Disclaimer: You think Bram would have happened if I owned Glee?

Author's note: So here we are, the fourth and final installment of this story. Thank you to everyone who has read, favourited and reviewed this story, your support means the world. I've enjoyed writing this and I hope you've enjoyed reading it. As always, any comments you have on the chapter (positive or negative) are completely welcome, so don't hesitate to leave me a review - I love to hear from you. I hope you enjoy the chapter.

You stand silently in the scuffed corridor as you peer through the glass window into the choir room, ignoring the trickle of the final homebound students leaving school for the day in favour of studying the girl perched cautiously on the back row of seats. A giddiness you've chased after in vain over the weeks Santana's been missing had ballooned inside you with Sam's whispered message, midway through your last class of the day, that she was waiting for you in the practice room, concentration on modern poetry destroyed as your muscles yearned to spring you from your chair and across to the other side of school. It's stung to enter the choir room since you've returned to McKinley, the space tainted by the absence of its graduating members; their echoes still linger in the corners of the room, memories of past laughter and playful bickering filling in the silences of a now-disjointed club, one struggling to breathe under the loss of those who helped shape it, the loss of trusted friends and musical allies.

The loss of Santana.

Your hand hangs uselessly by your side in practices these days, fingers itching with the absence of the tanned counterparts with whom they so effortlessly tangled. Your heart burns every time you forget she's no longer there, every time your lips curl with mirth and you turn to share the amusing thought flickering across your mind, every time your eyes search out the comforting sway of her ponytail. The room is shrunken, incomplete without her, and your excitement builds with the pounding of footsteps against linoleum floors, desperation to see the imposing emptiness banished by her presence coursing through you. You're almost surprised not to be greeted with a flash of red and white as you glance into the room, the lack of a cheerleading uniform jarring with an image you realise is based not only on a return of Santana, but on a return to before. She seems uncomfortable in a way you've never seen, almost trapped by a room that used to be the only place in which she truly let herself be free. Unease curls around the base of your spine as you watch her eyes dart about the room, deep breaths drawn into her chest as her hands tap out an uneven beat against her legs.

It's a routine you grew too used to seeing throughout junior year, yet you've rarely seen it since. It's one used by Santana to draw herself up, to build the strength required to bolster her defences for yet another day, and your heart clenches in worry at the sight of it. Your fingers, loosely curled around the door handle, absently tap out the same beat until she turns and catches your eye through the small square of glass, the soft smile playing about her lips all the encouragement you need to push open the door and step inside.

"You wanted to see me?"

"Sophomore year I used to sit in this back row and secretly watch you," she starts, clouded eyes tracking your slow steps across the choir room floor. "I counted the number of times you'd smile at me, and I'd die on days that you didn't."

The corners of your lips quirk up at the reminder of the months where a warm smile was the only way you could show Santana your feelings, hoping she would understand the depth of the affection lurking behind the simple movement of your lips. She's never told you this before, a confession left out in favour of numerous others, and your smile grows at the realisation that, even while trapped within the seemingly unbreakable confines of her closet, Santana at least partly understood everything you wordlessly tried to tell her. Yet guilt grabs at the corners of your mouth before your smile can stretch any further, regret spreading over your skin like a rash as the second part of her admission drops heavily between the two of you and every time your frustrations with the Latina grew too large flashes behind your eyes.

"I miss this place so much. It's where we fell in love," she shrugs, her gaze slipping from your face to stare around the empty room, and she misses how your grip tightens on your folder at the tremor in her voice. You gently lower yourself to one of the scattered chairs as she takes a breath, the shakiness doing nothing to ease the building worry you feel at the atmosphere of regret surrounding Santana. The room seems charged with an almost inevitable sorrow, the crushing loneliness no longer held back by the other members of the glee club creeping towards you as the flickering ghost of a smile disappears from Santana's face. "Where I could say things with music when words just weren't enough...and I need to tell you something that I don't know how to say."

You recognise the song as soon as the first notes pierce the silence surrounding the pair of you; it's one you've heard before. Wrapped in blankets as the two of you lay on your sister's trampoline the night before she was due to leave for Louisville, shivering not from the cold but from a fear of what was to come, Santana had sung it to you in a voice barely above a whisper, dark eyes holding blue captive beneath the star-filled sky. It hadn't made her departure any easier, your muscles aching for days with the memory of the sobs that painfully wracked your body as you fell apart in your father's arms, his strong embrace useless against the piercing pain of the ever-growing miles between you and Santana, but you had clung to it in the weeks after she left. The promises of forever became your only salve against the aching loneliness, countless nights spent crying yourself to sleep to the same song spinning on endless repeat, chords and melodies and lyrics wrapping themselves around you in a poor imitation of Santana's last embrace. You've always loved it when Santana sings to you, bares herself to you in a way she knows you'll understand, but a part of you longs to interrupt her, to beg her to stop, desperate to avoid the painful memories of the last time she sung this to you.

Terrified that this performance will signal something worse.

The beginnings of tears prickle at the corners of your eyes as you spot the glossiness in hers. You've always felt everything she has, every feeling she displays echoed in you to a greater or lesser degree; it's a connection with the Latina of which you've always been proud, emotions linking the pair of you long before Santana consciously let herself be emotionally vulnerable with you, but as you watch her fingers tighten around the edges of the chair she's perched, you find yourself wishing for the first time that it didn't exist. A war rages behind watery eyes, fear, anguish and regret crackling in the air around Santana, and the weight of it all presses down on your chest, leaving you dizzy and struggling for breath.

Her voice doesn't calm you like it did two months ago. Her words no longer spread themselves over you like a warm blanket. You feel distant, cut off, as if somewhere along the route to Kentucky, the connection that has bound the two of you together ever since Santana first discovered you in the playground splintered, frayed links falling to the side of the road. Perhaps that's why the two of you have been out of sync since she left, schedules never quite matching up, conversations dissolving into pained excuses as one of you is dragged elsewhere. To your mind, one that sees things in beats and rhythms and in how well two entities match, it's a terrifying notion.

You try to smile, but your throat tightens around a painful lump as every promise you've ever heard in the song crashes around you at the pain sweeping over Santana's face. It's all you can do not to let yourself fall apart. Your throat dries, almost cracking with the effort of holding back the sob trying to force its way out of your mouth. Everything feels like it's shattering beneath you, things of which you had been so sure mere hours ago wiped out by the tremble of her lower lip, the tear staining a perfect cheek.

She can't look at you as she draws the song to a close, the last lingering note directed, not at you, but at some vague point in the distance, and you think that's when you know what she's about to do. Panic grips you because it can't happen, you can't let it happen, and your brain tries to fight its way through the mess of tears threatening to take over in search of some way to stop it.

"Well...sad songs make me sad and I don't want to be sad," you mumble, sniffling as you try to wipe away your tears. You need to be the strong one, for once you need to be the one to guide, to show Santana that she's making a mistake.

"I haven't been a good girlfriend to you," she starts, shaking her head before you can deny it.

You're not stupid. You knew this would never be easy, that your relationship wouldn't be the same as the one you shared when Santana was in Lima. You want to tell her that but your body won't respond, refusing to move as Santana opens her mouth to continue talking, your brain unable form a sentence from the words tumbling through it chaotically.

"I can't come home on the weekends and pretend that things are they way they were because they aren't," she continues, and you know that, you do, but your body still won't move; your hand won't grasp hers tightly; your voice won't sound an objection.

You've never had so little control over your own body.

It terrifies you.

"And I don't want to be like all of those other long-distance relationships that, y'know, hang in there for a few months and then break up when someone eventually cheats or things get weird."

"I would never cheat on you," you counter immediately, willing your voice to sound as certain of that as you know you are, determined to soothe the insecurity flashing in her eyes.

"I know," she whispers, nodding, and you're seized by a wave of nausea because she doesn't match your statement with one of her own. Because, God, now you're terrified that she might have cheated on you and it's irrational, you know it is, but you spent weeks telling her she would find someone better at Louisville and her promises that she wouldn't were never fully able to calm that fear... The blood pounds so loudly in your ears that you almost miss what she says next. "I know, and I would never cheat on you either but..."

You want to throw up at the hesitation.

"If we're being completely honest, I had...I guess the best way to describe it would be an energy exchange," she starts, adding a layer of confusion to the fear churning in your stomach. "I was cramming for this really boring sociology class, and I looked up and this girl was staring at me. She smiled a little too long, which means she was either crazy or a lesbian, and judging by the stack of Virginia Woolf she was reading, she was into me...so I smiled back."

She shrugs, guilt splayed across her face, and you almost want to laugh at the absurdity of it, that Santana thinks a smile is worth the end of your relationship, but she doesn't give you the chance to interrupt.

"I had an attraction and y-you...you may have had one, or y-you might have one, and that...that happens."

You want to shake your head frantically, to scream that it doesn't matter because she's it for you, she has always been it for you, but you're frozen as she moves to the seat beside yours, grim inevitability dampening the brightness of her eyes.

"Let's just do the mature thing here, okay?" she asks, but you know it's not a question. Still, it's enough to snap you from your temporary paralysis and you shake your head once, twice, but the lump in your throat has grown too painful to let through any of the words swimming just out of reach of your tongue.

"This is not an official break-up, but let's just be honest that...long-distance relationships are almost impossible to maintain, because both people are rarely getting what they need," Santana breathes shakily, and the tears threatening to invade her voice are enough to tell you this is the end. "Especially at our age," she adds softly.

You have to look away before you crumble, your hand coming up automatically to brush away the tears slowly marking your cheeks.

"This sounds a lot like a break-up to me," you shrug, unwilling for her to sugar-coat the crushing pain in your heart, your body screaming as if your heart was actually breaking. You don't understand why you fought so hard, why you struggled on beneath the burden of homophobes and being rejected by family members, why you refused to be broken by the vicious heckles launched at the two of you around town if you were just going to let it crumble into meaningless ashes at the first sign of difficulty.

"You know this isn't working," she mumbles, eyes fixed imploringly on yours even as she shakes her head. "You know I will always love you the most."

Your face crumples and the soft kiss she presses to your lips tastes of nothing but goodbye.

You want to hate her for it, to throw out the harsh insults you're used to hearing slip through her lips. People often assume you're incapable of hatred, reducing you to a human embodiment of childlike naïveté because you can't always divide mentally, or because you still mix up some of the presidents, but you feel it just like everybody else. It was there in the bile rising in your throat as the commercial outing Santana appeared on your TV screen, in the burning desire to scream at the Latina's grandmother for abandoning her. It courses through you every time you think of Russell Fabray, flickers into focus at every memory of Kurt being shoved into lockers. But when it comes to her...no matter what Santana does, no matter how much you've been hurt by her, you don't know how to hate her.

You slump into the arms she wraps around you, fight draining out of you with the tears that strangle your murmured 'I love you too'. You wonder whether this is punishment for taking her for granted, whether you assumed that she would always be there, pinky wrapped around yours, and thus you didn't shower her with the love she deserves, one you've always prided yourself on being able to make her realise she's worth.

"Please," you whimper, pulling back from the hug to press your lips to hers more firmly, pleading against her lips even as you feel her lack of reaction. It's pathetic and your cheeks flush with embarrassment, the tears tracking over them doing to nothing to cool the flaming heat, but you can't stop yourself because you can't lose Santana. She's your everything, she grounds you, and you're already feeling dangerously off balance even as her arms hold you up, everything you've ever envisaged with her disintegrating beneath the tears you feel drop from Santana's eyes onto your shoulder as she gathers you into her arms, gently rocking you from side to side.

Your beautiful, perfect Santana. Strong to the very last.

You don't know how long you sit there, how many minutes slip by your gentle swaying, but eventually the tears dry, damp shoulders finally given a reprieve. Shaky breaths scrape over your rough throat as she pulls back, red-rimmed eyes catching your own before she leans up to press a lingering kiss to your forehead, thumbs stroking softly over the mess of dried tears on your cheeks. And then she's gone, easing herself from her chair and walking across the choir room to the door, heels shattering the heavy silence. She pauses at the door, just like she did so many years ago, and the whimper that slips past your lips is all the pleading for her to stay you can muster, but she slowly creaks the door open and steps out into the empty corridor.

You're left to watch the girl you've loved for ten years walk away and you can't find the words to stop her.