"Is it true?"

These first three words slipped from Santana's lips involuntarily as she sank onto the edge of the bed.

Brittany knelt down on the floor so she could still meet her gaze.

"Is what true?"

"You talked to Quinn?"

"Yes," the blonde replied softly.

The other woman sucked in a sharp breath at the confirmation. Her lip trembled but she batted her lashes and looked around the room to maintain her composure.

"Why didn't you tell me?" she whispered as she swallowed to quell the sobs rising in her throat.

"I tried, Santana. You don't know how long I've been trying. It just seemed like every time that I tried to bring it up you'd fall asleep, change the subject, or...," she searched for a delicate way to word the last part. "...We'd stop talking altogether."

The brunette thought back over the past few weeks. True enough, she could remember at least a handful of times that Brittany had seemed on the verge of telling her something that was troubling her. However, she had always found some way to avoid having that conversation. How long had she been cutting her off? She hadn't even realized that she'd been doing it, until this moment. Why had she been so afraid to let her speak?

Her wife saw the acknowledgement of this on her face and continued.

"Did Quinn say anything to you about what we discussed?"

"She just said that you talked. Not anything specific. She seems to think that having you here with me is bad for you. She made it sound like you're not happy."

Santana's eyes lowered to search Brittany's face carefully.

"Are you unhappy, Britt?"

The other woman sighed heavily. She stood and turned to sit on the bed beside her spouse. The brunette stiffened, already anxious over the fact that she hadn't received an immediate answer.

"It depends on which part of this you're focusing on when you ask me that," Brittany admitted as she wove their fingers together.

"I don't understand," Santana said quietly.

"Am I happy getting to spend all my time with you again, the way I did before? Yes," her wife began while choosing her words with careful consideration. "But am I happy to be here, to be living in this world where I don't belong now? ... No."

The smaller woman lowered her head at this last utterance and closed her eyes as she tried to accept it.

"Why not?" she finally asked. Her voice was so low that her spouse could scarcely hear it.

"It doesn't feel right. I'm uneasy in my own body," Brittany explained. "It's not natural. I always feel like I'm out of place, like everything around me knows I'm not supposed to be here anymore."

"What about... what about when you're with me?"

"What do you mean?"

"You said you're happy being with me but that's emotionally, right? What about physically? The rest of the world makes you feel uncomfortable in your own skin; what about with me?"

Here was the hard part. Brittany removed her fingers from Santana's before responding because she knew her heart would shatter if she felt her wife recoil. She clasped her hands in her lap and ducked her head.

"I can't feel it."

"At all?"

She shook her head and the brunette saw a tear slip off the tip of her nose.

"So, those nights when you and I were together... You were only doing that for me?"

Another nod. A sniffle.

"Oh, God," Santana murmured.

She thought back to the first exchange when she found herself unable to sleep. The more she remembered, the more that this revelation explained why something had seemed amiss.

"Why didn't you tell me?" she asked again and her voice shook slightly as she posed the question.

"Because," Brittany replied. "I was afraid of what it would do to you. This has been so hard on you, Santana, and I knew how much you needed to have it all back, even for a little while..."

"But still, what about you?" Santana interjected. "I've been so busy enjoying how I finally got to feel better that I completely missed the fact that you've been stuck in your own private hell!"

"It hasn't been hell," her wife insisted. "It just hasn't been the same as it was."

"Never feeling like I fit into my own life, having the woman I love be oblivious to my misery, getting fucked and not being able to feel a goddamned thing... That sure sounds like hell to me!"

Her eyes were slightly crazed and she was beginning to rock back and forth. Her arms were wound tightly around her body and crisscrossed under her chest. It was as if she was fastening herself into an invisible straightjacket. Fear gripped Brittany at the sight of it and she dropped back to the floor again to try to break through the brunette's hysteria.

"Santana. Santana, look at me," she said insistently.

Her wife refused, so she grabbed both sides of her face and held her forcefully in place until she made eye contact.

"This is not your fault. Not any of it. You had no way of knowing if I didn't tell you."

"But that's just it. I did know. Shit, the more we talk about it, the more warning signs are coming back to me. How long was I willing to turn a blind eye and pretend everything was exactly the same just so I didn't have to deal with the truth?"

"We both wanted to pretend, Santana," Brittany pointed out. "It wasn't just you. We spent almost our entire lives together. We've been the center of each other's worlds. Neither of us knew what everything else was supposed to revolve around without the other one there."

The dark haired woman pressed one shaking hand over her eyes as they closed. Her knuckles went white from the pressure she was putting on her lids as she tried to trap in the tears.

"I just don't see the point of anything when you're not here," she finally choked out. "I mean, I did manage to at least get myself back to my routine before I went looking for the stone, but that first week after you... after you died, I couldn't even move. I went to that graveyard every day to just lay down next to that mound of dirt. From sunrise to sunset, I was on my back looking at the sky and talking to you like you were still there. I barely even ate. It was like I couldn't keep track of time if I wasn't telling myself, 'Oh, I need to go meet up with Brittany for our lunch date' or 'I can't stay late to go through these files because I promised to take Britt out to dinner tonight.' There were no checkpoints with you to move me through my day."

Her wife nodded quietly.

"I'm so, so sorry, Brittany," Santana said while taking both of the other woman's hands in hers. "You shouldn't have had to go through what you've been feeling on your own for so long. I should have picked up on it; I should have done something. It's not healthy, the kind of isolation I've been putting you through."

"You didn't do it on purpose," the blonde responded kindly. "Besides, it hasn't exactly been healthy for you, either."

"How so?"

Brittany frowned.

"I need you to see something."

She helped Santana to her feet and led her into their bathroom. Gently, she placed a hand on either of her spouse's shoulders and stood her directly in front of the mirror over the sink.

"Look at yourself," she instructed.

The brunette complied and, after a moment's inspection, she began to suck on her lower lip.

"I guess I do look kinda rough, huh?" she asked while she took in the frighteningly dark circles under her eyes and the ever-deepening age lines on her face.

"Also...," Brittany said as she reached for the bottom of Santana's shirt. "There's this."

Carefully, she edged the material up until it rested under her wife's chest, revealing the startlingly visible ribcage beneath the taut skin. The shorter woman traced the bones with the tips of her fingers. She lifted her head to meet the blonde's gaze in the glass.

"How long have I been like this?"

"A while," Brittany admitted. "Since I can't eat anything anymore, you just pick at your meals while you're talking to me. I've tried to sort of take over the conversations while we're at the table, just so you have more time for your food, but it doesn't seem to make a difference. You hardly touch a thing and never mention feeling hungry later."

She slid her arms around Santana's waist and was careful not to squeeze too hard as she closed the embrace.

"Not to mention the fact that you barely sleep these days. Sometimes I lose track of how many times you wake up in the night crying or calling out my name. Sure, you just grab my arm, pull me around you, and then go right back to sleep. Still, it's throwing off your schedule and I don't know how much longer your body can take it."

"Why haven't I noticed this happening to me?" the brunette asked shakily as she clasped onto her wife's wrists with trembling hands.

"Because you didn't want to," her spouse stated. "I feel horrible for letting you carry on this way for as long as you have. If no one else that has seen you said a word, then I at least should have had the courage to speak up. You've been cutting yourself off from the rest of reality for a really long time now and you're wearing yourself into the ground."

Santana twisted around so she could look Brittany in the eye.

"So what happens now?" she queried tremulously, but her dark eyes revealed that she already knew the answer.

"We have to move forward," the blonde replied. "For both our sakes."

The widow broke free from the other woman's arms and went back into their bedroom. She plunked down at the foot of their bed and looked at her hands resting in her lap.

"I have to let you go."

It was a statement, not a question. However, she lifted her head to see how Brittany responded to this. Her wife nodded almost imperceptibly. The two fell silent as they fought to keep from crying. Santana shuddered and rubbed her shoulders as she looked helplessly around the room. The blonde was at her side in an instant and enfolded the smaller woman in her arms as they rested their heads together. They rocked in place for a time, each unable to properly soothe the other in the midst of their own pain.

"Are you gonna be okay once you're gone?" Santana asked as her voice balanced on the precipice of a sob. "What if you get lonely?"

Brittany shook her head gently.

"Nah, that's where people get things all mixed up. Once they've gone on, the dead don't feel the misery of solitude. They're the souls left in this world, the ones we leave behind, that are really the lonely ones. Honestly, Santana, after what happened to me... I still don't really have the words to describe everything that I experienced but I can tell you this much: aside from wanting to know that you were okay, I was fine. I promise. Everything's going to be all right for me."

Santana shook her head in wonder as tears began to slide down the sides of her face.

"It should have been me instead of you."

"Shh, don't say things like that."

"I just don't know where you find the courage to face this. You've always been so much braver than I'll ever be. Sometimes I think the Sorting Hat put you in the wrong house."

"Do you want to know something funny?" Brittany asked as she wiped her wife's tears away. "I think the hat thought the same thing. It almost put me in Gryffindor that night, but it changed its mind at the last minute."

"You never told me that."

"It's not really something I thought about that much, but yeah, the hat did mention bravery while its voice was talking to me. In the end, though, it said my loyalty was even stronger."

She shrugged self-consciously and tucked her hair behind her ear.

Santana clasped Brittany's hand tightly in hers.

"I'd say that was accurate," she said sincerely.

Several iridescent droplets trickled from the corners of Brittany's eyes while she looked down at their interlocked fingers.

"Just promise me one thing, okay?" she asked in a strained voice as she struggled to speak without a tremor. "You can't go back to the way you were before you found me. And you can't live the way you've been since you brought me back, either. I need you to go out again, Santana. I need you to talk to other people, spend time with friends, and carry on with your career. I need you to swear to me that no matter how hard this gets - and it's definitely not going to be easy - you're going to live."

Santana nodded but Brittany wasn't satisfied. She removed her hand from her wife's hold and held it aloft, extending the pinky.

"Promise?"

The brunette hesitated. She looked down at the crooked finger for a moment with a frown but finally lifted her own hand and curled her pinky through the open space.

"I promise. I swear, Britt. No matter what. I've spent all these years demanding so much from you and taking so much. If this is the one thing you ask of me, then I'll do it."

A relieved smile broke across Brittany's face. She took in the way Santana squared her shoulders in determination and lifted her head high with that familiar Lopez pride shining in her eye.

"That's my girl," the blonde murmured affectionately.

"I'm just really going to miss you," the smaller woman admitted as her throat began to constrict.

"I'm going to miss you, too," her spouse assured her and placed one hand lovingly against her cheek.

The dark haired woman leaned into the touch. She pulled Brittany close and kissed her repeatedly, moving her mouth quickly as if she wanted to exchange enough caresses to span the lifetime that they would no longer get to share. The blonde returned that passion equally and draped both arms around Santana's neck as she closed her eyes and treasured their last good-bye.

"It's not the end," Brittany whispered reassuringly in the fractions of seconds that their lips were apart. "You'll see me again, when the time comes. We'll be together then."

"What do I do with the stone?"

"Take it to our vault," the blonde instructed. "If it's there, it's out of sight and out of mind. You can get on with your life; do your best to pretend that it no longer exists."

"Okay," the widow agreed reluctantly. "That's probably best."

They brought their lips together a few times more and lingered to remember every nuance of the sensation.

Her hands began to shake violently, but Santana did as she knew that she needed to and wrapped one palm around the Resurrection Stone. She pulled the cloth pouch out of her pocket with her free hand and tugged the cord off her neck. Carefully, she made sure the top of the bag was wide open and then held the stone over its waiting home.

She lifted her eyes to meet her wife's and the blonde's hands reached out to wrap around hers. They would release the Hallow for the final time together.

"I love you," Brittany said warmly.

"I love you," Santana returned.

Then they both inhaled deeply and nodded to each other.

Now.

One. Two. Three.