Title: Just A Girl (8/10?)
Author: Race122VE (Coll)
Pairing: Santana/Brittany
Rating: R (mostly language, then violence and some semi sexiness as the fic goes on)
Summary: "But…you're just a girl." Glee AU fic.
Word Count: A little over 4k.
Disclaimer: All television shows, movies, books, and other copyrighted material referred to in this work, and the characters, settings, and events thereof, are the properties of their respective owners. As this work is an interpretation of the original material and not for-profit, it constitutes fair use. Reference to real persons, places, or events are made in a fictional context, and are not intended to be libelous, defamatory, or in any way factual.
Author's Note: Holy crap this is way late! Apologies to the people keeping up with this and waiting for my ass to finish stuff. I've got majority of the end written, I just need to actually get there. However, Chapter 9 won't be up till after the first week of December (at the very least...) But thanks for the patience and your comments!
Chapter 8
Santana can actually hear the seconds tick slowly, and painfully, by as she stands there, eye locked with Matt Rutherford while her mom keeps nervously shifting her gaze back and forth between them.
For a split second, her hand jumps, ready to reach behind her back and retrieve her stake and turn the bastard into dust, but she can't. She's risked enough lives tonight; her mom is not going to be added to that list.
She should say something, she knows this, but she fears that any sudden movement will trigger Matt into doing…something. She's not sure what, there's about a million scenarios running through her head and none of them end well.
So she stands, and stares, and waits.
Her mother, not being able to stand the uneasiness of the whole situation, speaks up. "Santana, what's going on with you?" she hisses, stepping next to her daughter and nudging her with her elbow. "Don't be rude, say hi back to your friend."
She goes from cautious and scared to pissed and confused, snapping her head towards her mother with her mouth hanging open in shock.
There is no way, in this fucked up situation, that her mother was actually chastising her for being rude.
But she had to get over herself. Her mother may be pissing her off, but she'd rather that than the alternative, and Santana supposed she had to play along with this little game to see what Matt's plan was.
"Hi," she gave in, muttering quietly.
He nodded at her, a satisfied smirk on his face that she wanted to smack off, before turning to her mom. "Hey, Ms. Lopez," he begins, politely. "Is there any way I could please get a water or something? My throats a little dry."
Her mother agrees, and they both follow her as she leaves the living room and disappears into the kitchen. As soon as she's gone, Santana whips out the stake and Matt flashes his true face, baring his fangs.
They stand there for what seems like forever before Matt laughs. "Put the stake away, Santana," he orders quietly.
"Why the fuck would I do that?"
"Because if you kill me, you'll never see Brittany again," he tells her calmly, and his smile grows a little wider when he adds. "Rachel too, but something tells me you don't care as much about that."
Brittany's name alone is enough to throw her off, along with what Matt is insinuating. The anger begins to build up inside her, and she fights every urge to lunge forward and end Matt's afterlife. It's way too risky, and she's not just thinking about her mother clanging around in the other room. She can't afford putting Brittany's life in any more danger than it's already in.
Santana responds by pocketing her stake once more and throwing her hands up in the air.
"You've got my attention," she says through her teeth.
Matt's face shifts back to normal, but he's still smiling wickedly at her. "Here's what's going to happen," he begins. "You're going to say whatever it is that you have to say to get your mom to let me come up to your room so we can have some more time to talk, and then I'll let you know how the rest of the night is going to play out."
Santana scoffs, "And I'm, what? Just supposed to trust you?"
"If something was going to happen, it would have happened by now," Matt responds. "I could've killed your mother after I got the invitation in."
"And what's going to stop you from killing her later if I don't kill you?" Santana shoots back, nowhere near ready to comply with anything Matt says, despite his knowledge and control over the situation.
Matt merely chuckles back. "It's like you're asking me to kill her, Santana-"
"You make a move for her and it will be the last one you ever make." Her hand moves back to grab her stake again and Matt's already halfway across the room, game face on.
"Do you trust yourself enough to take this risk?" he asks, faking a movement and causing her to stumble forward slightly. "Look, we're both fast and we're both strong and here's how it would go down. I make it to your mom and I kill her then you kill me and lose Brittany and Rachel. Everything."
Santana's eyes narrow and Matt continues, unaffected by her glare. "Then there's the scenario where I am just about to kill your mother then you kill me first. She gets to live, but you'll be revealing what you are to her. Oh, and Brittany and Rachel will die too.
"Stop pretending like you have any control over the situation, Santana," he tells her, punctuating the final words as if he's slowly jutting a jagged knife straight through her heart. "You don't."
It's a fact that she hasn't been letting herself think all night. If it were possible, Santana thinks that knowledge hurts more than anything else. Sure she's wracked with guilt and blame, but she knows that, right now, everyone she cares about is still alive.
All her life, she's been obsessed with control.
From the beginning, in middle school, she always had to be the first one finished with her tests, the first in line at lunch, the one to get to the top of the jungle gym during recess and only grant access to Quinn and Brittany. The mentality continued into high school. Even though Quinn was the head Cheerio, Santana pulled all the strings in their trio and that bled into the team. Also, in spite of Brittany's reputation, she was the first one of her friends to kiss a boy first, round all the bases, lose her virginity.
Little by little the universe fucked with that, took that feeling away from her. It started when her dad left and basically kicked the shit out of her when she was called, and now…
Now Santana was faced with reality and all she really wanted to do was give up, crawl into a hole, and die.
But she had too many people depending on her, even if she had a sneaking suspicion she was going to just let them down in the end.
Her mom came back in, extending a glass to Matt, before she could agree to anything. Not that there was really any other option.
"Ma, I know it's late and I'm still grounded," Santana begins, keeping her eyes downward. "But can I take Matt upstairs for a bit? He missed the meeting and I just want to burn him the music we chose so he's not behind."
The tell tale signs that her mother is going to refuse show up on her face, and Santana reacts accordingly, "It takes, like, ten minutes to burn a CD, ma. I'm just trying to help out a…"
The word 'friend' is right there, but it's not something she can't say anymore.
"A teammate," she settles on, as well as plastering her most convincing good daughter face.
"Ten minutes?" her mother asks, eyeing both of them.
Matt plays his part too, giving her a wholesome smile.
Reluctantly, she agrees. Once upstairs and in Santana's room, Matt struts in and flops down on the bed like he belongs there. She wants so badly to hurt him and then end his miserable existence. "Remember the last time we were in here together?" he asks conversationally, but emphasizes the next word in a sleazy way. "Alone?"
Santana bites down on her tongue hard enough to draw blood.
Does she remember when her mom went and stayed with her cousin after her dad left and she threw a party and fucked Matt when she was sloppy drunk and vulnerable and just looking to feel something?
"I remember," she nods, plastering on her best poker face as she crosses her arms over her chest and glares back. "Let's cut the shit and get on with it."
If he wants to make a remark, he chooses not to. Matt's propped up on his elbows, looking back at Santana with his legs kicking back and forth playfully. He's entirely too comfortable and Santana is thrown by it but tries to remain steely. She knows she's not going to like anything he has to say and she should be prepared for that right off the bat.
"Give me your phone," he demands. "And the stake you have tucked in your pants. Also, I want to know where your weapons are."
It takes her several moments of deep breathing and glaring back at Matt and his shit eating grin before she reaches into her pocket for her phone before tossing it on the bed. She gets the stake, drops it on the ground and kicks it his way before motioning to her closet. "There's a black duffel in the back, behind my shoe rack," she tells him. "It's all in there."
He grabs her phone as he stands, crushing it with little effort and letting the mangled device fall from his hand. For a second Santana turns into a teenager, just a normal girl who's afraid of what her mom is going to say now that she's managed to destroy two cell phones in the span of a couple of weeks.
But she's not that normal girl. It's not going to matter that another phone is lying in pieces in her room because she's probably going to die tonight.
Matt's crouched over in her closet, pushing things aside to reach for her weapons and her eyes fall on the stake that's a few feet away from her grasp. If there was a time she was going to do this, it was now. She doesn't even try though, which is the most depressing thing. Santana's already given up, she already knows she's outnumbered, and she's never felt more useless in her entire life.
The bag lands on her bed and Matt bends down, grabbing the discarded stake and twirling it around in his fingers as he looks down at her.
"What now?" Santana asks when she notices his gaze lingering a little too long on her neck.
"Now we have a little chat."
Again, he lets more time pass and she's not sure if that's some kind of mental tactic or something but it is pissing her the fuck off. "Well," she says, throwing her hands in the air before crossing them over her chest. "I don't have all fucking night…"
"That is true," he smirks knowingly before going on. "Well…tonight was a disaster."
And Santana can't help but comment under her breath, "Fucking understatement of the year."
"I mean," Matt goes on, getting more and more worked up as he talks. "I put in a lot of time with this whole thing. I was in charge of this, it was my thing. Do you even know how hard it was to stay a safe distance away, fight my new born urges and curiosities? I couldn't get too close otherwise you would know what I was, and that hindered us as well. There was a lot of guessing about who the Slayer was."
"When did you figure out it was me?"
"I knew for a while," he responds. "Once the groups were narrowed down and we collected information about certain students you were one of the obvious choices…"
"But you had others?" Santana prompts, taking in all the information that she can. It's what she needed right now and it was, literally, the only weapon she had. If she was going to save Brittany and keep everyone safe, she had to know exactly what she was up against.
"Someone had different ideas," he spits out, growling slightly. "Once we know that it was a brunette in the Glee Club that's when the plan was made to strike, to get Rachel. A newborn team was sent, just to get a feel of things. I mean, best case scenario we got the Slayer, worst we lost a handful of morons. Of course we got a shitty outcome cause they plucked the wrong brunette."
Rachel.
They thought it was Rachel, and why they ended up taking Brittany she doesn't really know.
But she wants to. Santana wants to press the issue, find out as much information about why they took Brittany, if she's OK, if they have any plans for her…
That's not the information she needs though. Not if she wants to at least try to make it out of this alive and with everyone safe. She has to focus on this 'someone' Matt is angry about. The one that gave the call to take Rachel. A part of her had always figured Matt wasn't the brains of the operation, the one in charge, and from the way he's talking he seems pretty bitter about it. It's a useful piece of information and needs to see if she can pull anymore out of Matt.
"Who thought it was Rachel?" she asks, not really expecting an answer but what could it hurt?
"You'll find out soon enough," he replies, brushing her off. "I've already talked enough about this. It's time to move on to what's going to happen next."
"And what's that?"
"I'm going to leave, you're going to tell your mom that you're turning in early, you'll wait 'til it's safe to sneak out of your house, and I'll be waiting outside the whole time until you do," he tells her. "Oh, and if you try to call anyone…try to get in touch with Quinn or your watcher in any way, I'm coming back into your house and snapping your mom's neck like a twig."
Santana stares back, trying not to flinch at the sudden mental image of how easy and quick it would be for Matt to just take her mother away from her like that. Her fingers dig into her arms, hard enough to leave imprints of her nails, but she just sets her jaw and nods once.
"How long do you need?"
She takes in a deep breath, giving her a moment to think, before answering, "A half hour. Probably."
It's when she's due back at Mr. Schuester's. She figures he'll know something's up and try to do…something. She's not sure what Schue, Coach, and Quinn can actually do, but they'll know that something is wrong and they're not stupid enough to call her house and get her mom all worked up.
Matt walks forward, throwing his arm over her shoulders and leading her to the door. "Let's go say goodbye to your mom then."
All she wants to do once they're downstairs is get Matt out of her fucking house. He makes a good show of shaking her hand, thanking her, being a fucking gentleman and Santana makes a mental note to take him out. Even if she's probably going down, she is going to make sure she takes Matt down with her.
One way or another.
She's about to slam the door in his face, but his hand stops it and he leans in, whispering, "Half hour."
"Fuck off," she spits before slamming the door.
Santana can still feel him lingering on the other side of the door, probably smiling and just being generally creepy. Her head moves forward and thumps against the wood a couple of times before resting there. She squeezes her eyes shut as he mind begins to weigh the pros and cons of spending a little time with her mom or running upstairs and curling up into a ball.
When her mom appears behind her, causing her to jump and spin at the sudden shuffle behind her, Santana makes up her mind.
There's no way she can spend an extra second with her mom and be strong enough to go through with this.
"Everything OK, Santana?"
She nods, not trusting her voice while she's trying to hold back tears at what will probably the last time she sees her mother.
"I thought you two were friends," her mom starts. "I'm sorry if you didn't want to see him-"
"It's not that, ma," she shakes her head. "I'm just…really tired today."
Her mom purses her lips, eyes scanning Santana's face. "You do look exhausted," she agrees quietly, worry evident in her tone. "You're sure that's it?"
Again, Santana nods, not trusting herself with too many words. She's always been quiet when something is bothering her. Usually she always ends up going to her mom in the end, so the older woman lets it slide. Luckily for Santana, her mother must think that's what's happening here.
She steps forward, places a warm hand on her arm, and leans over, placing a light kiss on Santana's forehead. "Get some sleep," she mumbles against Santana's skin, squeezing her arm comfortingly.
When she steps back, Santana can't help but shiver and wrap her arms around her body. Her mom doesn't notice and goes to walk back into the living room. Santana knows exactly why she does what she does next. She does, but she also knows it's a dead giveaway for 'something's wrong' or 'I'm in trouble.'
Still, she can't help herself when she says, "I love you."
Her mom turns instantly and stares back suspiciously.
It's not like they never say 'I love you' to each other, but they don't say it nearly enough for it to be normal behavior. She's always felt loved and she always treats her mother that way, but after her dad left and it was just the two of them pitching in and doing the work Santana just noticed how neither of them said it as much as they used to.
So, when either of them said 'I love you' it usually meant more than just the words. Which is why her mom was opening and closing her mouth, trying to say something but obviously over thinking the words too much. Santana saves her the trouble and heads to the stairs, throwing a "Good night" over her shoulder.
She shuts the door and leans back against it before sinking down and hugging her knees to her body. She wants to leave now, to get this over with as opposed to sitting in her room and being bombarded with her thoughts. After saying 'I love you' to her mom, though, she had to wait, had to put on the show. A part of her wants to take it back, but how was she supposed to leave and, presumably, not come back without letting her mom know that?
Santana can still sense Matt outside pacing, acting just as impatient as her, and she feels like she has to do something. The guilt has been weighing her down, the feeling of helplessness adding to it, and she hates that she just has to sit here and wait to walk into this alone with nothing.
That's when the Slayer kicks in for (what feels like) the first time tonight.
Her eyes scan the room for anything that she can hide on herself and use in a possible situation. While she's pretty much accepted her fate and is going in this knowing that, more likely than not, she probably won't be coming back, it doesn't mean she's not going to fight.
Santana pushes herself up off the ground and goes to stand at her dresser. She stops briefly at her reflection and wonders why her mother didn't push more, didn't ask what had happened to her that night, cause she looks like shit.
It's not something she has time to dwell on, though, so she tears her gaze away from her mirror and scans her dresser first. She notices her nail file and tosses it on to the bed before moving over to her desk and emptying out a cup filled with pens and pencils. She can't take much, and she's not even sure where she's going to hide it, but Santana has to try to arm herself.
In her closet she drags out a pair of boots she usually wears when it's snowing and stuffs a pencil in one and a nail file in the other. It's snug and she's pretty sure she stabbed herself with the file, but she feels a little better about the situation.
There's probably a good fifteen more minutes left before she has to leave when her eyes look back to her dresser and catch sight of a photo in a pink, homemade frame decorated with stickers of hearts, rainbows, and ducks. Inside is a picture from the beginning of the year, when Brittany came back from her family thing and Santana couldn't wipe the smile off her face from having her best friend back.
She walks over, picks up the frame, and runs her fingers over the side of the picture that has Brittany pulling Santana tight against her body while her other hand is holding the camera out to capture the moment. She's not sure how long she stands there, staring at her best friend, but a drop of water falls on to the picture and it breaks the trance.
Santana looks up, wondering how the hell water could possibly be leaking from her ceiling when she realizes she's crying. She sets the picture back down on her dresser and swipes the back of her hand over her cheeks a couple of times when she hears footsteps coming up the stair.
It's time.
Reaching out, she kills the lights in her room and quickly gets under the covers, lying with her back facing the door. Her mom checks in on her whenever Santana's in trouble or she's extra worried about her daughter. The way she's been acting she can't blame her mom for lingering in the door way. She can feel the gaze burning into the back of her neck, but she just ignores the ache she feels and stares ahead until her mom is finished.
That's about three long minutes later.
The door is shut softly behind her and Santana remains where she is, her ear cocked towards her mom's room as she listens to the movements of her mom getting ready for bed. Once she hears the light clicking off in her mom's room the covers are thrown off and she's opening her window. She crouches in the frame, looking down and seeing Matt stepping out from behind a tree and waving up at her.
She jumps down with ease and walks up to join Matt. "You OK?" he asks sincerely as he begins to walk down her block.
Santana follows him, even though she has to pause because…did he really just fucking ask if she's OK? Seriously?
Too baffled to even think about how she would answer the question, Santana remains silent, walking with her head down and her arms crossed over her chest. Matt looks sideways at her. "Did you hear me?"
"I fucking heard you," she responds.
"Well," he shrugs. "Are you?"
Without even thinking about it, Santana stops, balls her hand into a fist, brings her arm back, and then swings it forward, hard. There's a satisfying crack ringing in her ears and she realizes she broke Matt's nose, but vampire healing is just as good as hers so she knows it probably doesn't even hurt him. She stumbles forward with the momentum and Matt falls back on his ass, but is up quickly. Her knuckles will be bruised, she's sure of that, and the way Matt's looking back at her, both hands resting on either side of his nose, she feels like they won't be the only thing bruised.
But she can't help but smile back at him.
Another series of cracks breaks the silence as Matt puts his nose back in place. "Now are you OK?"
"I am, actually," she replies.
"Good."
Then, with even less warning than her punch to Matt, his boot connects to her face and sends her flying backwards. She can feel blood pouring out of her nose and just an endless, throbbing pain coming from her entire face. It feels like someone threw a car at her head and she thinks she should get up, she knows that she should, but her brain can't function right now.
Footsteps approach and Matt stands over her head before he crouches down and leans over her body. She wants to say something but her mind is slowly but surely ceasing all functions. Her arms that were half heartedly trying to push her up before have stopped moving and her breath is slowing to a long, steady pace.
Matt's face gets blurry and she thinks he's talking but the words sound far away.
Then everything goes black.
Author's Note 2: I'm awful with these cliffhangers...so sorry!