It Was Never
A/N: This one shot contains descriptions of domestic violence, which may be triggering for some people. This is also completely AU, so don't hate me too much.
It was never meant to be this way.
They had been happy, their friends had commented on how amazing the two of them looked together, how it had been so surprising but their personalities just seemed to match somehow. After years of falling in love with other people, of crying in each other's arms when things didn't go according to plan, they had managed to find love in the arms of someone neither of them ever imagined falling in love with.
They could both still remember the carefree laughter, the tickle fights, the passionate arguments that usually resulted in sex, the way Santana would walk from their apartment to the theatre after every single show, to make sure Rachel never had to walk home alone. They could still remember the smiles, the vacations, the group dates, the talk about their future together and how many kids they wanted, how old they wanted to be when they got married, the careful jokes about who was going to propose to whom. They could still remember it all, which was why everything hurt so much now.
It was never supposed to hurt so much, not in this way. Rachel would close her eyes and imagine how in love she used to be, how she would find herself, so often, just staring at Santana with a huge smile on her face and butterflies in her stomach because she hadn't been so happy in such a long time. Santana tried her best to forget the good times, she wasn't that person anymore, she didn't deserve to think about how often she could make her girlfriend smile and laugh, it was all in the past. Now, all she could do was make Rachel cower from her, she had become so good at being the reason why tears were running down her pale and bruised face.
The arguments and the screaming had become too much for their one bedroom, New York apartment and Santana quickly found herself in the middle of nowhere, away from her own friends and family in an attempt to keep Rachel away from them. So much had changed; she was no longer the person she used to be, Rachel was a mere shadow of the beautiful woman she had become, and their relationship had somehow taken this dark turn neither of them could have ever expected.
The first time she had gripped Rachel a little too tightly, leaving a harsh bruise on delicate skin; she was taken aback by how sorry she didn't feel. She should have been able to apologize, she should have kissed it better and Rachel should have walked out right there and then. A year later and Santana still could never come up with a reason why Rachel would stay, why she would put herself through that. The ex-Broadway star would just smile sadly when Santana asked, and remind her that she loved her and as stupid as the young woman would feel for saying it, she knew it was true, they were the truest words she could have ever spoken. She thought about how her friends could only think she was an idiot for staying with the woman who abused her, but when she imagined leaving, she feared for both their lives.
She should have left at the beginning. Both of them knew that. She should have walked out there and then and never looked back but she stayed, she stayed because she was in love and with each bruise and broken bone, every hospital visit, she would repeat those words. She was loved, and she was in love, but none of it was right, neither of them were the people they had once fallen in love with.
Everything had changed, and as Rachel stared at the beautiful woman she had once fallen in love with, the cool metal of a handgun pointed to her head, she could see how they had come full circle. This was how it ended, she honestly couldn't see any other way; she had tried to walk out so many times, but she always found herself going back to her, terrified of what she would do. At the age of twenty-four, she guessed this was how her life was going to end – it wouldn't be next to the person she had married sixty years ago, it wasn't going to be peacefully, or even clean. And it wasn't going to be natural; she was meant to die at the hands of the woman who was supposed to love her more than anyone else and she wasn't going to stop her. Maybe this was the only way they could ever be at peace.
When she was nineteen, she had lost the love of her life and she had to accept it. When she was almost twenty-one, she had fallen in love again with the most beautiful woman she had ever seen. When she was approaching her twenty-third birthday, she had felt true pain at the hands of her girlfriend. And just a day before her twenty-fifth birthday, she found herself on her knees, silently crying for everything she should have had, and everything she had lost.
It was never meant to end this way.