Author's Note: This is a sequel, of sorts, to Backwards Walk. By which I mean, it starts before it and ends after it, but parallels the storyline. So, if you haven't read that, you might want to, but it's not necessary, I suppose.
Santana is five years old the first time she meets Quinn. Two weeks into kindergarten, a thunderstorm forced recess into the gymnasium, the three classes crowded together and intermingling on hardwood floors the echoed harshly with the sound of sixty children and three hassled teachers. Santana, frustrated at not being able to play tag, sulks under a basketball goal, and misses the approach of an unfamiliar blond in a yellow dress until the girl sits delicately next to her.
A boy appears behind them and yanks at a blond pigtail, eliciting a squeal of pain. Santana, recognizing the already-familiar actions of Dave Karfosky and always glad for an excuse to hit him, leaps to her feet in one smooth motion and—folding her hand into a fist just like her daddy taught her, one-two-three-four fingers with a thumb tucked over top—punches him square in the nose.
She's given time-out at recess for the rest of week and gets a painfully disappointed lecture from her parents about fighting. But it all seems worth it when, every day of her time-out, a quiet blond in a sundress sits demurely next to her. Neither of them ever speak, but just like that, camaraderie blooms out of silence and gratitude.
Santana is nineteen the first time she sees Quinn with finger-shaped bruises and crescent cuts on her arms. They're pale and faded, the bruise a thin green and yellow speaking of days—weeks?—passed, the cuts healing over with fresh skin, all dotting over the paler skin of her upper arms.
They're at the gym in Lima, back from college for Christmas break during their sophomore year, fresh off of racing one another on the outdoor track; Santana sprints for the doors to the building, Quinn hot on her heels. A burst of speed gives Santana just the edge she needs to skid to a halt and slap the door first in victory.
Quinn grumbles at the defeat, leaning on her knees and panting, shaking sweat out of her eyes as they make their way inside to stretch. Santana gloats cheerfully as they drag a mat to a free space of floor and drop down onto it, and Quinn rolls her eyes, tugging at her long sleeved shirt ineffectually before peeling it up over her shoulders and tossing sweaty cotton at Santana.
Santana doesn't notice the bruises marring her skin until halfway through their stretches. When she does, fire blooms in her chest and her stomach contracts as Quinn shrugs, offering a saucy wink and telling Santana that she's just jealous that Quinn has a girlfriend to get laid with regularly, writing off the bruises and cuts as a trophy of sexual conquest.
Santana lets it go, rolling her eyes and sneering at Quinn before tossing insults about Rachel out on autopilot.
She files the bruises away, though, unconsciously keeping her eyes peeled every time she sees Quinn after that for any delicacy in movement, any winces, any more marks discoloring her skin.
It happens more and more, and every time, Santana feels sicker.
Santana is twenty the second time Rachel and Quinn break up. She wakes up to a pounding on the door and stumbles out of bed, ready to condemn the intruder to hell for waking her up at five in the morning on a Sunday, but the snarl on her lips fades immediately when she sees Quinn standing huddled in the hallway, fresh off the bus from New York to Boston with an overnight bag at her feet and looking shattered and tiny in the confines of a bulky winter coat.
Santana silently reaches down to pick up the bag, taking it into the dorm room and turning to watch appraisingly as Quinn makes her way inside. Nausea ricochets off of the fury building in her chest when she sees how gingerly Quinn moves, how she sits on the chair at Santana's desk and refrains from leaning back.
She stays silent, as enraged with Rachel as she is with Quinn for not leaving, for letting it happen, for staying with a girl who hurts her, even if it's unintentional. A text message to her absentee roommate lets the other girl know that Santana needs the room for a few days, and is met with kind understanding. Santana spends four days skipping classes and lying through her teeth to her professors, hour and hour at her desk trying to keep up with coursework while keeping an eye on Quinn at all time. She fetches ice and feeds her ibuprofen and bites down on the inside of her cheek until she tastes blood every time she looks at the medley of black and blue spreading across Quinn's shoulder blades, sharp delineations obvious from the edge of a doorjamb imprinted in her skin.
When Quinn hugs her tightly at the bus station, eyes shining as much with gratitude as they are shameful tears, Santana is quiet, swallowing the raging desire to tell Quinn again that she needs to leave Rachel, that it's not healthy, that she deserves so much more, that Santana's willing to walk from Boston to New York to hunt down Rachel Berry and show her exactly what her lapses in temper feel like.
Instead, she presses an uncharacteristic kiss to Quinn's cheek and murmurs that she'll always be there. Rage bubbles in her chest when Quinn says that it won't happen again, that things are good between her and Rachel, that they're happy.
It's an argument Santana's lost too many times to count, and she grits her teeth as she watches Quinn board the bus to go home.
Santana is two years shy of her quarter-century the first time she sees a bruise disfiguring Quinn's features. She is barely out of law school, slogging through the life of a junior associate at a corporate firm in New York, when she realizes that she hasn't heard from her best friend in four days. She bribes one of the paralegals to finish the brief she's been drafting from her case notes and cuts out of work at lunch one day.
She walks into Quinn and Rachel's apartment unannounced, the spare key wedged in the crack above the door all too easy to locate. Music is playing softly from the bedroom, and Santana stalks quietly across the apartment to lean against the doorjamb, watching as Quinn sits in bed, engrossed in studying for what should be the last final exam she ever takes, hair curtained down around her.
"They have libraries for a reason, Q," she drawls, and Quinn jerks her head up in surprise, eyes wide behind her glasses. Santana's eyes widen in tandem with Quinn's when she catches sight of the patch of bruising spread across her cheekbone.
"I'm going to fucking kill her," she spits out, jerking away from the door.
"Santana," Quinn pleads softly. "It's not a big deal."
"Not a big deal?" Santana says incredulously. She hurls her keys and sunglasses onto the dresser, whirling to face Quinn angrily. "Quinn, she's hurting you. She's abusing you, for God's sake."
She paces up and down the small room, pent up energy making her skin hum. She wants to bolt, to run all the way down to the theater off Broadway where Rachel rehearses and put her fist through Rachel's nose. Her hands clench painfully into fists, her own fingernails digging into her palms sharply.
"You need to stop this, Q," she says. The words come out heavy, strangled, her chest aching as she speaks. She turns to face Quinn, hands on her hips in an effort to keep from putting her hand through a wall, and something wholly separate from anger pushes from the inside of her chest at the sight of her best friend sitting, dejected and bruised and alone in her bed, shoulders slumped over notes and books and a laptop.
Caught amidst the fury pounding out against her skin, it feels a little bit like her heart might be breaking.
"It's not a big deal," Quinn murmurs. Her voice is soft, quiet, sounding almost broken, and the unfamiliar feeling in Santana's chest redoubles, shoving the anger to the wayside. "Besides, it's not like I'm not just as bad."
The rage returns at her words, and her fingers twitch with the desire to hurt Rachel Berry. "Okay, one," she snaps out, having to settle for talking instead of punching. "You're not. She's not walking around with fucking bruises from you." She hates the desperation in her voice almost as much as the bruise marring Quinn's face, the defeat in the blonde's eyes, the fact that Santana knows that she this argument won't end any differently than any of the others in the past five years.
" And two, even if you were—which you aren't—then you'd just be proving me more right." Even if she knows she's going to lose, she's too desperate not to try. "You need to get the hell out of this relationship, Quinn! It's not healthy."
"I can't," Quinn responds, and Santana wants to scream in frustration.
"You can," She says. She crosses her arms over her chest. "She's like the size of a mouse, I'll beat the shit out of her if she tries to come near you again." A desperate, hateful seed of hope blooms in her chest, as if it would be better if Quinn was simply scared of Rachel and not still too hopelessly enamored with her to leave.
"That's not what I meant." The sharp glare in her eyes is enough to puncture the balloon of hope that had grown unbelievably quickly. ""I need her, S. It's…. it's Rachel, okay? I love her."
"Quinn, look in the fucking mirror!" Santana shouts, glaring back just as darkly. "She's hurting you, goddammit."
"I don't care!" Quinn's hands slam down onto the textbook in her lap, the impact loud enough to make Santana flinch. "I love her, and we fight, but everyone fights. I don't care if it hurts because God knows I hurt her enough in the past and God knows my temper is just as bad as hers."
Disgusted that she's not at all surprised at Quinn's reasoning, Santana deflates. This argument is so familiar, so repetitive, always ending the same way. Her whole body aches, and she wants to snatch up Quinn and take her home, lock her away, kill anyone who thinks of coming near her with a raised hand again. Eighteen years of friendship, the one person who's been at her side no matter what, and Santana can't do a single thing to protect her.
"Quinn, it's not the same." She hates the vulnerability in her voice. She's not the one who's battered, after all; what right does she have to sound vulnerable? "It's not the same. I've known you my whole life, I know how your temper plays out. I know you throw shit when you lose it, but you've never hit anyone, never thrown them into a wall, never left her with bruises she has to cover up."
Quinn shakes her head, an unreadable look in her eyes at Santana's broken voice. "I break her," she grinds out quietly. "I don't mean to, but I do. I try so hard to keep it in, to hold onto it, to not snap, but I always lose control. I say awful things to her, S, and it hurts her so much."
Santana shakes her head furtively. The unfamiliar feeling in her chest, where it feels like her heart is slowly being pulled apart piece by piece, is overwhelming, and it baffles her at how it completely swarms over the anger, pushing it away so efficiently. "It's not the same," she says stubbornly.
"No," Quinn says. "It's worse."
Santana lets out a frustrated breath, wishing desperately for a single thing she could say that she hasn't said before. Her mouth opens—to say what, she doesn't know—and is beat to the punch by the sound of the front door slamming and Rachel's voice wafting through the apartment.
Santana stiffens, eyes locked on Quinn as the blond deflates, slumping back against the headboard tiredly. Sighing, Santana retrieves her keys and sunglasses, pausing at the door. "You have a key," she says quietly. Defeat doesn't suit her, but it's not like Quinn has ever given her a choice in the matter.
"I know," Quinn whispers. "Thanks, S." She smiles tightly at Santana, who clenches her jaw just as tightly and silently strides out of the apartment, barely capable of keeping herself from smashing Rachel's head into the wall as she passes.
She makes it two blocks before slamming her fist into the side of a building with a strangled yell. The startled looks of the other pedestrians roll off of her, their unimportant interest meaningless as she shoves a college student out of the way and takes the taxi he just flagged.
Santana is 28 when she's in the middle of a client meeting and her secretary comes in apologetically, saying that she has an urgent phone call for Santana. She takes it, and her jaw drops when Quinn mutters numbly over the phone that she just told Rachel to move out and that she could really use someone there with her. Without a second thought, Santana hangs up the phone and yanks her coat on, sprinting out to catch a cab.
When she gets there, Brittany—bless her and her sweet disposition, Santana thinks, sending up a prayer of thanks for the fact that the three of them are still friends—is sitting with Quinn while Rachel packs. Santana pauses to shrug her coat off, tossing it over the back of the couch as she leans over to press a kiss to the top of Quinn's head before she makes her way to the bedroom where Rachel is packing.
The apologetic, guilty set to Rachel's shoulders as she obsessively folds and packs her clothes does nothing to abate Santana's disgust for the other girl. She watches with hawkish eyes as Rachel packs and pulls her suitcases off the bed, pausing in front of Santana.
Santana stares down at her, lip curled in disgust as she wonders if now, finally, after over a decade, she can get away with beating the living shit out of Rachel Berry.
Instead—and only because she has no desire to get arrested, and she knows for certain that if she marked Rachel's face, the actress's agent will press charges in an instant—she crosses her arms and draws herself up to her full height.
" You will not come back," she says evenly. "Come near her, and I will end you." She holds Rachel's eyes with her own as she speaks, determined to make Rachel know that she means business.
"Take care of her," Rachel whispers. "Please."
Santana clenches her fists, barely constraining herself from punching Rachel. She wants to yell, to scream, to shout that Rachel has no right to ask for anything from anyone, that Quinn wouldn't need taking care of if Rachel had ever been capable of controlling her temper, that no matter how cruel Quinn's words could be she never deserved a slap, a punch, to be slammed into a wall.
She restrains herself admirably, simply stepping just enough to the side to allow Rachel room to squeeze by. She shadows the other girl by a few feet, fists at her side and shoulders tense, as if she expects Rachel to try something unexpected and ridiculous.
Instead, Rachel leaves silently. And, for the first time in over a decade, Santana sees Quinn shatter because of Rachel Berry, a broken sob forcing its way past her lips as she all but collapses against Brittany.
Santana is three days past her thirtieth birthday, possibly still hungover from the birthday party her coworkers through two days earlier, when she comes home from work to see Quinn sitting edgily on her couch.
It's been almost two years since Quinn sent Rachel packing, and Santana has sat at her side as patiently as she could, working with Brittany and their other friends desperately to try and put Quinn back together again. She's watched with bated breath as Quinn has stayed quiet and alone, uncertain of how hard she can push without becoming just like Rachel.
"What's up, Q?" she says casually. She hangs her coat and scarf in the closet, grimacing at the flakes of snow melting on them. She patiently waits for an answer (she's never patient, not with anyone, unless it's Quinn Fabray coming off of ten years of abuse), making her way into the kitchen and retrieving two beers. Quinn accepts one silently, fiddling with the label as Santana drops down next to her.
"I loved her," Quinn whispers, and Santana freezes, beer halfway to her lips. In two years, they've not spoken about it, Quinn remaining stubbornly close-lipped. "She was… I don't know. Things were so good, you know? Almost all of the time, we were happy. She was the one who made me feel like a real person again, after Beth. She was so kind, so forgiving, so generous after everything I'd put her through. And she loved me." She smiled sadly, tears glistening in her eyes, and Santana swallowed a lump in her throat.
"I know you hate her," she said softly. "But I need you to know that even with everything that went wrong, things weren't bad all the time. When they were good, they were fantastic. It was like… things were good, too good, and they were so great when they were good that I figured that when they were bad, it was just to make things balance out. Because I was so mean to her sometimes, so it felt like that was the price of admission for all of the good. I thought that being so happy that I felt drugged was what I needed, that it was important enough to put up with being hurt."
Santana grips tightly at her beer, the condensation leaking down onto the material of her suit pants, cold enough to hurt but feeling so very far away at the moment. Her stomach clenches in a painfully familiar way, so similar to every time she saw a bruise spreading across Quinn's skin, breaths taken shallowly to compensate for bruises on her back, her ribs, her stomach.
Suddenly, inexplicably, it feels like her heart is breaking again at the sound of Quinn extolling all of the upsides of her relationship with Rachel.
"But I was wrong," Quinn goes on. She finally looks over at Santana, eyes suddenly dry and voice level. "It shouldn't come with a price, should it? Happiness, safety, love, that doesn't come with a caveat that says that I have to let myself be hurt in payment."
"No," Santana says, her voice strangled. "It doesn't." Her heart aches and she wishes, so desperately that it hurts, that she could turn back time, go back to before Quinn was ever with Rachel and be the person for her that Rachel had been first. To show Quinn exactly what happiness and love and safety really were, without the balancing weight of guilt and anger and pain.
"Twenty-five years," Quinn says softly. "We've been friends since kindergarten. And that entire time, you've been protecting me."
Santana is frozen, throat tight to the point of pain, certain that Quinn can't be saying what she thinks she is.
"It's always been you, hasn't it?" Quinn continues. Her free hand reaches out tentatively, as if on reflex, fingertips brushing against Santana's cheek. Santana sucks in a breath at the contact, cheeks flushing darkly, and she can't help but look away. Quinn is suddenly closer, and Santana can't seem to find any air, even though she thinks wildly that there has to be oxygen somewhere in the room.
"It's always been you," Quinn says again, and this time it isn't a question. "Why didn't you ever say anything?"
Mouth dry, entirely unable to find her breath, Santana can do nothing but shrug stupidly, eyes locked on the amber liquid sloshing in her beer bottle. Her hands are shaking.
"S," Quinn whispers. She takes the beer out of Santana's hands, setting it gently on the table in front of her and scooting closer. Her fingers slide under Santana's chin, tugging until Santana can't help but meet her eyes.
"I couldn't," she mumbled. Her words are barely audible. She can't put together a single reasonable explanation as to why she couldn't, just that she was incapable of acknowledging it, too young and brash and stupid to realize that the fire the bloomed in her stomach every time the thought of someone hurting Quinn crossed her mind meant more than her protective streak flaring up—after all, she was painfully protective of Brittany, too, but always reactively; she never sat around worrying constantly in advance about what to do if someone hurt Brittany, not like she did with Quinn.
"Can you," Quinn starts, her voice catching. She swallows, fingers still soft under Santana's jaw. "Can you now?"
Santana can't do anything but nod. Quinn offers the most brilliant smile Santana has seen on her in thirteen years, and Santana can't help but mirror it in return. Without any warning, Quinn all but leaps forward, arms wrapping painfully tightly around Santana's shoulders and burying her face in Santana's shoulder. Santana can do nothing but smile wider, arms wrapping tightly around Quinn's waist.
She spent eleven years trying to hold Quinn together, watching as the explosive, volatile love she shared with Rachel had all but ripped her to pieces; she spent two years trying to put her back together from the shattered mess she had been in the aftermath. Now, though, with her arms wrapped protectively around a blond who's been at her side for fifteen years, all the can think is that finally—finally—she can show Quinn how things are supposed to be.
She grips tighter to Quinn, the weight of a blond head comforting on her shoulder, and for the first time in her life, knows that this is one thing she'll never screw up.