A/N: Warning for anxiety, mention of blood, injuries, and nightmarish visions.

Pacing the living room in his Burberry wingtips, Kurt starts wearing a visible path in the knotty pine floor. He holds his cell phone to his ear with his right hand, and kneads his pinched brow with the fingers of his left. A song by Imagine Dragons plays over the line while he waits for someone to pick up, and Kurt has to tighten his grip on his phone to keep from throwing it across the room. Fucking ring back song, Kurt thinks. He can never remember the words to this one, so it becomes irritating when it goes on too long.

The song cuts off when the man he called picks up, and Kurt pounces.

"Chase?" he says when he hears a tired, "Hello?" come through the receiver. "Yeah, we got home alright. Listen, I have a question - did you see anybody slip something to Sebastian tonight? What? No, it's just…something happened to him when we left, and I'm a bit worried…Kevin? You think Kevin maybe...That rat bastard! No, I won't tell him you said anything…Okay, thanks…He will be, but I'll let Sebastian know."

Sebastian listens from the bedroom as Kurt disconnects that call and starts immediately on another, barely letting the poor sap on the other end of the line say, "What's up?" before Kurt tears into him.

"Kevin…yeah, hey…no, I'm not really doing all that good. Look, tell me honestly - did you give Sebastian something? Because if you did, I need to know what it was in case I have to take him to the hospital...No, I am not joking. I'm damn serious, Kevin. Something happened to him tonight, and it messed him up…Well, he was acting like he'd dropped something, except I know he didn't because I was with him all night…No, I don't care what you think! If you put something in his drink and I find out about it, I swear to God, I'm going to break into your apartment and pop the buttons off every one of those tacky Dolce and Gabbana shirts you think go with everything…then I'm going to kill you!"

Sebastian chuckles into his pillow, nearly giving himself away. He's supposed to be asleep. He thought after he got home he'd be well on his way.

Sebastian had been a mess in the parking lot, even after the specter of Kitty had faded. No matter how hard Kurt tried, no matter what he said to soothe his boyfriend, what he promised he'd do to make things better, he couldn't get Sebastian to calm down. Kurt managed to get Sebastian into the car, and ended up driving them home, while Sebastian did the only thing he could do. He passed out for the entire ride, not opening his eyelids an inch until they got back to Sebastian's penthouse. The whole trip home, Sebastian's mind stayed blank, up until he had to wake up. Then the visions came back to him, snapping at him in succession, and when he regained consciousness, he knew what he had seen in the parking lot wasn't a hallucination.

It was real.

Somewhere in the world had been a woman named Kitty, and Sebastian had witnessed her murder. He saw her get shot. He saw her bleed. He watched her die.

And even though she was dead, somehow she needed his help.

Jake needed his help.

Sebastian had to find Jake.

These are facts, clues to a puzzle he doesn't understand, but he has an urgent need to solve.

He feels like lives may depend on it. Lives close to him.

When they got home, Kurt put Sebastian immediately into a shower, and after multiple assurances that he'd be okay, left him alone to bathe - to cry or scream, whatever he needed to do. He made Sebastian a mug of steamed milk, not because Sebastian likes it, but because Kurt couldn't make him coffee, and he needed something to do, otherwise he might have a mini-break down himself. Sebastian finished with his shower, and Kurt sat with him on their bed while he drank. Then Kurt tucked him under the comforter, and kissed him goodnight.

Kurt goes into Mother Hen mode when he needs to. Usually Sebastian hates the caregiver bullshit, but this time he needed it.

He needed to know that Kurt was in his corner, and he was. He didn't judge Sebastian for his break down. Sebastian knew Kurt wouldn't. He tried to explain what he meant about Kitty and Jake, the things that he saw, even though he had no rational way of explaining them or understanding them. Kurt listened, and he tried to make sense out of it, but Sebastian was in no condition for a lengthy discussion on the subject. So Kurt sat beside him in silence, holding his hand until his eyes grew heavy, only leaving him when he felt sleep was inevitable, but as soon as Sebastian heard Kurt leave the room, he opened his eyes again. He couldn't relax. He was spooked. He knew he was at home, in his penthouse, but he felt detached, disconnected, like part of him was somewhere else.

He was afraid that other part might be with Kitty.

He didn't want to close his eyes. Every time he did, he saw Kitty staring back at him, as if she was sitting right in front of him, holding his hand instead of Kurt, whispering in his ear the same words over and over – "Find Jake. Help Jake. Please, do this for me."

Sebastian knows he isn't going to sleep tonight. He'd stay up if he had to put lit out cigarettes on the back of his hand. He can't see her again – her eyes growing dim as the life inside them goes out; the hole in the center of her forehead, breathing smoke; and all that blood, gushing down her face and painting streaks on her skin.

Her pale skin. Pale like Kurt's. With lifeless eyes, blue like Kurt's. It's too easy to mistake Kurt for her, or her for Kurt, in Sebastian's traumatized mind.

When Kurt thought that Sebastian was finally drifting off, he stepped out into the living room and started making calls to every friend they'd hung out with at the bar that night, determined to find out if someone had slipped Sebastian something without them knowing. Sebastian had already told Kurt that he didn't think so. In the beginning, Sebastian couldn't be 100% sure, but something deep down in his bones said that this wasn't a bad trip. Whatever he saw, as inconceivable as it seemed, was real. But that was the way Kurt worked. It's not that he wasn't open to the possibilities, it's just that he needed to eliminate the easily explainable first.

And regardless of how Kurt had defended them during his fight with Sebastian in the parking lot, he wasn't afraid of dumping every friend he had to protect his man.

Sebastian loves that about him.

Kurt makes his final phone call, berates his last "friend", and decides to pack it in for the night. He takes a quick rinse off and climbs into bed. He doesn't want to leave Sebastian alone. He wraps Sebastian up protectively in his arms, and holds his boyfriend against him. As far as Kurt is concerned, whatever wants to hurt Sebastian, mess with his head and tear him to pieces, is going to have to do it over Kurt's dead body. Lying in Kurt's arms, soaking in the heat from Kurt's body, fresh from the shower, filling him with warmth and comfort, and a sense of love that blankets all, Sebastian is almost fine to go to sleep. He can just about fall out into a dreamless oblivion, with Kurt there as his anchor, tethering him to reality. As long as he's with Kurt, everything can return to normal again.

Everything will be fine.

"Kitty…"

Sebastian hears the voice in his ears, weaving in and out of his head, buzzing through his sinuses. But then he hears it far away, traveling off into the distance. He shifts his eyes, looking around as much as he can without disturbing Kurt's sleep, but he doesn't see anything out of the ordinary. Just his half of the bedroom, dimly lit from the glow of a light outside.

Kurt forgot to close the blackout curtains, Sebastian thinks. But then the light turns blue, and it flickers, like a bulb from something outside has begun to burn out.

"Ja-ake," a voice sings back. "Come get me, Jake…"

Sebastian feels himself get up and start walking, but he's also lying in bed beneath Kurt's distressed print comforter, with his boyfriend's arm draped over his torso. Sebastian's footsteps start to drag, becoming heavy and loud, like he's wearing metal-soled shoes, walking across a hard, cement floor.

"Where are you, Kitty?"

A giggle – girlish, childlike – answers his question.

"Don't make me come and find you."

"Awww, but finding is where the fun is, Jakey."

Sebastian hears footsteps run away from him, lighter than his own, and he considers giving chase - why, he has no idea. But then others join them. The first set slows down as the others catch up. There's a scuffle, then a thud, several thuds, and the giggles turn in to screams.

A loud bang, like a metal pot dropping onto the cement, echoes through the building, except it's not a metal pot, and Sebastian knows it. He's heard that sound once tonight already, and he'll never forget it. A gunshot. It's a gunshot.

Somewhere in this creepy, deserted building, where Sebastian walks unprotected and alone, someone has been shot.

"Kitty? Kitty!? Oh, God no! Oh, please, no! Kitty!"

Sebastian follows that voice, those cries, even as they bounce around him, making the direction of their source unclear. But he's not following the sound, he realizes. He's following the emotion welling up within him when he hears them, when they shoot inside him and poke holes into his soul. He's following himself, because for a second, he's the person screaming. He's the man weeping, tears dripping down his cheeks, wetting a spot on the floor that's covered in old, sticky blood. Kitty's blood. Sebastian blinks, and he can see her there, lying with her eyes wide open while everything else about her shuts down.

Crouching beside the stain, holding his hand out as if he's caressing her face, Sebastian finds a young police officer. The officer looks up, dark eyes scanning Sebastian from head to foot, eyebrows pulled together in the middle.

"Who are you?" the officer asks, putting a hand to his hip, hovering where his service weapon hangs in its holster.

Sebastian should put his hands up, but he doesn't. He should stop walking forward, but he can't. What's going on now shouldn't be happening, so he figures those rules don't apply.

"You're Jake," Sebastian says. He should be asking, but he doesn't. He knows he's right. Jake Puckerman. Kitty's cop boyfriend.

"Yeah," Jake says. "How did you…" He stops himself and shakes his head. "Probably the same way I know that your name is Sebastian. There's a voice, and it whispers in my head when I look at you." Jake looks away. "It's her voice." Jake stands up, looking at Sebastian one more time, noticing his clothing, or lack thereof.

"Yes," Sebastian says, acknowledging the truth of what Jake said. There is a voice. It's not so clearly defined, but it's there, and it belongs to Kitty. This voice links the two of them together – him and Jake, and Sebastian fears it will never go away.

Having the voice of a dead woman in his head is not the way he wants to go insane.

"What are you doing here?" Jake asks, brushing his hands together and clearing away the dust that attaches to everything the second you walk into the place.

"I…I don't know," Sebastian says. "I mean, I assume I'm dreaming, and that you're part of that dream..."

"Yeah, well, that's going around." Jake sounds frustrated. He sweeps his eyes around, except they're no longer in the dusty, abandoned warehouse. They're in Sebastian's bedroom, and Sebastian is still in bed with Kurt. "Nice place. Is that a real Mitchell painting?" he asks, motioning over Sebastian's shoulder. Sebastian knows what painting Jake's referring to, but he looks over his shoulder anyway to make sure it's there, that they're back at his penthouse, which he is for a second, but when he looks back, he's with Jake in the warehouse, the switch happening so fast Sebastian's head throbs.

"Yeah. It's my…boyfriend's…" Sebastian isn't sure he should have mentioned Kurt, or that he should tell Jake anything more than he already knows.

"He's got excellent taste," Jake says with a nod.

"I'll tell him." Sebastian doesn't ask how Jake knows the things that he knows. Sebastian doesn't really want to know. This is his dream. There. That's a nice, tidy answer.

"This was our place," Jake says, looking down at his feet, at the ground beneath him, paths he'd walked many, many times to get to the woman he loved. He could do it in the dark.

He just didn't do it fast enough this time.

"What?" Sebastian says, looking up and around at the building. "You guys lived here?"

"No, but we met here," Jake explains. "This spot is on my beat, so when we started seeing each other, she knew I'd be here eventually. She'd wait for me." Jake reaches into his pocket and pulls out his phone. Swiping the screen, he brings up a picture of a young woman looking into the camera, with bright, blues eyes, wavy blonde hair falling in front of her face, and a sneaky twist of a smile on her gloss-painted lips.

"Is that…Kitty?" Sebastian asks.

"Yeah," Jake says. "Kitty Wilde. She was my girl, but I guess she belongs to all of us now."

"Us?" Sebastian asks, a lump filling his throat. He'd had a suspicion, a feeling there were more, not just him, but he wasn't certain. "Who's us?"

"You, me, them," Jake says with a sigh. "You'll see them. They'll see you. You'll find them…even when you don't want to. She gave them to us, now they're ours, and we have to take care of them."

"Why?"

"Because we're being hunted."

"Hunted? By who?"

"By the men who killed Kitty," Jake says. "The real men who killed Kitty, not just the ones that put the bullet through her head."

Sebastian sees white flashes coming from Jake's eyes, projecting images in his head.

Kitty, wearing a hospital gown, handed a small paper cup of pills that she tosses to the floor, followed by a glass of water that she bats out of an unseen nurse's hand.

Kitty, tossing and turning on a gurney, her nose swollen and bloody.

Kitty, struggling to escape, while men in white coats strap her to a bed.

A doctor giving Kitty a shot in the arm, her blue eyes glowing a metallic silver, and then bleeding at the corners.

Sebastian shakes his head to get the images to stop, but they come at him faster, thoughts that belong to Jake, thoughts that belonged to Kitty, thoughts that belong to people he hasn't met, their voices overlapping, some trying to get his attention, others wondering the same thing he is – What's going on? Why me? Why did this happen to me? I've never even met this woman! I want this to stop right now!

"Wait!" Sebastian says, expressing out loud what he and all those other voices are thinking. "I didn't sign up for this! I can't do this!"

Jake looks back at him, his face blank, his eyes exhausted, his mind done. Sebastian can feel it.

"If not you," Jake says, "then no one."

"No," Sebastian says firmly. "I can't. Look, I'm sorry about Kitty. I really am. But I can't do anything about it, and I can't help you."

"You have to, Sebastian." Jake says it like, no matter what Sebastian decides he wants, he has no choice.

"Why? Why do I have to?" Sebastian argues. "I was doing just fine until you guys dropped into my life. I didn't ask for this. No one told me I'd have to take care of anyone other than myself. And guess what? Aside from me in my life, there's only room for one other person, and that's him." Sebastian gestures to Kurt over his shoulder with a tilt of his head. "What's in it for me, huh? Why should I help you?"

"What's in it for you?" Jake laughs dryly. "You get to live, that's what's in it for you. Because, if they find us, they'll kill us." Jake's gaze flicks past Sebastian's shoulder before returning to his eyes. "Him, too."

Sebastian jerks his head around to look at Kurt, confused as to why they're suddenly back in his bedroom, with Sebastian sitting up in bed and Jake seated on the edge of his mattress. Sebastian sees the sleeping man behind him, eyes closed, unconscious to the bizarre episode Sebastian's having at this moment.

"Except what they want, they want from you," Jake adds, "so they might not let him off so easily."

Sebastian doesn't want to know what Jake means, but his mind becomes fraught with images of violence, torture, of what happened to Kitty before she died – beatings, rapes, ligature marks, rope marks and burns on her wrists, her ankles, her arms and her legs, dug in deep. Bruises on pale skin that could be Kurt's. Festering red blisters on hands that could be Kurt's. Blackened skin around blue eyes that could be Kurt's.

Kurt – Sebastian's safety net, his rock. They had such a relatively blasé life until about nine hours ago. How did things take such a weird turn? Why are they all of a sudden in danger?

Sebastian thinks Jake might know. How can he not if he's sitting right here? Sebastian doesn't want this. He doesn't want to be a part of this at all. Maybe Jake can get him out of this...somehow. Maybe he knows the remedy, the antidote to this…this…whatever it is he has now.

Sebastian turns back to Jake. He has to ask him these questions. He needs to know what to do to keep Kurt safe, because he'll be damned if his boyfriend suffers the same fate as Kitty.

But Jake – the man who loved Kitty, the man in the police uniform, the man Sebastian is supposed to save - is gone.