Setting Rain on Fire 9/?
“Do you believe in heaven?”
It’s been two days since our moment in the choir room. It’s around six in the afternoon and we’re sitting cross-legged in the balcony of the hotel suite, picking out random people from the streets below and creating ridiculous imaginary stories of their lives. Of course, Brittany’s theories are far more creative than mine are: “I bet that woman walking up the street is actually hiding cats under her sweater.” “That kid looks around eleven, do you think she got her Hogwarts letter yet?” and my personal favorite, “Oh, look, San! Those two girls slook just we used to. Do you think they’ll end up together like we did?” She was pointing to two girls who barely looked four. I just laughed.
Then a mother walks by, carrying in her arms a boy who would have been around Nicholas’s age, and Brittany’s face falls. She looks towards the horizon for a moment, deep in thought. When I reach out to lightly touch her arm, she asks me,
“Do you believe in heaven?” Her tone sounds casual and almost uncaring, but I can hear the quiet desperation in her voice. She wants to know what I think because she needs reassurance. And I don’t know how to give it to her; we’ve never had this sort of conversation before.
“Heaven?” I repeat dumbly. She nods, turning to me. I take a deep breath and lean against the railings, closing my eyes to think.
“Well,” I begin, and I feel her shift closer to me, “I never really thought about it before.” She begins to lean away, and I can almost taste the disappointment radiating from her. I open my eyes and grasp her arm quickly. “Let me finish.”
She looked surprised, but nods once and lays a hand over mine. “Go on.”
I take a deep breath. “You know that I was raised in Catholic household.” She nods again. “When I was young, I was taught to memorize things about spirituality. All I had to remember was to be good so I could go to heaven, and to avoid being bad so I wouldn’t go to hell.” I smirk slightly at the memory, before sighing. “But somewhere along the way I just sort of stopped really caring about it all. I used to go around thinking, did it all really matter? I was going to live only once, and I was going to live on my terms, not some deity’s.” I pause, and when I talk again, my voice lowers. “Initially, when we - ” I gesture with my free hand at the two of us. “- happened, I kind of stopped caring completely. I remember thinking to myself that it would be ridiculous to believe in a deity who didn’t value the love that you and I shared.”
“Oh, San,” I hear her whisper softly, but I hold up my free hand, and she falls silent.
I clear my throat. “One moment changed it all though.” I look up at her and smile slightly. “Do you remember the day when…” I take a deep breath and summon all the courage I have, “Nicholas was born?”
She gasps, and her eyes widen. Her entire body seems to grow rigid for a minute, and I understand why. It hurts to hear his name. I can’t believe I even managed to say it out loud.
When her body slumps down there are tears in her eyes, but she blinks them away and nods.
“You were so brave then.” I whisper, leaning forward and taking her other hand, the bandaged one. “It killed me to see you in so much pain,” I admit, swallowing with difficulty. “But you powered through it.” In my mind I remember all those hours in labor, watching her struggle while I could do nothing. I feel the tears pricking my eyes but I fight them back. I need to be strong, even if it’s just for this moment. She looks at me and urges for me to continue.
“I remember when the doctor first put him in your arms.” I choke slightly. “You looked up at me and said, ‘San, look. It’s our son.’” I let out a shuddering laugh.
“I remember.” Brittany gives me a teary smile, then adds, “You looked frightened for a while, like you were realizing for the first time that we were actually going to have a child. So I said, ‘Come here.’ Then you walked over.”
“I was being such a guy.” I snorted. Then I squeeze her hands lightly in mine. “You know the minute I started really believing in heaven?” I whisper. She shakes her head slightly. “It was the moment that I was right beside you in that hospital room. You had just gone through nine months of torture, eight hours of labor, and you still had the most divine smile on your face. You took my hand and pulled me closer, until we were both holding him in our arms. You looked at me then, and the look on your face was just so pure and beautiful that I realized there just had to be a heaven.” I sniff slightly. “There has to be a heaven because you both belong in it.”
* * *
I give Santana a gentle smile, but I can’t help from frowning slightly. “What do you mean?” I chastise softly, releasing one of her hands to graze her cheek with my fingertips. “You belong in heaven too.”
She lets out a broken sigh and pulls away from me, letting go of my hand. My frown deepens, and I grab her shoulders before she can move any farther away from me. “Hey.” I say faintly. “San, look at me.”
Shaking her head, she just tries to push me off. I tighten my grip on her shoulders, moving forward to push her downwards. “Santana. Tell me.”
She gives up struggling, and keeps still for a few minutes, so I let go of her shoulders. Her eyes are shut tightly, but there are tears leaking from them anyway. I bend downwards and brush them away.
“I don’t belong in heaven.” She blurts out, opening to her to look straight at me. The look in her eyes catches me off guard: it’s pained and sad. “I can’t belong in heaven. I don’t deserve to be in heaven.”
“What are you talking about?” She lets out a quiet, humorless laugh and points at herself.
“Satan, remember?”
I give her a reproachful look. “C’mon. You don’t seriously believe that.”
She shakes her head again, and I catch her mumbling something that sounds like, “don’t understand.”
“What don’t I understand?” I ask clearly, cupping her cheeks in my hands, turning her head to face me. “Tell me. I want to understand.”
When completely she breaks down into tears, I almost feel frightened. I gather her into my arms and rock her back and forth until she calms down enough to whisper my name.
“Feel better?”
“Not really.” She replies shakily.
“Please tell me.” I plead. She looks at me then, and I see the conflict in her eyes. I gaze back as earnestly as I can, willing for her to let me in. Then the look in her eyes shatters and she reaches for me, wrapping her arms around my neck and pressing her face into my collarbone.
“I’m so sorry.” Her voice breaks, the sound muffled.
“Why?”
“It’s all my fault.” She sobs. “Everything is my fault.”
I don’t know what to say, so I just rub her back, whispering comforting words over and over.
“I feel so sick.” She mutters, shaking her head. “I make myself feel so sick. How can you still be here? The reason you’re in so much pain is because of me. Fuck, Britt.” She spat out vehemently, “The reason you tried to kill yourself was because of me.”
I feel horror rush through me, white-hot and blinding. “Don’t say that.” I mutter.
“Why not?” She argues, pulling away again. “It’s true.” I make a move towards her but she’s on her feet before I can stop her. She begins to pace back and forth agitatedly on the tiny area of the balcony. “Every single wrong thing that happened boils down to something I did, or didn’t do.”
“Santana.” I begin, my mouth dry. “What happened in the bathroom wasn’t your fault. I made that choice.”
“And I didn’t save you!” she snaps, kicking the railing. “I wasn’t there for you. I couldn’t handle any of it. I messed up. I ran away and left you to stumble in the god damn dark on your own.” She slumps against the railing. “I fucked up.”
“San.” I stand, wrapping my arms around her waist and trapping her against the railing. I sigh against her shoulder. “Please listen to me.” She starts to shake her head again but I continue forcefully. “It wasn’t just you, alright? I shut down. I couldn’t handle any of it, either. We both made mistakes.”
She sniffs. “But it’s my fault he’s gone.” She moans, sobs wracking her body. “I told him never to fight back.” She’s shaking so hard I have to hold her upright. “I told him never to fight back to any bully unless he was standing up for someone else.” She begins to drop downwards. “And I was supposed to pick him up. If I wasn’t so selfish about my job, if I wasn’t so damn self-absorbed he’d still be here.”
I clutch her tightly to me as she sobs brokenly at the sky. People can probably hear us from down the street, but I don’t have a mind to care. I turn her around and press her face to my shoulder.
“Santana. The only reason you worked so hard at that job of yours was to make sure you could give our family the best lifestyle you could.” I try to reason with her. When she makes no response, I add, “Well, isn’t it my fault too?” I whisper into her hair. “If I left earlier I would have been there sooner.”
“Workshop.” Santana manages to blurt out despite her heavy breathing. If she doesn’t calm down soon, she’s probably going to start hyperventilating.
“Yeah, and who says that dance should have been more important than my son?”
She shakes her head again and pulls back. Her mouth is open and I can tell she’s about to argue. “Santana.” I say firmly. Then I sigh and press my forehead to hers. “I’m going to tell you a secret.”
She swallows thickly, before nodding.
“Every single night, I revisit that moment in the school hallway.” The image flashes in my mind, and I feel a tremor run through my body. “You know why?”
She makes a noise of denial in the back of her throat.
“Because I always feel like I have to change that moment.” I admit softly. “Every night I’m back in the hallway and I think, ‘If I had run a bit quicker,’ or ‘If I had arrived a bit sooner’ everything would be different. But even in those dreams, there seems to be nothing I can do. No matter how hard I try, nothing changes.”
The sky is darkening now, and I knew that if I tried hard enough, I would make out the first few stars blinking far in the horizon. But I ignore the view and gaze deeply into her eyes. “And one night I just realized that, maybe that was the point.” I look down, fighting back tears, before I look up at her again. “There’s just nothing that either of us can do to go back and change that moment - or any moment.” I swallow and take a deep breath. “There’s nothing we can do to change the past.” The words feel like knives as they leave my mouth, but I know that they need to be spoken. “The only thing we can change is the future.”
She releases a shuddering breath, then throws her arms around me and pulls me close. I wrap my arms around her as well and hold her as the light around us fades and the moon rises over the horizon.
Neither of us says anything else for the rest of the night, our pinkies intertwined between us as we stare up at the stars passing us by.