Chapter Text
i.
Santana Angerona is completely certain death is the only pattern in the universe.
He could tell you as a child it was obviously the case, burnt sage and fresh parsley filling the hut. A calming scent for such a place.
Jars of moving organs were kept along decaying shelves and animated skeletal animals followed his every step, candles burning on each of their skulls. And yet, a simple herb was always a few steps nearby to distract his senses.
This younger verison of himself would get puffy with endless hysterical tears, a direct cause from waking nightmares only potions could ease him down from- unethical but impossible to solve otherwise.
His eyes remained distant and unsure of every breath afterwards.
"We're all gonna die."
It wasn't like it was a deterrent from going about his day to day routines. The truth has always been told upfront; what you witness you cannot alter.
And what he witnessed every day was death.
Small and insignificant,
A frog torn apart by birds on the front porch. It's mucus melding with saliva, beaks sharp and eyes far more piercing.
Loud and sudden,
Car accident on the bridge across the lake into town. A mother and her niece on a night drive to meet with extended family.
Long and endless,
The goblin girl that lives close to the hut whose parents begged for Gran Gran to "cure" her.
They're all dead now.
He stares at the world like it's already ended, and has sense he was born.
Intoxicated or not he's learned to detatch himself from Liera all together. Haunting the bus stops, the tiny outlet mall, and local parks like a living tall tale.
The people in the grocery store hesitate when passing by him. He hears whispers,
That one's under The Hag's spell.
I wouldnt trust him.
Don't follow him anywhere.
They're all damned too. At least when he looks over at them and their domestic average qualities, its a reminder many won't make it. They aren't ready for the infection.
He takes a bag of plain corn chips, placing it into a small grocery bag beside a salsa jar- his hands feeling unreal and cold.
Santana is used to eating taboo blends from Gran Gran's couldron; alien in comparison to what his fingers cross over now. Reptilian skins, dried humanoid flesh, cyclop membrane, and plenty of live insects.
He didnt know to fear most of these things growing up, there simply was never a great comparison until later in life. By the time he learned what an average teenager gobbles down he'd adapted just fine to the horrors the hag provided.
But the few things he grabs inside the snack aisle are what he'll store in his bedroom, while staring at the wall, waiting to feel real again.
As he checks out, he makes the mistake of glancing at the cashier for a brief quiet moment.
It's an older man, graying hair and kind nervous smile. Half elf, cerulean blue eyes.
He avoids interactions because they all feel too temporary and fueled with fear by the other participant. He dosen't mean to hold eye contact like he does, it just happens.
"Find everything okay?" The man asks.
The bravest one he's met today by far.
His name tag reads-
No, best not to read it.
Santana nods his head, hair falling over his face. He grabs the single bag. Now just waiting for his receipt, not that he really needs it, but he knows thats what people do. And sometimes he wants to feel like "people".
The machine stutters, leaving a long pause between them, likely malfunctioning.
The half elf apologies and attempts pulling the paper out himself.
"Here you are-"
"Sorry." Santana breathes, staring at the worker's forearms now.
And he means it too.
Not just for the broken machine, but for everything that breaks that seems consistent- for the age in this man's face and the fact he's kind. For the shifts that will repeat over and over until there's no work to be done at all.
His eyes whell up ever so slightly before he takes the paper from the man's hands. Strong and handsome, well used with calluses, and a wedding ring around a finger-
Instinctively his body reaches and gags. Santana feels queasy, he's stomached human flesh better than the sight before him.
The cashier frowns with wide eyes,
"Are you okay, son?"
Santana dosen't know what to say.
He opts to not say anything at all.
The walk home is long and hypnotic.
Gravel transistions to a single dirt road that's linear and stretches on to a little dot in the distance. Like a target, like a barrel of a gun- like a clear point of death.
A point you reach and everything ends.
It reminds him of the many stolen artifacts back in the living room closet. Specifically a four inch Colt Anaconda revolver, taken from a now overzealous corpse (who'd been so certain he could threaten The Avalon Hag). He's never told anyone, but he cleans it every Friday after work.
One of his coworkers whose an older dwarven woman grumbles off and on about how to handle them. He didn't mean to listen in, nor did he intend to internalize the random facts- namely that even if you don't use it, you should keep it clean.
And he really dosen't shoot it. He talks to no one while holding it underneath his jawbone, no bullets to be found, just adjusting to the impeding silence and easing his head to a small harmony.
Maybe his grandmother knows, realistically she must- everything in Avalon she tracks. But she's never moved it or hidden it. Never once confronted him about it. She must be confident he won't really hurt himself and like always, has no idea how to engage with the topic without worsening things.
Santana often finds himself on the floors of every place he frequents. His own bedroom. The dirt deeper inside the forest. The break room of his workplace or the walk in freezer. Everywhere he can lay down, he does.
Flashes of scenes fly across his eyes from all points of the world. What assaults his mind and eyes are hazy and muffled by the surrounding winds on his way home.
Visions of the lines beside lips pulled taunt when mouths opens too wide, screaming out in a primal way. Only the most desperate of sounds.
Car alarms blare out, footsteps hitting kitchen floors and hospital rooms, families begging any God to help them run faster or to find help sooner.
The world weeping, again and again.
He finds himself stuck on the road. Laying down with his bag and half ruined receipt. Ink blotting the bottom by accident.
The sky is a thin gray, the grass around him bleak and pale, the dirt road a beige dusty hue- everything perfectly nothing before the dark oak trees grow ahead.
He closes his eyes and listens to The End.
He cannot find his breath.
It feels like he's been punched in the chest before inhaling the right amount, and now his lungs just can't catch up no matter what he tries.
There's some certainty he's dying, becoming apart of this pattern thats been waiting for him.
One that's opened a door and asked,
Did you think you werent apart of me? Just because you ended up outside my window and witnessed me?
At his side, a brush of coldness hits his face. Cold tar tendrils stretch to his body, pulling it to the source. He cranes his neck back more, eyes looking the best they can with what plagues him. Finally he can make out a large towering form, an open ribcage, heartless.
The Hag of Avalon.
She takes him the rest of the way.
She always does, no matter how far.
Later that night he'll help her put together bones and dusts for a horrible idea she's had. Something revolving curses and age old revenge. Not that he minds her work being so horrible. The only thing he's ever dared loved simply is this way, he won't run from it.
She's never visually grown affectionate for him, outside of a few awkward attempts, he knows thats just not how she works. But there's small tells of bigger emotions. Namely her intense posseivness.
A few tendrils curl around his forearm as he works beside her. Grounding him, squeezing him for a moment- before retreating back to the brewing pot.
He loves the sound of her movement, the quickness and steady groaning that sometimes leaves her body. And today its paired with what lurks beyond their home.
Theres a storm outside the hut.
He can see the winds violently move tree branches outside their windows.
He casually blabbers on about shutting the shed doors before Gran Gran puts up a finger.
"Outside." She asserts in a croak.
Her voice as inhuman and cold as always.
He walks out onto the porch with her.
Through the small openings in between the rotting trees above he can witness how dark that gray has gotten. How much the storm progressed in his absence.
"North."
Santana furrows his brow, too tired and unmotivated to stay out here long. But there's no denying his grandmother.
There's not anything noteworthy towards the horizon- just dark clouds and winds.
He looks anyway.
The concept of faith, he bitterly thinks to himself.
Gran Gran's large body spills across the wooden porch and her multitude of hands reach towards their shared view.
“Cloud patterns for a storm. Do you see?"
Santana nods, "I see yeah..the gray stuff. Yeah."
She hums.
Only he'd describe it that way, to anyone else its a gurgling mess.
"Walk onto the dirt." She demands, "Then wait for it to reach us."
He listens with a sigh.
Internally, he's thinking he should go back to his room to sleep forever. That he can learn whatever lesson this is through his windowpanes and thin wooden walls. And naturally, clean up the mud that awaits him the morning after, but he dosen't dare do that yet.
He plants himself in front of their house, eyes looking into the sky. They squint as a mean downpour begins, hitting the worn cotton of his T-Shirt and exposed arms.
He breathes.
His lungs accept the slight burn,
But with the preparation and waiting it's easy to take in all the misty air around him.
And then, so clearly,
He realizes he's actually breathing.
The rise of his chest hit repeatedly by droplets that urge him to keep the process clear and loud.
The wind picks up faster and faster, leaves hitting his back and dirt lifting off the ground onto his jeans. He's waited long enough now that the storm is undeniably directly above him. He can hear trees deeper in the forest breaking with their age and dead bark. A few windows shatter from the hut, but he dosen't stop staring ahead.
He's been caught up in bad weather after long shifts. When recounting all of those instances he's never really stood in them too long unless he was dissociating.
It was always about getting through it as fast as possible if he noticed at all.
But this is different.
His heart is thumping like a caught rabbit's, his eyes no longer bracing for the rain but crinkled with a smile, full teeth bared to heaven. There's a chance The Hag is making the winds all the more harsh and nasty, adding to the thunder that shakes his vertebrae- as some measurement of what he can handle. Still, its not something he minds either way.
He's surrounded in the chaos, he keeps facing the source. The sky above.
It's so peaceful to finally have it hit him.
He hears in his head,
In the warmest of praises,
"Good job."
And he thinks, not to anyone in particular, this may be the best its ever going to get. And he dosen't hate that idea as long as he gets it again.
That was seven minutes before he ran back into the cabin, laughing so deeply he nearly fell over onto the countertop. Smiling ear to ear, cackling "There's mud everywhere Gran Gran! Look at me!". Shoes ruined and making everything messier by the minute.
The Hag nagged him to clean everything up. Genuinely nightmarish with how her form hits the walls and chases him around the house.
But of course, this was a mess she helped make too. One she was proud of causing; it meant if he could find relief in this, her sorcerer could find it again with worse.
That was seven weeks before Santana fell down the dirt road again, but got himself up before anyone else could assist.
In the back of his mind he assured himself she'd be there if the chaos wasn't something he could face alone but for now he could. Because the closer it got, the quicker he'd be able to breathe.
That was seven years before the hut was full of ash and screaming. His voice raw and broken with grief. An empty bed haunting him with the sentence: what did you expect? And a living room closet missing one of it's keepsakes now destroyed with magic.
A point prior to his illusions of being led down roads forever. As if that road was one he'd always walk with someone else.
Before his grandmother was dead.
Despite how impossible it feels,
The outbreak isn't the worst part.
No storm could fall into the planet and erupt the world the way that bedside did. A quiet, small end for the only thing he cared about. No chaos, no screaming- just a story ending.
The only one he's ever cared to be apart of.
ii.
"I love you."
The first time Santana conjured those words to anyone, it wasn't exactly very clear who they were meant for.
He'd been six years old, looking at an old photograph of his parents- the only thing on his bedroom wall at the time.
The Polaroid was sun kissed and blurry. Within it's white frame his mother holds up a camera. They stand smirking while on a distant coast. Her arm wraps over his father's shoulder bringing him into a tight side hug.
The small words written underneath it say,
"What you witness you cannot alter."
He's memorized every aspect of it. On the back, both of their first names were signed with a date that wasn't even here yet. Likely when everything would go to shit.
He stares at it, too high up to really reach.
Behind him The Avalon Hag looms above, her dark neck bent where it hits the ceiling.
He dosen't scream or try running anymore, he's scared of a lot worse than her now, and shes the only one who can ease him through what he sees.
Her body moves closer in a glimpse of a nearby mirror, one that's cursed to show the person dead and rotted- excluding herself of course. Those slick tendrils pool closer and closer to his back with nearly no sound.
She speaks to him for the first time in a long while.
"What you see will become reality." She whispers, "They died thinking they could stop it."
Santana trembles with a sudden hiccup, accompanied with a newfound melancholy. His body curling in on itself already smaller than before.
"You need to grow strong, my sorcerer. You shall know The End and conquer it."
Her hands crawl down his back to wrap around his weak biceps. She pulls on his body subtlety, attempting to yank him away from this picture he stares at far too much.
This is the only thing he wants to do when he's under the calming influence of a potion and not immediately haunted by premonitions. It bothers her.
This is meant to be a cold lesson.
One that teaches him he'll die too if he dares change fate, or worse, stays inside staring at what couldve been. She would tear it apart if it didnt hold actual importance to their work here. His state is inefficient and annoying.
She dosen't exactly need him hyper and ready to become a grand hero, after all, she scorns such things. But she dosent enjoy his attention on what left long ago. This is the same reason she refuses to talk about any details surrounding who these people were, all that matters is he's left alone now.
"A greater waste, Santana, to want to change the past. As it's always futile to change anything at all."
She drags him further away from that past with her body.
But thats not how he sees it.
To Santana, being pulled back in this fashion is the closest thing to a hug.
He willingly backs away from the faces of his parents to throw himself into her body.
His hands, small and shaky, clutch onto her freezing body. His face pushes into her with as much might as he can muster.
"Stay!!" His inner thoughts cry, barely audible in her mind. "Don't go! Don't leave me!"
He stomps his feet still scarred by the splinters across the decaying floor.
"Pleaseee!"
His face turns only for a moment back at the wall when he hyperventilates out garbled nonsense, likely a poor attempt at mimicking her deep speech. He stares at the old photo one last time that night.
In his mind a sentence becomes pointed. "I love you!"
He cries into her mass, his tears a delicious thing to her any other day,
Or in truth, really any day prior to this one. Its not a meal she can grow an appetite for, for the first time, she dosen't feel the need to make him weep harder.
Because this is the first time she's been hugged too.