Karofsky marched Santana out the door and up some stairs to a long, white corridor. There were doors to various rooms coming off either side, separate corridors branching off every now and then and a large set of double doors leading outside at the end. It reminded her so much of Mckinley she wanted to laugh. She was surprised to see daylight streaming in and wondered again how long she had been locked up.

They took the last corridor on the left and she half expected to see the entrance to the teachers lounge as they marched on but instead there was just more white, more doors. Eventually they stopped in front of one and Karofsky knocked.

Santana didn't hear the response but the door was pushed open and she was marched in. As her eyes locked on the woman she had been searching for all this time her fists clenched and her face scrunched up with animalistic rage. Karofsky's grip tightened on her shoulder as they moved further into the room and she could almost hear him willing her to calm down. As he pushed her down into a chair and cuffed her to it Sue Sylvester returned her gaze levelly, sitting behind a desk with her fingers steepled in front of her, seemingly without a care in the world. If it wasn't for the multiple fractured ribs, the broken finger, the split lip and the death of half her friends Santana could almost believe she was back in high school again, waiting for another lecture on how she had failed to destroy the glee club.

And yet there was something not quite right. Behind the superior look on her face and the relaxed pose Sue Sylvester looked different somehow, and not just the fact that she was dressed in a plain navy suit rather than one of her multitude of tracksuits. Santana couldn't quite put her finger on it. Tired? Wary? Scared?

"Thank you, David." The woman said quietly as Karofsky finished up and went to leave the room. She waited for him to close the door behind him before continuing. "Sandbags. I've been waiting for you to get here. I have to tell you, I'm disappointed it took you so long."

"Yeah, well, what can I say, Coach?" She spat. "I've been a little busy burying my dead friends."

"Yes, I heard about that." Sue answered calmly, standing up and walking to a filing cabinet by her desk. "Q and poor, sweet Brittany."

"Don't you fucking dare…" Santana started with a growl.

"Porcelain surprised me though." She continued as though her former Captain had never spoken. "I never picked him for a fighter. Not a very good one as it turns out."

Santana sprang out of the chair with a yell, ignoring the burning in her arms as they were held in position by the cuffs. "I am going to fucking kill you, you evil bitch!" She screamed as she yanked at her restraints. "I swear to God, if it is the last thing I do I will make you pay for everything you did to us!"

"I'm going to stop you right there." Sue said, leaning against the filing cabinet and regarding Santana coolly.

"Don't you have a soul?" Santana cried out in desperation. "A conscience? Don't you understand what you have done to us? To this country? Don't you care?"

"Sit down, Santana."

"Don't fucking stand there and bark orders at me like we were back in high school, you psychotic freak! You were vindictive and crazy even back then but after your sister died…"

"How dare you talk about my sister?" Sue roared, her calm finally breaking as she advanced on Santana in a rage. "You don't know the first thing about me or what happened so sit down and shut up!"

The twist of her face and venom in her voice caused Santana to stumble back into her chair, the fear and respect ingrained in her from years of careful abuse and training by the formidable woman kicking in and pushing her rage down. She eyed her cautiously as she towered before her, the fire slowly receding from her pale blue eyes as she ran a shaky hand over her carefully coiffed hair. Slowly she walked back round her desk and sat down carefully before raising her eyes once again to her former student.

"What I have to tell you may come as a shock, Lopez, but I want you to do your best to fight your fiery, slightly unclear Latin heritage and try to hear my words. I am not your enemy here."

"Bullshit." Santana spat. "You are the only true enemy I have ever had."

"If you believe that you are a bigger fool than I ever gave you credit for."

"Oh fuck you!" She hissed, leaning forward in her chair again. "You ruined my whole life! You turned my girlfriend into a psycho that I had to kill. You kidnapped my best friend's child because she wanted to leave your twisted little group, turning her into a mini version of yourself and weren't even there to protect her when she went so far out of her mind that she tried to murder everyone she ever cared about! Just tell me why, Sue?"

"I wish I could."

"What?" Santana said incredulously.

"I can't answer that for you because I am not responsible for it."

Santana stared at her in disbelief. "Are you fucking kidding me?"

"Do you remember how this all started, Santana?" Sue asked her calmly.

"I'm sorry, but seriously are you fucking joking? Are you actually that delusional that you truly believe you are not responsible for what happened in Lima?"

"Answer the question."

"God, you're serious aren't you?" She laughed. "You are seriously so unhinged that you've totally cleared yourself of any blame."

"Answer the question."

"For God's sake…" Santana shook her head and snorted in exasperation. She tried to fold her arms and rolled her eyes in irritation as the cuffs stopped her. "You got elected, the attack happened, you shut down the town and rolled in the army. After a few months you shut down the police and got the law passed stopping people from leaving the town. You put Quinn in charge of the Cheerios and made us 'peacekeepers'," Santana did quotation marks with her fingers and rolled her eyes at this. "Then you disappeared."

"And then?"

"And then what?" She yanked her arms up in frustration. "Then the world went to hell! You sent word that we had a mole and she had to be dealt with, we found out it was Devon and Britt tortured and murdered her. Turns out she had a gift for it so she decided not to stop there. Do you know what she did to me?"

"No."

"Of course you don't, because you set this whole thing in motion and then disappeared to destroy the rest of the country."

"I don't know because I was cut out once I served my purpose in Lima." Sue stated simply.

"Excuse me?"

"You said it yourself, Sandbags. Once the police disappeared so did I."

Santana stared at her again, completely thrown by her words. "Are you seriously trying to tell me you weren't running the Cheerios?"

"Yes I am." She replied.

"You remember I was in the Cheerios?"

"Yes I do."

Santana sat back, no idea how to continue this conversation. "Okay. So if you weren't running the show, who was?"

"Russell Fabray."

That name, stated so simply, so calmly, by this woman whom she had hated so completely for the last four years threw Santana dangerously off kilter. Her heart thudded in her chest as she remembered the man who turned her seemingly fearless best friend into a gibbering wreck every time they were in his presence.

"You're lying."

"I wish I were." Sue replied, shaking her head just once and reaching into a drawer in her desk.

"I don't believe you."

"I didn't expect that you would." She shrugged. "But I know you have experience in putting your faith in the wrong people and the man is a genius manipulator. Before I knew what was going on he had taken control and made it impossible for me to get it back."

"Oh yeah?" Santana scoffed. "And how did he do that?"

"He took Becky Jackson."

Santana wasn't sure how much of this she could take. Suddenly everything she had believed for all these years was a lie. Or was Sue's tale a lie? She looked down and shook her head in an effort to straighten her thoughts.

"So you sold us all out? For Becky? Me, Quinn, Britt, the whole fucking country? You seriously expect me to believe that you, Sue Sylvester, couldn't come up with a single plot to save her and overthrow him."

"Believe me I tried."

"Not hard enough. You left us. You let him destroy us."

"That I will take responsibility for." She said, the tiredness showing clearly on her face now. "I wanted to try and make sure you were all safe, so I sent in someone to watch out for you. The mole you were searching for was mine. My plan backfired and for that, and what happened to her, I am sorry."

"What?" Santana asked, suddenly so tired that she couldn't even bring herself to be shocked.

"Q didn't know. All he told her was that there was a mole and she had to deal with it. He came and told me that they had found my girl and dealt with it and that if I interfered again there would be dire consequences. I assume you have worked out how he was controlling Quinn at this point?"

Santana tipped her head back and sighed deeply, every injury she had received aching all at once. "She knew it was him and not you?"

"She knew."

"I wish I could have helped her." Santana whispered, tears clouding her vision.

"You can help her now. I want you to work with me. I want you to help me finish this."

"What?" She looked up at the woman and shook her head in disbelief.

"I want you to join my team, Santana." Sue held her gaze. "You can be my head of security. Or something."

"Right." The wheels in her head started turning. "So, you're telling me that Russell Fabray has been controlling everything behind the scenes for all this time, using you as some sort of, what puppet? Public hate figure to hide behind?" Sue nodded once. "And now you expect me to believe that having threatened to kill me for causing the death of his daughter that he will just allow me to come work for you, no come back, no questions asked?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because Russell Fabray is the kind of man who sees women as objects to be controlled and discarded as he sees fit. If you had died he would have been fine with it it, but just because you haven't doesn't mean he considers you enough of a threat to concern himself with. Truthfully he never cared about you at all. He used the threat on your life to lure you in to get to the person he does hold responsible for the corruption and eventual death of his little girl. The person he's always blamed."

Santana's blood ran cold. "Where's Puck?" She asked quietly.

"Santana…"

"Where is Puck?" She yelled.

"I don't know." Sue said, shaking her head. "They took him to Fabray about two hours ago but…"

"And you didn't think to tell me till now?" She shot forward in her chair, fear and anger rushing through her.

"Well, you didn't really give me much of a choice."

"We have to do something!" Santana pulled again at the cuffs. "If you're telling the truth then you have to let me out of here right now!"

"You know I can't do that."

"Well, do something! Anything!"

"I can't do anything yet, as we have already established."

"But…"

"Santana," Sue sighed. "As I am hoping you are smart enough to figure out, a man as powerful and paranoid as Russell Fabray has undoubtedly bugged this office. Thankfully I am a resourceful woman and have installed a jamming signal. In the interest of not arousing too much attention I can only utilise it in short bursts and since I switched it on four and a half minutes ago you have thirty seconds to make your decision before I either release you or throw you back in your cage and leave your fate up to him. If you join me there is a chance that you can save Puck, but it's extremely doubtful. What is certain is that if you say no your friends will no doubt stage an ill advised rescue attempt and get themselves all killed. You can stop that, but I need your answer and I need it now. Do you understand?"

Santana's mouth went dry as she realised the enormity of Sue's statement. She was right. There was no choice. The only chance she had of saving Puck was to get out of these cuffs and the only way to do that was to say yes. And if she said no then Rachel and Cara would come storming in here and possibly get themselves killed. Did she trust Sue? No. Would she sell herself to her to protect her friends? What choice did she have?

In the space of half an hour everything she had believed to be true had been turned on it's head and all she had left that she could cling to was her love for her girlfriend and her trust in her and Cara.

"So," Sue asked, pointing at the ceiling to show they could once again be heard. "Are you ready to come back to the winning team?"

Santana readied herself to make her pact with the devil and opened her mouth to speak. Before she could get the words out the door behind her opened and Sue's face turned white.

"I thought you were dead." She said quietly, a small smile pulling at the corner of her mouth..

"Come on, Coach," A familiar voice replied, causing Santana's heart to break in her chest. "You taught me better than that."