Everybody knew.

It had been broadcast on the local 6pm news precisely one month and twenty four days ago. It had been in the newspaper.

Blaine was there. He watched the Jet Ski hit the boy in the head and the paramedics push on his chest. He watched the boy's life fade away. He watched as the ambulance drove away without sirens, the hurse arrive at the church four days later. He watched through teary eyes as his family spoke and as the coffin was lowered into the ground. He watched and re watched it on TV every night until the man was charged. He put himself through hell as a punishment that he didn't do anything to help, that he didn't get to say goodbye until he was gone.

Walking through the corridors after summer break Blaine felt the eyes of his pairs digging into his back. People looked at him with sorry expressions. Blaine didn't know why they bothered; nobody exactly liked the boy when he was alive. Tina and Artie never left his side; they never spoke to him either because Blaine wouldn't speak. Blaine hadn't spoken to anyone since it happened. When Miss Pillsbury brought him into her office on after the first week of school he simply shook his head muttering the words 'I already have a councillor'.

This year was supposed to be the boys first year at university, his acceptance letter for NYADA arrived two weeks after he died. He was going to achieve so much, become famous. He was beautiful, had so much potential. They were meant to video call each other every night to talk about their days. They were meant to stay with each other every holiday. They were supposed to live in New York, grow up, get married, have a family, and die together. Not like this.

Blaine could never shake the thought from his mind that it was he who suggested they go on holiday with their two families. He had suggested they go for a swim in the sea. It was Blaine who couldn't revive him before the ambulance got there and he was already gone. He would not let anybody, no, not one soul, tell him that it was not his fault.

Blaine constantly found himself in the bathroom holding the container of sleeping pills. His conscience argued that the boy wouldn't have wanted this. The other part told him that the boy wanted him to save him from dying and it's his fault he did die.

His mother found him one evening lying on the floor. He was unconscious, an empty bottle beside his head. Everyone knew this was serious. They had come to discover Blaine could do this. They knew he would react like this. The love of your life died on your account. And considering there are only a handful of out of the closet gays in Lima there was no way Blaine could find somebody else. That boy was his life. People told him the pain would get better, people told him no matter how hard it is now, you will get through this. Blaine rolled his eyes. Nobody understood what kind of games the death of the boy was playing on his mind. Constantly eating away at his common sense. Taking his will to live like a normal teenage boy, well, as normal as he could be after losing his boy, being gay, getting the urge to scream at anyone that tried to tell him it's not his fault.

He couldn't concentrate anymore, everything just got worse, the pain, the staring, and the people 'just trying to help'. Blaine wanted to escape. Every time somebody mentioned the deceased boy he'd grab his chest and let the tears spill over. He didn't partake in social events. He locked himself away in his bedroom every evening. He lay on his bed hugging a picture of the two of them close to his heart; because that's the only way he was close to him.

School that year flew by. Blaine failed his senior year but it didn't bother him. He was wrong, he should've taken the year off when it was offered. He watched as his friends graduated. He watched through the window as the senior class of McKinley High School 2012 celebrated their graduation. Blaine looked on from the outside. He always looked from the outside. Blaine was an outsider, he had been his whole life, and he would be for the rest of his life. There was no way he'd be happy with anybody else. There was only one person who made him feel special.

At each yearly anniversary you would always find Blaine sitting beside the man's gravestones. Each birthday he would be there. Always with a new bunch of flowers, a guitar, and a song in his back pocket. Times like these were the only times you would hear Blaine sing, yet he never sung the way he used to, he didn't have the power. He sung about regrets, about sorrow, forgiveness, heartbreak, and love. He still cried himself to sleep every night even when he was 50. His bedroom a shrine to the boy he loves. Somewhat the feeling of the boy being around him eased the guilt, he never understood why; surely being surround by pictures of the boy you practically sent into a death trap would make you feel even guiltier. But just being around him made him feel like he wasn't dead, that he would walk through the front door and kiss him the way he used too.

People still offered him help 40 years later. The same people that had watched him suffer the first year. Those people had understood and respected his decision before. Why did they now have to be so persistent? Why did people have to keep interfering, all Blaine wanted was to be left alone. He wanted nobody distracting his train of thought. The man that he devoted his life to was all he was willing to think of. This is how god decided for him to live, this was his destiny.

Nobody could help.

Not then.

Not now.

Not ever.

This was his life; he had to live it alone.

He brought this on himself.

This was fate.

No, this was Karma.