#i want to join a choir that does mostly early music but there isn’t one in my city | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

monabela · 5 years ago

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here's Tragic Werewolf Story ft the Finno-Ugric trio in which I borrow elements from various werewolf myths to make my own, mostly inspired by Sonata Arctica's Among The Shooting Stars, but honestly, they have a lot of songs about (were)wolves and I'm not convinced the singer isn't a furry (love you Tony). they're still my favorite band. this fic is named after the (non-wolfy) song of the same name! it’s set in the fifties for Some Reason. AND finished just in time for @fuckyeahaphestonia‘s eeweek! for Some Reason :P

Rise a Night

characters: Finland (Tuomi), Hungary (Erzsébet), Estonia (Eduard), and Ukraine (Iryna)

word count: 9541 summary: Six years after his brother’s death, Tuomi returns home, hoping to find some closure. What he and his sister find instead, defies all their expectations.

also on AO3

Eduard has been gone for six years, and Tuomi finally returns home.

He doesn’t think he’s ready, doesn’t think he could ever be, but he thinks it’s time.

As when he left, winter’s veil has cloaked the town. Coming home in another season would have been easier, when maybe every footstep in the snow, every light behind closed curtains, wouldn’t remind him of the night his only brother died. Tuomi has never been one to take the easy route, however. Winter is always going to come eventually, often sooner than expected here in the north; there’s no reason he should sit around and wait for it.

Besides, his half-sister still lives here. He hasn’t seen her since he left the town, and it will be good to be able to hold her again. They wrote, whenever Tuomi lingered in one place long enough, and he called sometimes when he had money to spare for it, but none of that is really a substitute. Two years ago, when Erzsébet got married in the summer, he’d been planning to come, but found that he still couldn’t. He’s only seen her husband in pictures.

Now, Tuomi crunches through the snow and the darkness of the late afternoon to his childhood home, where Erzsébet still lives. The blue walls are still familiar, still painful. It’s inconceivable to him that his sister has managed to stay here after everything, but he supposes he and Erzsébet just have different ways of coping.

When she opens the door, she looks good. A little older, certainly, and not nearly as radiant as in the wedding pictures she’s sent him—even in front of the two empty seats in the front row of the church—but healthy, and happy to see him. Without saying a word, Erzsébet pulls him across the threshold and into her arms, kicking the front door shut behind him while he drops his bag. Her grip is so tight it crushes the air out of Tuomi, but he hugs her back just as tightly, breathing in the scent of cigarette smoke and bread clinging to her blouse.

“It’s so good to see you,” she whispers into his damp coat.

Tuomi closes his eyes. Swallows.

“It’s good to see you too. Sorry it took me so long.”

Life just goes on, even when the last remnants of childhood are ripped away—the remnants no one even knew were left. That’s something Tuomi knows now, if he knows anything.

“Are you hungry?” Erzsébet is asking, already tugging him further into the house. She’s always been the pragmatist.

“Of course I’m hungry,” he replies. “Erzsi, wait, my coat is wet.”

She waits impatiently while he takes the coat off, taking it from him and hanging it up to dry on the door to the living room. The hall is just as narrow as he remembers, but it’s less cluttered now.

In the living room, a fire is crackling in the hearth, and nothing has really changed. Before, Tuomi and Eduard lived here together, while Erzsébet had stayed with their mother in her tiny new home until the day she died. At least, she didn’t have to know her eldest son didn’t make it past the following winter.

The room has a few new pieces of furniture—maybe made by Erzsébet’s husband, who, according to her descriptions of him, enjoys carpentry in his spare time. Speaking of him…

“Is the husband not home?” he asks, turning to his sister and realizing he has been silent for too long. Erzsébet smiles softly, shaking her head.

“He’s out in the forest. I’ll tell you about it later.” Now, she gestures him towards the dining table, and tells him to sit while she gets dinner. The table is new, but the chairs are the same. Tuomi forces himself not to imagine Eduard coming into the room, carrying some book or another and ready to discuss something he heard on the radio today. He’d have loved to see how more and more people are getting a television. Erzsébet doesn’t seem to have one yet, but Eduard’s beloved radio still has a prominent place in the room.

“Do you need a hand?” he calls out, but Erzsébet is already sidling back into the room, carrying a tray with a large pan on it. It smells good, and wafts warm air into Tuomi’s face when she sets it down on the table.

“I’ve got it.”

“I see.” He smiles at her when she sits down as well, handing him a plate and cutlery from the tray.

There is stew in the pot, which is great, mostly because it warms Tuomi’s chilly fingertips and nose. Erzsébet talks about pretty much nothing while they eat—the town gossip, as if he’s only been gone for six days. He appreciates it. It’s not that he doesn’t have things to tell her, but he doesn’t think he can yet. There will be plenty of time to make her laugh with the strange situations he’s found himself in these past years.

“What is your husband doing in the woods?” he does ask, during a lull in her monologue.

“He’s a hunter.”

He knew that, somewhere, but, “It’s not hunting season.”

She sighs. “There’s been some—there have been attacks. Some kind of animal, a wolf or maybe a bear. The winter has been quite harsh so far, so it’s probably getting closer to find food, and that includes our livestock.”

“So they’re going to kill it?”

“If it comes to that.” She shrugs, swiping her hair over her shoulder, although a strand of it catches on her orange blouse. It’s much longer than it was when Tuomi left. “They can’t find anything, so far. Maybe it moved on. There’s a lot of forest.”

Tuomi hopes so.

They sit around talking for a while, until he starts yawning, and Erzsébet insists he should go to bed, she can deal with the dishes herself.

“I wanted to meet your husband,” Tuomi complains, even as he hauls his bag up the stairs to his old bedroom. It’s a guest room now, although some of his old things are still there. He wonders what they’ve done with Eduard’s room. Doesn’t know what would be best.

“We’ll still be married tomorrow, Tuomi. Get some sleep, you’ve had a long day.”

That’s true; there was a train ride, and the ride with a passing stranger, and then the hike up to the town, through the snow and falling darkness.

“Fine, fine, since you insist.” He hugs her again before she heads back downstairs, and he goes to use the bathroom. On his way back to his room, Tuomi stares at the door of Eduard’s bedroom for a long while. He even puts his hand on the handle, but doesn’t go in.

He falls asleep fast, and doesn’t dream at all.

In the morning when he wakes up, it’s already starting to get light outside, which must mean he slept longer than he has in some time. Maybe, being here is doing him some good after all, Tuomi thinks, peering out across the landing. Downstairs, he can hear Erzsébet cluttering around, unsurprisingly still unable to do anything quietly. It’s almost as if he’s a child again and his mother is making lunch during the winter holidays, when the snow was too heavy for anyone to go to school.

After freshening up, Tuomi joins his sister in the living room, where she’s busily writing something down while she bobs her head to the music on the radio.

“Good morning!” She smiles at him. “Did you sleep well?”

“Surprisingly so, yeah.” He looks around conspicuously. “Just you again?”

“Oh, shush, Tuomas, you’ll get to threaten the poor man soon enough.” She laughs, but her expression sobers quickly. “They didn’t find anything in the woods, but there’s been another incident. Remember Iryna? Apparently, some of her chickens were killed last night. She didn’t notice anything.”

Tuomi nods. “How is Iryna?”

She was close to Eduard, too. They used to be in a choir together, but that is a long time ago and already was six years ago. They remained good friends.

“She’s well. I was planning to go visit her, actually, before I get the groceries. You could come if you want.”

That would be nice, so he agrees to come. Since it’s practically noon by now, they have lunch before bundling up and heading out. It hasn’t snowed any more, but the sky is cloudy and threatening, so it most likely will before tomorrow.

Erzsébet points out some things that have changed in the village, where new people have moved in houses that were still empty six years ago, left abandoned during the war. It’s good to see, if wry. The whole town feels wry to Tuomi, oddly disconnected, but it doesn’t hurt as he feared it would.

Iryna is warm as ever, hugging Tuomi close as soon as he and Erzsébet walk into her little shop full of sewing supplies, which hasn’t changed in the slightest. Iryna herself has cut her pale hair shorter, but her kind smile is the same. A little frazzled, but welcoming.

“So good to see you, Tuomi. Are you staying for a while?”

“Of course,” he replies, and he hears Erzsébet sigh behind him. Coming here, he wasn’t sure whether he could stand to stay, but he knows now that he can, and plans on taking up on his sister’s open invitation. “Maybe I can help out. There are always things to do, especially when the winter’s like this.”

“And then there’s that bear,” Iryna sighs.

“Why do you think it’s a bear?” Erzsébet asks.

“The door of the shed was torn open,” she explains, while they follow her behind the counter and into her actual house. “As far as I know, no wolf or anything else can do that.”

“Wolves are pretty smart.” Erzsébet cocks her head. “But it does seem more likely that a bear woke up too early and is grumpy now.”

“Maybe you can help with taking care of that, Tuomi.”

“I’m not much of a hunter,” he says, accepting the cup of tea Iryna hands him. “Thank you.”

She smiles. “Just as well. Actually, if you don’t mind, you could help me patch up the shed.”

“Sure, of course!” He is always happiest when he can do something useful with his hands, not unlike Erzsébet. Although Eduard was handy as well, he was more of a studious type than either of them. It still stings that the most cautious one of the three of them—the only cautious one, if you’d have asked their mother—should die alone in the woods.

No one knows, really, what happened that night. Tuomi remembers blood like auburn rivers in the snow. Shreds of Eduard’s favorite coat, the green one. Some pale hair, just lying there as if left in the drain, nearly invisible on the frozen ground. No one ever found Eduard’s body. At least, not all of it. Tuomi’s stomach turns every time he thinks of the grave that’s almost empty. They survived the war, all of them, and then…

He puts his cup down on the table and turns to Iryna.

“Where’s this shed? I’ll see what I can do.”

The woman bites her lip, eyebrows drawing together, but, with a glance at Erzsébet, stands and leads him out to her backyard, pointing at the shed.

“I had to put the chickens back in the coop,” she explains, shivering and pulling the sleeves of her cardigan down, “but it’s cold, so I’d like to have them back inside tonight.”

Tuomi surveys the door, putting his hands in the pockets of his coat. It shouldn’t be too hard to fix; the lock has broken off, but it’s still in one piece, just like the hinges. He asks Iryna if she has any tools he can use, and waits while she goes to get them.

“Bears don’t eat chickens, do they?” she asks when she comes back, pensive.

“Bears will eat anything when pressed, honestly.” He takes the tools. “I’ll be done in… Fifteen minutes?”

Iryna smiles and clasps his shoulder on her way back to her house, the snow crunching under her boots. Tuomi sets to work putting the lock back. It has been cleanly broken off the door; there are barely even any splinters. That must have been one delicate bear.

With anyone else, Tuomi would wonder if they didn’t do it themselves, faked an attack to get some attention, but Iryna can’t possibly have changed so much in six years that she would stoop to that.

It doesn’t even take ten minutes before the shed can be locked again. Tuomi tries the door a couple of times, and checks inside that there is no debris. He finds hay, and bloodstains in the dirt, and is thinking about the restraint this supposed bear showed by not just ripping all the chickens to shreds, when he spots something light in the corner of the shed, stuck on the edge of an old table the chickens must use to roost now.

He frowns, reaching for it.

It’s hair. Fur. He rubs the coarse lock of hair between his fingers, still furrowing his brow. Do bears get grey as they age? Maybe they do, he decides, but certainly not this light of a grey. Some of the hairs are practically white.

“Iryna,” he calls, walking back into her house.

“Tuomi! Is it fixed?” She hands him his still warm tea back as soon as he enters the kitchen, where Erzsébet is reading some kind of magazine.

“Yes, no problems. But I don’t think it was a bear.”

“No?”

He opens his free hand to show her the patch of fur, and Iryna cocks her head. Erzsébet stands up to take a look, and sighs.

“Better get another lock, Iryna. Wolves will stop at nothing.”

After saying goodbye to Iryna, Tuomi helps Erzsébet pick up groceries and tells her about the time he almost ended up marrying a woman during his travels, completely on accident.

“How was I supposed to know that man was actually an ordained minister?” he asks, and Erzsébet is laughing too much to attempt an answer, leaning her hands on the kitchen counter, shoulders shaking.

“It sounds like you have enough stories for the next six years,” she says, eventually. Tuomi bites his lip and focuses on the potato he’s peeling.

“I might,” he mumbles.

“Eduard would have loved to hear them.” She slants a soft smile his way.

Tuomi knows. All three of them love a good story. It’s something their parents instilled in them.

“Do you ever visit his grave?” he asks Erzsébet. She leans back against the counter after putting the potatoes on to boil.

“I do, but not…” She tucks her hair behind her ear. “I keep it tidy, because you know Ed, that’s what he’d have done, but it’s not… A special place, not in the way Mom and Dad’s graves are, or my father’s.”

Nodding, Tuomi touches the back of her hand, and she smiles gently.

“It is hard sometimes, Tuomi, living here. I understand why you left.”

“I understand why you stayed,” he replies. Tomorrow, he decides, he’ll go to visit his parents’ graves.

For now, they switch to lighter topics, laughing over dinner and finding a photo album to look at during the evening while the radio crackles in the background. When Erzsébet’s husband does eventually come home, he looks so exhausted that Tuomi just greets him and then lets him be on his way, watching him stumble up the stairs. The winter doesn’t tend to be forgiving, and he gets that.

Erzsébet frowns and retires as well, bringing some leftovers with her. Tuomi sits in the living room for a while longer, digging his toes into the carpet and listening to the radio in the light of the frozen moon. He imagines when he turns it off, that he can hear a howl in the wind, but there’s nothing but a rustle in the trees in the garden.

They shovel snow the next day before anyone can even leave the house, Erzsébet’s husband smoking continuously throughout, almost nervously.

“Are you alright?” Tuomi asks him, raising his eyebrows.

“Me?” He leans on his shovel. “Just worried about the wolf.”

Tuomi nods. That’s fair. It must be stressful, having the expectations of the whole town resting on your shoulders. The man is gone quickly afterwards, just a small dark speck in the snowy town. Erzsébet stands in the doorway and looks after him, pulling her shawl around her shoulders and smoking a cigarette as well.

“He’s so wound up about it,” she tells Tuomi. “I hope they find something soon.”

He puts an arm around her shoulders and pulls her back into the warm house.

“I’m sure they will. They’re hunters, it’s what they do.”

“Not professionally,” she replies, but drops it. “You wanted to go visit Mom and Dad today, isn’t it? They’d have hated this weather.”

“I really wondered why we always stayed in the north.”

Before they can do that, Erzsébet runs some errands, and Tuomi tries to read a book between wandering restlessly through the house. When they finally go outside and start making their way to the graveyard, he offers his sister his arm. There are children playing out in the streets, enthusiastically lobbing snowballs at each other and trying to grab each other’s sleds. Some of them wave at Erzsébet, who waves back and tells Tuomi she helps out at the local school sometimes, mostly cleaning and looking after the children during lunches.

“I suppose it’s a way of continuing what Eduard started,” she says, waiting while Tuomi pushes the graveyard’s gate open. “You know, teaching people. I’m not as smart as he was, but still…”

“You’re plenty smart.”

“I’m not saying I’m not. I’m just saying Ed was smarter. That’s not a secret.” She closes the gate behind herself and stares out across the silent graveyard next to Tuomi. Like this, covered in snow and illuminated by the setting sun, it’s like they’re watching a miniature landscape. The monuments are tiny hills and the trees watch over everything as if holding the sky up.

As they walk silently to the edge of the graveyard, snow starts falling again, gently fluttering down and sticking in Erzsébet’s dark hair and to Tuomi’s coat. Across the field, where the forest begins, the shadows seem as though they are dotted with stars.

They stop, and Erzsébet reaches over to brush the snow off their parents’ headstone. Her father is buried on a military cemetery elsewhere, but his name is inscribed on their mother’s grave as well. She was widowed twice.

It’s still strange to Tuomi that Erzsébet is all he has now, that his whole family is just her.

Well, he has a brother-in-law, he supposes, and he seems like a nice man.

A dark shape emerges out of the snow, and both of them duck on instinct as a large black bird soars overhead. It lands silently on a headstone just across the path, feet sinking into the snow. The raven blinks at them, tilting its small head while snow slowly falls on black wings.

“That’s…” Erzsébet whispers, taking a step forward. “That’s Eduard’s grave. I think I’ve seen that bird before, around here.”

The raven squawks and spreads its wings to fly off again. It circles over Tuomi’s head before disappearing into the snow and falling darkness.

“I think it lives here,” Erzsébet says. She tugs the brim of her hat over her eyes to shield them. “But it’s nice to think—”

The bird soars back, landing on Eduard’s headstone again.

“That maybe, it’s watching over Ed,” she finishes. “I wonder if it’s hungry.”

But Tuomi isn’t listening to her. He’s watching the raven, whose beady eyes seem fixed on him. Underneath its feet, he can just make out Eduard’s name, the cold dates marking his whole life. He was only 27.

“Tuomi?” Erzsébet whispers.

The raven takes off again. Tuomi runs after it.

“Tuomi!”

He can hear her hurry after him. Ahead, the raven sits on the last headstone at the edge of the graveyard. As soon as Tuomi catches up with it, the bird soars into the shadows of the forest. The moon is barely up, and although it is nearly full, it doesn’t light his way as he hurries into the dark.

“Tuomas Mets!” Erzsébet hisses, even as she continues to follow him. “What are you doing?”

He shushes her, squinting into the trees to try and find the raven. It seemed… Important. Tuomi isn’t a man who believes in superstitions, no matter what he saw during the war, on his travels, so it’s not that he thinks this bird… Is watching over Eduard, like Erzsébet said, or anything like that, but it seemed so imploring. Maybe it just needs help. The winter is hard.

A tug on the sleeve of his coat. Tuomi follows Erzsébet’s gaze to where the raven has landed on a snowy log. He takes a step toward the bird.

In the next moment, it takes off again, and a large, light shape hurtles out of the shadows. Erzsébet curses, letting go of Tuomi as she stumbles back.

The wolf growls low in its throat while the raven settles in a tree above it. With slow, measured steps, the wolf crosses the space between the trees, its paws soundless on the ground and its green eyes burning through the darkened night.

Tuomi knows that color.

He would know it anywhere, even after six years. After ten, twenty. It will haunt him for the rest of his life. Slowly, and almost detachedly, he kneels in the snow.

“Tuomi!” Erzsébet hisses. The raven calls.

But the wolf is silent, standing still and looking at Tuomi, who doesn’t dare blink, afraid of losing the moment. For the first time in six years, he can see his brother’s eyes, the peculiar sea green, like part of the northern lights.

“Eduard,” he whispers, reaching out.

The wolf turns, and runs into the darkness. When Tuomi wants to leap up and follow, Erzsébet is there, hauling him back with both of her arms around his waist and her breathing harsh in his ear.

The raven circles over them once before flying into the forest, and Tuomi swears, sagging into his sister.

“Tuomi, are you insane?” she hisses. Before he can even think of how to answer that, she’s dragging him back through the graveyard, icily quiet. They don’t stop once before they reach the gate.

“What just happened?” Erzsébet then asks, leaning against the snow-covered fence and pushing her gloved hands against her face. Snow glistens in her hair in the light of a street lantern. “You could have been hurt, Tuomi.”

“I’m not sure.” He breathes out heavily, watching a cloud form in front of his face. Did she hear him say Eduard’s name? Did the wolf hear him? He knew those eyes. He knows he did.

“Let’s go home,” she sighs, linking her arm through his. Now, Tuomi is sure he hears a howl in the woods behind them, and a large black bird soars ahead.

Neither of them tells Erzsébet’s husband about the encounter with the wolf.

Tuomi has uneasy dreams, and come morning, he feels a familiar itch, an urge to leave. He can’t. He’s here now, and he’s run away enough.

“Where are you going?” Erzsébet asks, leaning against the doorpost of the living room while he puts his coat on in the hall. She wearing pants today, which he can’t recall having seen her do before, although she might have during the war. He wasn’t here, then.

“I don’t know. I might see how Iryna’s doing.” He smiles slightly, trying to look reassuring, and Erzsébet nods with a sigh.

“Well, be careful.”

“Of course not,” he jokes. She raises her eyebrows, and he bites his lip. “Of course I will, Erzsi.”

Tuomi walks through the sunny, snow-covered village, stopping to talk to some locals when they recognize him and pushing an excitable little boy down a slope on his homemade sled. Really, it’s good to see that the town is doing well again. It lifts his spirits.

At the town hall, or what passes for it, he spots a poster warning people to be careful after dark, and definitely not let their children out unsupervised. There’s a little map of the area, with Iryna’s house and several other locations across town marked as where there have been attacks the past few weeks.

It must be a very smart wolf, because the sites move from one end to the village from one attack to the next, effectively leading the hunters on a wild goose chase.

Eduard was smart, Tuomi catches himself thinking. He always thought ahead.

He knew those eyes.

Behind him, his name is called.

“Hey, Tuomi,” Erzsébet’s husband says, walking over to him with his hat pulled low over his eyes against reflecting sunlight, his green coat flying out behind him. “Erzsébet says you forgot your scarf.”

He laughs, and takes the scarf when the man gives it to him.

“Are you two very sure you don’t want children?” he asks, and gets a dry laugh in response.

“Believe me, not exactly father material.” He waves, and starts in the direction of the forest. Tuomi unfurls the scarf, and is surprised when something flutters out of it, landing gently in the snow.

A single black father rests by his feet. Slowly, he picks it up. Turns it over between his fingers. When he looks over his shoulder, his brother-in-law is long gone from view.

“Great,” he whispers.

Without really deciding to do so, Tuomi goes back to the graveyard. The church bells ring noon when he reaches his brother’s grave and pushes the snow off to lay the feather down on top of the cold headstone.

Eduard Mets, 1920-1948

It doesn’t mean anything, not really, but his knees give out all of a sudden, so he kneels on the stone edge of the grave, the sun warming his face and trying to pierce through his closed eyelids. He doesn’t feel the cold snow seeping through his pants or crawling into his gloves to chill his fingertips. Not for the first time, he wonders what the hell he’s supposed to do in a place without Eduard. What he’s been doing, these past six years. Drifting, he thinks. Helplessly drifting.

A gentle hand lands on his shoulder, and doesn’t have to open his eyes to know it’s Erzsébet.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbles.

“Don’t.” With a rush of cold air, she crouches next to him, and now, Tuomi glances her way. “I just want to make sure you don’t catch your death.”

“Your husband brought me my scarf.” He looks at the single feather sitting on top of the headstone.

“Good. I’ve lost enough people.”

“We all have,” Tuomi says quietly. “But I think I was right to come back, Erzsi. You’re not losing me.”

She smiles at him, familiar green eyes crinkling ever more at the corners, then straightens.

“I’m going back home. Are you coming?”

With a last look at the cold, unyielding stone of Eduard’s grave, Tuomi nods. His chilled joints protest as he stands, and he grimaces at his sister.

“You’re not the one who’s almost forty, little brother,” she chides him, and he can’t help but grin, even as he realizes that Eduard would have been 34 in just a few days. Maybe, they should do something for his birthday. He’ll have to ask Erzsébet.

As they approach their childhood home, Tuomi’s gaze catches on an upstairs window, where a blue curtain flutters in the still air.

“Hey, Erzsébet?”

“Hm?” She pulls at the cord hanging out of the mail slot to open the front door.

“What have you done with Eduard’s room?”

“Nothing much.” She follows his gaze upwards. Frowns. “I definitely didn’t open the window.”

Inside, Tuomi rattles up the stairs, and is already pushing the door handle of Eduard’s bedroom down when he hesitates. He turns to Erzsébet as she climbs the stairs behind him.

Without being asked, she says, “I clean it a few times a year, and we’ve got some of his old books stored, but we don’t… We don’t really go in there.”

With a deep breath, Tuomi pushes the handle down again, and slowly opens the door.

It’s cold in the room, and silent. Eduard’s bed stands, bare but largely covered in books, underneath the open window. He liked to watch the stars, the northern lights when they appeared. He’d always been a dreamer, in his rare free time. No one ever expected that of him, but the only thing greater about Eduard than his intelligence was his imagination.

Erzsébet is walking over and shutting the window, a frown on her face. The latch seems very secure.

“I don’t know how—” She cuts herself off. Tuomi watches with his heart jumping into his throat as she lifts a glossy black feather from the windowsill, holding it between her thumb and index finger. They’re both silent. Of course, this doesn’t mean anything. It can’t.

And still, after yesterday…

“You’ve brough something very odd back to town, Tuomi,” Erzsébet says.

“Maybe it was waiting for me.”

Closing her eyes, she puts the feather back down and presses her hands over her angular face.

“Yesterday, in the woods… What did you see?”

Tuomi’s gaze drifts over to a picture on Eduard’s desk. All three of them, posing in summer clothes with their mother. He remembers the day it was taken. The second summer after the war, everyone just happy to bask in the sunshine.

“I saw his eyes, Erzsébet.”

“He’s dead,” she whispers, then swallows hard. Clenches her fingers around the black feather, crushing it out of shape. “And even if he isn’t, he can’t be… That’s old folk tales. It’s the twentieth century.”

Tuomi would agree with her, but he knew those eyes. She doesn’t know the things he saw during the war, during the past six years. There are remnants of times long gone everywhere, old beliefs still lingering between radios and televisions.

Or maybe he just wants to believe that he can see Eduard again, and it was a mistake to come back home.

“What now?” Erzsébet asks. “Whatever this is, we must be able to figure it out. We owe that to Ed.”

“You’re right. He would have.” Of course, Eduard was the planner, but they’re both smart. Tuomi is certain that, if there is something to find, they will find it. For better or for worse.

After dinner, he has his coat on before Erzsébet is done putting the dishes away, and she grumbles, good-naturedly if a little forced, while he waits for her to bundle up as well. The evening is clear, and the moon is already up, nearly full and lighting their way to the south side of the village, the opposite side of where they were yesterday.

“Haven’t the hunters noticed the pattern?” Tuomi wonders, waving his clouding breath away so he can see the path in front of him. The snow is largely undisturbed here. The air sparkles above it.

“Haven’t heard about it.” Through her shawl, Erzsébet sounds muffled. “It’s unlikely, so they wouldn’t look.”

Again, Tuomi thinks, Eduard was always the planner.

Over the crunch of their shoes in the snow, he hears a hoarse call, the familiar caw of a raven.

“We must be going in the right direction,” he whispers. They’re on the edge of the forest, the evergreen of trees a looming black mass in the darkened evening. Even with the moonlight, the forest floor is dark. Erzsébet just hums. She tucks her hand into the crook of Tuomi’s elbow. In her dark coat and with her pale face mostly covered by her shawl and hat, she’ll be nearly invisible.

After standing still for a moment longer, she starts walking again decisively, leaving Tuomi no choice but to go into the woods as well.

Both silent again, they peer searchingly into the darkness as the trees close around them.

Once more, he hears the raven call, and he squints uselessly up in an effort to spot it. Erzsébet yanks at his arm when he nearly trips.

“Sorry,” he mumbles, sheepishly.

“Try to be careful.” She stops, and Tuomi glances at her, watching her dark eyebrows furrow. He follows her gaze into the shadows, preparing to ask a question, but falls silent.

In the snow, one shadow seems larger than the others.

No, it’s not a shadow. Tuomi shudders and pulls his sister closer to him. He remembers this. The blood-soaked snow of six winters ago still burns in his memory.

“It was here,” Erzsébet whispers. “The wolf.”

And then, it is there again. Piercing eyes burn through the shadows like a white-hot knife and Tuomi can’t move—refuses to move, even when Erzsébet jumps back, pulling on his arm. Ahead of them, the wolf growls low in its throat, baring teeth that glint in the moonlight. With shaking hands, Tuomi lets go of his sister to take a step forward. She doesn’t say anything, and the wolf doesn’t move, sea green eyes unblinking on Tuomi.

“Please,” he whispers, taking another step, “don’t run this time. We’re here.”

The wolf’s muzzle twitches, a small growl escaping, but it doesn’t move.

“I left, but I’m back,” Tuomi continues. Like before, he kneels, slowly, deliberately. He is the only thing moving in the small clearing. Even the trees seem silent.

“I’m not leaving again.”

With a snarl, the wolf leaps. Strong paws knock the breath out of Tuomi as he sprawls back in the snow, the wolf looming over him. Its breath is heavy and warm, and it presses Tuomi down, growling through its teeth.

“Tuomi!” Erzsébet gasps. He can’t look at her, can’t look away from the ever-familiar sea green piercing into him, but he hears her continue in something that’s barely a whisper, “He’s… Eduard, if—if you can hear me, if you understand me… We’re here, we’re both here, so please. Give us a chance.”

The wolf makes an almost plaintive noise, like a kicked dog, and scrambles away, off Tuomi, who grabs Erzsébet’s hand to help himself up, then immediately leaps after the wolf, into the shadows. Swearing, Erzsébet follows him.

Tuomi tries desperately not to lose sight of the flash of grey fur ahead of him, skidding through the snow. Branches slap into his face, showering him with powdery snow, but he doesn’t allow himself to notice. His lungs are burning by the time he bursts into another clearing. The wolf is already on the other side.

“Eduard!” Tuomi calls, and just as the wolf stops, he trips. With nothing to stop him, he falls face-first into the snow, hitting his forehead on a rock hidden underneath. Stars dance in his vision, the shock of cold and pain overwhelming him for a long moment.

It's too much, all of a sudden. He wants nothing more than to stay there until things go back to the way they were before. The way they were six years ago.

“Get up, you—” Erzsébet swears again, and then she hauling Tuomi out of the snow by his armpits, her strength somehow still managing to surprise him after all this time.

“Are you trying to get yourself killed, Tuomas?”

Tuomi looks up at her, startled by the edge of desperation in her voice.

“The wolf—” he starts, and his sister shakes him.

“It’s not the wolf I’m worried about” In the moonlight, her green eyes shimmer with tears. “I thought I was the reckless one, but you’re… Tuomi, what the hell have you done to yourself these past six years?”

“Erzsi,” he whispers, barely able to part his freezing lips. “Eduard is…”

“I know, Tuomi. I saw it.” Her fingers dig into his shoulders. “But he wouldn’t want you to be so… Goddamn reckless. You’re not worth more than he is. And, I think… If I lose you, if we lose you, then there’s no hope for him. Do you understand?”

Teeth clattering, he nods. With a sigh, Erzsébet unfurls her shawl and drapes it around his neck.

“Nothing makes sense here, but I know we’re in it together, if I know anything.” At the call of a raven, she looks up, squinting into the darkness. “There’s something there.”

Tugging her shawl tighter around himself, Tuomi turns to follow her gaze. Between the trees on the other side of the clearing, he can make out a large, dark shape. A building?

“What…” he breathes. Erzsébet squeezes his shoulder, and he looks back at her. “Should we…”

“You need to get out of the cold before your nose freezes off, so yes.”

Before he can reply, she has started marching across the clearing and towards the darkened, run-down cabin, so he follows quickly.

The door isn’t locked, and Erzsébet ushers him in before closing it behind him.

It is marginally warmer inside. Tuomi squints into the darkness and finds the smoldering embers of a dying fire glowing in the corner of the room. He listens, shushing Erzsébet when she starts to speak, but the cabin is silent.

Still, “Someone was here recently.”

“Is that someone still here?” Erzsébet, ever the pragmatist, asks.

“I don’t think so.” As his eyes adjust to the darkness, he makes out the shape of an old oil lamp on a table by the window. Watching his footing, he makes his way over and lights it easily, casting a soft glow over the room. Erzsébet blinks in the light, then looks around.

“What is this place?” she breathes. Tuomi has to agree with her.

The cabin is sparsely furnished, with a bed, table and chair, and a single cabinet next to the door. It is obviously lived in, but feels, more than anything else, like a place to hide.

When Tuomi takes a step forward, he notices that his oil lamp casts odd shadows on the floor, and he shifts the light to get a better look.

There are gouges in the wood, splinters sticking up every which way. The door isn’t much better, and he is reminded of Iryna’s shed. The patterns are the same.

“Tuomi?” Erzsébet says, holding the door of the cabinet open with trembling fingers. “I think…”

He walks over to her, and feels his blood run cold.

“I always wondered where that photograph went,” she whispers, reaching into the cabinet to pick up the shattered frame sitting at the back of one of the shelves. She runs her fingertips across the familiar shape of their mother’s face, faded with age. In this shot, Erzsébet herself has her arms firmly crossed, and Tuomi is looking away from the camera. He remembers seeing something unusual out of the corner of his eye, and so quickly after the war, everything unexpected startled him.

Eduard looks amused, towering over all of them as he always did. His tall form catches all the sun. At the place where his shoulder meets Tuomi’s, there is a tear in the photograph, as if that part was ripped off but eventually put back.

“What does this mean?” Erzsébet asks, putting the picture back down. There is some food in the cabinet, mostly cans, and a meager stack of clothes. Green, and blue. Eduard’s favorite colors.

“I think it means…” He can’t say it, steps back, head pounding.

“We have to do something,” Erzsébet says softly. “There must be a way.”

Tuomi takes another step back.

“It’s been six years—”

“It’s been six years, and you’re back home.”

That’s exactly what he was afraid of. Putting the lamp down, Tuomi runs back into the night.

“Tuomi!” Erzsébet calls, her footsteps thundering after him, but he doesn’t stop, not until he reaches the edge of the forest and he almost trips into the road, caught at the last moment by familiar gloved hands.

For a second, the green coat makes his breath catch, and he can barely look up. It’s just his brother-in-law, smelling like cigarette smoke.

“Tuomi, look out,” he starts, but Tuomi wrenches himself away, tripping back again—only to find that Erzsébet has caught up to him.

“What the hell are you doing?” she shouts. “We have to do something!”

“Erzsébet, not—” He turns around, but her husband is gone. Tuomi blinks. He was there, wasn’t he?

“Not what? You’re here now, and we have to—”

“That’s just it!” he bursts out. “I’m here now! I wasn’t here for the past six years, because I ran away, like a coward! I abandoned Eduard! I abandoned everything.”

“No one blames you—”

“I do, Erzsébet,” he says, hoarsely. “I always have, but now…”

“How do you think I feel?” she asks, grasping his shoulders with that firm grip of hers. “I was here all along, and I never once helped him. I mourned him, and, god, have I been angry at him, at you, but I wish I could have helped.”

“You couldn’t have known,” he tells her, knowing as he says it what she will reply.

“Nor could you, Tuomi.”

He closes his eyes, hanging his head, and Erzsébet rests her forehead against his.

“We’re going to help him.” She clenches his shoulders. “I promise.”

A tear rolls hotly down his freezing cheek, but Tuomi ignores it to pull back and look at his sister.

“I promise,” she repeats. “Let’s go home.”

They go home, and Tuomi tries to sleep for hours, tossing and turning and staring into the shadows of his now-unfamiliar childhood bedroom, the moonlight catching on the edges of furniture that wasn’t there before like an alien landscape.

He thinks about the cabin in the forest, the grooves like claw marks in the wood. About living in fear of yourself for six years. He wishes it could have been him. Anyone but Eduard.

Eventually, he must fall asleep, but wakes when the night is just fading to dawn. He thinks he might have heard a noise, and when he looks out of his window, there is an unfamiliar shadow in the snowy garden. It is gone in the blink of an eye.

Tuomi knows he won’t be able to sleep again, so he gets dressed quietly and walks to the landing, avoiding the floorboards that are creaky on muscle memory alone. Eduard was always a light sleeper. Is a light sleeper? Tuomi sighs and puts his hand against his brother’s bedroom door.

“Sorry, Eduard,” he mumbles, and then there’s that noise again, just behind the door. Like… A shuffle. A breath. Tuomi’s heart skips a beat.

“Erzsébet?” he whispers, but he can hear her snoring lightly down the hall, so it can’t be.

The noise again.

“Eduard?”

Nothing. With trembling hands, he pushes the door open.

The blue curtain flutters in a soft, cold breeze, swinging into the empty room.

“God—fuck!” Tuomi clenches his jaw. Of course. What was he thinking? He slams the window shut, leaning on the sill heavily for a moment, trying to catch his breath with his eyes closed.

“Tuomi?” His sister’s voice is soft behind him.

“Sorry, Erzsi,” he grits out. Taking a deep breath of the frigid air, he forces himself to relax when she puts a warm hand between his shoulder blades.

“Don’t be.”

In the reflection in the window, Tuomi meets her tired eyes.

“You didn’t sleep well either?”

“Of course not.” She smiles tightly when he turns to her. “I keep thinking about Ed. It’s like when he just…” Her words trail off, and she evidently doesn’t know what to say.

“Yes.” Tuomi glances at the desk, the photograph, and his breath hitches all over again. “Erzsébet.”

She turns.

“No…”

There is a knife, on the desk, its handle tilted to the left as if the person who put it there was left-handed. Like Eduard. The metal is unblemished, shining like moonlight, and the edges sharp.

“How… Who…” Erzsébet wraps her arms around her herself, but Tuomi reaches for the knife, slowly. It’s cold in his hand.

“Silver,” he says.

There is no indication where the knife might have come from, no note or engraving or even a fingerprint. Tuomi turns to the window and looks at the retreating moon.

“No, Eduard,” he says. “You underestimate us.”

“What do we do?” Erzsébet is asking. “He won’t be at the cabin, he’s smarter than that.”

“Then we look.” Like they did six years ago, when he went missing.

Tuomi puts the knife back down, and turns to the wardrobe. There is one coat inside still, Eduard’s nice coat, the one he wore to their mother’s funeral, the one they would have buried him in if there had been enough of him to bury. It was already terrifying to think of what happened to him, that day in the forest, but now, knowing he survived, it’s somehow more harrowing to think about. How did he recover? Was the wolf his salvation, or was that what tore him apart in the first place?

“He must know,” he says, “that we’d never stop looking.”

“We’ll remind him, Tuomi.”

“Not to interrupt—”

Erzsébet nearly whacks her husband in the face with how fast she whips around at the sound of his voice. He jumps back, unlit cigarette falling from between his lips.

“What’s going on?” he asks, and he takes a step into the room, his eyes widening at the sight of the knife on the desk.

“We were… It’s almost Eduard’s birthday,” Erzsébet stammers. “It’s… On our minds.”

“Of course.” He takes a step back this time. “I have to go.”

“Hey…” Erzsébet reaches for him, and he takes her hand. “Be careful, please. The wolf is out there.”

“Of course.” He meets Tuomi’s eyes for a charged second. “Don’t worry.”

He kisses her once, picks up his cigarette, and is gone again.

“He’s strange, isn’t he?” Tuomi asks, and Erzsébet laughs, surprised.

“I’ve always had a type.”

Feeling a little lighter despite himself, Tuomi follows her downstairs, taking Eduard’s coat with him. It smells musty, but is still somehow comforting, so he tugs it on after breakfast, when they go out without a clear destination in mind. He wouldn’t have fit it six years ago, but he has lost all the weight he put on after the war since then, and although the sleeves are long, it feels nice.

“You look more like him than when you two were younger,” Erzsébet says thoughtfully, and he smiles, offering her his arm.

They walk over to Iryna’s first, where Iryna compliments Tuomi’s coat and tells them she hasn’t heard of any new incidents in town.

“Maybe it did move on,” she muses. Tuomi and Erzsébet share a look. That is an option, he thinks, but then shakes his head. If Eduard stayed around here all these years, he surely wouldn’t leave now.

Then again, sometimes all it takes to make a difference is one experience, one person.

They have to find him.

“We’ll see you again soon, Iryna,” he says, pulling Erzsébet along while she waves at Iryna.

They spend most of the morning wandering around the edge of town, and then Tuomi spots the local library-cum-bookstore and has to go and look at the books on myths and legends while Erzsébet goes to get something to eat at home. She brings him back some bread while he reads about wolfmen and werewolves, and she waves at the bookstore owner too. He always liked Tuomi.

Well, he liked Eduard, and Tuomi was inevitable, at that point.

The books are… Inconclusive. He doesn’t know what he expected. Of course there is no consensus on something that isn’t supposed to exist.

“Now, you really look like him,” Erzsébet says, looking over his shoulder.

“Eduard would have fifty more books and you know it.” He closes the one in front of him. “It’s no use. We have to find him.”

There is no sign of Eduard anywhere, and they don’t see the ubiquitous raven either, not even at the graveyard. By the time evening is falling, Tuomi wonders if they should have gone to the cabin after all, but he’s also very hungry and very cold, and it’s starting to snow again, so they go back home to eat dinner.

Erzsébet’s husband, looking bedraggled and somehow sorry, wanders in halfway through and barely eats anything before announcing he’s going to sleep. Erzsébet stares after him, forehead creased.

“Stranger than usual?” Tuomi asks.

“Yes. Don’t worry about it.”

“Are you sure?”

She bites her lip. “He’s a grown man. Eduard is more important now.”

Tuomi touches her shoulder, but doesn’t say anything else.

Despite the snow, gently falling, they go out again, Tuomi still wearing his brother’s coat. The moon is full tonight. Some of the stories he read claimed the phases of the moon affect the wolf. He hopes that isn’t true. Eduard has seen a thousand moons or more, the past six years, but something of him is left. A fire deep inside. Tuomi means to wake it, because if anyone can, it’s him and Erzsébet.

It feels like the how is still miles away when they hear it, but it pulls on Tuomi, cuts through the snowy night.

“Let’s go,” Erzsébet says, and they hurry to the forest. Still, the raven is nowhere to be seen. Maybe, its work is done.

The forest is silent, pine trees like looming giants protecting their secrets. Neither Tuomi nor Erzsébet speaks. They listen. Their own footsteps crunch gently, but there is a woolly silence all around them. Sometimes, Tuomi spots something grey out of the corner of his vision, but it’s always snow.

Until it isn’t.

The wolf, the same wolf, leaps out, teeth bared in a snarl, shaking its head as if preparing to pounce.

Tuomi slows his pace but doesn’t stop walking. Erzsébet does. The wolf growls as he nears, snapping its jaw at him. Its light fur is stained with something, the color unclear in the darkness. Erzsébet takes a few steps forward.

Reaching his hand out, Tuomi gets his gloved fingers close enough that the wolf could bite them, if it wanted. It doesn’t. It stands there, frozen, and Tuomi can’t take the look in those familiar eyes. He kneels again.

“I’m back,” he says softly. He can’t bring himself to say his brother’s name, this time, afraid the wolf might run. “I’ll come back as often as it takes. I promise.”

The wolf shakes its head again, flinging snow off the fur.

“Me as well,” Erzsébet says, resting her fingertips on Tuomi’s shoulder. “And you know us. We’re stubborn as anything. Got that from Mom.”

“Please,” Tuomi says, reaching further forward. The wolf cautiously watches them both, those sea green eyes so unmistakably intelligent. He takes his hand back to remove his glove, then offers his fingers again, swallowing nervously. Erzsébet’s hand clenches on his shoulder, through the coat.

When the wolf nudges its cold nose against his fingertips, Tuomi makes an involuntary sound in his throat that has the animal looking up, lips already curling back for a growl, so he speaks quickly.

“You’re cold,” he says. “You never liked the cold, just like Mom and Dad. I had to bring so much firewood in to keep you warm.”

The wolf if still. Tuomi takes his coat—Eduard’s coat—off with measured movements. Erzsébet takes a breath.

“I still can’t smell the wood stove burning without thinking of you.” She huffs a nervous little laugh. “Even Mom thought it was too hot at a certain point, and that was rare.”

Tuomi has managed to get out of the coat, and he holds his fingers out again.

“It will be alright,” he whispers. “I promise, Eduard.”

Before the wolf can do anything, he drapes the coat around its haunches. For a moment, it stares up at him in confusion, green eyes wide, and Tuomi is convinced this was all for nothing, that his brother is gone forever, but then, the wolf curls in on itself with an ear-piercing howl of pain, and he has to hold Erzsébet back from lunging for it while it disappears almost completely beneath the coat’s blue fabric.

In the stillness of the forest, the sound is agonizing. The howl only barely manages to be louder than an awful popping, like bones snapping, like something tearing itself apart right before their eyes. Erzsébet hauls Tuomi up and clenches his cold hand painfully, breathing hard.

It stops, suddenly, and the silence is deafening.

Tuomi takes a step forward.

There is a flash of movement, but it isn’t in his direction. It’s away from him.

And for the first time in six years, he sees his brother’s face, those green eyes and his pale skin, fair hair matted as he scrambles away.

“Eduard,” Tuomi says, and Erzsébet is the only thing holding him up when his knees threaten to give out under the relief and sadness and anger all welling up inside him.

Eduard’s eyes, those eyes, are wide and terrified, and he falls into the snow when he tries to get up, pulling his coat tight around his skinny form. Although he is wearing tattered denim jeans, his feet are bare.

“What’s happening?” he stutters, his voice hoarse and panicked. “How is this—”

When he finally meets Tuomi’s eye, Tuomi manages to take a step in his direction, and Eduard just looks, terrified.

“Eduard.”

“No, no. Get away!” He curls in on himself, violent shivers coursing through his body. “This can’t be real. Leave me alone!”

“It’s us, Eduard,” Erzsébet says, her voice thick with emotion.

He tries to get up but falls again, and this time, both Tuomi and Erzsébet rush forward to catch him. He jerks in their grip, his skin ice cold. His face is gaunt and haunted, and his breathing fast.

“You don’t understand,” he whispers, shaking. Erzsébet begins unwinding her scarf. “I’m… I can’t.”

His fingers dig into Tuomi’s arm through his sweater.

“I understand you’re scared.” Tuomi watches his brother flinch when Erzsébet gently puts her scarf around his shoulders.

“No, you don’t.” Eduard tries to wrench himself free, but he just falls again, and scrambles back through the snow on his hands and feet. “I’m protecting you. I’m— I’ve done so many things. So many terrible—”

“I fought in the war, Eduard,” Tuomi says, and Eduard flinches again, so different from the unflappable man Tuomi used to know.

“Please, leave me.” Eduard chokes back a sob. “I don’t deserve—”

“You don’t get to decide that,” Erzsébet says, and Tuomi can see tears streaking down her face in the moonglow. “You have the freedom to choose the things you feel, but you don’t get to decide whether you deserve our help, Ed.”

He bends his head, his skinny shoulders shaking with tears.

“You can’t help. I can’t…” He speaks to the ground. “The wolf is… It gets what it wants. I just live in the shade, and I don’t…”

He meets Tuomi’s eye again.

“I don’t think I deserve to even be called alive anymore, sometimes.”

This time, he doesn’t flinch away when Tuomi gets closer to him, watching him kneel in the snow. Gently, Tuomi reaches out, brushes snowflakes off his shoulders. His hair is long and tangled, but his eyes are ever so bright.

“I recognized your eyes, Ed,” he whispers. “No one has eyes like that except you. No wolf I’ve ever seen has eyes like that.”

Eduard closes them.

“I was never going to let you go. I never will. If I have to do this every night for the rest of my life, I will.”

“We will,” Erzsébet adds. Eduard opens his eyes, a wild, unfamiliar edge to his expression. Like a wolf looking for prey.

“Don’t say things like that.” His voice is a rasp, barely more than a breath. He doesn’t blink.

“You’re not the wolf, Eduard. I know that.” Tuomi takes a deep breath, cold air burning in his lungs. “I love you, alright? I never stopped, and I never will. I could never wish you dead.”

The wolf in Eduard’s eyes blinks first, and disappears.

“Tuomi,” he says.

“I promise.” He grasps Eduard’s face, and Erzsébet kneels at the man’s side, taking one of his bony hands.

“Erzsébet, I…”

“Listen to your brother, Mets.” She clenches her jaw, reaches into a pocket of her coat, and pulls out the silver blade. “This was never going to be the answer, not with us.”

“If you cannot save me, I need you—”

“No.” She holds his gaze, and then throws the knife into the shadows with all her strength. It glints harshly in the moonlight, just once, before disappearing. “We both love you, and it’s time to go home.”

From one of the trees, a raven calls, and Eduard looks up as it flies back in the direction of the village.

“Alright,” he breathes, and lets both of them help him to his feet, his bare feet in the snow. Tuomi swallows, but holds him up as he knows he always will.

“Let’s go home.”

#Hetalia #aph finland #aph hungary #aph estonia #apheeweek #fin #w: 10000 #np #u: historical #theres probably some typos left but I'll fix them later... gotta sleep #ages later I've finally fixed the typos

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themostrandomfandom · 7 years ago

Note

Hey JJ, I was wondering what is your opinion on Klaine and the relationship between them and Brittana. Also I have a friend whose really obsessed with you and your blog and she reads it religiously so that must mean that your stuff is good ;) hope your day is going well :)))

Hey, @ruskinino!

First off, thank you forthe sweet message. Sorry it has taken me so long to post a reply.

Second, in response to yourquestion:

While both TPTB at Glee and fanon might like toimagine a close and straightforwardly friendly bond between Brittana andKlaine, I think that, in reality, things are much more complicated, and,unfortunately, less positive.

The two couples don’t hate each other, but thereis certainly a degree of caution in the way they interact, with both sides having been burned in the past.

We can break the issues down after the cut.

WARNING: I am writing this response as a fan of Brittany Pierceand Santana Lopez and a Brittana shipper. Though my intention isn’t to bashKurt Hummel, Blaine Anderson, or Klaine, there are elements of my analysis thatare critical of their behavior and which discuss some negative views which I believethat Brittany and Santana hold towards them. If you ship Klaine, proceedcautiously. What follows probably won’t be your cup of tea.

___

Brittana, Klaine, and Glee’s Writing

First, let’s talk aboutBrittana and Klaine on a production level.

In terms of Glee marketing,Brittana and Klaine were very important. For a show that prided itself on itsdiversity and forward-thinkingness, having two same-sex teen couples at itsfront and center was a big deal. While a lot of the critical praise for Gleedied off before the first season had even ended, the show continued toaccumulate awards from GLAAD, the Trevor Project, and other LGBTQ organizationsthroughout its run thanks, in no small part, to Brittana and Klaine’sprominence.

For PR purposes, Brittanaand Klaine were often paired together in promotional materials and paralleledin episode structures. RIB loved putting them side by side because when they did,it got everyone’s attention. If having one same-sex couple getmarried on TV was a huge thing, then having two same-sex couples get married onTV at the same time was an even huger one. It was all about doubling up, and thepowers that be at Glee took the opportunity to put two and twotogether when they could.

That said, Brittana +Klaine was often better executed in idea than in practice.

The truth is that asidefrom being LGBTQ and participating in show choir, Brittana and Klaine were twovery different couples, and Brittany, Santana, Kurt, and Blaine were four verydifferent characters. While in theory there exists a fictional universe wherethey all (or at least most of them) could have been friends—a point which manyexcellent fanfics well prove—the canon Gleeverse wasn’t it, mostly because thewriters never put in the work to really establish those interpersonal dynamics.

Brittana and Klaineran in the same circles and frequently orbited around one another in terms oftheir storylines and character development, but the narration never truly allowedthem to get to know one another or to form stable bonds.

Despite various comingstogether, at the end of six seasons, shared wedding notwithstanding, one nevergot the sense that Brittana and Klaine were actually very good friends. Sure,they didn’t hate one another, but there was also no deep love between them.Klaine were still questioning Brittana’s motives. Brittana were still mockingKlaine’s clothing, mannerisms, and relationship status.

Glee had failed to provethat these kids actually liked and related to one another on any special level.It was just another instance in which Glee kept trying to tell us that thesecharacters were friends, but they never showed us that such was the case (see here).

For as much as fanon lovesto imagine what might have been, canon shows us a much more convoluted—and muchless pretty—picture, one in which, due to a history of bullying and hijinks,Klaine never got comfortable enough to drop their guards around Brittana, andso, after years of repeated rebuffs and rejections, Brittana eventually grewfrustrated with Klaine’s distrust of them and emotionally disengaged.

So now let’s talk aboutthese relationships “in universe.”

Kurt and Brittany

The truth is that KurtHummel, like most of the characters on Glee, never really gets Brittany Pierce,and his view of her doesn’t change much between S1 and S6 (see here).

To Kurt, Brittany is simpleand strange—“a girl who thinks the square root of four is rainbows” and talks openlyand unironically about unicorns.

He tends to accept what hesees from her at face value, buying into the early stereotype she perpetuatesfor herself, namely that she is slutty and dumb, in some ways unaccountable forher own actions because she doesn’t understand what she is doing (see here).

Because Kurt’s initialimpression of Brittany is that there is not much to her, he never really thinksto look at what might be going on beneath her surface, and his opinion on hercharacter remains generally static. Consequently, he has trouble comprehendingher more nuanced behaviors, and he oftentimes patently misunderstands herbecause he is unaware of what her true motivations are and where her emotionalstakes lie.

Initially, the fact that Brittanyis one of the most popular girls in school is somewhat intimidating to Kurt, andespecially because she and the rest of the Unholy Trinity don’t mesh well withthe New Directions. For a long time, he doesn’t understand Brittany’smotivations for joining the glee club and so doesn’t entirely trust her. Whenshe is revealed as a spy in episode 1x13, he feels his distrust of her hasbeen validated (“You leaked the set list! You don’t want to behere. You were just Sue Sylvester’s little moles!”).It is well into S2 before he begins to trust that Brittany really wants to bepart of the glee club and that she isn’t just out for herself.

As time goes on andBrittany becomes more integrated into the group, Kurt tries to be nice to her inthe same way that people try to be nice to infants and pets, but oftentimes hispatience with her shenanigans wears thin, which is something that we see fromhim both when she serves as his beard in episode 1x18 and when she becomes his presidentialcampaign manager in episode 3x02.

When the things she saysbaffle him or when her behavior comes across to him as particularly nonsensical,Kurt has a tendency to snap at Brittany and drive her away. Lack ofunderstanding and patience for Brittany notwithstanding, Kurt does seem togenerally like her and is sometimes even protective of her. If asked, he wouldprobably say that he considers Brittany a friend, albeit not his closest one. Attimes, he even calls her by an affectionate short name, “Britt.”

Kurt and Santana

Kurt’s dynamic with Santanaover the years is similar to his dynamic with Brittany, in that it is alsopredicated on an initial poor first impression and the inability to advance thoseinitial views, even given an accumulation of new evidence.

To Kurt, Santana is thequintessential mean girl, motivated largely by malevolence and spite.

When she initially joinsglee club, he doubts her loyalties, just as he does Brittany’s. However,whereas the biggest fault he finds with Brittany is that, in his view, she isstupid and has a bad taste in friends, with Santana, he finds that she isvicious and even dangerous, particularly as she has a tendency to makehomophobic comments towards him (K: “Can we talk about the giant elephant inthe room?” S: “Your sexuality?”).

While there is some debateas to whether or not Kurt realizes that Santana is gay prior to her S3 outing, thefact is that, no matter what he knows or doesn’t know, he remains fairly alooffrom her throughout S1 and S2, and, in the few instances when they do interact,he is openly wary of her intentions.

In his mind, Santana isinherently selfish, so the idea that she would put herself on the line forsomeone else without expecting anything in return just doesn’t add up to him. Why does she protect him from Dave Karofsky? How come she goes out of her way to get him back to WMHS from Dalton? What gives with her suddenly using her prom queen campaign to protect him when for the lastseveral years she has taken every opportunity to bully him for being gay?

His cautious attitude towardsher continues into S3, when he doesn’t know exactly what to make of herattempts to be nice to him and behaves towards her as one might a cat that hadpreviously attacked him but is now purring. Though after her outing, he has abetter idea of why she does some of the things she does—such as going with him,Blaine, and Brittany to confront Sebastian Smythe after Dave Karofsky’s suicideattempt—much of her behavior still remains a mystery in his mind.

Why, for instance, does shenot appreciate his and Blaine’s attempts to serenade her during Lady MusicWeek?

In S4, when Santana becomeshis roommate in NYC, Kurt finds her behavior invasive and at times infuriating,though he generally gets along with her better than Rachel does.

In S5, he feels forced to choosebetween his loyalties to Santana and his loyalties to Rachel, and he inevitablychooses the latter.

In S6, he regards Santanaas a friend, though he still struggles to reconcile her behavior with what hethinks he knows about her basic motivations, which is why it so surprises himwhen she seemingly “out of the blue” decides to share her wedding day with himand Blaine.

As I discuss elsewhere,

Santana spends much of S1 and S2 making homophobic comments aboutKurt, so, to him, Santana is a mean girl, and he never really allows her togrow out of that role in his eyes.

Though in later seasons she becomes his roommate and tries tobecome his friend, he always keeps her at arm’s length and will side withRachel over her in a heartbeat, even in situations where Rachel is in thewrong.

At best, Santana is his fun, bitchy lesbian acquaintance. Atworst, she is his caustic, bitchy lesbian acquaintance.

He seems convinced that she is an awful person who sometimesmasquerades as a sweetheart rather than a sweetheart who sometimes masqueradesas an awful person, and he treats her accordingly, for the most part—though, infairness, he seems somewhat more amiable toward Santana than is Rachel, on thewhole.

Kurtand Brittana

As stated above, Kurt’sopinions of both Brittany and Santana remain fairly static throughout theentire series. When he first gets to know Brittana, he observes that Brittanyis a ditz and Santana is a bully, and his views on them don’t much change overthe course of the next six years.

If he encounters behavior fromthem which deviates from what he thinks he knows about their characters, then hecounts that behavior as aberrant and doesn’t shift his schema to allow for thenew evidence.

In other words, if Brittanydoes something undeniably clever, then he is likely to suppose it was anaccident—an exception rather than the rule. Ditto for if Santana does somethingcertifiably nice.

By S6, he knows enough torealize that, generally speaking, he and Brittana are on the same side.However, he continues to doubt their intentions, and, even up to the pointwhere they are graciously sharing their wedding day with him and Blaine, hestill questions their characters, failing to understand that they have grownand changed a lot since they were fifteen years old.

Overall, he does notunderstand Brittana’s dynamic. He either assumes that they function like he andBlaine do (see episode 6x03)—which they don’t—or else just plain fails to wraphis head around how they behave and what they feel for each other,underestimating the strength and depth of their bond. At his core, he can’t seewhat they see in each other. Why would someone like Brittany want to be withsomeone like Santana? Why would someone like Santana want to be with someonelike Brittany? What do they have in common? How do they make things work?

Brittana really are amystery to Kurt, but one he doesn’t spend too much time trying to unravel.

The fact that he soadamantly opposes their engagement even after six years of knowing them showsthat he doesn’t really get what they’re all about because, if he did, he wouldrealize that through all the ups and downs and changes with them throughout thetime that he has known them, they’ve always been each other’s only constant,and their bond with each other is strong, deep, and mature.

Brittany and Kurt

In S1, Brittany primarilyseems to pity Kurt Hummel—and especially because she very much understands hisunderlying motivations at that time.

Brittany is out long beforeKurt is, and she seemingly never wrestles with her own sense of identity in theway that Kurt does (see here).However, she does still feel for Kurt, and particularly as she recognizes thathe and Santana are essentially in the same boat.

Though at this point in theshow, few people would see similarities between an unpopular, virginal gaychoir boy and a popular, slutty “straight” cheerleader, Brittany knowsthat Kurt and Santana actually share much in common, albeit below thesurface.

Both Kurt and Santana carrya secret that that they’re desperately trying to suppress. Both Kurt andSantana worry that if they are honest about their identities, they will losethe love of their family members. Both Kurt and Santana perform socialgymnastics in order to maintain a sense of equilibrium in their lives, tryingdesperately to balance who they really are with who they think they need to bein order to survive.

Brittany is aware longbefore Santana says it out loud that Santana looks to Kurt as thequintessential canary down the mineshaft and that anything she sees happeningto him, she fears will also happen to her. Whenever Kurt faces homophobia orsuffers a setback as he negotiates his outness, Santana takes note, andBrittany, by extension, does, too.

In my view, that is why throughout S1 we see several instancesin which Brittany helps Kurt to interact with his father on his own terms, suchas in episode 1x04, when she and Tina convince Burt that Kurt is on thefootball team so that Kurt can save face (see here),and in episode 1x18, when she acts as Kurt’s beard so that Kurt can prove toBurt that he is “straight” (see here).

At this point in herdevelopment, Brittany is still very much in the business of helping Santana tomaintain the illusion of their straightness, and she essentially does the samething for Kurt. While she may not personally feel the need to hide her same-sexattractions, she knows that Kurt and Santana do, and she doesn’t hesitate toplay along in their schemes to convince the world that they are “outstandingheterosexuals,” no matter how overblown and ineffectual said schemes may be.

It is only as Brittanystarts to change how she relates to Santana during S2 that her relationshipwith Kurt also changes, and she becomes less about trying to help him obfuscate his true self and more about helping him to celebrate it.

Nowhere is this attitudefrom her more apparent than in episode 2x20, when she acknowledges how strongKurt has to be in order to be himself and encourages Santana to stand by him inhis time of trouble (“Go back out there and be there for Kurt. This is gonna bea lot harder for him than it is for you”).

While there is an element of self-service to Brittany’s actionsin this situation—Santana helping Kurt to feel comfortable with himself in turnhelps Santana to feel comfortable with herself, and a comfortable Santana isone who will be able to date Brittany—there is also some genuine pride andappreciation underlying them.

Brittany is glad that Kurt has gone from being someone who wouldlie to his father about having a girlfriend to being someone who can takeownership of a shitty situation by saying, “I’m proud to be who I am.” She seesthe progress he has made, and she applauds his real bravado.

Though she hasn’t said so out loud, to this point in the show,Brittany has considered herself to be in a position to “help Kurt up.” While hehas struggled to accept himself and later to forge his identity as an out gaykid at a conservative school, Brittany has already been there, and she has beenquietly watching him, lending him help when she can, and rooting for him fromthe sidelines.

Come S3, she feels that Kurt has finally peaked and that theyare now on equal footing in terms of being comfortable in their own skins.

That’s why she turns to him as an ally in her quest to make WMHSa safe place for other, potentially still-closeted LGBTQ kids, includingSantana—because she assumes that she and Kurt are both in a position to helpothers reach the point they’ve gotten to and that they’re on the same pageabout the importance of activism in their community (see here).

Her assumption is a mistake not because Kurt doesn’t care aboutLGBTQ causes but because he doesn’t understand her and her motivations.

For one thing, like most people at the school, Kurt doesn’t seemto think of Brittany as bisexual, her openness concerning her orientationnotwithstanding (see hereand here).Particularly given that Brittany and Santana are not yet openly dating at thetime when episode 3x02 takes place, Kurt doesn’t get that Brittany has theproverbial dog in this fight. In his mind, she is an ally at best, so it’s nother personal safety, comfort, and wellbeing that are going on the line in thiscampaign, just his. He is the out gay kid, so he’s the one that will have to facethe backlash, not Brittany, who, according to his understanding, is ostensiblystraight.

For another thing, because Kurt views Brittany as naïve, he believesthat she is wildly oversimplifying the matter at hand and that she doesn’tunderstand the grander implications of her own actions. He assumes that shethinks that running a campaign of this nature will be easy and that no one willpush back against it because her world is all rainbows, puppies, andbutterflies. He doesn’t realize that Brittany has been watching how peoplereact to him for as long as they’ve known each other. He also doesn’t get thatshe is smart enough to know what happens to anyone who dares to be toodifferent at their school.

While Kurt is finally to the place where he is comfortableclaiming his identity as a gay man and publicly being in a relationship withBlaine, he isn’t eager to become the face of the gay rights movement atWMHS—and especially not after being driven to Dalton the year before. The waypeople react to him is different than the way people react to Brittany andalways has been. While she may be comfortable associating herself with ProjectUnicorn, he isn’t, and so he and Brittany butt heads.

Whereas in the past when Kurt has snapped at Brittany (see episodes1x18 and 2x02), Brittany has typically backed off and done as Kurt says, in S3,Brittany actually stands up to Kurt, and the fact that she does so isreflective of her own personal growth during the Back Six of S2.

That said, it is also reflective of her changed view of Kurt nowthat he is out and more at ease in his own skin. In the past, Brittany viewedKurt as delicate, so she was all about being gentle with him and going alongwith things at his pace so as not to spook him. Now she knows that he isconfident in himself and that he can handle tough love. In her mind, that meansthat she can take the kiddie gloves off with him. So she does.

When Kurt says he doesn’t want her to run his campaign for thesenior class presidency, Brittany comes back swinging. Though she initiallyshows shock and disappointment about his decision, after a pep talk fromSantana, she tells Kurt that she is going to continue the campaign without him,becoming a candidate herself. While she isn’t mean about what she says, she isfirm, and she doesn’t back down.

This action represents a major shift in the way Brittany relatesto Kurt. No longer does she pity him or look at him as someone she has to baby.

—and that point is important, because going forward into S3,Brittany really seems to take off her rose-tinted glasses when it comes toKurt and how he treats her.

Brittany has always been aware that everyone aside from Santanathinks she’s stupid. Some people are meaner about it, like Finn, while somepeople are nicer about it, like Mercedes. It’s the difference between outrightdisdain and condescension versus “being too gentle” with her. Kurt was alwayson the nicer end of the continuum. Brittany knew he didn’t think of her as anintellectual equal, but she was willing to let it slide because at least mostof the time he was kind.

But as their political campaign heats up, Kurt starts to getannoyed with Brittany’s antics—and particularly as she gains over him in thepolls—and his interactions with her become noticeably harsher. Whereas beforehe always at least tried to hide the fact that he thought she was as dumb as abox of rocks, now he is much more open in his patronization, and Brittany isn’thaving it (see episode 3x03).

Between the disrespect he shows Brittany as a political rivaland his participation in Santana’s humiliating public outing experience (seeepisode 3x07), Brittany starts to get a bit passive aggressive towards Kurt. Ofcourse, it’s not that she outright hates the kid—she still likes him wellenough—it’s just that she is no longer giving him a free pass in how he treatsother people.

That attitude is the one she carries into S4 and S5, as Kurtgraduates and moves to New York, where Santana eventually becomes his roommate.While Brittany doesn’t have much direct contact with Kurt during this time, shehears through the grapevine about how he is treating her girl, and, honestly,the reports leave her troubled.

That Rachel and Kurt would kick Santana out of first the Loftand later Pamela Lansbury when Santana wants nothing more than to be theirfriends doesn’t sit well with Brittany. That Santana always seems to have tobeg for Hummelberry’s acceptance and friendship even though she freely givesthose things to them hurts Brittany’s heart.

In episodes 5x12 and 5x13 especially, Brittany sees just howmuch of a toll it has taken on Santana to constantly have to be on her guardaround Hummelberry, and she feels frustrated because things didn’t have to bethat way.

If Kurt had just dropped his guard, Santana would have been hisfriend to the end. Couldn’t he see?

Again, Brittany doesn’t hate Kurt for his behavior, but she alsodoesn’t entirely excuse it. In her mind, Kurt can be a nice guy when doesn’thave his head up his ass. It’s just that Kurt does have his head up his ass alot, and particularly when he is caught up in the constant drama that seems tosurround Rachel and Blaine.

Honestly, Brittany is never a big fan of Blaine, a point whichwe’ll discuss in more detail later.

Come S6 when Brittany starts interacting with Kurt on theregular again, her m.o. seems to be that she wants to remind him to be true tohimself and to heed his better impulses. She goes about doing so by behavingpassive-aggressively towards Kurt when he fails to toe the line (see episode6x02) and calling him out when he crosses it (see episode 6x03). Throughoutthis season, we see her use more tricksy troll!Brittany behavior on him thanshe ever has before, usually with the intent to take him down a peg or two whenshe believes he is getting too full of himself (see here).

At this point, Brittany knows that Kurt will probably neverfully get her and Santana and that their relationship will never be superclose, even given their shared history at WMHS. Still, she wants to be ondecent terms with him, and she wants him to show her and Santana basic respect,even if he doesn’t understand them or their dynamic at all.

As for Brittany’s push to share her wedding with Kurt andBlaine, suffice it to say that there’s a lot more to that story than meets theeye, and, despite what she professes, Brittany is no Klaine shipper (see here).Brittany has her eye on a prize in that situation, and Kurt is just in thedetails. She is on her way to a happy ending, and if she has to let him mooch herwedding venue to do so, then so be it.

Her attitude in that episode is indicative of her overall attitudetoward Kurt to end the show: She feels like she and Santana tried to connectwith him, but it never worked out. At first, she was hurt by the fact that Kurtnever came to understand her—and especially that he never came to understandSantana—but now she’s over it. She can be friends with him on a superficiallevel as long as he’s nice to them, but she’s not going to sit back and let himtreat her or Santana badly anymore. She knows they’re worth more than that,whether Kurt sees it or not. In the end, Kurttany has become a fairly neutralrelationship, and Brittany’s m.o. with it is to do no harm and take no shit.

Brittany and Blaine andKlaine’s Relationship

As I discuss elsewhere,

While Brittany doesn’t hate Blaine like she hates Rachel, she alsoisn’t his number one fan. In general, Brittany doesn’t take well to anyone whobelieves that they’re better than everyone else, so Blaine going after everysolo and role and class presidency with aplomb, regardless of whom he steps onto do so, doesn’t sit well with her. Brittany believes in being a team player,and, the way she sees it, Blaine isn’t one. He will always put himself in thepoint position, even if he isn’t the best person for the job.

—which brings us to his treatment of Kurt.

Historically, Brittany has been protective of Kurt, as she cansympathize with him (see here, here, and here).Brittany likes to see Kurt succeed because she likes the idea that someone whomarches to the beat of his own drummer can make it in a world that tries tomake everyone conform—hence why she helps Kurt with his campaign and why sheacts as his background singer for his NYADA audition and why she is generallynice to him, even though they’re not necessarily close friends.

Of course, just because Brittany generally likes Kurt and wantshim to succeed doesn’t mean she always agrees with him and his choices or willrefrain from giving him a little bit of tough love should she feel the need todo so.

Enter her “advice” to Kurt in episode 6x02 “Homecoming.”

Brittany has watched Kurt’s relationship with Blaine from thestart, and, honestly? I don’t think she likes most of what she sees.

For Brittany, a real partnership is about two people supportingeach other and helping each other to fulfill their dreams, and from Brittany’sperspective, I don’t think she sees Blaine doing those things for Kurt, thoughKurt often does them for Blaine.

In her eyes, when Kurt and Blaine both want the same thing—i.e., asolo in glee club, a role in the school play, a prestige spot at NYADA, acertain rule to be honored in their relationship—Blaine almost inevitably endsup getting whatever the thing is, with Kurt stepping aside or bowing out inorder to allow him to have it.

Add on the fact that Brittany has undoubtedly heard all about the“Klaine can’t live together without fighting” fiasco from Santana, and,frankly, I think Brittany probably views Blaine as a negative factor in Kurt’slife rather than a positive one.

That said, Brittany is all about respecting the choices peoplemake for themselves, so for as passive-aggressive as she may be about and eventowards Blaine, she isn’t going to stand in Kurt’s way once he decides he wantsto be with Blaine forever.

If Kurt loves and wants to be with Blaine, then Kurt loves andwants to be with Blaine, and Brittany will accept that Blaine is Kurt’s person,even if she doesn’t understand the appeal (see episode 6x03 and 6x08).

Santana and Kurt

Santana’s relationship with Kurt follows a similar trajectory toBrittany’s.

However, while Brittany runs through the cycle of sympathizing withKurt, wanting to befriend him, realizing that a deep friendship with him is notpossible because he never makes an effort to understand her, and then gettingover it mostly over the course of S1-S3 (at least on her own account),Santana’s cycle runs over the course of the whole series, and it runs on higheroctane than Brittany’s does overall.

Santana is the more emotionally reactive half of Brittana, so shetends to take things with Kurt harder than does Brittany on a whole, and especiallybecause her relationship with him is wrapped up in her own sense of identity asa gay person and in her dynamics with Brittany, Rachel, and her feelings abouther future, and it is marked by insecurity from start almost to finish.

As I say elsewhere,

Santana’s relationship with Kurt iscomplicated.

On the one hand, she spent much of high school wishing she couldbe him: i.e., the out gay kid who persisted in being himself no matter whatopposition he faced.

On the other hand, she spent much of high school terrified to behim: i.e., the out gay kid who got thrown into lockers and roughed up andtossed into dumpsters and hated on and threatened because he was gay (“I mean,you know what happened to Kurt at this school”).

Kurt was simultaneously an object of both devotion and fear forSantana. In spite of herself, she identified with him very strongly. She sawhis successes as successes she could possibly have and his failures as failuresshe could potentially experience (see Santana intervening to save Klaine fromKarofsky’s wrath in 2x18 and Santana’s panic after Kurt becomes prom queen in2x20).

That’s part of why she worked so hard to make WMHS safe for Kurtin Season Two, long before she herself came out (see here).

During Season Two, Kurt was more of a symbol to Santana thansomeone with whom she had an actual relationship, but during Season Three, shemade her first overtures of real friendship to him, reaching out to him whenSebastian and the Warblers tried to hurt him and Blaine (“Today is your luckyday, because Auntie Snixx just arrived on the Bitch Town Express”).

In her mind, Santana had done Kurt several solids by thispoint—i.e., forming the Bully Whips on his behalf, bringing him back to WMHSfrom Dalton, singing to him at prom despite her own fears, taking downSebastian after Sebastian hurt Blaine, etc.—and the fact that she had done soplus her and Kurt’s shared experience of being out gay kids at WMHS should havebeen enough to make them friends.

We see Santana operate under the assumption that she andKurt are friends throughout Season Four, answering his summonsto stage an intervention for Rachel in 4x12 and bringing him Christmas presentsin 5x08 (the events of whichtake place during Season Four chronologically). Though Santana stillcalls Kurt names, she assumes he knows that she only does so because she likeshim.

That being the case, she fully expects him and Rachel to welcomeher into the Loft with open arms (and particularly as Rachel actually invitedher to live in the Loft during the events of 5x08).

Unfortunately, that’s not what happens.

From the very first time Santana does something nice forKurt—i.e., forming the Bully Whips in 2x18—Kurt questions her motivations in sodoing. Why is the girl who openly mocked him and attempted to sabotage the gleeclub during their sophomore year suddenly buddying up to him in their junioryear? Surely someone as selfish as Santana can’t have altruistic motives. Shemust have either lost her mind or stand to profit from helping Kurt somehow.

Even when he learns that Santana is gay come Season Three, Kurtstill views her largely as an outsider, and his distrust (andmisunderstanding) of her continues well into Season Four, when she moves intothe Loft.

To be fair, navigating the Hummelpezberry dynamic is trickybusiness, and particularly for Kurt, who often finds himself in theuncomfortable position of mediating between Rachel and Santana, both of whomget up to some pretty wild hijinks and who often butt heads with each other.

Kurt is a natural peacemaker, and he dislikes having contention inhis home, so he will try to counsel Rachel and Santana through their disputesas much as he is able.

That said, at the end of the day, Kurt is Rachel’s best friend, notSantana’s, so while he may try to maintain his neutrality concerning theirdisputes, when push comes to shove, he almost always sides with Rachel in theend, as per what we see during the Pezberry Funny Girl disputeof early Season Five.

As I say elsewhere:

While there is certainly no shortage of wittybanter and fun musical numbers between roomies Kurt, Santana, and Rachel, thereis a shortage of “relationship-building” scenes—or at least a shortage oflasting “relationship-building” scenes that the Glee writers don’t subsequentlyrescind, ignore, or negate.

For every one friendly gesture Hummelberry andSantana make towards one another—such as, for instance, when Santana helpsRachel through her pregnancy scare in episode 4x15 or when Rachel encouragesSantana not to give up on her dreams in the first scene of episode 5x09—thereare at least two or three scenes that then show how very unstable their dynamicactually is—such as when Hummelberry kick Santana out of the Loft in 4x16 andSantana and Rachel are at each other’s throats throughout most of 5x09 and5x10.

Just as it was always the case that the UnholyTrinity broke down into units of Brittana + Quinn, it is also the case thatHummelpezberry breaks down into units of Hummelberry + Santana, with Santana asthe odd one out.

Not only do Kurt and Rachel frequently form ranksto outvote Santana, but their bond as Hummelberry can exist independent of her,whereas her bonds as part of Pezberry and Kurtana are largely dependent onHummelberry’s bond with each other—i.e., Kurt serves as a necessary peacemakerbetween Pezberry, allowing their friendship to exist, while a common interestin and exasperation with Rachel and her antics is what keeps Kurtana united.

Santana’s bond with Kurt is more stable thanSantana’s bond with Rachel, which is to say that Santana and Kurt are lesslikely to fight than Santana and Rachel are. However, Santana’s bond with Kurtis also weaker than her bond with Rachel is, which is to say that Santana hasless in common with Kurt than she does with Rachel and also that Santana feelsthat Kurt needs her less than Rachel does.

Of course, both Santana’s bond with Kurt ANDSantana’s bond with Rachel are relatively weak compared with Kurt and Rachel’sbond to each other.

If it comes down to it, Hummelberry’s tendency isto have each other’s backs. Though they like Santana to a degree, she is extraneousto them.

And the thing is that Santana knows it.

Santana knows the difference between a secureattachment and an insecure one, and she knows that while Hummelberry aresecurely attached to each other, they are, for the most part, insecurelyattached to her. Santana knows that Hummelberry will tolerate her as long asshe is on her best behavior, and she fears the implications of theirtoleration.

Frankly, Santana is terrified of stepping one toeout of line, lest Hummelberry kick her out of the Loft again—because for asmuch as Santana says that she needs her job at the diner, she needs her placeat the Loft equally as much.

So while Santana ultimately fights less with Kurt than she doeswith Rachel, her relationship with him is just as tenuous and one-sided as isPezberry’s.

She ultimately never achieves the kind of intimacy and secureattachment to Kurt that she craves.

So cut to Season Six, when Kurt objects to Santana’s proposal toBrittany (see here):

Santana is angry that she tried for years toprove to Kurt that she was his friend, and he responded by evicting her fromthe Loft, questioning her intentions in auditioning to play Rachel’sunderstudy, kicking her out of his band, making her feel like a stranger in herown home, being ungrateful when she saved him from his high school bully anddefended Blaine against Sebastian Warbler on his behalf and scored him a job atthe diner and brought her girlfriend into his band and participated (graciouslyand quietly) in his proposal to Blaine and spent time socializing with andgetting to know him, being kind to him in his down moments, giving him soundadvice in a way that no one else was honest enough to do, etc.

Santana is angry that despite her trying herdamnedest to show Kurt that she was not the same girl he knew in highschool—that she wasn’t wrathful anymore, that she was generous, that she waswilling to share her heart in friendship with anyone who would treat it withcare—he never believed her. He always thought the worst of her. He kept her onthe outside, when she so desperately craved (and worked hard to earn) histrust.

Santana is angry but mostly she is hurt.

Santana is hurt because she genuinely cares aboutwhat happens to Kurt, but he has just shown her that he doesn’t give a damnabout what’s most important to her in return.

She showed him her precious things, and hetreated them like they were garbage.

Kurt was supposed to be Santana’s friend, and itbreaks her heart that he isn’t.

So while Santana’s capacity to forgive is muchgreater than most people generally give her credit for—and often even greaterthan those who wrong her might deserve—she does inevitably reach a point whereshe just can’t take it anymore.

And so when Kurt fucks up something that isimportant to Santana, that is sacred to her, that’s supposed to be beautifuland happy and pure, by lecturing her about learning from his mistakes? Sheloses it.

To Santana, it’s just another example of howeverything about the Kurtana relationship has always been about Kurt.

It is no coincidence that Santana spends the months that herrelationship with Brittany is at its most tenuous chasing after Kurt’sapproval. Throughout S4 and early S5, she is desperate for a place to belongand something to hold onto, and she keeps hoping that Kurt will take pity onher. She has always envied the courage he has to be himself, and now that sheis scrambling to figure out who she is outside of high school, she seeks toally herself with him, thinking that maybe some of his self-determination willrub off on her and help her find her direction.

It takes until episode 6x03, when Kurt objects to her proposal toBrittany, for Santana to realize that she should stop killing herself to winKurt’s love and approval, as, in the end, she is probably never going to getit. Going forward, she doesn’t bear Kurt ill-will. She just isn’t as hung up onwhat he thinks of her, largely because she has found where she belongs and shehas a better sense of who she is, regardless of what anyone might think. Thesecurity she feels in her relationship with Brittany makes up for the insecurityshe feels in her relationship with Kurt (and also Rachel). She’ll be friendlywith them on a superficial level, but when they inevitably do something todisappoint her, she isn’t going to take it personally—not anymore.

This attitude towards Kurt is the one that Santana carries intoher wedding day, and it is what allows her to offer up her nuptials for Klaineto take part in as well. Everything that has happened between Santana and Kurtover the years is water under the bridge now, so if Brittany wants Klaine toget married at her and Santana’s wedding, then Santana is cool with it. She’sgame. She can be altruistic, and if Kurt notices, then awesome, but if not,that’s his deal. She doesn’t need his validation anymore. She is just going tobe herself.

Santanaand Blaine and Klaine’s Relationship

The central dynamic between Brittana and Klaine is always mostlybetween Brittana and Kurt, as neither Brittany nor Santana has much of apersonal relationship with Blaine beyond his being Kurt’s boyfriend/fiancé/husband.

To this end, Santana and Blaine don’t often interact on a one-to-one basis, andmost of their exchanges center on and are filtered through Kurt.

On the few occasions when Santana does take notice of Blaine forreasons not directly related to Kurt, her interactions with him are notnecessarily positive.

In episode 2x12, Blainetana get off to a bad start when Blainesingles Santana out at BreadStix, singing to her that she may never find loveat all and compounding her already horrible, awful, no good, very badValentine’s Day by drawing attention to her loneliness and (inadvertently)playing on her fears.

Things get worse in S3 after Blaine transfers to WMHS from Daltonand immediately starts grabbing up solos left and right, exacerbating Santana’ssense that there is no place for her in an already crowded New Directions (seeepisode 3x04).

That said, though Santana does not have much love for Blaine on apersonal level, she is willing to tolerate him for Kurt’s sake.

In general, Santana follows the same rule as Brittany when itcomes to how she treats Blaine and his relationship with Kurt, which is to saythat, though she may not personally see Blaine’s appeal for Kurt or think that Blaineis a particularly good match for him, she acknowledges that if Blaine is Kurt’sman, then Blaine is Kurt’s man, and so treats him like a friend for Kurt’s sake.In her case, “treating Blaine like a friend for Kurt’s sake” translates to hersnarking at him as she does at Kurt but also protecting him like her own whenneeds be.

The place where this behavior from her is most apparent is inepisode 3x11, when she “goes to battle” against Sebastian Smythe after hethrows rock salt in Blaine’s eye, sending Blaine to the hospital. Her musicalduel against Sebastian and the reconnaissance work she does against him is allfor Blaine’s benefit, a way to prove that Sebastian is guilty and get him backgood for what he’s done.

To Santana, that’s just how one treats a friend’s significantother—and it’s what she would expect Kurt to do for Brittany were the situationreversed.

Note: Santana’s expectation that friends should respect theirfriends’ relationships even if they don’t necessarily like or “get” themunderlies her hurt when Kurt objects to her proposal to Brittany in S6. No matterhow she feels about Blaine, she would never undermine Kurt’s right to be withhim or place her objections over Kurt’s feelings.

Overall, Santana seems to view Blaine as conceited and feelannoyed with him for his grandstanding, but she still accepts that Kurt loveshim, and that’s good enough for her. The only time she ever truly “goes after”Kurt and Blaine’s relationship is in episode 6x03, after Kurt objects to herproposal to Brittany. In that case, she is lashing out to hurt Kurt because hehurt her first. In her mind, he broke the “your friend’s relationship is sacred”rule, so she’s punishing him for it, plain and simple. The fact that she laterforgives Kurt enough to let him and Blaine share in her wedding proves that herdiatribe was mostly a nervous reaction and that, underneath everything, shebears Klaine no real malice. Again, she is over it, and if Kurt wants to marryBlaine, then that’s his business, and she’ll respect his decision.

Blaineand Brittana

As stated above, Blaine doesn’t have many individual interactionswith either Brittany or Santana, as he knows them mostly through Kurt (and, inBrittany’s case, through Sam).

That being the case, his views of the girls andtheir relationship seem mostly to fall in line with Kurt’s: He thinks Brittanyis dumb, Santana is mean, and Brittana is somewhat inexplicable. In general, heseems to be amused by the strangeness that is them, and he doesn’t really gettheir whole “thing,” but he plays it off because, well, why not?

On the few occasions when Brittana do nice things for him—such as when Santana protects him and Kurt from Karofsky in episode 2x17 or when Brittany invites him and Kurt to share in her and Santana’s weddding in 6x08—he is grateful, if befuddled, as he doesn’t really understand where the niceness is coming from.

Following Kurt’s lead, he never really pushes for a deeper or more intimate friendship with either Santana or Brittany or with Brittana as a couple. He seems mostly fine with the pleasant but superficial status quo and with Kurt being closer to the girls than he is. Whatever history is there, he’s not going to poke at. There is nothing that really personally compels him about Brittana, one way or the other.

Conclusion

Brittana and Klaine end the show as neither friends nor enemies.

Santana’s early bullying and Brittany’s seemingincomprehensibility put Kurt off on them early on, and Kurt’s inability tochange his opinions put them off on him later. Though over the years, they singplenty of songs together and show occasional care for one another, ultimately,they fail to achieve true understanding. To Kurt, Brittana are still asimpleton and a mean girl. He doesn’t recognize Brittany’s cleverness orSantana’s ooey-gooey center. To Brittana, Kurt is impossible. They feel theyhave tried to win his friendship to no avail, so now they’ve given up. Their relationshipstops just short of real intimacy. They have shared history, but they don’tbare their souls to one another.

In the end, Brittana and Klaine represent a failed experiment bothinside and outside of their fictional universe.

The writers tried to make “two same-sex couples as buddies” fetchhappen, but they never truly allowed the groups to overcome their rocky startswith each other. Their inability to scaffold and build up this friendshipcorrelates to a larger failure on their parts in the way that they wieldedSantana as a character—namely, that they never quite knew what to do with heronce they could no longer just straight up treat her as a villain following herdevelopment in S2.

They knew that Santana could be nice, but she made such aconvenient heavy that they were reluctant to label her a hero. Their attitudetoward her is reflected in Kurt’s treatment of her, and it accounts for many ofthe starts, stops, and stalls that she and Kurt experience over the years.

The same is also true to for Brittany and Kurt, as the writerswere never able to gracefully transition Brittany between what they had firstenvisioned her as in S1 and what they eventually made her into from S2 on, and,consequently, Kurt was never able to advance his views of her, either.

Since Kurt’s attitudes eventually became Blaine’s, the wholeBrittana and Klaine friendship stalled from the onset. For every one bondingmoment they experienced, there was always a fight or a misunderstanding or agrudge that prevented them from truly drawing close. Klaine keep their guards up. Brittana have hurt feelings and eventually move on.

Of course, none of this analysis is meant to discourage peoplefrom enjoying the idea of a Brittana and Klaine friendship in fic and fanon. It’sjust to say that, in canon, I think that the Glee writers choked in theirexecution and that the whole situation is a lot more complicated than itappears on the surface.

As for my own views on Klaine, I don’t personally ship them,though I respect those who do.

Sorry this answer turned into such a monster piece.

Thank you for the question!

#Crazy Brittanalyst answers #ruskinino #Also @dive-right-into-you: I got your question and I'm working on a response

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