A/N: This is a oneshot in my Tomorrow's Problems 'verse, which also includes Five Times Kurt Didn't Say Goodbye and a chapter of You Had Me At Sesame Street (coincidentally entitled 'Tomorrow's Problems').
I wrote this for a prompt on tumblr, because last night I wanted to write some drabbles and was curious if anyone would actually give me prompts if I asked. Turns out that people were very willing to do so, so I actually ended up with four other stories, all of which can be found on my tumblr and on my Kaine Fanfic Masterpost, in the bottom section 'Fics that are only on tumblr'.
The same warnings apply for this as for everything in this 'verse: character death, extreme angst and possible triggers for depression
Remember/Forget
by padfoot's prose
...
Sometimes, Kurt loses his Blaine, and wonders if he'll ever come back.
Under the haze of painkillers - tugged beneath the surface by chemicals specifically designed to numb, to dull, to slowly dissolve the very humanity out of patients - he slips away occasionally. More often, recently, as the doses get higher and the pain gets worse.
Blaine's eyes - hazelhazelhazel - go bleary and blank, and Kurt can see the consciousness seeping out of them. He watches on helplessly as he slowly but surely loses his husband, his Blaine, to the emptiness that is all the doctors can offer him as an escape.
Kurt doesn't - he absolutely doesn't - resent Blaine for choosing the numbness. He doesn't think he's weak for giving in, for finally admitting that it all hurts too much and asking for an IV. He's known forever that this day would come, but before it was always an indefinite moment in the future, a time that was hazy and distant. He didn't know that Blaine would start dying this soon.
It's a silly thought, because he's been dying forever, really. They both have, everyone has, everyone in the whole damn world is travelling on this same useless path, all heading to the one destination. And some people try to take forks in the road, turn left and right and move forwards and backwards and spend years telling themselves that they're not heading towards that inevitable end, but they are. And others take shortcuts, making stupid decisions and wrong choices and mistakes, putting themselves in danger when it's so, so unnecessary. Bringing themselves closer to the finish line. Closer and closer until- until they're there. They're finished.
Kurt takes a sip of coffee as his eyes threaten to close, ignoring the guilt that bubbles in his gut at having disobeyed his and Blaine's no-coffee rule. He keeps his gaze fixed on the person before him, the virtually unidentifiable mess of tubes and machines and beep beep beep that Kurt knows his husband is buried somewhere deep within.
"Is he any better?" Rachel asks from the doorway, the dark bags under her eyes nothing compared to Kurt's.
Kurt shrugs, looks back at Blaine and wraps his hands tighter around his coffee cup. Wake up, he begs to the still and silent body on the bed before him. Just wake up.
"Can I do anything?"
Kurt shakes his head. He opens his mouth to croak out a reply, a something, but his throat stings and burns and he remembers that he has a cold too. It's not just Blaine who's sick.
The thought is bitter and cruel and Kurt knows it, but with his pounding head and all the pain he just doesn't care anymore. He wants bitterness and cruelty, because at least they're sensations. At least he can experience them and resent them and feel something.
He hears Rachel leave again, going back into the waiting room where she and Patrick have been sitting for hours and hours, refusing to budge. Kurt had told them long ago not to bother staying, but they won't listen. Maybe one of them should go - probably Rachel, who needs her rest, what with being pregnant and all - but Kurt gets the feeling that they can't stand to be apart right now. As ridiculous as the idea is, perhaps this is hurting them as much as it's hurting him.
Blaine stirs on the bed and Kurt feels his whole body go tense, tired eyes twitching as they focus on Blaine's face. Even though he knows they won't be Blaine's eyes when he opens them, Kurt still holds on to the desperate hope that, at least once more before he dies, his husband will look at him like he used to: so pure, so honest, brimming with unadorned love. A golden gaze that warms Kurt to his core, a gaze that he could eat and breathe and live on if only it were possible.
"Kurt?"
Blaine's voice is so frail that the word is more of a sound than a name, and it pains Kurt in a whole new way to realise that never again will he hear his name spoken with that reverence, that unique and unappreciated lilt that Blaine used to say it with.
"I'm here," Kurt chokes out, his throat burning but that so, so doesn't matter right now.
Blaine's eyes open a crack, revealing a sliver of dull brown irises against the too-white background. His stare is watery and confused and completely, utterly wrong, but Kurt tries not to let his repulsion show. This is Blaine, he reminds himself, all that's left of my Blaine.
He wordlessly extracts a water bottle from the bag by his feet and lifts it to Blaine's lips, pouring it into his mouth as Blaine swallows eagerly. He grunts and Kurt moves the bottle away again, replaces its cap and stows it back in his bag, straightening in time to hear Blaine say, his voice stronger now, "Where am I?"
"We're at the hospital," Kurt says slowly, carefully, watching to make sure Blaine takes in every word. "You're sick, and they're trying to help you get better."
It's a blatant lie and Kurt is sure that, even in his depleted state, Blaine knows it is. The nurses aren't trying to heal him any more. They're trying to preserve him.
"How...?"
Blaine sounds confused and worried and his eyes have opened fully now and are fixed beseechingly on Kurt, as if he knows, even through the haze, that this man is the key to everything. It hurts and it thrills and kills Kurt all in equal measures to see that, even now - when reduced to his most basic, to the rawest state of life - Blaine still trusts him completely. It's comforting in an odd, agonising way, because it assures Kurt that what he and Blaine had - have - is primal and real and deep. It proves that Blaine wasn't acting in love - that what he professed to feel for all those years is true.
"You're sick," Kurt tells his husband, reaching out a hand to still Blaine's fingers when he notices they're shaking. "So I brought you here to help you get better and-"
"It's not working," Blaine interrupts, and for a second Kurt is struck dumb but then Blaine's lips quirk into a smile and he realises it was a joke.
"No," Kurt admits. "It's not."
Blaine's smile falters a little at Kurt's tone of surrender before he makes a valiant attempt to revive it. He can't quite control his expression though - too distanced from it, from himself, by the painkillers pulsing through his veins - and instead he settles for staring at Kurt so hard and earnest. Kurt knows without a doubt that the supreme amount of effort it takes for Blaine to do even this is being exerted for his benefit alone, and so it's all he can do to smile back - weak and wavering and forced, but that's everything he can manage. Still, even now, Blaine is somehow stronger than him.
"Do you know what's going on?" Kurt asks, wondering how much time he'll have today, how many memories he will have the chance to impart, to relive, until Blaine slips away again, perhaps for good.
Blaine nods slowly, his eyes leaving Kurt's for a few seconds as he looks around the hospital room. There are bunches of flowers on a shelf opposite his bed, as well as photos that Kurt brought in when he realised he'd be staying here for a while. On the table closer to Blaine, where Kurt's abandoned coffee cup now sits, there is just one photo, a framed one of their wedding day, with a sticky note taped to the corner.
Going out with friends tonight, the note says in Blaine's messy writing, see you when I get home? Don't want a repeat of last night! Love (forever, really), B
"That's from the day I got sick," Blaine says, nodding to the note. "I left it for you in the morning when I left for school."
Kurt nods.
"You looked so beautiful that morning. I remember waking up and the sun was shining in your hair, and I couldn't believe that I hadn't even had a chance to talk to you the night before, just to tell you how much I loved you or to ask how your day had been or to thank you for leaving out dinner."
Kurt nods again, haltingly, feeling his eyes tearing up.
"The sunlight was on your head, I remember, because I didn't understand how it hadn't woken you up yet. I got up and closed the curtains so it wouldn't bother you, and I kissed your cheek and scribbled down that message and left it for you on the pillow."
Kurt bites his lip but doesn't say anything in reply. Blaine's rapt expression is so happy - he's so glad that he knows this, that the drugs and the pain haven't yet taken this memory, at least, from him.
"See, Kurt. You help me to remember. Just seeing you I can remember it all, already. Every moment with you. I'm never going to forget it."
"I know, sweetie. I know you won't. I love you."
Blaine grins impossibly wide, teeth flashing, eyes sparkling as he replies, "I love you, too."
"Now go to sleep, Blaine, please," Kurt smiles, reaching out to smooth his husband's hair, swallowing thickly and notcryingnotcryingnotcrying when Blaine pushes his cheek into the curve of his palm, nuzzling affectionately.
"Will you still be here later?" Blaine asks, suspicious.
"Of course, I will."
Comforted by Kurt's assurance, Blaine's eyes flutter closed, and Kurt wonders, like always, if this will be the last time he sees them. The last time he hears Blaine's voice, the last time he feels him move - warm and real and alive.
As Blaine's breathing deepens and he disappears into the haze once again, Kurt finally lets his tears fall, extracting his hand from where Blaine has curled around it to wipe roughly at his own face.
Staring sadly - his entire being buzzing, vibrating, overflowing with a sadness so extreme and so intense - Kurt takes in the ruined, dying body of his husband. He replays Blaine's words in his head, See, Kurt. You help me to remember, and tries with all his might to shut out the truth.
To forget that it was winter and snowing and there was definitely no sun that morning. To forget that the note was on the fridge, tacked there with a magnet, not on the pillow. To forget that he and Blaine had spent the night before up talking, fighting, and the message Blaine had scribbled was meant ironically, cruelly.
Because, he knows, deep down, that he's useless now in helping Blaine to remember. And all that Kurt really wants is Blaine's blessing - Blaine's permission to forget.