The ticking of the clock sounded through the otherwise silent kitchen. Each clack of its moving hands jarred Santana's nerves but she kept her face as stoic as possible.
Quinn Fabray could not have looked more out of place sitting opposite her. Her prim and proper comportment stood in stark contrast to the casual clutter and hodgepodge decor of the Pierce-Lopez household. Two cups of tea sat untouched on the table and released tendrils of steam into the oppressively tense air between them.
"You're looking a bit rough," Quinn commented at last. "What happened to your face?"
"It's good to see you, too. How's life been treating you?" Santana queried sarcastically.
"Sorry, I guess that wasn't the best lead-in. It's just that you've got a pretty nasty scar that I don't remember being there before."
"It was just a freak accident," the dark haired woman explained with a dismissive wave. "Don't worry about it."
"All right," the blonde said slowly, clearly holding back a dozen follow-up questions. "Let's change topic. How are you feeling?"
"As well as can be expected."
"That's good. Keeping busy?"
"Yep."
"Have you spoken to the council about the extra time you took off?" Quinn questioned anxiously. "Did they mind you adding an additional two weeks?"
"I contacted them briefly. I told them if it really bothered them that much, I'd just call it an advance on future vacation time and not take any breaks for the following year."
"And that actually worked?" the former Ravenclaw asked incredulously.
Santana shrugged.
"They're familiar with my reputation in the courtroom and they're not keen to get on my bad side."
"It's lucky you're the best at what you do," the other woman remarked as she took a tentative sip of her tea. "It gives you a little leeway to make demands."
"One of many advantages," the brunette agreed. "The salary doesn't hurt, either. Listen, Fabray, I've never been very good with small talk so I'm just gonna get straight to the point. I apologize if this comes out a bit bluntly. We were never exactly what I would call friends. So tell me why is it that, all of a sudden, you've got your nose up my ass?"
Quinn's face flushed and she took another drink before responding.
"The truth is, Santana, this isn't entirely my choice. It's something I promised Brittany. She always wanted to know that somebody else would have your back if she wasn't around. You don't exactly make that easy for people to do so she assigned the task to me. She was a wonderful woman and a fantastic friend so I said yes. It was the least I could do and no amount of surliness from you is going to make me go back on my word."
Santana shook her head and smiled. Brittany. Even though she'd had no way of anticipating her fate, her first concern had been ensuring that the love of her life would not be left alone.
"Fair enough," she told the other woman. "I appreciate the way you're respecting her wishes."
"Thank you," Quinn replied curtly as she smoothed her skirt to avoid eye contact.
"Anything else you want to ask me about during this check-up, doc?"
The blonde tightened her lips and fought to suppress her annoyance at how quickly her companion's acerbic wit had returned.
"Not really. I just wanted to check on you and see how you were doing," Quinn said as she rose and grabbed her jacket from the back of the chair. "I suppose it's comforting to find that you're the same as ever. Where did you go on your vacation?"
"Camping. Fresh air helps me clear my head."
The two women walked to the front hall with Santana in the lead, ready to open the door and send her visitor on her way.
"Just send me a letter if you need anything," Quinn told her as she paused in the doorway to look back at the widow. "Or you can just come over. It doesn't matter what time; I'll help you in any way I can."
"Thanks, I'll remember that."
The blonde hesitated a moment and the dark haired woman had to struggle to keep from stomping her foot with impatience.
"You're... you're not the only one who suffered a loss here. Just keep that in mind. Take care of yourself, Santana."
The brunette opened her mouth to reply but Quinn had already disapparated, leaving her infuriated at the fact that her old rival had gotten the last word.
... ... ...
"How did it go?" Brittany asked while she brushed her fingers along her wife's furrowed brow.
Santana had climbed into bed and summoned her almost immediately after Quinn's departure. They were now nestled side-by-side on the mattress with their limbs intertwined.
The smaller woman huffed and crossed her arms over her chest.
"As awkward as it's always been with us," she said. "However, I did gather from her that this impromptu display of uncharacteristic friendliness was at your behest."
Brittany kissed her neck to drive away her frown.
"Guilty as charged," she admitted as she propped herself up on her elbows. "Are you mad?"
Santana tried to scowl but couldn't maintain the expression, try as she might.
"No," she admitted. "I just wish you would have given me a bit of a heads up first."
"So you could change your address and hide, just to avoid having to owe her anything?" Brittany asked with a knowing smile.
"I guess you're right. I don't tend to welcome other people into my life with open arms."
"Except for me."
"Yeah, but that's you," Santana said. "It's different. You always did have a way of managing to be the exception to every rule."
Her wife smiled at the round-about compliment and pressed her lips to Santana's gratefully. She broke the contact to rest her head over the dark haired woman's heart and listen to its steady drumming. The pleasant familiarity of the moment helped calm the brunette's agitated nerves and left her feeling overwhelmingly sleepy. Even after her brief nap, she was still exhausted. She snuggled more comfortably into her side of the bed and played lazily with a few strands of the other woman's hair.
"Sing a song for me, Britt," she murmured drowsily.
"Which one do you want to hear?"
"What about that muggle one that your father used to sing sometimes?" she suggested. "The one we had played at our wedding. Do you remember how it goes?"
"Yeah, I do. I always thought it was so pretty."
"Sing it for me."
"I may not always love you, but long as there are stars above you, you never need to doubt it. I'll make you so sure about it. God only knows what I'd be without you..."
Brittany trailed off as she noticed her spouse's eyelids beginning to droop.
"Keep going," Santana urged as she opened one eye to look at her. "Please. Just until I fall asleep."
"Okay," the blonde agreed quietly.
She shifted so she could stroke her wife's hair while she continued. The other woman rubbed her back appreciatively and smiled.
"If you should ever leave me, though life would still go on believe me, the world could show nothing to me. So what good would living do me? God only knows what I'd be without you."
The brunette drifted off again and the tension in her body eased as Brittany melodically repeated the last line.
"God only knows what I'd be without you... God only knows what I'd be without you... God only knows..."
At last, Santana's fingers relaxed and uncurled. The Resurrection Stone dropped from her limp hand onto the floor. Brittany vanished and the smaller woman was left unconsciously alone in the otherwise empty bed.
If only she could have held onto that peace while she was dreaming. However, it was then that a ghost of an entirely different nature than that of her late wife rose from the past to haunt her.
...
It was the summer before their final year at Hogwarts. Santana still wasn't sure what had prompted her to tell the truth; all she knew, then and now, was that she couldn't live with the lie a moment longer. So she decided to finally talk to her parents.
Knowing that she couldn't face that conversation alone, she sent an owl to Brittany asking her to come help. The distance between their houses wasn't very great, as the crow flies, so the blonde was climbing off her broom in front of the Lopez residence within an hour.
Santana ran out to meet her and nearly bowled the other girl over as she threw her arms around her neck. They walked into the house hand-in-hand and the smaller teen asked the blonde to wait for her in the living room while she called for her mother and father. They answered the sound of her voice almost immediately and then there was no turning back.
The two girls sat beside one another on the couch, facing Mr. and Mrs. Lopez, and Santana finally confessed the feelings she had been hiding from them for longer than she cared to remember. She almost breathed a sigh of relief when her revelation was initially met with only confusion and a series of questions. However, that would have been relaxing a moment too soon.
When she grabbed Brittany's hand and told them of her love for the person at her side, the shift in their moods was drastic and immediate. Santana wondered which infuriated them more: that this girl had been carrying on a secret sexual relationship with their daughter for nearly two years or that she was a half-blood? Regardless of whichever was the answer, the news left her mother speechless and threw her father into a terrifying rage.
He bore down upon them both and his face grew crimson and contorted. His moustache twitched furiously as his mouth tried to form words that would accurately express his objections to this match.
"How dare you?" he demanded. "You lying, sneaky, ungrateful little brat. You have some nerve..."
His black eyes felt as if they were burning a hole through her. Santana pressed herself as far back into the couch as she could to escape his wrath.
"Bad enough that you had to tell your mother and me about these unnatural desires you have, but then you chose to invite her here on the day that you did it? You expect us to welcome this filthy abomination into our family? We were already being remarkably lenient allowing the two of you to be friends! For God's sake, Santana! ¿Dónde está tu cabeza? What were you thinking? We may not have instilled you with all of the values we might have hoped, but we certainly didn't raise a blood traitor..."
The brunette's lip curled at the way he had insulted the other girl but, in spite of herself, her eyes smarted with tears at his disappointment in her conduct. Then he rounded on the other teen.
"And you!" the man thundered so loudly that it reverberated through the house and made the blonde flinch as if she had been struck. "How can you possibly sit here before me as if you have any right whatsoever to make a claim on my daughter's affections? You know the shameful lineage you possess and you are aware of our feelings on that matter. Yet here you are, acting as if the firstborn of a half-witted witch and a filthy mudblood could ever be worthy to so much as breathe the same air as a descendant of the flawless Lopez line..."
"Flawless?" Santana at last interjected as she stood. "Even you aren't that delusional. They're far from perfect. They're inbred, Papi! That was the only way to keep the line 'pure.' "
"Our ancestors did what needed to be done, and never once did that include allowing this sort of disgraceful riff-raff..."
"Don't talk about Brittany like that! She's a human being and more worthy of love than this entire family put together, myself included. Hell, I'm lucky she'll even have me, considering that this is the sort of supremacist, prejudiced, outdated stock I come from! I'm embarrassed to share your name!"
Her father's hand flew so quickly that she had no way of anticipating or blocking the blow. Santana crumpled upon impact and her face struck the edge of the end table beside the sofa. She pushed back up to her feet almost immediately. A slow trickle of blood slid from the wound beside her eye and pooled at the corner of her mouth.
The injured girl spat out the unpleasant taste of iron and nodded the grim acceptance of her father's reaction. Then Santana suddenly realized that the blonde was standing next to her, had rushed to her side the moment she fell, and she drew courage from the way her girlfriend's hands gripped her protectively.
"You know what?" she demanded. "The sad thing is it doesn't even matter if you hit me. The fact is, I'm going to take Brittany's name as my own and there's not a damn thing you can do about it."
A glint appeared in her father's eye. Challenge accepted. He reached into his pocket and drew his wand. His daughter crossed her arms over her chest and glared. However, when he leveled it, the end pointed not at his defiant child but at her lover. Santana tried to push Brittany out of harm's way but her timing was off by a fraction of a second. The curse grazed the side of the girl's head as it passed and a crimson flow immediately spilled from the gash. Dazed, the blonde grabbed the other teen's hand as they tried to run toward the front door.
Mr. Lopez attacked again, not even bothering to speak the necessary words. His arm merely jabbed through the air and the force of his fury sent jets of fire shooting in all directions. Several reached their moving target and slashed through Brittany's clothes to leave deep cuts across her back, shoulders, and legs. Still, they ran, knocking portraits askew and sending vases crashing to the floor in their wake. At last, Santana could see the entrance hall and the way out. She picked up the pace and tightened her hold on the other girl's hand as she pulled her along.
Once outside, there was no time to think, no time to plan. Santana grabbed Brittany's broom from the grass, straddled it, and tugged its injured owner onto her lap. Cradling the bloodied blonde to her chest, she kicked off the ground without looking back. Her father's echoing shouts told her that he had followed but found that he was too late to stop them.
She couldn't possibly go to the Pierces' house - not with their daughter looking like this - so she flew to the nearby woods and touched down under the shade of the towering trees. Already, she could feel the flow of liquid soaking into her own clothing and the other teen's disoriented moaning sent shivers down her spine.
Her adrenaline was pounding through her veins. She carried Brittany to the softest patch of ground she could see without her legs buckling even once. Tears streamed down her face as she took in the severity of the damage. One side of the girl's face was covered in blood and her shirt and pants were tattered in places. Carefully, she rolled the blonde onto her side and, when she saw the sickening lashes in her flesh, Santana tasted bile. With shaking hands, she pulled her wand out of her back pocket and aimed it at the worst of the wounds.
"Vulnera Sanentur," she choked out through her sobs. It took several repetitions but the bleeding finally stopped and the injuries healed.
Hiccupping and shuddering, Santana hoisted the limp girl up to lean against her shoulder. She stroked her hair and rested their heads together as she wept uncontrollably. The other teen's hand slid up to the collar of her shirt and clutched it tightly.
"I'm so proud of you," Brittany whispered. She shifted to look her in the eye while wincing at the pain that even such a small movement caused.
"Why? I nearly got you killed. This was the biggest mistake of my entire life."
The blonde shook her head.
"Hiding who you are would have been a mistake. What you did was right, Santana, and you didn't let them tell you otherwise. You were so brave."
Santana laughed bitterly.
"Yeah, I was such a goddamned hero that I put the person that matters most to me directly in the line of fire. If I had any real balls, I would have taken on that situation on my own. Now, instead of me - the one that actually pissed them off - being the one that took the hits, you've been hurt so badly you can't move and I barely got a scratch. I can't believe I let myself get you into this. I'm so sorry. You didn't deserve it. I should have known better."
"You didn't 'get me into' anything," Brittany insisted through gritted teeth, still struggling against intermittent stabs of pain. "I've known your parents for half a decade. I was aware of what would happen and how they would react. I didn't care. This was the hardest thing you were ever going to have to do and I was going to be there for you. It was my decision."
The brunette's throat tightened. She bit her lip as she met the other girl's gaze.
"So I guess this is it, huh?" she asked finally. "We made it to the finish. Now there's just you and me."
Brittany's eyelids fluttered and she nodded weakly.
"Any regrets?" she asked feebly as she traced her fingers around the girl's trembling mouth.
Santana grabbed her hand and kissed the center of her palm.
"None."
With the last of her waning strength, Brittany tugged herself upright to press a deep kiss to Santana's lips. The smaller teen responded in kind and allowed the last of her fear to ebb away as she felt her soul mate's mouth smile against her own.
The other girl had spoken the truth. No matter what else happened, Santana knew she was right. Forget the whispers at school; forget her parents; forget the house where she grew up and all the things she'd left behind - this was home.
At last, the exhaustion from her ordeal overtook the young woman in her arms. Brittany slipped into unconsciousness in Santana's embrace. The brunette looked down at her for a moment, just taking her in, and then carefully readjusted so that they could both lie down together.
She knew there'd be a lot of explaining to do when she took the girl back to her family, but at that point the speech she'd have to prepare could wait. For now, she and Brittany would just sleep, harbored for the moment in the quiet serenity of their own little world.
...
Santana awoke with a jolt. The woman's chest ached with the pain of her recalled emotions and the traces of moisture along her cheeks told her that she had been crying in her sleep. Her right hand tightened, expecting to feel the press of the stone against her palm. When she realized that it had dropped to the floor, she scrambled to retrieve the enchanted object.
Just having that treasure in her hands brought an immediate comfort but she knew she wouldn't be satisfied until she put it to its intended use. Three turns and she wasn't alone. Three simple turns and her world was whole again.
"I thought you were going to sleep," Brittany said. "What happened?"
"I needed someone to talk to," Santana sniffled.
Her wife nodded understandingly, although her eyes still searched the other woman's face for the origin of her sudden distress.
"What did we do to deserve this?" the brunette demanded suddenly.
"Deserve what?"
"This!" the dark haired woman exclaimed, moving her hand through the air in the space between them. "Was everything else not enough? All those muttered comments... my family... those assholes from the Quidditch team that wrote things on your locker... the pricks from Slytherin that tried to beat us up... the at-arm's-length treatment we got from everyone once we graduated? We went through absolute hell to be together and then... then this."
"Then I died," Brittany finished for her softly.
Santana's nose began to run and her tearducts burned with every drop that they released. She nodded at her spouse's words, still unable to speak them herself.
"Why did you have to go cover that youth uprising?" she asked bitterly. "I know we were too little to remember the elder generation of Death Eaters, but still. For God's sake, Brittany, you had to have known their offspring would be just as dangerous!"
"My job was always hazardous," the blonde reminded her. "You follow where the story leads. That's how it works. Still, if I'd thought for a second that it would take me away from you..."
She tried to take the brunette in her arms but Santana pulled away, unwilling to be held.
"It's not fair," she wailed while wiping her face angrily with the back of her hand. "It's not even remotely fair, and I will never understand the point of everything we went through if this was the way it was always going to end."
"You're looking at the wrong part of the story," the other woman told her.
They grasped each other's hands and sat cross-legged to face one another more directly.
"What do you mean?"
"Well, even in fairytales, you know they won't live forever. That's not what 'ever after' means. It's not an eternity; it's just until the end of their days. And that's okay. The whole point, the part we really care about, is that all the time they had together after they beat the bad guys was full of happiness. Even though we didn't get as long as we wanted, you and I did have that, didn't we?"
Santana nodded tearfully.
"Yeah, we did."
"So, to me, we were a lot luckier than most people get the chance to be."
"There isn't anything you wish you could change? Something you would have wanted to be different?"
Brittany tightened her lips as she thought carefully.
"Only one," she replied at last while she brought her spouse's hands together so she could enfold them in her own. Her voice came out in a fragile whisper. "I really wish we could have had a baby."
Both their eyes welled up with emotion and the brunette nodded her agreement. That would always be one of their most devastating mutual memories. They had tried everything. She still remembered entering the muggle hospital. The bustle of ordinary people and the whirring of those perplexing machines had terrified her, but she endured it in silence for love of Brittany. Her wife had wanted to be a mother more than anything, and she was willing to face whatever they had to in order to make that happen. Unfortunately, all of their combined bravery was not enough to change their situation. It simply wasn't in the cards. None of the inseminations took and they were never notified of any children available for adoption.
"It's okay," Brittany assured her, pulling Santana back to their current conversation.
She wiped the brunette's tears away with her thumbs and ignored the continuous fall of her own. Ever the one to provide comfort, even when she was the one more in need of it at the time.
"You should probably try again to get some sleep," the blonde said with a watery smile. "You have work tomorrow."
Santana groaned.
"Just what I need," she grumbled. "More people trying to make me feel better by bringing up the one thing I couldn't possibly be further from wanting to discuss with them."
"They just want you to know they care. It's not meant to hurt you."
"Well, it does anyway, whether it's meant to or not."
"Just try not to let it bother you. There are a lot of people in trouble waiting for you to help get them out of it. They need you on form."
She brushed the shoulders of Santana's shirt with her fingertips, the way she used to smooth the other woman's suit before she stepped out the door each morning. The brunette smiled at the familiar gesture and reluctantly allowed the blonde to plant an affectionate kiss on her worried brow.
Her spouse eased her back onto the bed and pulled the covers up over them. She ran her fingernails through her wife's thick, dark hair and murmured soothingly to her. Though she wanted desperately to stay awake, to release her troubled thoughts into the air, Santana found herself drifting off once more to the sound of Brittany's voice.
"It'll be all right. You'll see. Everything always looks better in the morning."