If it was anyone else - anyone else - asking, she would have said no without a second thought. She would be at home right now pulling on a little black dress getting ready to go out, get wasted and make sure that she didn't come home alone. If it was anyone else, she'd laugh at the idea of spending her Saturday night with a four year old, but twenty years of never saying no turns into a pretty hard habit to break, and when Brittany needs her, she's there. So when the message came through at one o'clock this afternoon - hey s, can u do me a biiiiiiiiiig favor? cud u look after hailey tonight for a few hours? its just that i gotta stay a while longer in work tonight and its super important cos we've just landed this huge deal and u know i wouldn't ask if i cud get sum1 - she'd looked at it for approximately five seconds before typing out a - sure, what time u want me over?xx - and hitting send.

Turns out four year olds are pretty hyper, like, all the time. She knew they had more energy than she did (she's twenty-six, she's almost seven times older than this kid, so it's to be expected), but she didn't realise that they want to play pretty much every single hour of the day. And it's not like she didn't just pick her up from Brittany's mom's house where she's pretty sure they could open a jungle gym business with the amount of play equipment there.

Hailey talks the whole way back to Brittany's apartment, hardly even pausing for breath. She tells Santana about the dragon she slayed today so she could get to the castle to save the prince, and Santana laughs before reminding her that it's usually the other way round and the prince saves the princess. Hailey just shrugs her shoulders and replies by saying that sometimes boys can get in trouble and need saving too, and sometimes girls can be really, really brave and strong and Santana shuts up after that because, wow, this kid is definitely something.

"It's your turn to think of a game," Hailey says, bouncing on the balls of her feet as Santana clears up the blocks they used to build a very sketchy looking rocket so Hailey could send Mr. Huggles to the moon.

"Oh yeah, who says?" Santana teases and Hailey smiles.

"I'm gonna tell mommy that you wouldn't play with me if you don't," she smirks.

"Oh no! Not mommy!" Santana says, pretending to be scared. "I guess I'm just gonna have to think of something extra fun then?"

Hailey lights up and nods her head, waiting for Santana's suggestion.

"I think I got it... What if we built a fort?"

"A fort? What's fun about that?" Hailey asks, screwing her face up in confusion.

"Are you serious?" Santana asks, and Hailey just looks at her with a blank expression on her face. "When your mommy and I were younger we used to build them all the time!"

"You did?" Hailey asks, her interest growing.

"Yeah, come on, I'll show you how to build one."

Twenty minutes later they're lying in the middle of Brittany's living room in a fort made from chairs and blankets and pillows and even some fairy lights from Hailey's room to light it up.

"This is cool," Hailey says, as they lie on their back looking at the lights shining through the blanket on the roof.

Santana smiles. "Yeah, I told you it was."

"Take a picture!" Hailey suggests, because it's her new favorite thing recently. Brittany's been showing Santana picture after picture of Hailey on swings, in the mud, helping her cook, and doing everything in between and even Santana has to admit that it's kind of cute. (Okay, it's a lot cute and it makes her melt because sometimes she just gets kind of overwhelmed at how good a job Brittany's doing raising Hailey as a single mom.)

"Okay, okay, calm down!" Santana says, reaching into her pocket to take out her iPhone, and she puts the camera on so they can see themselves on the screen. "Ready, Hail?"

"Ready!"

"Okay you gotta say cheese after three, yeah?" Hailey nods. "One... two... three... Cheese!"

"Cheese!" Hailey shouts and it makes Santana laugh so much that she has to take the picture again.

"Maybe not so loud this time okay, honey? One... two... three... cheese!"

Hailey joins in, quieter this time, and Santana presses the screen so they can see the picture.

"You're pretty," Hailey says, studying the picture on the screen.

"Not as pretty as you! Look at your big blue eyes, you're going to have boys lining up to kiss you soon," Santana teases.

"Ewwww, boys are gross!" Hailey protests, screwing her face up in disgust. "You don't kiss boys do you?"

Santana laughs out loud at that. "No, no," she says, shaking her head. "I don't kiss boys. I think they're kinda gross too."

Hailey studies her for a moment as if she's trying to work out whether she's lying or not. A few moments later she snaps out of it, satisfied that Santana's telling the truth. "Good, because I don't think you could be my friend if you kissed boys. You might pass on cooties to me."

Santana smiles. "Well you don't have to worry about that," she says, scrolling sideways on her phone to delete the first picture she took. She scrolls one picture too far though, and it catches Hailey's attention.

"You've known my mommy for a long time haven't you?"

"I've known your mommy since I was just a little older than you. Why?"

"Do you have pictures of my mommy when she was little?"

Santana looks at her phone at the picture on the screen. It's of her and Brittany and Abigail, a girl from Brittany's work, when they were out at a bar last weekend.

"I don't know if I have any on here from when she was really little, but I think I have some from when we were in school. You wanna see?"

Hailey's face lights up in a way Santana's never seen before, and she cuddles Hailey closer to her and pulls a blanket over them before making her way to the start of her photos.

"Your costumes are funny," Hailey laughs, pointing to a photo of Santana and Brittany on the Cheerios.

"Those aren't costumes, those are our uniforms and we had to wear them every day to school," Santana explains. "We wore them for, like, three years."

"That's nearly the same age as me," Hailey states. She pauses for a moment before saying, "That's a really long time to have to wear the same clothes."

"Well, we left for a little while and came back, so we didn't wear them all the time," Santana says.

"Why'd you leave?"

"Our coach was mean," Santana offers as an explanation because, really, how does one start to describe Sue Sylvester to a four year old?

"She was mean to you?" Hailey says, her voice small. Santana looks away from the screen for a moment to look at her and notices that she looks genuinely sad. "Was she mean to my mommy?" she says in a whisper.

Images of a cannon and Brittany almost being shot out of it flash through Santana's mind but she shakes them away. "She was mean to everyone, but I made sure that she never made your mommy sad. Your mommy is far too happy to let anyone make her sad."

Hailey seems satisfied with the answer, and turns her attention back to the screen, reaching up to go to the next photo. It takes Santana's breath away because she forgot she had it on here, and she doesn't know if she's ready for the questions Hailey is going to ask.

"Why is mommy wearing a suit?"

Santana swallows and looks at the photo in front of her at Brittany in a half tux half dress, and them both looking like complete dorks on a plastic dinsoaur at their senior prom.

"That was at prom," Santana offers.

"What's that?"

"It's a big party you get to go to at the end of high school. It's the last big party you all have together before you leave," Santana explains. She hopes Hailey drops the topic soon because memories of the following weeks and months are coming back when everything went wrong.

"So why is mommy wearing a suit?"

"She wanted to be prom king, so she dressed up a little like a boy," Santana says.

"Prom king?"

"Yeah, it's like... every year they crown a guy and a girl prom king and queen and it's kind of like they're the most popular kids in school. Well, it was meant to be a boy and girl but the year before at our junior prom it was two boys."

"But a boy can't be a queen," Hailey says.

"People can be whatever they want to be, Hailey, but no, boys usually aren't queens."

"So why was he?"

"People thought it would be funny to have him be queen because he liked things that girls like, like fashion and singing and dancing."

"If he liked things girls like then did he like being prom queen?"

"Not at first, because he just thought about everyone being horrible. But then he realised he could be a better prom queen than most of the girls in school anyway," Santana says, smiling at the memory of Kurt standing up and accepting his crown and dancing with Blaine.

"Is that why mommy didn't want to be queen? Because the boys could do it better?"

Santana curses children for being so inquisitive and thinks of how to word this so it doesn't come out like Brittany sacrificed her chance at prom queen so her girlfriend could run, and they could be in the running for prom king and queen together. When Hailey was born they decided not to tell her about their relationship in the past, or at least not until she was well in to her teenage years.

"No, it just wasn't as important to her as it was to some other people."

Hailey looks at Santana who's face is serious and slightly scared, and then looks back at the picture on the screen, tapping it to make it light up again. She looks at the smile on seventeen year old Santana's face and turns back to real life Santana. "Was it important to you?"

Santana guesses she should set some sort of example and tell the truth. "Yeah."

"Did you win?" Hailey asks, genuinely interested. "That's why you're so happy, right?" she says, looking back at the picture on the screen.

Santana looks at it too and smiles again. "No, I didn't win. But you know who did?" Hailey shakes her head. "Your aunt Rachel!"

"No way!" Hailey shouts, and she bounces up from under the blanket so she's kneeling beside Santana leaning over her. "She won?"

"Yep, she was our senior prom queen," Santana tells her.

"Did mommy get prom king?"

"No, your uncle Finn did," Santana says, trying to keep the disapproval out of her voice when she remembers that not only did Finn win, but also that Brittany also only got four votes.

"They were king and queen all that time ago?" Hailey asks.

"They've been together for a very long time," Santana explains.

"They're like people from a fairytale."

"They're... yeah, I suppose they are, aren't they? They have their happy ever after."

Hailey grows bored of looking at their prom photo after that, and moves to the next one.

A few photos later they come to one of Brittany and Santana aged twenty-one, with Brittany's stomach no longer the toned, flat one that everyone is used to, but instead with the beginnings of a baby bump showing.

"That's you," Santana says, pointing at Brittany's tummy on the screen. She remembers the way Brittany acted for a week, blanking Santana and giving her short answers, before finally breaking down and telling her she was pregnant. She remembers how Brittany apologised, how she sobbed uncontrollably onto Santana's shoulder saying "I'm sorry, I'm sorry" over and over again. She remembers thinking that nothing else in world mattered anymore than making Brittany realise that she has nothing to be sorry for, and making sure she has everything she could ever need through her pregnancy.

"In mommy's tummy?"

"Yep, you were really, really tiny then and we were really excited to meet you," Santana says, moving to the next picture and then the next. Brittany's bump is slightly bigger in each one. Santana took pictures of it all the time, fascinated that there was an actual human being growing inside Brittany. When Quinn was pregnant they were young and weren't that close, so Santana never really appreciated what an actual miracle pregnancy and birth was, but with Brittany... well, she thinks nearly everything Brittany does is incredible but making another human pretty much takes first place.

"It seemed like you were tiny and then all of a sudden you were really big and it was nearly time for you to be born."

"I don't remember that," Hailey says shyly, as if she should.

Santana smiles. "I don't think anyone remembers being born, honey," Santana explains. "But I remember you being born."

"You were there?"

Santana scoffs because really, where else would she have been? She'd been to all of Brittany's scans, her antenatal classes, even helped with the medical bills, so honestly, the thought of not being there when the big day arrived is completely absurd.

"I was there for everything," Santana says. "I remember the first time I saw you. You were the tiniest thing I'd ever seen." Santana flicks a few more photos over on her phone to one of Brittany holding a few-minutes-old Hailey. Santana never forgets how special that moment was. How incredible Brittany was during the birth, how beautiful she was, how both of them couldn't stop crying. Santana gets so overcome with emotion sometimes that it feels like it was the birth of her own child, even though she knows it wasn't.

"That's me?" Hailey asks, pointing to the minutes-old baby on the screen.

"That's you. You were the most special thing I'd ever seen," Santana says, swallowing the lump in her throat. Both her and Hailey lie in comfortable silence for a few minutes, as Hailey flicks through some more pictures, until Santana realises the time.

"Hailey, it's past your bedtime! Your mommy is gonna be mad at me for letting you stay up late!"

"But Auntie S! I don't wanna go to bed yet!" Hailey protests.

Santana sits up, and climbs out of the fort before turning round to Hailey. "I know you don't but your mommy told me you have to, and you don't wanna make her mad, do you?"

Hailey hangs her head in disappointment. "No..."

"Okay, so let's get you dressed for bed and brush your teeth, yeah?" Santana says, reaching out her hand for Hailey to take.

Santana honestly doesn't know how it happened, but somehow Hailey managed to convince her that it doesn't matter where she sleeps, as long as she just sleeps so that's why they're lying in the fort again and Santana's listening to Hailey's steady breathing as she sleeps.

Really, you'd think that a woman in her twenties would be able to say no to a four year old, but there's just something about this kid that she just can't say no to. She thinks that the fact that this kid is made from Brittany's DNA has something to do with it.

She's thinking about how both of them have the exact same shade of blue in their eyes and then suddenly someone's interrupting her and calling her name.

"Santana, wake up."

She knows that voice. It's not Hailey. She feels a hand gently shake her shoulder and she wakes up a little more, realising that Brittany's home already. She sits up slowly, so as not to wake Hailey, and rubs at her eyes.

"What time is it? Why are you home already?"

"It's like, half eleven, S," Brittany smiles and, yep, she definitely still melts every time.

"Was I asleep?" she asks stupidly.

"I think so," Brittany says. "But at least you got Hailey to sleep too. With that babysitter I got last time she was up until way past midnight."

Santana looks at Hailey, who's sleeping peacefully behind her. "Yeah, she was out like a light. I think she was all played out."

"Speaking of lights... you've got a nice little fort going on here."

"Oh, right, yeah, I'll... I'll tidy it away before I go home, don't worry," Santana stutters.

"Don't," Brittany says too quickly. "I like it."

"Hailey liked it too," Santana says, smiling.

"Well, duh. Of course she did, she's my kid. If my kid didn't like making forts I'd worry."

"You've never made one with her before," Santana states.

Brittany shrugs. "I know, I guess I just... that was something you introduced me to and I kind of wanted that to be your thing with her too..."

A soft smile appears on Santana's face. "That's... thanks, Britt."

"No, thank you, because I can now just take her to bed and don't have to worry about getting her to sleep," Brittany says, leaning over to lift Hailey carefully from where she's lying beside Santana. Hailey groans and mumbles but doesn't wake up, she just attaches her arms around Brittany's neck and leans her head against her chest. "Come on baby, you'll be much more comfortable in bed," Brittany says, and Hailey just grunts in response.

Santana leans back on her hands and watches as Brittany carries Hailey to her bedroom, eventually disappearing out of sight. When she's gone, she lies back completely and breathes out, because she never gets over just how much Brittany takes her breath away even after all this time.

She thinks about Hailey and how she's such an amazing person already, and how she knows that she's going to grow up to be something bigger than they can even imagine right now.

Brittany appears in the room again in what seems like no time and Santana doesn't hear her until she's kneeling down to lie beside her in the fort. Brittany studies her for a second.

"You okay?" she asks.

Santana thinks for a moment about everything that's going through her mind. About Hailey and Brittany and growing up with this amazing girl by her side and their friendship that's the most important thing in her life - always has been and always will be. About twenty years of memories both good and bad and the years that are going to come in the future and she smiles.

"Yeah, Britt, I'm fine."