A few days later, Kurt was on the train heading back home when his phone suddenly went off. His mind started racing, and he was grinning from ear to ear as he tapped the 'Accept Call' button and brought the phone up to his ear before looking at the display telling him who was calling.

"Hello?" Kurt asked, a little breathlessly.

"Hey, Kurt," Rachel said, obviously forcing the cheeriness in her voice. Kurt felt his high hopes plummet.

"Oh, hey, Rachel. It's been a while," Kurt said, almost monotonously, standing up as the train reached his stop.

"Yeah, it has. We haven't seen each other since," Rachel started to say, but then abruptly changed the subject., "Um…So, do you want to grab lunch with me on Monday? I found this cute little café near the theater I'm working with, and I just know you're going to love it. Please say yes, please please please, Kurt?"

"Okay, fine. Just come pick me up at VogueVouge on Monday, and then you can drag me to your new favorite place to eat that I'm probably going to end up going with you every week for the next month," Kurt concededs, laughing a little at Rachel's pleading as he exiteds the train and mademakes his way outside.

"Yay! See you then!" Rachel cheered.

"See you," Kurt said, hanging up and jogging up the stairs and sighing. Somehow, between the time Kurt had boarded the train downtown and gotten off, the weather had clouded over, and it had started pouring.

Just fantastic, Kurt thought, pulling up his jacket so that it covered his head and sprinting as fast as he could towards the apartment.


Funnily enough, the café Rachel had fallen in love with was nowhere to be found on Monday.

"I don't understand! I'm so sure it was right here!" Rachel cried, pacing. Kurt might have laughed if he wasn't so hungry and miserable from walking so much.

"Look, Rach, can we just go grab some pretzels and eat already? I only have twenty minutes to left until I have to head back, anyway," Kurt said. She agreed, and they wound up sitting on a bench in Battery Park, nibbling on some truly awful pretzels.

"Hey, remember how we both broke up with our boyfriends here a few years ago?" Kurt asked, snorting a little at the memory. Rachel winced.

"Please don't bring that up," she pleaded.

"Why not? It's not like anyone died that day or anything," Kurt said, causing her to wince again.

"It's just a really painful memory, that's all," Rachel explained, pausing before she continued. "You know, I'm surprised you're taking this so well."

"Taking what well?" Kurt asked, giving up and just throwing the stale pretzel away in the trash can next to the bench.

"You know," Rachel said, evasively. When Kurt just looked at her, confused, she continued, "The…the whole Blaine thing."

"Rachel, it wasn't him." Kurt told her.

"But, Kurt…" she said.

"But nothing. It wasn't Blaine, and I know he's not dead. So just drop it, okay?" Kurt argued, a little harshly. Rachel bit her lower lip, looking concerned.

"Kurt, it's been two months. If he isn't dead, then why hasn't he come home?" she asked him. Kurt gave her a look that was somewhere in between a glare and him about to burst into tears. He stood up, shouldering his bag.

"I have to go back to work now. I'll see you…Well, I'll see you eventually," he said, then walked away as fast as his legs could carry him without running.


Later that day, he walked out of the elevator, noddingded at the receptionist as he approached, and sat down in the waiting area. The girl from last week was there again, a different book propped up on her knees. But this time, the blonde streaks had been dyed over, making most of her hair a bright magenta-pink.

"Hi," she said, looking up at Kurt over her book cover. "I didn't introduce myself last week, did I? Sorry. That was kind of rude of me. I'm Alyssa."

"Hi, Alyssa, I'm Kurt. It's nice to meet you," Kurt replied, curiously.

"So, you've probably realized why people stare at me," she sighed, pointing at her hair and book., "I dye my hair odd colors, and read all the time, which is so far from normal teen behavior, it's almost funny."

"Well, I happen to like people who are abnormal. Why change or hide who you are?" Kurt shrugged. Alyssa smiled at him.

"Exactly. But the so-called normal people just hate people who stick out, and I hate that. I don't want to be the same as everyone else," she said, closing her book and placing it on the chair next to her.

"It's nice to know that there are still some people out there who are okay with being different," Kurt told her.

"Well, it's nice for me to meet someone that doesn't know me and actually says 'hi' instead of turning away when I catch them staring at me," she replied. The elevator opened, and the older mother exited, tapping her foot impatiently for the minute it took for Sarah to exit her office with the woman's son and say goodbye to him.

Sarah sighed, obviously annoyed, looking over to the waiting area and seeing Alyssa sitting there.

"Kurt, come on in," she said, leading the way into the office. Kurt sat down on the couch across from where Sarah was currently sitting.

"So, Kurt, how was your week?" she asked.

"Okay, I guess. I had a truly awful lunch today, though," he replied. Sarah raised an eyebrow.

"What happened?" she asked.

"Well, my friend Rachel wanted to drag me to this café she apparently found, so we spent half an hour looking for it, and ended up at a park eating the worst pretzels I've ever had the displeasure of tasting," Kurt sighed.

"Let me guess, the vendor at Battery Park?" she hazarded.

"The exact one. Funny thing about that park, Blaine and I broke up there," he told her.

"Wait…isn't he your husband now?" Sarah asked, intrigued.

"Well, of course we worked things out. I think the whole thing is pretty funny, looking back on it," Kurt said.

"I bet it is," Sarah smiled. "Now, I hate to ruin the mood, but today, why don't we talk about the search for Blaine. Did you volunteer to search at all? Did anyone find anything?"

Kurt immediately felt as if he was going to throw up. Biting his lip, he looked at the wall behind Sarah, not saying a word.

"Kurt?" she asked.

"So, what happened to your hand?" Kurt asked Sarah, eyeing her splint and trying to repress his urge to just get up and run out of there.

"I pulled a muscle in my hand opening a door. I don't want to force you to talk about anything that you're not ready to talk about, but just know that it really does help to talk about these kind of things," Sarah said. Kurt took a few deep breaths.

"I know. I know. I just…it's really stupid, because I know Blaine isn't dead, but…they did find something while they were searching," Kurt admitted in a small voice.

"Really? What did they find?" she asked. Kurt swallowed, and took a few more deep breaths before answering.

"A body," he told Sarah, so quietly that she almost didn't hear even heard him.


Every single member of New Directions came up to New York to help with the search over the next month. Countless hours were spent roaming through the forest and the surrounding area, looking for any trace of Blaine.

Nobody found anything for the whole four weeks.

Kurt spent the whole time searching through the dark, disgusting forest with everyone else, and falling asleep on the couch when he was too exhausted to keep his eyes open for any longer.

Then, exactly twenty-nine days, thirteen hours, and five minutes after Kurt found out about the crash, he got another call.

"Hello?" Kurt answered, copying some papers for Isabelle as a favor.

"Hey, dude," Finn answered. "Um, listen, I just wanted to call and tell you this before the cops do, so you don't freak out on them or something, but we found something today."

Kurt nearly dropped his phone along with all the papers he had just copied.

"You did? What? What did you find?" he asked, excitedly, feeling the happiest he had felt for a month.

"Um, well, me, Puck and Sam were walking around, looking, and we found this cave-thing behind a tree that we hadn't noticed before, so we went in to look, and we found…um…we found a body, Kurt," Finn explained. Kurt froze.

"Is…is it?" he asked, his own voice sounding strange to his own ears.

"We don't…we don't know," Finn said. "It's…it's too messed up to tell any facial features, but what little hair it does have is the same color as Blaine's, and it looks to be about the same height, so the police say it is most likely is Blaine."

"Okay, thank you for calling," Kurt said, faintly, hanging up before Finn could say anything else. He then staggered over to his desk, waiting for the official call.

It's while he's waiting that it finally occurred to when Kurt realized that Finn said that they were unable to tell who it really was.


Of course, they make him hunt down and give them all of Blaine's medical and dental records and even a toothbrush so they'll have his DNA to match, planning to that they can check even the most stupid little things to see if the body actually is Blaine. They ask Kurt if he would like to see the body, see if he can point out any little thing that might confirm that is, in fact, his husband.

Kurt refused. He knows it's not Blaine, so really, what's the point?

But one little, tiny nagging voice in the back of his mind refuses to say that Blaine's still okay and out there somewhere.


"It's not Blaine, I just know it's not, but they're taking so long testing every single possible thing to prove it's him, and Puck even told me that it didn't really even look like him when they pulled it out of the cave," Kurt said, clinging to that small ray of hope.

"Do you know when they're supposed to finish up the testing on the body?" Sarah asked, looking upset.

"Sometime this week, they're supposed to tell me what they've found out," Kurt told her.

"Well, you'll let me know what they tell you next week, okay?" she asked.

"I will,." Kurt reassures her.

What he didn't mention was that his heart felt a little more broken with each and every day that passed without Blaine there.