In the next room

***Warning: Major character death***

"He really was a great singer," Kurt closed the laptop and pushed it away from him. He pushed the air through his lips and closed his eyes, trying to expel the thoughts from his mind.

But he didn't want to expel them, from his mind. He never wanted to stop thinking about Blaine. It didn't matter that nearly 15 years had passed since his death. He would always think of him with equal fondness and pain. With a sense of loss and injustice. Injustice that he wasn't in Kurt's life anymore, but more that so many people in the world didn't get to know him; didn't get to appreciate him.

"I know," Rachel sighed from her position flopped back on the mountain of soft pillows. She hadn't needed to watch the videos. She had seem them many times before. "He should be here with us."

Kurt blinked back the tears and fought the tightness in his chest as he looked over at Rachel. She looked back at him with sad but calm eyes.

"Thank you for agreeing to hang out tonight," Kurt said. "Julian is sympathetic, but he didn't know Blaine and I think part of him feels jealous sometimes."

Rachel sat up and placed a hand on Kurt's arm.

"Hey, I like that we get to be together to remember him," she shushed. "Julian understands, I'm sure."

Silence spread from her last words and Kurt struggled again. He thought it would get easier over the years. It was meant to get easier, and in a way it had. The pain didn't subsume him every day and sometimes he even thought he forgot that Blaine wasn't there. They hadn't been together when the accident had happened, and they'd been living in separate states. Some days it was just like that had never changed, and Blaine was there, in Ohio, just out of reach.

But he wasn't.

Well, he was in a way, at the Lima Cemetery. Kurt hated going back to visit because that's all there was to visit now. His Mom, Blaine, and even his Dad now.

It wasn't fucking fair. Nothing was fair.

Blaine should still be there really. Blaine should be singing for all the world to hear, happy and content. He should be there with Kurt.

Kurt climbed onto the bed and into the soft cushions of the bed, and into Rachel's welcoming arms. He squeezed his eyes shut and just let her hold him, because she knew that was all she could do; all she should do.

He kept his eyes shut, and listened as she recited what had become a ritual of theirs on this day in February every year. She had learned the passage for an audition one year and it had had such a profound effect on them that she made sure she remembered it for each anniversary.

"Death is nothing at all
I have only slipped away into the next room
I am I and you are you
Whatever we were to each other
That we are still
Call me by my old familiar name
Speak to me in the easy way you always used
Put no difference into your tone
Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow
Laugh as we always laughed
At the little jokes we always enjoyed together
Play, smile, think of me, pray for me
Let my name be ever the household word that it always was
Let it be spoken without effort
Without the ghost of a shadow in it
Life means all that it ever meant
It is the same as it ever was
There is absolute unbroken continuity
What is death but a negligible accident?
Why should I be out of mind
Because I am out of sight?
I am waiting for you for an interval
Somewhere very near
Just around the corner
All is well.
Nothing is past; nothing is lost
One brief moment and all will be as it was before
How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting when we meet again."

By the end of the passage Rachel's voice was barely a whisper, and broken at that. The tears streamed down Kurt's face, but he lifted his head up to the ceiling. He didn't believe in God. He didn't believe in prayer.

But he believed Blaine was there.

A/N: The passage is from Canon Henry Scott-Holland, 1847-1918, Canon of St Paul's Cathedral, London