows anymore. She sighs, and looks at Bela. "You can let her in," she says with a wave of her hand. "But she has to stay on her side of the bed."
"And she has to get us snacks and drinks?"
Santana raises a brow, "I really did do a good job raising you," she smirks and nods at her daughter who gets up and moves to open the door for Charlie who falls back onto the ground and scrambles up. Santana rolls her eyes, and shifts the blanket that's on her legs up a bit. "You've been allowed into my castle, but you have to stay on your side." She says before Charlie can utter another apology which would just annoy her.
Charlie shuffles a bit and looks at Bela before biting her lip and looking at Santana. "You were right—I know you're right. I'm avoiding and ducking, things that I should be doing and not handling—I'm not dealing with anything that I should. I'll talk to my parents on Monday."
Bela turns and grins, "See mom, she's listening to you! She didn't apologize, and she's going to handle it." Santana snorts and Bela turns back to Charlie who looks slightly confused and pats her hand gently. "Now all we need is food." Bela gives Charlie a look.
"I'll go get us some food?" Charlie offers and she's met with near identical looks of amusement from both Santana and her daughter. She shifts a bit and gives Santana a look before going to go and make something to eat for them. She scratched her cheek, Santana didn't seem mad anymore.
"Charlie? Lilo and Stitch or The Incredibles? Mom said no more princess movies," Bela called after her.
"Lilo and Stitch," Charlie responds and she hears Santana groan and smiles. It was almost too good to be true, but she would take in every minute while it lasted.
AN: See you tomorrow. thank you for the reviews. Oh so what do you think of another fic similar to this, to some degree, I'm getting some ideas for the Alpha/Omega universe that I've been working on, and by similar I mean it shares some of the same themes, ie broken Charlie.
