AN: This actually killed me to write and it took forever, but here it is. The song lyrics are from White Sparrows by Billy Talent. Listen to it while reading if you'd like? It adds a neat effect I suppose. Also don't hate me! I love you all! Tell me what you think if you want to, reviews make my year.

Today I walked down our old street,
Past the diner where we'd meet,
Now I dine alone in our old seats,
The cold wind blows right through my bones,
And I feel like I'm getting old,
But I wish I was getting old with you.

Blaine sat hunched over in the corner booth at The Lima Bean, the coffee shop that he and Kurt used to frequent in their high school days. His hands were curled tightly around his coffee cup as he stared straight ahead, unblinking. His unkempt curly hair and the dark circles under his eyes didn't quite fit the image his expensive black suit gave him. People who shuffled by glanced at him with curious eyes, but he was immune to it. It was ironic that when he came here as a teen the persistent, judging stares were because of Kurt too. Except back then it was because they didn't like him showing off his love for the boy, and now it was because he was ruining their day with the heartbroken atmosphere he was suffocating in, at the loss of the man that boy had become.

He was lost in teenage Blaine's memories, transporting himself back to when he and Kurt were blushing and bashful, and oh-so innocent, sitting at the same table he was now. Kurt was grinning at him, at Blaine, with a non-fat mocha latte held sassily in one hand and the dim light reflecting in his gorgeous blue-grey eyes. Blaine stomach was full of butterflies and a hint of something else, and he was thinking he was the luckiest boy in the world because he had someone like Kurt as his boyfriend. He remembered wishing they could stay like that forever; holding hands under the table and staring into each others eyes. It was that day, one out of the hundreds they spent together, that he realized he wanted Kurt by his side every single day for the rest of his life. They would go to New York together, they would live together. Life would be perfect.

Blaine's hands tightened, indenting the soft cup that held his now cold coffee. He took a sip of the bitter and cold liquid and winced at the flavor before taking another. And another. He glanced at his watch and sighed. Time passed much too slowly. Every day felt like a million years, and Blaine had never known that he could hurt this much. Everything up until this point, every single bad thing combined was nothing. It was like a tap on the shoulder or a light shove. Nothing could remotely compare to the force of the blow that life gave him when it took Kurt away. Nothing could touch him again, now that Kurt was gone. Dead. A lifeless body with no voice to sing soft wordless melodies to Blaine as he fell asleep. Lifeless fingers that would never run gently through his curls or pull his face closer for a slow lazy kiss. Eyes that would stay closed, devoid of their usual sparkle and overflowing emotions.

Blaine wanted to scream. But he'd done enough of that. He'd screamed till his throat felt like it was bleeding. He had completely lost it. It was the strangest feeling knowing that what he was doing was unstable, even crazy. But he couldn't stop. He'd knelt in the bathroom of his and Kurt's apartment screaming and crying and throwing up, utterly terrified and confused. And alone. So alone. The phone had been ringing non-stop, the answering machine picking up the calls. Various worried voices floated through the apartment to the small room where he was losing it, but none of them registered until one shaky voice, one that was so familiar and so heartbroken, finally did.
"B-blaine? Just answer the phone okay, son? I need to know that you- that you're alright."

Burt Hummel. The voice of his father-in-law.

Everything after that was a blur. Phone-calls, an airport, a flight to Lima, a rental car and a rushed drive; his hands shaking on the steering wheel. Then finally he found himself walking into that oh-so familiar house. He had stared blankly at Carole as she opened the door, seeing right through her. She had flinched away from his eyes, startled by the lack of emotion in them. This time he didn't cry, couldn't cry. But Burt did. As soon as the man saw the broken look in the eyes of his son's husband it hit him hard. His baby boy was gone. And he had gripped Blaine tight and sobbed into the young man's shirt, crying out of pure agony. Carole had stood silently off to the side, holding herself while silent tears streamed down her face. Blaine just stared at the wall, robotically patting Burt's shaking shoulders, not noticing as the two of them slid to the floor in a heap when his knees couldn't take the larger mans weight. He just kept his eyes trained on the wall. He didn't want to see the house. He didn't need to see the pictures of Kurt, of him and Kurt, that he knew were spread throughout the house proudly.

He didn't need to remember the soft and sweet goodbye hugs they had exchanged on the front porch in the beginning of their relationship, or later on as they became more comfortable with each other, the less innocent hormone-fueled kisses on the couch in the dark, a movie playing in the background. They always tried to fit in as many kisses as they could before Burt and Carole got home, as if they didn't have forever stretched out before them. And it turns out that they hadn't. If the Blaine of the past would have known Kurt would leave him so soon he would have kissed harder, held tighter, he would have filled Kurt's life to the brim with passion and love. He would have shouted his love for Kurt from a rooftop every single morning, so that their was no questioning it's depth.

And now Blaine was here at The Lima Bean, waiting. Now he was forcing himself to remember because he knew he would probably never come back. The funeral had been this morning. Seeing all of his and Kurt's closest friends standing together crying and remembering, had only made him feel more lonely. They were all devastated he knew. Mercedes, Rachel, Finn…they'd all taken the news harshly. But they had their significant others to hold them, they didn't have to go back to a lonely apartment filled with Kurt's things. Blaine checked his watch again and then stood up, grabbing his small travel bag from the back of his seat. Time to drive to the airport and catch his flight, time to go home. But it wasn't home anymore, not really. The apartment that Kurt had decorated so carefully wasn't home. The entire state of New York wasn't home, because New York belonged to Kurt. It was where he shone the brightest. So brightly that it was impossible to believe that his light had been snubbed out.

Two days later Blaine Anderson-Hummel could be found sitting alone in his and Kurt's apartment, wearing a pair of Kurt's designer pj's and watching some mindless action movie with lots of exploding buildings, because he couldn't stomach romance movies, and he didn't know what else to do with himself. He wanted to go back to work at the office, because that's what Blaine did when he was breaking down, he threw himself into everything but his emotions, putting on a mask that nobody except Kurt had ever been able to see through. His boss had refused to let him come in though, so he was stuck here brooding and hating the world. He felt old. Impossibly old for his twenty-eight years. His birthday was next week, he remembered suddenly. He was getting older and Kurt wasn't. They were supposed to get old and wrinkly together and Kurt was supposed to freak out the first time he found a grey strand in his impeccable hair, and Blaine was supposed to comfort him and tell him he was still stunning. It was everything he'd dreamed about, and everything he'd never have.
He choked back a sob. And then his phone rang, scaring him. Blaine halfheartedly moved some blankets around until he found the stupid thing, and answered without checking the caller id.

When he heard the voice coming through the speaker he almost dropped it, because he'd forgotten all about her in his grief. Ashley. Her voice was anxious.
"Blaine, I'm so sorry. I should've called days ago but I just couldn't, I didn't know what to do. And I'm a coward because I can't have this conversation in person." And then she started crying.
"Ash what's go-"
"It worked Blaine. I'm pregnant. I'm so sorry." Time stopped, if it had even been moving in the first place.
"How long? How long have you known?"
"Since, before Kurt, since the night before he-" she choked back on her words. "He knew. I called him that morning and said I needed to talk to the two of you as soon as you were together, and he knew. I could tell he was so excited and now, -now, " she broke off again. "I'm so sorry."
Blaine didn't know what to say.

Ashley was their surrogate. When they spoke of kids, and how long the adoption process took, Kurt had mentioned Rachel and the way her dads had gone about things. It had seemed like a great idea. They had no idea if the baby would come out curly-haired and brown-eyed like Blaine or pale and delicate like Kurt. Ashley was Kurt's friend, someone they'd known since college. She was pretty in a soft way and one of the sweetest people Blaine had had the pleasure of meeting. She had offered herself to be the biological mother instead of a stranger, and she was determined that it would be her, despite their objections that she couldn't handle it, that it could be a painful process for the surrogate to give up the baby. But in the end they had chosen her. The process hadn't worked the first time, or the second, but she insisted that they keep trying. She knew how much they yearned for a child. And now, somehow she was pregnant. Blaine was speechless.
"Ash, I-" he finally spoke, but then stopped. What was he supposed to say? What could he say?
"I understand that you don't want it anymore, but I just don't know what to do. You probably never want to see me again. But Blaine, he was my best friend and he wanted me to have this baby, and I'm having it. You can't stop me. I don't know how this works with the contracts and things but I just I can't, because there's a chance that it's him - that it's Kurt's little baby boy or girl and- I-I can't. I don't want a kid, I'm not ready for one but if you don't want to anymore, I'm raising it, Blaine. You got that? You can't stop me." She was sobbing harder now, practically in hysterics.
"Please don't stop me."
"Ashley, I'm coming over. Try to calm yourself down. We'll figure everything out." Blaine was good at this. At helping other people, taking care of them. He had something to do now, something to focus on besides this empty apartment. Maybe this was a good thing. Something inside him changed, flickered slightly, and he knew that he was keeping the baby no matter what. Kurt would want him too.

About eight years later

Blaine was doing okay. He had accepted Kurt's death as something that was irreversible, though it took months. In the beginning he had talked to Burt a lot, the two forming a support system for each other. No one else really understood what it was like to lose the most important person in your life, your whole world, but Burt did. It had happened to him. Twice. Burt had changed a lot, he wasn't the same man he had been all those years ago, he was quieter, more thoughtful now. But then again Blaine wasn't the same person either. Most of his friends had distanced themselves after they spoke their hollow words of support. Others that were close to Kurt couldn't look at Blaine without crying, so he had chosen to distance himself from them. He had made new friends, new acquaintances. His life was back on track, though sometimes he would just sit down in his dark bedroom and cry for hours, letting out the pain that he tried to pretend didn't exist. It was hard, and he knew it would never get easier. Burt had promised him that he could be happy, but he hadn't sugar-coated it; The pain would never go away completely. Blaine knew that, and he didn't want it to anyways, because Kurt deserved to be remembered and mourned.

The biggest change in Blaine, the thing other people never let drop even when he asked them to, was that he didn't sing anymore. He would get his guitar out and strum a melancholy tune, but he would never add his voice. At every family gathering Rachel would beg him; just one song? She tried to get her husband to help but Finn would just shake his head and sigh before gulping down another sip of beer, rubbing at his eyes tiredly. Rachel would leave the room with tears in her eyes. She didn't understand. When Kurt had passed away she had sung almost nonstop for the first few weeks, slow mournful ballads straight from the heart. Critics of her performances had remarked that her voice had gained more emotional depth suddenly. Her stage presence while already great was now stifling. People left her shows crying. Her career threatened to spiral downwards because she was too intense and the audience couldn't handle it. She was a Broadway legend now. The diva with the chilling voice that disappeared with her husband and moved back to the depths of Ohio.

Only one person in the world had heard his voice in the years since the accident. Blaine looked down at his sleeping daughter stroking her hair as he whisper-sang the last lyrics of the song as he did every night. "Please don't take my sunshine away."

Lizzie was his sunshine. She pulled him out of his depression and she was his life now. Elizabeth Kurt Anderson-Hummel. People told him she'd hate him for the middle name when she was older but they didn't know his Lizzie. She coveted her strange middle name.
"It means I'm connected to daddy, right Papa? It belongs to both of us." she had asked him one day.
With tears in his eyes he had replied. "Yes sweetie. He gave you your first name too. It was your grandmother's."
"Don't cry Papa, daddy still loves you and he's waiting for us. We all just have to be patient."
"I know, sweetie, I know." Sometimes she made it harder.

At first Blaine and Ashley were devastated when the news came that the baby wasn't a boy. They never spoke of it but both wanted nothing more than a little Kurt to have and love. Blaine had braced himself for a head of curls and skin with the tiniest hint of a tan plus whatever features of Ashley's carried through. When Elizabeth was born, -"Yes it has to be Elizabeth, Kurt made me promise that if we ever had a daughter that would be her name."- and the little tuft of hair she had was a stunning brown they hoped. When she was a few weeks old and less red and wrinkly, her creamy skin almost made Blaine weep. Then one morning a few months into being a father, Blaine looked down at his daughter and instead of the grey-blue eyes most babies are born with he was staring into Kurt's unique eyes and he dropped to his knees and cried. Now at seven years old she was the spitting image of her daddy from her cute little nose to her long legs and pudgy baby-fat cheeks. She was going to be gorgeous. Burt cried almost every time he visited.
"Reincarnation of her grandmother, she is. Strong genes in their line, her daddy looked nothing like me either."

And now as Blaine watched his little girl sleep he swore that he could feel ghostly fingers rubbing his shoulders. If he tried hard enough he could feel warmth seeping into his back, a body pressed up against his. When he got up to leave the room he saw the image frozen on the computer screen and sighed. Kurt just smiled back at him. Unplugging the laptop from the charger he carried it into the living room and pressed play.

"Blaine. I'm not in the mood to be video-taped today. Go find something else to do." The screen blurred for a minute and then Blaine heard his own voice.
"Come on you're going to love watching these when we're old and wrinkly."
"I will never be old and wrinkly and I'm offended that you would ever suggest such a thing," Kurt's beautiful face scrunched up in disgust and he readjusted his position on the couch. The sunlight seeped through the large window behind him and caught in his hair casting pretty shadows on his face.
"I'm sorry, I'll be wrinkly but you won't look a day over thirty-five," Blaine corrected.
"Thirty-five?" Kurt's voice was full of horror but he was grinning.
"Thirty then. Now come here and kiss me while my my face is still pretty."
"You're a dork."
"You love me anyway." Then Kurt got got up and his hand reached for the camera, presumably moving it out of the way of Blaine's face, and the screen went blurry for a second as he dropped it to the coffee table. It now showed an empty couch but you could still hear their voices in the background.
"Well hello there beautiful, you're a little forward but I'll take it."
"Shut-up Blaine, and let me kiss you before I change my mind."
"Sorry."
There was silence followed by more bickering followed by laughter, and then the screen went black.

Another video started up but Blaine stopped it. There were hundreds of them, he had gone through a stage where he took videos of everything much to Kurt's displeasure, and he had refused to delete a single one. He wanted to remember just how happy they were, to catch the little moments. After he lost Kurt they just depressed him and people told him to get rid of them. When Elizabeth was still a baby he saved them all onto the laptop for her and she watched them sometimes. It gave her a way to get to know her other dad. She loved the laptop and sometimes instead of Blaine singing her to sleep she would ask for a video of Kurt singing instead.
"You have to take turns Papa or it isn't fair."

Blaine closed the laptop and placed it on the coffee table. This wasn't the same apartment that he had lived in with Kurt. He had taken Elizabeth and moved a couple hours away from the big city. Ashley still lived in New York, but visited Elizabeth often. Blaine sighed and laid down staring at the ceiling.
"I miss you, Kurt." he whispered to the empty air before his eyes closed and he drifted off to sleep.

He always would.

I'm crying in pain (crying in pain),
Crying in pain,
Our love will remain,
I'm crying in pain.