Santana

Only through the most stretched and strained circumstances had she and Finn really been able to call themselves friends, loosely connected through other, closer relationships, before being firmly bound together by Glee. One thing Glee did, whether or not Santana had always wanted to admit or acknowledge it at the time, was take people who had very little in common and quite a lot to dislike, get annoyed by, or resent about each other, and somehow still force them to become friends, even family. Finn Hudson was not someone she would have voluntarily spent any time with of his own merits, at least not after having bagged him once in bed, and yet, for various reasons, they had become exactly that. Friends. Family.

And now that she was living with his stepbrother, who had once had a crush on him, and his former fiancé, that had tied him into her life all the more firmly, even if she had little to do with him anymore at all. No matter the miles apart or the differing lives they were beginning to lead, Santana couldn't seem to escape the presence of Finn, always at least loosely in the background of her life.

But now he was front and center of their thoughts, their emotions, and try as she might to make it otherwise, of hers too. Because Finn was dead. Finn was dead, and Santana had no idea what to think or feel about it. Or at least, she had no idea what she would allow herself to think or feel about it.

She was sorry, of course. Sorry that anyone would die at nineteen years old, before they had really done anything in life at all. People could say all they wanted about how Finn had won Nationals in New Directions or impacted people's lives for the better just by being himself, but Santana knew it would all be something to say just to make themselves feel better, to try to give people false hope and inspiration to take out of what was essentially just a really shitty fact. Finn was dead, and nothing he had done or been or could have done could change that. What was the point in even trying to put a positive spin on it?

She was sorry for his mother, who had already lost her husband and now had a husband in remission of prostate cancer, who had had such a difficulty and grief-stricken life and now had been given more to bear. She was sorry for Kurt's father, who had become so close to Finn and seemed to love him and feel pride towards him almost as much as towards his own son- Burt Hummel, the dad that Santana had secretly always felt fierce jealousy towards, for having the warmth and supportiveness towards Kurt that Santana had always privately craved from her own father. She was sorry for Mr. Shuester, who had grown to love Finn as his best friend more so than a favorite student, for Puck and Artie and Sam and the other guys who had actually, inexplicably, seemed to look at Finn as a leader. And of course, she was sorry for Kurt and Rachel, whose pain in the past couple of days had been so intense and unrelenting that Santana sometimes felt like she was suffocating in it, like she was choking on their grief to the point that she could barely stand to be in the room with them, their very presence slowly squeezing the life out of her.

She was sorry for them, but only in a distant way could she really connect Finn's death to having any affect, other than through others, on herself. It was hard to do that when it still didn't seem real.

Kurt and Rachel, they were real. It was real that she could hear Kurt crying behind his curtain every night, deep, shuddering sobs, that Blaine had come to stay with them and was basically at his side nearly every moment of the day, retreating behind Kurt's curtain for hours at a time as he comforted him in a low murmur Santana actively tried not to hear. It was real that Kurt's eyes were constantly swollen and red with his tears and he could not seem to meet Santana's eyes, that he had changed his clothes only once and had no hair products in his hair, nor did Blaine- and THAT was an indication of the seriousness of the situation. It was real that Rachel was barely eating or sleeping and would shower only when Santana made her, that she cried so pitifully in the night that two nights in a row now Santana had ended up crawling into bed with her and wrapping her arms around her, lying down with her until Rachel finally tired enough to sleep. It was real that Santana had lain awake after, listening to her uneven breaths and feeling heavy all over, as though she could not move if she tried, and the pain in her heart was so intense she herself could hardly draw breath, and yet still she could not really label it as being directed towards Finn at all.

Kurt was real. Rachel was real. All this anguish, being thrust into the role of comforter that Santana sucked at so much, was all real. But Finn dying? That still seemed like a cruel joke, a perverted fantasy more than anything.

She had never been close to Finn, even through the ties of Glee. The most that could be said about their relationship was that it had gradually shifted to amused affection towards each other more than outright hostility and contempt. And how could it be much more? He was a doofy, not that attractive guy with lazy work ethic and a less than brilliant mentality who couldn't dance, could barely sing, and who was way too self-righteous without knowing what the hell he was talking about the majority of the time. He sucked at sex even for a guy and the way he hung on Rachel's lips was sickening, not to mention how he had swung back and forth between her and Quinn. Hell, he had been the one to OUT her and totally ruin her life for a while, back during their senior year of high school. Sure, maybe he had tried to make up for it after, and she could admit that he did try to fix his screw ups, however incompetently, and it was true that Santana could not imagine going back to being in the closet. But the point remained that he could be a complete dumbass.

But even so, he had been part of Glee. One of the leaders of Glee, as much as she might not want to admit it. He had been one of them, and it seemed completely unreasonable, totally unfair and just wrong that he could die.

And if he could die…so could anyone, absolutely anyone at all. Quinn or Rachel or Kurt, Puck or Mercedes or Brittany…so could she. And that, as much as anything else, was preying on Santana's mind.

She had thought about it, her senior year of high school, right after she had been outed, when the world seemed too much pressure, too few positives to continue with. She had locked herself into her bathroom and taken a bottle of her mother's sleeping pills in her hand, reading the label over and over until the words blurred in her eyes. She had thought about what it would be like to lie back in the tub and take them, two at a time, until she simply fell asleep for the rest of her life. But in the end her heart had started to beat so fast and her hands had shook so much she put them back, and instead she drank half a bottle of her mother's wine and called Brittany, crying for her to come be with her. But even then, death, real death, had been only a dark thought or possibility, never truly real.

But it was real now, a part of her life, and it seemed much more obvious and true now that she could die too. She could die today without having ever really gotten anywhere or done anything important, with no solid relationship and no real contributions, with her family far away and her abuela still hating her for who she was. She could die without anyone hearing what she really thought or felt, without anyone hearing the things she generally didn't say, the things she probably should say instead of the stupid, teasing, insulting shit she usually threw their way. She could die with their last memory of her being a sarcastic comment she didn't even really mean, and that would be what they really believed was true.

What had been the last thing she said to Finn? It sure as hell hadn't been that she liked him or even sort of loved him, in the Glee family kind of way. It hadn't been that she forgave him, even if he probably already knew that, or that she did appreciate his effort to make it right, clumsy and ineffective as it was, after outing her. It hadn't been that his dancing had gotten a little better or that his singing was always best when paired with Rachel, or that even if he wasn't' any good in bed, he hadn't been her worst. It hadn't been that she still laughed when she thought about him wearing tight gold shorts from Rocky Horror or that as disgusted as she pretended to be, it made her smile when she saw the way he could make Rachel's eyes light up with her love for him.

She didn't know, and on the second night that she lay with Rachel in her bed, one arm loosely around her, this was what kept her awake, her eyes hot and scratchy with lack of sleep. What had been the last thing she said to him? What had been the last thing she said to her mami, her papi, to Puck or Quinn or Brittany? Was it something that was worth it, something that she could be okay with if tomorrow, one of them was gone?

The day before the funeral, Brittany's name was on Skype. Rachel was still sleeping that morning, and Santana could hear the low murmur of Blaine and Kurt whispering from behind their curtain, so after a glance at Rachel, seeing that she was still out for the count, she had carried her laptop into her own bed area and waited, hoping for Brittany to make the first move.

It hadn't taken long. Less than five minutes after she had logged in, she saw a single message pop up on her chat screen.

"Sanny…u ok?"

It took longer than it should have to type the one word reply, the only response that was possible, because it was giving up the mask that had never really been fully covering her in the first place.

"No."

Another few seconds and Brittany was dialing her skype, the small picture of her face in the middle of the screen already causing Santana to begin to swallow frequently, trying to force down the sudden blockage to her throat. As Santana answered, allowing the blonde's face to fill her screen, she looks back at her wordlessly, seeing the concern in Brittany's deep blue eyes, the lines furrowing her brow as she regarded her, hearing the softness of Brittany's voice as she spoke to her.

"Hey, San."

And that was all it took. Two words, after the floods of verbal rants and raves Santana had heard from so many others in the past few days, and this was what broke down the bars she had tried so hard to maintain. Two words and she felt her face crumple, her body automatically fold in on itself as she began to sob aloud, finally giving audible release to her pain.

Brittany said nothing, at least nothing that Santana was able to register or hear. She just sat there, listening, watching her cry, remaining with her in the moment, even from hundreds, maybe thousands of miles away. She sat with her, but she could not touch her, and even with three other people in the apartment, the distance between them all made Santana feel almost unbearably alone.