The Hollow Men: A Story in Three Parts

by The Drowned World

As the bullying goes too far, Kurt's entire world is thrown into question when he begins to hallucinate a spiritual stalker. But is it a hallucination, or is Kurt caught up in something bigger – and is Blaine connected? AU for the KlaineBigBang. Complete.

4. Part III: Mer Girl

Glee

The Hollow Men, Part III

(Mer Girl)

I ran and I ran—

I'm looking there still

And I saw the crumbling tombstones

All the forgotten names

I tasted the rain, I tasted my tears

I cursed the angels, I tasted my fears

And the ground gave way beneath my feet

And the Earth took me in Her arms

Leaves covered my face

Ants marched across my back

The black sky opened up, blinding me

I ran to the forest, I ran to the trees

I ran and I ran—I was looking for me

I ran to the lakes, and up to the hill

I ran and I ran—I'm looking there still

And I smelled her burning flesh

Her rotting bones

Her decay…

I ran and I ran—

I'm still running away

—from "Mer Girl" by Madonna

"Two silver chalices, the teardrop of a mermaid, and water from the Fountain of Youth. One chalice will contain the tear, the other will not. Whoever drinks from the chalice with the tear will have their life extended…"

—from "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides"

"By an act of evil—the supreme act of evil: by committing murder. Killing rips the soul apart. The wizard intent upon creating a Horcrux would use this to his advantage…You split your soul, you see, and hide part of it in an object outside the body. Then, even if one's body is attacked or destroyed, one cannot die…"

—from "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince"

"Alice, you cannot live your life to please others—the choice must be yours…because when you step out to face that creature, you will step out alone."

—from "Alice in Wonderland"

Prelude.

I was a heavy heart to carry

My feet dragged across the ground

And he took me to the river

Where he slowly let me drown

My love has concrete feet

My love's an iron bar

Wrapped around your ankles

Over the waterfall

I'm so heavy—heavy

So heavy in your arms

—from "Heavy in Your Arms" by Florence + The Machine

When Quinn first woke up, she wasn't entirely sure at first why. It had been hard enough to get to sleep in the first place, after that morning. She had tossed and turned for an hour thinking about that scared boy who had come to see her, to beg her for her help – help she couldn't give. What could she possibly have said? Had she even helped him at all, even the smallest bit? She turned the memory over and over, wondering if there was something else she could have said, some small difference she might have made. He had certainly told her that she'd helped him, but the look in his eyes had scared her. It wasn't haunted so much as grim acceptance – but acceptance of what? Quinn sighed and gave sleep up as a loss. Down the hall she could vaguely hear her mother snoring, and Quinn envied the woman her easy slumber.

Quinn sat up in bed and glanced around, but something stopped her. It was a feeling, almost like a needle prick – that vague sense of déjà vu when one knows that something is indefinably wrong but it's unable to be articulated. The air smelled heavy, like ozone, and outside she was startled to see that a storm had raged through the night while she slept and was just now petering off to clearer skies.

The hints of moonlight showing through the clouds glinted on the drops of rain clinging to the blades of grass like cold, hard diamond, coating the earth in a faerie glow that was absolutely breathtaking and yet wickedly creepy at the same time. The entire night felt like something out of time, out of place, and she can't help the shiver that wracked her body. Quinn could practically sense the goose bumps trailing down her back. It isn't real, she thought, oddly enough. Quinn contemplated whether or not she was actually even awake in the first place, or if this was all actually an increasingly disturbing, waking nightmare.

That was when she felt that niggling strangeness once more that had woken her in the first place this dark and stormy night.

She was…needed, somewhere, somehow – something is horribly wrong and the entire night was screaming it at her, over and over again; and underneath this pulsating sensation of horror there is a need thrumming through her like a second heartbeat. Come—please—help…

Quinn stumbled, clutching her head. This wasn't happening—it wasn't possible—and yet it was the single most important thing in her entire life. This was the final culmination of…something and it had everything to do with the boy in her living room that afternoon. She was only dressed in her white nightgown and her long blonde hair blew wildly about her face while the wind shrieked murder. She wore no shoes and looked like an old Russian ikon of a martyred saint as she ran toward the car.

She had no keys but the car started and she was flying down the highway and her feet hadn't touched the accelerator. Her heart beat a rabbit's tattoo against her chest and the drumming pulse drowned out all thought or reason. The speedometer was passing 120 and trying to rise. Quinn was terrified – not only not only of the phantom driver but of the destination. She isn't an idiot; she knows they're driving steadily north.

Quinn swallowed bile down and the car skidded toward the dark towers of Dalton Academy. She had burnt rubber slamming into the parking lot. Why were there no lights on? No guards or boys to stop a half-mad teenage girl sprinting into the place as if her life depended on it? She ran and ran and ran, her hair and skirt flowing behind her in a ghostly reflection, following a call she couldn't understand. She stopped when she reached the doors of the library. Opened the doors. Felt the blood beneath her bare feet.

Quinn screamed.

This will be my last confession:

'I love you' never felt like any blessing, oh

Whisper it like it's a secret

Uttered to condemn the one who hears it

With a heavy heart…

Prologue.

1347—England

The very first to die was the man who had killed her mother.

When Amelia called Leomaris down, he answered to her eagerly. The man who had watched an innocent woman burn for spurning his affections… Amelia watched him without a qualm as the spirit possessed him, his body bearing the signs: black eyes, the veins of his lifeblood burning black, and the aura around him darkening and glowing with power. The man began to shake and to scream as his heart exploded within his chest, blood boiling from his mouth and nose and eyes. He had thought that he held power over them all, and yet he collapsed at her feet, dead, a lifeless husk and worth nothing but the dirt. She spit on the ground next to him.

Next were those fools who ran the church, who had watched her mother's mockery of a trial, watched her stuck with pins until she no longer cried in pain to find a 'witch's spot,' and sentenced her to death despite the fact that most of their children had only survived a plague sweeping the town due to her mother's ministrations. They screamed at her of hell, but they knew nothing of the world. She watched them die, thrown around the church like dolls.

The orgy of destruction was a seductive thing; it was easy to destroy, and Amelia fed off of the hate in her own heart easily enough. But it wasn't until she felt a frantic tugging on her cloak that she looked down and spotted a frightened child staring up at her. "Please make him leave Daddy alone!" the girl begged, and Amelia froze. No one should have been able to see Leomaris but her; they were not witches like her—they could not see spirits. She ran with the child from the courthouse, where she had last loosed her daemon upon the judge himself, and into the main street, stopping in horror.

Leomaris was killing everyone. She saw innocents everywhere – farmers impaled on their own pitchforks, women clutching at their dead children and screaming before they too were struck down. And everywhere there was blood; Amelia turned and fought back the urge to scream herself.

He was standing, almost corporeal, visible to everyone, feeding off of every death. Things that should have been impossible becoming all too easy for the monster; he raised a hand and lifted a wagon, tossing it into four men who were trying to shield their wives. The wagon caught fire as soon as it crushed the men, the blistering inferno consuming not only the women, but the houses behind them. Leomaris, realising his power, commanded the flames as well, and it spread like plague from house to house, burning the village to the ground. She heard a scream next to her and cried out as the child beside her went stiff, her eyes blackening and veins darkening before she collapsed, blood pouring from her. "NO!"

But it was too late; the child was dead. Screams and screams rose up around her like a hellish symphony, but there was no calling back the force that she had unleashed. What had she done? Her mother had warned her, had told her—but she had been so blinded by revenge, by her own power… "Leomaris, STOP!" she screamed, but it was too late. The village was burnt, gone; the villagers dead. The unnaturally beautiful demon turned to her and in the blink of an eye was by her side.

"Where do they go, these things I strike down?" he asked curiously, and she screamed.

"They are dead, you beast! They have ceased to exist!"

"Nothing can cease to exist," Leomaris said uneasily.

"Everything dies," Amelia said bitterly, dropping to her knees beside the little dead girl who had asked for her help.

"I will not," Leomaris said strongly. "I do not want to end."

"That is no longer your decision to make," Amelia decreed, staggering to her feet. "I will banish you back to whence you came!"

"You can't," Leomaris snarled back, his eyes darkening in anger. "You are bound by your agreement, witch – you will give me human form!"

"I would never grant that kind of power to you!" Amelia screamed. "You destroy everything you touch!"

"Am I not a god of one of your stories?" Leomaris asked, his face splitting in a smile too horrible to behold. "I decide who lives and who dies!"

"You are no god! You are a child granted power—power that I will take from you!" Amelia raged. "You had no right to kill these people!"

"But I had the right to kill only the ones you wanted dead? A strange contract, witch," Leomaris replied.

"I was wrong!" Amelia whispered pitifully.

"You were not wrong! You gave in to your true nature and it was beautiful to me! This world is beautiful to me, and you have given it to me!" Leomaris exulted. "With every death, I can feed off of the human spirit more and more; I've never felt such power! When I am granted a body, I will rule this earth!"

"I will never grant that to you," Amelia repeated, her heart pounding.

"You do not have a choice," Leomaris said coldly, and surged towards her.

Part II.

2010—Lima, Ohio

Pass me that lovely little gun

My dear, my darling one

Forgive us now for what we've done

It started out as a bit of fun

He's found the answer that we lost

We're all weeping now, weeping because

There's nothing we can do to protect you

O children

Lift up your voice, lift up your voice

O children

Rejoice! Rejoice

Hey little train, wait for me

I once was blind but now I see

We're happy, ma, we're having fun

But the train ain't even left the station…

—from "O Children" by Nick Cave + The Bad Seeds

For two days, Kurt avoided Blaine like a plague, despite the other boy's intentions otherwise. The Warblers were giving him space, which he appreciated; he didn't show up to the final practise session before sectionals. Considering that he was only a part of the vocal harmony for one of the two planned songs and was otherwise expected to simply hum along and join the shuffle-step a capella movements, Kurt didn't feel that he suffered much from it.

These were, of course, ordinary and everyday things that he could focus on; they kept his mind off of the news report that had followed that next morning. David Karofsky had been found dead by his parents, an unnamed source at the hospital had revealed. The news was quick to link it to Karofsky's new therapy sessions, his fights and odd behaviour at school, all fuelled by Dr. Shane's office refusing all comment. The boy had been found locked in his bathroom, hiding from the rest of the world, with two slash marks to his wrists. There had been no note.

In some awful way, that was what Kurt was focussing on more than anything: his burning need to know why. Why now? Why on earth would he have written Kurt that letter sounding like he was getting his life back on track, to turn around and do this to himself? To his parents? In one of the psychology elective semesters Kurt had taken last year, it had been mentioned that suicides often reached out in some way to those they felt had some connection to the planned event, but there were warning signs in those outreaches – sorrow, guilt, vague allusions to goodbyes. There had been none of that in Karofsky's letter, only apology and hope.

Kurt's mind felt like it had been scrambled and fed through a blender, piece by piece. He couldn't focus in class or out of it. And for reasons he couldn't fully articulate, not even to himself, he could not bear to be around Blaine – either Blaine, if he were to resort to thinking about it like that. Maybe the letter had held some clue to the disastrous decision that had ended a boy's life; maybe if he, Kurt, had not been so selfishly wrapped up in the mystery of the boy he was crushing on, he would have caught that clue and…what? What could he really have done? It was the helplessness of his agency that found Kurt curled up in a hardback chair in one of Dalton's many sitting rooms the night before sectionals, his history book open on the table in front of him and his eyes staring into the fireplace while a gentle snowfall iced the world outside cold as any crypt.

His mother had had a necklace, one that he still had in a jewellery box which tinkled "My Favourite Things" from The Sound of Music if it were wound up. It was a golden phoenix flying from faux red rubies signifying fire around its tail. The phoenix was his mother's favourite faerie tale, one she'd told him endlessly: a gorgeous bird, the oldest in the world, would awake one day and see pain and sorrow around her. She would fly through the world, singing a song of sorrow, until she reached Heliopolis, the City of the Sun, and gather the ingredients for her nest. Then she would fly to the highest tree, and sing the last notes of her song before the rising sun hit her nest. The nest would catch fire, and the bird would die – but be reborn, younger and more beautiful than before, singing a song of hope, from the ashes. This way mankind would know that hope could never truly die.

Kurt snorted bitterly – his mother had been more of a dark phoenix, he supposed. She'd burnt and never risen from the ashes of his childhood, like so much of himself, his belief in things beyond him. It was that belief bubbling to the surface that was leading him to avoid Blaine, that much he knew. Quinn's doubts, his own observations… He had questions about Blaine that might never have answers to suit his logical world, and that thought terrified him because it meant that on some core level he had already accepted a fantastical truth, even if he had not admitted it to himself.

Kurt stared into the fire and thought of the streaks of gold in his mother's hair, streaks he himself inherited if he spent too long in the sun. He wondered morbidly if he were to follow in her footsteps, a dark phoenix as well. Was he nearing his nest now? Was he in ashes already?

"You've been avoiding me," Blaine noted, walking into the room. Kurt nodded, not bothering trying to lie. Blaine always knew when he was being lied to – at least, this version of Blaine; the mere power in the timbre of his voice immediately alerted him to the fact that his night-time friend was not to be, not tonight. Blaine didn't seem surprised that Kurt had known he was there. Kurt was hyperaware of Blaine, had felt the hairs on his arms rising as if with unstoppable electricity as soon as the other boy had set foot in the room. What did that say about him? About Blaine? About them?

"I understand," Blaine said calmly. Kurt fixed him with an incredulous look, which Blaine simply returned evenly. "You're upset about the situation with Karofsky, and I'm not. I can understand why—"

"You should be upset," Kurt interrupted coldly. "He was a human being."

"He was an animal," Blaine bit out, his teeth ground together, but the loss of control was quickly smoothed over and he offered Kurt an apologetic smile that Kurt didn't buy for an instant. "But you're right. He was a human being, in the end. We all are, aren't we?" Before Kurt could begin to sort out the inflections behind that, Blaine balanced his portable iPod dock on the table between them. Kurt arched an eyebrow but said nothing. "You missed Warbler practise yesterday. We all missed you," Blaine continued, picking up the thread of calmness. "I missed you," he continued, his voice softening, going oddly, lusciously intimate. Kurt found himself leaning forward despite himself and forcibly told his body to stop.

"I had a lot on my mind," Kurt said, his voice uneven. Damn it, where was his anger from before?

"But I know how much you love to sing, little phoenix," Blaine said wistfully, and Kurt froze, his entire skin crawling with horror. His mother used to call him that—how the hell… "I was rather hoping that you would sing with me, here, tonight. Before sectionals tomorrow, to help. You know, with nerves."

"I'd rather not," Kurt forced out, glued to his seat by god only knew what. "I don't have any solos tomorrow anyway; if I'm not on pitch it's hardly noticeable."

"It's noticeable to me," Blaine said, as if that not only explained everything but also justified it. Kurt wanted to glare at him; he looked up and jerked in surprise when he noticed that Blaine was sitting across from him – he'd moved so silently, like he'd glided across the floor rather than walked. His eyes were trapped in the dark depths of Blaine's stare, and Kurt once more thought of a bird and serpent. Given his recent musings, he didn't much like the comparison. "Please, Kurt. Sing with me?"

"Okay," Kurt whispered, before he could bite it back. Blaine's face lit up as if Kurt had just granted his deepest wish, and for one aching moment he was so beautiful that it was like he was from another world, far, far from this one, and Kurt shivered when the moment passed. Blaine winked at him roguishly and pressed Play. Oh, no, Kurt thought when the bars of the song picked up – but the music seemed to only draw him closer to Blaine. Kurt danced away, a dangerous game of cat and mouse, and sang.

I really can't stay—

But, baby, it's cold outside

I've got to go away—

But, baby, it's cold outside

This evening has been so very nice—

I'll hold your hands, they're just like ice

For every bar that Kurt sang, Blaine had an answer; part of Kurt thrilled at the easy tension that swirled with the song while part of him trembled. It wasn't so much a dance they were leading as some twisted version of cat and mouse – Kurt moved, Blaine followed. Kurt put the sofa between them and Blaine simply leapt with leonine grace over the top, drawing closer. He wasn't letting Kurt get away, and the stakes, the stakes with this were too high…

I wish I knew how—

Your eyes are like starlight now

To break this spell—

I'll take your hat; your hair looks swell

Somehow, Blaine had trapped Kurt against the door, and Kurt knew that his heart was beating like a rabid animal's as their voices swelled together, powerful and harmonious and wonderful as the song reached its end. He couldn't move. He was terrified…

Blaine's eyes devoured every centimetre of his face as he moved in and their lips met. Kurt let out a moan that shocked him as electricity, shocking, powerful, tingled from his lips and zipped through his entire body. His heart was beating a tripwire and he couldn't move, couldn't think. It was like a vampire's kiss – he was helpless, fading, sapping… He pulled back, fighting an urge to sob he could not understand – it was beautiful and it was… Kurt looked up, and screamed when Blaine pulled back.

His face was dark, flushed; his veins flickered like spider-webs over his face, his eyes were black as a doll's, as a predator's, the eyes which were his eyes that had stalked Kurt his entire life—

"Kurt—"

Kurt shoved Blaine, as hard as he possibly could, once more feeling that rush of something from deep, deep within him surging to the fore, that some something that he had felt a taste of in the locker room with Karofsky, a day that seemed like years ago, a different time, a different life.

"NO!" Kurt roared, and Blaine was flying backward with a shout, but Kurt had already sprinted out of the door.

888

On the bus ride to sectionals the next day, Kurt was one of the first to board. Wes, who had taken it upon himself to make a clipboard and check off the members one by one – ever the stickler for rules – had given a double-take when he saw Kurt. "You look awful, Kurt," Wes remarked, sounding concerned. "Did you sleep last night?"

"Not much," Kurt said truthfully. In fact, he had barely slept at all. After running in a blind panic from the impossible vision in the sitting room, Kurt had stumbled into the empty conservatory. The room had been a gift from some wealthy parents' function at some point; Kurt had only ever seen it during the tour that he'd received upon transferring to Dalton in the first place. It was a lovely place; the windows were designed like greenhouse windows and it was full of plants year-round. The air smelled thick and the moonlight sliced through the night eerily, the stark white light making the flowers as menacing as nightshade. It looked like a witch's garden.

Kurt had shut the door and locked it, and spent most of the impossibly long night trying desperately to convince himself that what he'd seen was just a trick of the light, or another one of his hallucinations, quick to come on and quick to recede. There was no way that Blaine…

—Amelia called forth every last ounce of power left to her, drawing it from the earth like her mamma had taught her, whispering her apology to her mother's spirit for not listening to her sooner. But that didn't matter now; what mattered was drawing the power around her like a blade and plunging it into the heart of the spirit's existence. Leomaris screamed, loud enough to shatter glass, and she pushed and pushed until the cruel caricature of a man dissolved into a million pieces too small for her to see. Amelia scattered him to the four winds, draining the power he'd gained from the deaths of the innocent, but she could still feel him, drawing on the power she had invoked to draw him into this world. He would take the power from her…

She ran into the woods, the cinders of the village trailing behind her—

What little sleep he'd gotten had, of course, been interrupted by nightmares, and he'd jolted awake again.

Kurt had plugged his headphones in and clicked his iPod to shuffle through whatever it liked, not really paying attention to the music but using it as background distraction instead. He chose the seat behind the bus driver, traditionally where the teacher sat, as it was designed to only hold one person. As the Warblers were a student-run organisation, their chaperone for the event was Mr. Clary, the band director, who gave Kurt a look upon entering but sat in a different seat anyway. Kurt could care less, as long as he was left alone.

He received a few unexpected shoulder squeezes from some of his friends in the group – Luke and David and Zach, particularly, and Kurt supposed that they had assumed he was still upset over the news of Karofsky. There was no way to tell them that… Kurt frowned and rested his head against the window, staring out over the Dalton grounds with unseeing eyes. He pretended not to notice when Blaine boarded the bus, or when Blaine stood over him for a second, their shadows mingling like smoke from a fire. It was an apt comparison, Kurt mused; Blaine's kiss had been like fire, possessing, consuming, burning through every part of Kurt's being. Maybe that had been what caused the…vision; Kurt had never felt so bare in front of another before, like Blaine had, during that one instant of inferno, peered into Kurt's most private being.

But that thought was just as ridiculous as any other, and really Kurt had nothing to solidly grant him an excuse for running away last night. There were two options – the first, that he was slowly spiralling into insanity; or the second, that he had actually seen what he'd thought he saw last night and that Blaine was somehow supernaturally connected to every moment leading up to Kurt's transfer to Dalton Academy. Insanity, then, Kurt decided grimly, and resolutely continued to stare out of the window as the bus began rolling toward Columbus.

For one brief moment, Kurt thought of a different bus ride to Columbus – a different Kurt, then, it seemed. He'd been sitting next to Mercedes, awash with the glow of actually having a real, true, best friend, whispering gossip and fashion to each other. They were all cheering Artie being able to ride with them, and they were full of terror but hope, as well. They might not have had Finn, but they were rolling out of Lima and toward something bigger, and the irresistible buzz that went along with that prospect had had them all humming their songs under their breath.

The thought of that boy and his friends had Kurt fighting back tears, and he angrily turned the volume up on his iPod to drown out his thoughts. That part of his life was over now – no matter how much he might wish for it back.

He pretended not to notice Blaine's dark eyes that never left the back of his head, not once, the entire journey.

888

When the glee clubs were given their programs and sent off to their respective green rooms, Kurt glanced down and noted with little interest that they were slated to go second. When the Warblers split to go down the hallway, Kurt lingered back and walked away from them. He walked slowly, ambling with little purpose, feeling a bit like a zombie in a horror movie. He was trying to find that icy core inside of himself that he had once hid behind so well, numb to everything, including himself, but it was getting harder and harder to find that within himself.

Kurt drifted from hall to hall, avoiding the main crushes of people, reflecting on how hard he'd worked to push people away from him. It hurt to care, to know what people thought of you and to have to face it every day. Kurt remembered when this had all began, behind that wall of numbness, it had been a burden to simply wake up some days, wanting nothing but to sleep forever and ever. The problem was, Kurt was awake now, in ways that he hadn't been in so long, and he didn't know if he could truly trade this awareness of the world around him for that withdrawal. The world was painful, all sharp edges and pitfalls, but in that pain there was a sort of beauty that he couldn't even explain.

Kurt stopped in the atrium, surrounded in a crush of people, of life, and he wondered, not for the first time, what his mother would say if she were there.

"Kurt!"

He turned around and smiled when he saw Rachel shoving her way carelessly through the crowd toward him, a smile on her face. "Hello, Rachel," he replied, the warmth in his own voice surprising him. Rachel might have been completely self-centred at times, downright mean at others, but she was the only person in all of Lima who had ever truly understood that his being gay had nothing to do with who he was, and who had not only shared with but known his desire to fly far and fast away from that place.

"Come on, over here!" she dictated, as usual leading the way and expecting the world to follow her. Kurt grinned bemusedly as she directed them to the snack bar, where she hopped up on a seat and promptly ordered a horrifying amount of candy. At Kurt's look, she launched into a litany of complaints against Lauren Zizes, and Kurt smirked as he was quickly caught up on the constant influx of drama in New Directions; Mercedes might fancy herself the queen of gossip, but Rachel spread more than even she herself knew due to her inability to stop talking about a subject even if she knew consciously that she shouldn't reveal a part of it.

"But enough about us; how is it going with the Warblers? What solo are you singing—no, never mind, don't tell me that; that would be cheating," Rachel commented turning to him. There was a world of simple, uncomplicated hopes in her eyes, and Kurt could see every one of them like petals off the rose – a desire to win, to be a star, to fix things with Finn, to prove herself, to be liked by her friends. He couldn't open up to her about the happenings at Dalton, and see her eyes lose that shining, so he just smiled and nodded. "You really should know, Kurt that nobody blames you for leaving – I mean, not that you had much of a choice there, toward the end. What I mean is that we all feel terribly about not noticing how bad it had gotten and helping you, with…Karofsky." She said his name softly and looked down, probably praying. Kurt reached his hand out and took hers in his.

"I'm doing fine, Rachel," he told her, giving her hand a squeeze for reassurance.

"Good," she said, just as firmly. She launched forward then in an unexpected hug, squeezing half the life out of him. "The Kurt I know would be going crazy about the competition," Rachel whispered. "Don't you dare go easy on us, Kurt Hummel." She drew back, giving him a misty smile, before she gathered up her snacks. "Time to go deliver these to Jemima the Hun," she said. "Break a leg!" And then she was gone, and Kurt was left to stare after her, something big and painful and beautiful swelling within him.

Rachel was right – he wanted to win, he wanted to be selfish and damn the consequences. Kurt thought back to another time, another life – the end of that bus ride, when they had all stood together and sang. They'd fucking owned it, and they'd taken that giant trophy from sectionals and known for just that instant that they were worth something, no matter what any Lima loser ever wanted to say to them. Kurt had remembered then every fantasy of standing before a sold-out crowd to perform "Defying Gravity," feeling really and truly like nothing could bring him down, and god, he ached to feel that again.

Breathing deeply, Kurt stood up from his stool and headed back into the crush of humanity, for once not feeling separate from them, but one of them – a conglomeration of hopes and dreams and feelings, fragile and destructible but beautiful for the sheer mortality of it all. By the time he made it back to the Warblers' green room, he was practically bursting from wanting to smile so much. It took a moment for it to sink in that everyone in the room was frowning, Blaine most of all.

"What's up?" Kurt asked, confused. Thad and John were both looking down at the ground, shamefaced, and Wes looked absolutely carved from stone. "What's wrong?" he changed tack.

"There's been a spot of bother," Wes grated out slowly. "Thad and John don't want their solos anymore. There's absolutely no time to change everything around that. It's been put to a vote, and even if you were here the results would remain the same: the Warblers have decided to pull out of the competition."

"What?" Kurt demanded.

"Kurt," Blaine said, stepping forward, and Kurt narrowed his eyes as he saw half the boys in the room automatically look to Blaine. "This was a team decision."

"And I just wonder who suggested it," Kurt said acidly, gratified when Blaine frowned, his composure slipping for a moment. But Kurt was furious, suddenly; Blaine had done this while he was gone, had made this decision for him, for all of them. Thad and John had never once had trouble performing in front of an audience; in fact, Thad was more of an attention whore than Rachel, at times. Yet somehow, now, they both come down with overwhelming stage fright? For over a month, Kurt had let Blaine dictate his life – Blaine had had so much to do with the transfer process that he had all but signed Kurt's papers himself. He'd led Kurt along in this strange whirlwind, and Kurt had been content to follow—but no more. Kurt took charge back, and turned to Wes.

"Wes, if I may address the Warblers?" When the Asian boy nodded, Kurt stepped up, in front of Blaine – he had to draw eye contact away from the other boy, even though he could feel Blaine simmering behind him. "That is complete and categorical bullshit." The room erupted into whispers and Kurt drew on every memory of Rachel overpowering a room as he shushed them with both hands and attitude.

"When I was with New Directions, we came to sectionals with nothing but a dream of success. We'd had a…tumultuous journey to get there, and at the time we didn't even have our captain with us. We had planned on two songs, both that we'd performed publicly…and both of our competition took the songs and the planned choreography." Kurt fixed each and every boy with a steely glare. He remembered how Blaine would draw them in, and he shut his eyes briefly and just willed them to listen. He made as much direct eye contact as he could, surprised and pleased when even Thad and John had leaned in to where he was. "We were crushed. We had next to nothing – but we were a team. We loved glee. And with a few suggestions from our co-captains and about twenty minutes of throwing together some choreography, we won."

"But this isn't New Directions," Blaine said calmly, stepping out from behind Kurt. The boys' eyes turned toward him, and Kurt cursed inwardly. "And you aren't with them anymore, Kurt. Are you with us?"

"I'm with the Warblers – and I want a vote," Kurt returned. He turned again and once more trusted to faith, throwing every ounce of passion into his voice and pushing inside of his mind – believe me. "We could walk away – we could let this entire year mean nothing. Or we can say the hell with that. Each and every one of us knows songs; we don't need one soloist or two to carry a group number. I've got music arrangements on my iPod. I know that we traditionally do just a capella, but come on: can any of you argue with the fact that we have some amazing singers in here? Trust me!" Kurt went on quickly, feeling his words starting to catch on.

"Well, Kurt, I don't think—" Blaine began smoothly.

"Do you think that you could do it?" Wes interrupted. The entire room stopped cold; it was likely the first and only time since his arrival at Dalton Academy that Blaine had been interrupted, let alone disagreed with. Blaine himself was staring at Wes like he had just announced his intention to enter to win a guest spot on Ru Paul's Drag Race. Kurt felt his heart leap into his throat as Wes fixed him with a steady stare. "I don't want to walk away from this; I've worked hard as one of the captains of this group to get here. Need I remind any of you that the Warblers did not exist as a true competition show choir until last year? How we felt actually making it to sectionals in the first place?"

"There is a formula we can follow," Kurt agreed quickly, stepping up next to Wes, giving his position strength. "I don't want to cast just myself forward, but I know that New Directions will do one large group number and one performance to spotlight a soloist – most likely Rachel Berry. We could do a solo to lead in to a group number where we all join in – our choreography for 'Hey Soul Sister' from a few months ago would even still apply; it's loose and easy to follow."

"Kurt, this would be you," David said, standing to join his two friends. "We would use the extra time while you were soloing to assign parts in a group number."

"You really want me to lead the solo at sectionals?" Kurt asked, shaking.

"If you can do it," Blaine cut in, mocking Wes' earlier words. His face looked white, furious, and drawn; the other boys weren't really looking at him. Kurt went still and, for the first time since the weirdness between him and Blaine began, he willingly looked Blaine dead in the eye. There was no disorientation, no compelling force behind it. Kurt stood, strong, alone.

"I can," he said flatly. He didn't break eye contact when Thad and John started up a cheer, and Kurt flushed as Blaine broke the look, and his name was being chanted. This was his moment, and he knew exactly what he wanted to say.

888

This is utter madness, Kurt thought, resisting the urge to peak. The other boys were going to watch his performance on the monitors in the back rooms, silently practising their positions and the clapping; they'd settled on a song they all enjoyed that would allow some a capella arrangements along with audience participation if they pulled it off right. But they needed Kurt to begin it. He took a deep breath. The best song performed was one that was felt, and Kurt knew this song from backwards to front, remembering that strange, morbid conversation with Rachel one afternoon after their duet where she had reminisced about imagining her own funeral. For the first time, Kurt was beginning to understand why that would appeal to her.

He looked back, where the Warblers were standing, and saw Blaine. Blaine was looking at him oddly. Not with the intensive possession that had marked their interaction last night, but with a strangely fixed expression, like Kurt was doing something that Blaine wanted…but for the life of him Kurt couldn't figure out what was going through the other boy's head. Kurt met his gaze, and Blaine nodded once, solemnly, before turning and walking back to the rest of the team. Phoenix, huh? Kurt thought somewhat defiantly. Watch me fly.

Whatever was happening to him, everything was building to a head. Blaine had shown his hand last night, hadn't he? It was time for Kurt to show his. This may be the last time he had the chance to do this, to say this to the people that it mattered to most. He peeked out behind the curtain and saw Rachel spot him, nudge Mercedes next to her and Quinn next to her, to Tina and Mike and Puck and Sam and Artie and Finn, even Mr. Schuester and Carole and his father. Kurt finally, finally smiled, and offered them a tiny wave before he twitched the curtain back; the opening swell of music had started, and he'd seen Rachel nearly burst into tears when she recognised the song. She would understand, then. Kurt smiled, and channelled the character he'd loved for so long. It was time to say goodbye to his friends, the way he'd never had the chance to.

He lightly drew the curtain back and stepped into his spotlight.

It won't be easy—you'll think it strange

When I try to explain how I feel

That I still need your love, after all that I've done

You won't believe me

All you will see is the boy you once knew—

Although he's dressed up to the nines

At sixes and sevens with you

Kurt stepped forward, his posture perfect, his voice flawless; he didn't think he'd ever hit such a pure soprano before in his life, and if now was the time, then so be it. His words were hitting home, and he saw Quinn and Mercedes both crying as they waved for him. They understood.

I had to let it happen—I had to change

Couldn't stay all my life down at heel

Looking out of the window, staying out of the sun

So I chose freedom

Running around, trying everything new

But nothing impressed me at all

I never expected it to

Mr. Schuester was punching the air, cheering him on, and Kurt remembered every time he'd run to the man with problems he didn't feel like he could tell his father. His father, who was sitting there as well, his face full of pride and love and affection, and Kurt spread his arms wide to embrace not just the audience but the feeling.

Don't cry for me, Argentina:

The truth is, I never left you

All through my wild days

My mad existence

I've kept my promise—

Don't keep your distance

Kurt again stepped forward, toward the lip of the stage, standing above his audience, arms raised, looking down upon them – separate but not alien.

And as for fortune, and as for fame

I never invited them in

Though it seemed to the world they were all I desired

They are illusions—

They're not the solutions they promise to be

The answer was here all the time

I love you, and hope you love me

He moved, a simple dance, remembering as much of Madonna's stellar performance from the balcony of the Casa Rosada in Evita as he could, gesturing but not too strongly, drawing them in but not driving them away. He strengthened his voice and blasted:

Don't cry for me, Argentina:

The truth is I never left you

All through my wild days

My mad existence

I've kept my promise—

Don't keep your distance

He stopped, took a moment to pause. Then, he turned, faced his audience, and once more lifted his hands.

Have I said too much?

There is nothing more I can think of to say to you

But all you have to do

Is look at me to know that every word

Is true!

And with that, he sank to his knees and bent forward, giving himself wholly to the audience as he hit that last note, pitch perfect, practically sobbing as the entire audience leapt to their feet, the applause striking him like thunder. It was everything he had ever dreamt of, there, in his hand, and Kurt looked up, grinning like a lunatic, but he saw it reflected on every face of New Directions as they stomped their feet and joined the storm of applause.

The clapping died down as the strumming chords of the next song swelled in, and Wes and David came to join him on stage, Wes leading and David joining in:

Happiness hit her like a train on a track

Coming toward her—stuck, still, no turning back

When the clapping along began, Rachel and Mercedes were the first to join in, and Kurt grinned fiercely as he saw the audience jump in as the full force of the Warblers' voices lifted together in brutal harmony, and they all danced together, filled with purpose.

Happiness hit her like a bullet in the back

Struck from a great height

By someone who should know better than that

The dog days are over

The dog days are done

The horses are coming

So you'd better run

Run fast for your mother, run fast for your father

Run for your children, for your sisters and your brothers

Leave all your love and your longing behind

You can't carry it with you if you want to survive!

By the time the song was finished, the entire audience was on its feet, and Kurt felt that in that moment he could have soared into the air.

888

Kurt sat with Wes and David during New Directions' performance, cheering loudly at the surprising choice of soloists. Developing appreciation of Rachel notwithstanding, it was wonderful to see Mr. Schuester finally showcasing just how much talent the entire club possessed in spades. Sam and Quinn sounded indescribably sweet together on "Time of My Life" and the oldies hit was a fun group number, but Santana absolutely blew him away with her rendition of "Valerie." Of course, the way her eyes stayed on Brittany's unbelievably good dancing, Kurt didn't have to exactly wonder what was inspiring her. Still, he'd glimpsed her true talent when they'd done their fabulous rendition of "Bad Romance," but that was nothing to now. He joined in the standing ovation with many of the Warblers, proudly.

When they all took the stage, Kurt waved back when the merry Hipsters proudly displayed their second-place trophy. A venerable-looking old woman that vaguely reminded him of Grandma Hummel had gestured him over for congratulations, which Kurt returned enthusiastically. But when the announcer called out the tie win between New Directions and the Warblers, Kurt felt deafened by all of the screaming both onstage and of, screaming which he gladly joined in on. There was no universe where he could have predicted his happiness as both teams converged on him for hugs. Not only had he given the Warblers their first sectionals win, New Directions would go on to regionals, meaning that they wouldn't be arbitrarily cancelled by Figgins. He caught Mr. Schuester's eye, and the teacher pulled him away from his babbling friends for just a moment.

"Kurt, you were…amazing, up there," he said warmly. Kurt smiled. "I just wanted to apologise—" Kurt held his hand up to cut him off, and returned the man's warm smile.

"Mr. Schuester, it happened. I think it's worked out pretty well," he said, looking at the intermingling singers. The man himself chuckled as Burt caught up with them, loudly proclaiming a joint family dinner at BreadstiX to congratulate both Finn and Kurt, and the teams cheered loudly. Kurt tugged on his dad's sleeve and suggested that he spend the night in Lima before returning to Dalton Sunday night, and Burt nodded enthusiastically. Finn clapped him on the shoulder roughly and awkwardly, and Kurt rolled his eyes and shoved him back. Mercedes, catching wind, immediately started planning a shopping excursion with him and Tina, and Kurt laughed as he caught Wes attempting to hold a conversation with Brittany and the resulting confusion on his face.

When he excused himself to the bathroom, Kurt wasn't entirely surprised once he'd splashed some water on his face to look up and find Blaine standing behind him. They were alone and the door was closed, but where Kurt had felt nervous and trapped in the common room last night, now he felt calm. Whatever was going on between him and Blaine, he'd discovered today that he still had it in himself to resist it, and with spectacular results. Kurt dried his face and turned around to regard the other boy evenly.

"You can't go back to Lima," Blaine said finally.

"I beg your pardon?" Kurt returned calmly. He wasn't angry, though; Blaine reacted to that, rather like a shark, in their conversations together. Instead, he remained calm.

"Stay with me," Blaine said. It wasn't a suggestion.

"No."

"Why not?"

"Blaine, you don't control my life. You don't control me," Kurt replied, calmly tossing his paper towel in the trash can. "I'm going to spend the weekend with my friends and my family." He turned around, giving Blaine his back, and headed toward the door.

"No," Blaine snarled roughly, and then he was suddenly shoving the door closed again, trapping Kurt between his body and the way outside. "Kurt, you need to understand—"

"Yes, actually, I do," Kurt said calmly. "I've seen things, in you, in me – impossible things. And it really occurs to me: I don't even know who you are!" He stepped forward, and Blaine slowly stepped back, clearing space between them. "Give me one good reason why I should trust you, Blaine – just one. Why are you so different to me at times? How do you always know what I'm thinking? How do you control everyone and everything around you, all the time – why me?"

"You're not ready," Blaine said inexplicably, stepping back. "But you will be. You'll understand, Kurt: you belong to me."

"Good-bye, Blaine," Kurt said flatly.

This time, when he walked out the door, Blaine didn't try to stop him.

888

Dinner at BreadstiX was indescribably fun. Kurt, Burt, Carole, and Finn were joined by Quinn, Mercedes, and Luke and his parents. From the way that Luke was staring at Mercedes, Kurt didn't exactly need three guesses why Luke had chosen to stay in Lima for the night. Mercedes was blushing furiously every time she caught him staring, and she was playing a furious game of footsie with Kurt under the table by way of communication every time he encouraged her with his eyes to talk to Luke.

The conversation flowed between football, glee club, academics in general, and Sue's creation of an insanely elite squad of students called "The Bully Whips," who were rewarded for stopping incidents of bullying between students. Kurt was shocked to hear that Santana had become a member ("It was after she saw Brittany get slushied, before they removed the machine," Mercedes explained, which cleared things up, though, of course, Finn just looked more confused at that rather than less). Kurt and Luke explained the somewhat insane educational standards of Dalton, and Mercedes complained that her AP English class had become insanely boring since Kurt had gone and no one was there to skewer poor Mr. Lewis' choice of bad poetry for subject matter.

The adults were talking about Dalton's no-bullying policy, and as Luke's father was a graduate from the institution, he was expounding at length to Burt and to Mercedes' parents about the school's history as being one of the first private institutions in the area to not only allow, but encourage black students to join when separate-but-equal was being fought over in the courts. Mercedes rolled her eyes at her father and went back to teasing Quinn about how Puck was dancing around her like a performing puppy – he'd even joined the Bully Whips in an attempt to impress her, which backfired badly when he was promptly expelled from the group after being caught using a fire extinguisher to 'teach Azimio a lesson.' Quinn blushed and rolled her eyes and instead changed the subject to mutual admiration of their songs of the night. (Kurt proudly showed them the text message Rachel had sent him, it was so long it had to be split into three different missives, which critiqued his performance and gave him four stars out of five. (As Rachel was the only recipient of a Rachel Berry Five Star rating, this was big news.)).

Mercedes had complained about Kurt not going to Burlesque opening night with her, but instead making her wait to go with him till a week later, and Kurt countered by offering to help her recreate Christina Aguilera's incredible dress from the "Bound to You" number in time for Prom. Unsurprisingly, Mercedes folded, and Quinn shook her head fondly. By the time they were all leaving, Luke had worked up the nerve to talk to Mercedes directly – though they were both so nervous the conversation mainly centred around mutual awe of the never-ending breadsticks from which the restaurant derived the name. Quinn and Kurt found themselves sharing exasperatedly fond expressions with Luke's parents, and Kurt kindly intervened by confiscating both blushing teenagers' phones and programming them with each others' numbers. Mercedes promised murder, though she looked grateful, and Luke shot Kurt two thumbs up.

Finn and Carole were staying the night at the Hummel house, and, to his immense surprise, Kurt found himself screaming with Finn at the television screen as Finn attempted to teach Kurt the simple combinations for an X-Men fighting game when Kurt had expressed a slight interest in the films. To both of their surprise, Kurt had developed a streak of aptitude for the game and ended up trouncing Finn repeatedly. Carole had finally intervened and they all had family desert together as Carole proudly showed off the ice-cream maker she and Burt had invested in. "Since you can use all of your own ingredients, you see, we get to use non-fat milk and cut back on cholesterol…" she rhapsodised, while Burt and Finn made faces behind her back and Finn and Kurt ended up throwing marshmallows at each other.

It was the happiest night at home that Kurt had had, ever since his mother had died, and for reasons he couldn't fully articulate, he felt like sobbing his eyes out. This was simple life, with no complications or annoyances. Maybe Burt would even go ahead and propose to Carole – wouldn't that be something? Kurt slipped quietly away and headed down to his room. It had been completely untouched, as Burt had promised – when Finn stayed over, he tended to stay on the couch upstairs. Kurt glanced around him, at the pristine white walls and cold colours.

He remembered how alone he'd felt down here, surrounding himself with icy images of perfection, planning his escape from Lima. He was beginning to realise that no matter where you went, you took your home with you. He didn't want to stay in Lima, but he didn't entirely hate it as much as he'd thought. Perspective was a funny thing.

Kurt wandered through the room, examining memories and dreams, before he went to the bathroom and sighed with a twist of the lips when he saw the two prescription bottles he'd promised Dr. Shane he would restart and then promptly left them behind upon his transfer to Dalton. Running away from dealing with the problem: wasn't that what was getting him into trouble in the first place? Kurt fingered the bottles and thought of that awful, long-ago night when he had been trapped down here, the voice in his head coalescing into a nightmarish phantom, escaping into the shower…

He'd been haunted for so long, he barely remembered what a night like tonight was like, and it wasn't something that he liked to admit to himself. Blaine terrified him; there was the intimate, beautiful Blaine, the boy who Kurt had fell totally in love with from the start, and then there was the other Blaine, who reminded him so much of the nightmares in his childhood that he had tried for so long to leave behind. For the first time, Kurt was beginning to accept that something utterly impossible was happening to him, though everything in him prompted him to fight against it. Kurt believed in logic, rational, reasonable thinking. But as Sherlock Holmes once so wisely stated, "When one has eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, is the truth."

Kurt left the room behind and slipped quietly into his parents' room, listening for signs of the others downstairs. When he didn't hear anything, he went to the dresser of his mother's, that his father had never gotten rid of, opened the top drawer, and wound up her music box. When the tinkling strains of "My Favourite Things" began, Kurt slowly opened the box and looked inside at the sparkling phoenix necklace, wishing with a sudden, impossible clarity that his mother was still here, with him, to hold him and tell him what to do.

"You look so much like her," Burt said from the doorway, and Kurt spun around with wide eyes. Burt chuckled and moved into the room, sitting down on the edge of the bed. "Your mother came into my life like a faerie tale. I've never met anyone like her, except maybe you. You have her eyes, and her hair, and her skin. But you're my son." His eyes were faraway and Kurt slowly sat down next to him, resting his head on his father's shoulder, sighing when Burt wrapped an arm around him.

"Tell me about her, Daddy."

"Elizabeth was beautiful, inside and out," Burt said simply. "She was like an animal whisperer; they all loved her. And she kept a garden that just would not stop growing, even when we couldn't possibly eat everything she was growing – she'd just give it to the neighbours. And she loved you, Kurt; oh, god, did she love you."

"She wouldn't have run away from a problem, would she?" Kurt asked slowly.

"No, she wouldn't have," Burt replied softly. "She would have done what she thought was best, right here," he tapped Kurt's chest softly, where his heart was. "I miss her so much, Kurt, but I never, ever regretted knowing her – especially because she gave me you."

"I love you too, Dad," Kurt said, hugging his dad back, before he stood up decisively. He closed the box. "Tomorrow, I'm going to Dr. Shane's. I think that I'm really ready to talk to her again."

"That's probably a good idea," Burt agreed.

"And, Dad? Mom would've really liked Carole," Kurt said, smirking impishly. Burt shot him a distinctly unimpressed look as Kurt started snickering, but Burt reluctantly joined in as well.

"Yeah, I think she would have," he said. Then he stood up, and pressed the box into Kurt's hand. "Elizabeth had this when I met her – she always had it. I think she meant to give it to you. You should keep it."

Kurt nodded, and hugged his father goodnight before he headed to bed.

888

—Amelia ran and ran and ran through the woods that had been her home, hearing him gathering like a storm behind her. There was no way that she could outrun him for long; all she could pray for was that her last, most desperate plan would work, or the evil that she had unleashed into the world would never end, never fail, never go away until he had achieved what he wanted.

She ran and ran, until she reached the cliff at the top of the hill a mile from the home she had made herself, planning foolish, girlish plots of revenge: a revenge that had shamed her mother's spirit. Amelia could only pray that she would be put to rest once this was over…

"Amelia," the thing whispered into her mind, catching up with her. She trembled—she was so young; she did not want to pay for her mistakes! But such childishness was behind her now. There was only one way to break the contract; only one way to ensure that he would never get what he wanted. She whispered a goodbye to the life that she had lived and loved so much, and threw herself off the cliff, tumbling into the air, hearing him scream above her…it took so long to crash into the rocks below, and then she knew nothing at all.—

Kurt managed to shrug off going shopping with the girls by setting up a morning coffee date instead. He and Quinn teased Mercedes mercilessly, until she turned the tables by interrogating Quinn about Puck. Kurt grinned as he watched it all, feeling slightly separate from them. He finished it off, though, and broke off from them. Perhaps he hadn't been as cannily cagey as he'd thought, though, because Quinn had pulled him in for a quick hug and a whispered, "Are you sure you're okay?"

Kurt nodded and gave her an easy smile, which she returned hesitantly before going to join Mercedes to pick up a waiting Tina. Kurt promised later outfit critique via Facebook before he headed back to his car. Taking a deep breath and releasing it, he sighed, switched his phone off, and pulled back onto the road. Within ten minutes he was parking next to the soft white exterior of the Old Oak Resting Home. He parked his car on the far end of the small parking lot and locked it, surveying the place with a touch of unease. Lima's resident asylum; it had been set up back when psychiatric wards weren't part of general hospitals. Dr. Shane ran her practise from the office suites at the front while overseeing the patients who lived in the rooms in the rear. Kurt had once been one of them, for all of two weeks. He'd never set foot in the rear rooms since, in the sporadic visits he'd been forced to make to Dr. Shane.

Did he really want to do this? Resoundingly, no – but he couldn't keep running away from this. If he was really on the edge of a complete breakdown, seeing visions and hearing voices, then he had to overcome his fear of mental institutions long enough to take the necessary steps to stop it. And if they could find nothing wrong with him, then… Kurt would cross that bridge when he came to it. But he couldn't afford to stand passively back while his life passed him by any longer.

Nodding, Kurt headed into the front door, where, unsurprisingly, Dr. Shane herself was waiting for him. He'd called her early that morning to announce his visit and his possible overnight stay; she'd assured him that she had cleared her schedule for him. That was one thing – it was impossible to hate her. The woman was remarkably good at her job, and she really did bend over backward for her patients. Maybe it really was just Kurt's general distrust of doctors who tried to examine his inner self that projected dislike onto her. After all, she'd certainly seen right through him on many occasions before.

"Hello, Kurt," she said warmly, greeting him with open arms. He smiled vaguely as he filled out the required forms – his father's signature wasn't necessary, as he'd already signed Dr. Shane as Kurt's primary mental caretaker years before. When all the logistics were complete, she led him to her office. He vividly remembered the place, and it wasn't changed much from what he remembered. She had the couch for her patients, but also chairs in front of her desk; shelves upon shelves of books; walls were a calm blue like the sea on a beautiful day; she had model boats in glass bottles and dolphins and mermaids adorning shelves and wall art, including one picture of a shirtless mermaid that had made Kurt blush when he was a small boy. Apparently, some British sidewalk artist had drawn it for her years before and she'd never gotten rid of it.

Dr. Shane waited patiently for Kurt to sit down, to relax, and to take a drink of the water she offered him: he was stalling, and they both knew it. Kurt, annoyed to be falling right back into old patterns, settled himself back in and drew himself up to meet her gaze head-on. "Was Karofsky happy when he left here that afternoon after he wrote the letter?" he asked, and she winced. "I know that you can't break confidentiality and all that, but, just, tell me: was he happy?"

"He seemed at peace," Dr. Shane answered slowly, thinking her words over carefully. "Kurt, there are times when someone – particularly an emotionally volatile teenager – takes their own life and there doesn't appear to be an explanation. You mustn't blame yourself for this at all. Humans aren't infallible beings—far from that—and not every suicide leaves warning signs leading up to their final decision."

Kurt nodded, something falling into place in his mind. It was time – had been time, for a short while. "I need to know if I'm going crazy," he finally settled on. "And I don't mean in some pedestrian way – I need to know if I'm really, legitimately losing it."

"What I asked you at the hospital that day," Dr. Shane began, and Kurt nodded.

"I've been seeing things again – but I didn't tell you all of it," Kurt confirmed. "I think that I'm really ready now."

"Whatever you choose to tell me, Kurt," she nodded, and sat back. Kurt thought long and hard about this. Where to start? It couldn't start with Karofsky, because if he were being truly honest with himself, this had begun so long before that…

"The dreams were always the same, ever since I was a little boy," he began. "I don't actually remember when the first one began. I just know that it was after my mother died. There are still parts of that year that I don't really remember, actually. I'd always had vivid dreams; my mother would tell me stories to distract me from them. She told me that if you tried to live in dreams, then you could never really leave. I tried to ignore the dreams at first, but they scared me so much—the girl in the red cloak, the patches of snow on the ground, the blood in the snow. I told you about watching her mother die when I was little, remember?" Dr. Shane nodded slowly, her face expressionless, and Kurt took that as his sign to continue.

"I would see bits and pieces of that, like a film that you walk into halfway through. But no matter how far into that I saw, it always ended the same: running, always running from the wind behind her. And when the wind reaches her, she denies it what it wants and throws herself off the cliff instead. And then the wind turns to me, and I am trapped in darkness with this man…this, this thing. That was the sleepwalking, you see; I was trying to escape."

"Leomaris," Dr. Shane continued for him, and Kurt nodded grimly, his eyes faraway, fixed on a little boy and the shadowy man who was with him, always with him.

"I had to look that name up when I got older," Kurt continued. "It means 'king of the sea,' or 'lion of the sea.' It's Latin. I never knew Latin, and I still don't. That's what always confused my dad, I think, that name."

"You weren't the only one who had to look it up," Dr. Shane cut in with a gentle smile and Kurt smirked with a small huff of laughter and a nod.

"I saw Leomaris for forever before I told my dad, and he freaked out," Kurt went on. "That's what I didn't tell you. My father was always trying to get me out of trouble at school. I don't remember doing these things. Maybe my mind was trying to blame someone? But I remember Leomaris being mean to people who were mean to me. He followed me everywhere; he wanted every piece of my time. I always saw him as so much larger than me, and powerful – but really he was like a child, I think. Scared to be ignored, if that makes sense."

"So why didn't you tell me this when we first met?" Dr. Shane asked.

"You were saying things at the time to my dad when you thought I wasn't listening," Kurt replied. "You said you'd never seen an imaginary friend developed this way, that it was troubling and that it was a bad thing. It scared me – he scared me. He always knew what I was thinking, and he could do things, make me think that I could do things, that were impossible."

"Like what?"

"Like moving things that couldn't be moved," Kurt elucidated. "Knowing things before someone said them, or before they happened. I didn't think to connect him with the thing that killed all of those people in my dreams until one day, when I was playing on the playground. This boy didn't like me – he thought I was too girly, most likely. Anyway, he was picking on me, and I saw Leomaris, so I got scared. He hated people that were mean to me, and I was already scared of him at that point. So I felt this…horror, like I can't describe: like I was possessed. My body was doing things that I didn't tell it to, and I moved the other boy away from me the way that Leomaris would move things. And I felt him, in my head, getting stronger like he was taking something from me into himself.

"That day, he became solid – I could touch him, for that split second. And it terrified me, because he hadn't done that before. So I told my dad about Leomaris, and my dad ended up taking me to you."

"Well, I was certainly concerned that you were blaming an invisible spirit for putting another boy in the hospital," Dr. Shane said wryly. "But you weren't talking to me very much at first for other reasons, I think." Kurt nodded at this.

"My mother hated you – people like you. She said that no one could ever know a man's soul, especially not through books or schooling." Kurt smiled fondly, and continued. "My mother could see things before they happened. She knew lies from truth, always. And she was the first person other than me who ever saw him. I used to believe in magic, in god—gods—whatever, but after she died…"

"You saw Leomaris before her death?" Dr. Shane asked, surprised.

"Sometimes," Kurt nodded. "Not like I would later – my mother didn't like him. When she tucked me in at night, she said she'd make him stay away from me… Actually, I think that she saw him before I did, that first time. We were in a park, and she stopped, and stared at something or someone, and that's when I saw him."

"I see," Dr. Shane said slowly. "Kurt, I want you to tell me the things you told me about the last few months – everything."

Kurt sighed, and nodded, and started at the beginning. Every single vision, every dream, every piece of Leomaris resurfacing that he had refused to believe, every time he had imagined Leomaris' eyes in Blaine and then run from it; he detailed the confrontation in the locker room and then on the stairs, how he'd felt that possession from his childhood enter him then and fought against it and how it hadn't seemed to matter. He told her about Blaine's split-personality, the way that he had dubbed it in his head. And the more he talked, the more every piece of the labyrinthine puzzle he had found himself in fit into place – Blaine's mannerisms, his strange way of speaking, his eyes, his… How long had Kurt been comparing Blaine to Leomaris without admitting it to himself?

By the time he'd concluded the story with sectionals, Dr. Shane was looking remarkably grave. "So, a diagnosis? Schizophrenia or psychosis?" Kurt joked weakly.

"Kurt, you've been under a terrible amount of stress this year," she said slowly. "But that is absolutely no excuse for you to be experiencing such realistic delusions, not at this point in your life. And while I agree that your…relationship, of whatever kind, with this Mr. Anderson appears to be somewhat unhealthy, I think that you and I both know that the root of your problem is nowhere near him. When you first came to me as a child, I'd actually begun to hypothesise that Leomaris was in fact a real person or adult in your life that you had developed into some fantastically powerful ghost in order to protect your subconscious—"

"Why the hell would my subconscious turn a real-life attacker into a supernaturally powerful one for protection? Wouldn't that just make me more terrified?" Kurt cut in.

"No, Kurt – because you need to be angry; you keep your thoughts and everything important about you locked so far inside of you that if you thought this threatening man, whoever he was or is, was some kind of ghost trying to penetrate that part of you, that would make you angry enough to fight back. But that's neither here nor there, as I think that we can both safely say that this spirit is not one of flesh and blood."

"He wants to be, though," Kurt said softly, and Dr. Shane looked at him. "Ultimately, I think. He wants to be human."

"Kurt…any delusion wants to be acknowledged as real," she said slowly.

"You think that I'm schizophrenic," Kurt returned flatly.

"I think that there is a very real possibility, yes," Dr. Shane replied bluntly, refusing to pull her punches. Funnily enough, that used to be something that Kurt appreciated about her. "A mild form, certainly, but visual and auditory hallucinations are nothing to be taken lightly. And there's a variety of treatments. That you treat these…events or occurrences as so potently unbelievable is a good sign that you aren't lost to them. But either way, I'd like you to stay at least the night here for further observation. I'm going to have to start you on a new medication regimen."

"Of course," Kurt said vaguely. He wasn't bothered. Leomaris hated mental hospitals; he wouldn't come here. When Kurt could accept that fact, then he could accept that he didn't believe Dr. Shane.

What then was the truth?

888

Kurt's room was similar enough to the one he stayed in as a child that he felt a little nauseous. It made his skin crawl to feel like he was right back where he was when he started middle school, coming in and out of the psych ward and making him even freakier to his peers than he already was. Kurt emerged from the bathroom changed into the soft, plain white cotton of the pyjama-like t-shirt and pants of what patients were allowed in their room, though his things were in a bag in the corner; as a voluntarily committed patient only there potentially for an overnight, Kurt wasn't being kept as a prisoner. Dr. Shane hated that term, naturally.

He settled on his bed and glanced out the window, frowning when the dark, bruise-like clouds outside seemed to match his mood. The first fat drop of rain struck the window like the fist of an angry god. The thunder rolled, the lightning struck, and down came the rain. Kurt didn't much appreciate the metaphor in his life and he turned away from the storm, trying not to think about the bars separating him from the glass. They were there for safety for suicide risks, or for those who wanted to escape but shouldn't. They weren't there for people like him…

Except, Dr. Shane seemed to think they were. Kurt didn't really know what he believed anymore.

The clock on the wall abruptly stopped ticking. Kurt frowned and shifted on the bed, kneeling up to look. The thing looked just the same as always. He shrugged after a moment – the battery was probably dead. Flopping back on his pillow, Kurt wondered if he should contemplate sleeping when he heard a small click. The sound continued, and Kurt, bewildered, sat straight up in bed and stared at the door as he finally located the sound coming from the…door?

There was a final, fatal click, and the door swung open to complete silence on the outside; in fact, Kurt noted worryingly, there was almost no sound except for the rain. Then someone stepped into the room, and Kurt froze. Blaine Anderson looked at the door, looking stupidly pleased with himself, before he turned around and fixed Kurt with a bright smile. Kurt could have sobbed; it was Blaine, stupid curly hair and unguarded smile and all. Before he could so much as move, Blaine had surged across the room and caught Kurt in a fierce hug, crushing them chest to chest.

Kurt pulled back, though – he had to pull back. "Blaine?" he whispered. "Tell me the truth." He fixed the other boy with a hard stare, putting space between them. "Are you Blaine?"

"Yes!" Blaine exclaimed loudly, then, seeming to check himself, lowered his voice. "Yes, Kurt, yeah – it's really me. I've been wanting to tell you—" Kurt held a hand up, stopping him, and Blaine worriedly stepped backward.

"You're really telling me that all those nights I thought you were a completely different person…you were." Kurt didn't really phrase it as a question. Blaine's face was full of inescapable pity, and Kurt felt bile rise in the back of his throat. If there was one thing that he couldn't abide, it was pity, and certainly not from Blaine of all people.

"Kurt, I wanted…I couldn't tell you, at first," Blaine whispered. "You wouldn't have believed me."

"I'm listening now," Kurt whispered, drawing his knees up defensively. Blaine winced and moved, sitting cross-legged across from Kurt at the end of the bed. Their eyes locked, but it was a completely different warmth that shot through Kurt at this tension between them. Blaine's eyes were a warm chocolate brown, honest and pure, every emotion he had displayed on his face for the world to see and to tear apart. Kurt trusted him, and not because of some projected feeling in his mind. He just intrinsically knew – had known, from that first night alone in his house, that Blaine was someone he could trust.

"What do you want me to say?" Blaine asked finally. Kurt snorted inelegantly.

"Try the truth?" he asked sarcastically. Blaine's lips quirked in a fought-back smile, and Kurt sniffed back more tears, moving to copy Blaine's position on the bed.

"Kurt, I don't even know how to say this…"

"Blaine, there is literally nothing that you could tell me right now that I would call you crazy for not having thought of it myself," Kurt assured him sardonically, and Blaine nodded.

"It's just that…I've wanted to tell someone for so long, but I knew that they would think that I was completely insane, and then it would happen, and it would be for nothing anyway. But then I met you, and I knew that you were like me – but that's the problem, isn't it?" Blaine shook his head, and Kurt frowned. If Blaine wasn't going to make any sense…

"Kurt, the first time that we met, that day at Dalton, when you were so scared…" Blaine sniffed, drew himself together, and looked Kurt dead-on. "That wasn't me. His name is Leomaris."

Kurt felt his entire body stiffen with tension, and then release like poison from a wound. There was absolutely no way that Blaine should know that name. Kurt had never said it around a soul besides his father and Dr. Shane, and neither of them had ever met Blaine. "I know," he whispered, his voice hoarse, scraped raw. Blaine's features twisted into a terrible, brittle mask of sorrow, and he bowed his head. "How…?" Could Kurt even shape the question? He didn't really have to though. Blaine reached across the bed and took Kurt's hand, and slowly took it in his. That was when Kurt noticed – Blaine was wearing a t-shirt. Blaine always wore some kind of long sleeves…

Blaine took Kurt's fingers and traced them delicately over the harsh, ropy scar tissue on one of his wrists, and Kurt gasped, his eyes tearing up as he lightly caressed the old wound. He didn't need to see the matching slash on Blaine's other wrist to guess the rest. "I didn't come out at my old school. I was picked on because I was the smaller kid who played with the girls and liked show-tunes, but I was really good at not being noticed. I liked football well enough, so the other boys let me alone for the most part.

"I had always been weird, though. I knew things, sometimes, that I shouldn't have known but I just did, and every once in a while weird things would happen around me, usually when I was really freaked out," Blaine continued, and Kurt felt the echoes of his own childhood down to his bones. "It was enough to not give me many friends – jeeze, I remember the time that I was on a camping trip my school had set up, and I'd gone out with a teacher to help get some firewood for the second night. I answered a question about the woods around us, and it wasn't really until he was looking at me like I'd just got out of the carnival that I realised he'd never asked the question out loud."

"Weird things," Kurt echoed slowly. "Like what?"

"Like that door," Blaine said, nodding towards it. "I guess the term is telekinetic, but it's not like some stupid movie where I can shoot people all over the place, you know. It's half worthless – that was the first time I ever pushed a door, you know? I can move little things and stop clocks; actually, electricity doesn't like me all that much."

"Show me," Kurt challenged. He didn't know why he was trying to remain sceptical about Blaine's words; he'd accepted so much else, like Leomaris himself – hell, why not this? Blaine snorted and gestured for Kurt's pillow. Kurt raised his eyebrow but he gave it to him. It was a thin little hospital thing. Blaine held it up and frowned at it. For a long moment, Kurt's doubts began to gnaw at him again; this was likely the most ridiculous position he'd ever found himself in.

The pillow moved.

Kurt yelped and jerked back, his heart pounding. Blaine dropped his hands and the pillow just…stayed. Blaine shook a little after a moment, and the pillow twitched, shook, and fell back to the bed. Silence ruled the room for a long minute as Kurt stared at the pillow, his eyes wider than a fish, before he gaped at Blaine. Blaine shrugged, red-faced, and looked away. "See? It's just a little parlour trick, you know. Stupid – nothing like you."

"What the hell do you mean, nothing like me?" Kurt demanded. "I think that I'd know if I could do something like that!"

"You could do a lot more than that," Blaine said grimly, and Kurt slumped back, shaking his head; catching this, Blaine frowned. "How do you think Karofsky broke his arm that day? How you threw him…me back, the other night?"

"Just…keep telling your story, alright?" Kurt snapped, his fists clenched. Blaine had no idea what he was talking about, and… He just moved something with his mind. Kurt tried very hard to stop his hands from shaking as Blaine looked away, nervously picking at his jeans with a hand.

"Well, anyway, things were going pretty normal for me, other than being gay," Blaine continued. Something bitter and hard passed behind his face, and Kurt could practically hear the words behind that look. "It was a small town in South Carolina," Blaine said, producing a trace of a Southern drawl that for reasons unknown to god and man Kurt found indescribably sexy. "I already knew that I couldn't be a faggot. I didn't tell anyone. And I guess it could've stayed that way, until… Until I started to hear him."

They were both leaning in, a private bubble between them and the rest of the world – the only two people in the world who could possibly understand the other's position. "It started small, at first – a voice, who would whisper my own secrets to me. I thought that I was just going crazy, but then it got to be more. I started to see him, following me, watching me everywhere. Things would start to just go wrong around me, and people were starting to notice me more and more, and that was the last thing I wanted was to be noticed. And then one stupid day in gym class, this boy that I had this ridiculous crush on, Troy McMichael, he noticed me staring at him. That was the beginning of the end."

"You thought that he wasn't a jerk…" Kurt began for him, his heart aching, and Blaine nodded, his eyes tearing up, refusing to look directly at Kurt.

"I did. And he turned out to be so much worse. I got shoved around, and insulted. My things were stolen. Anything I liked at that school, it got vandalised. They would bother me at lunch, so that I couldn't eat. They made sure that everyone in that school knew just what I was. And the whole time, I could hear that voice, getting stronger and stronger the more I listened to it. The more I would see him. My parents were fighting because the school had to call them when I tried complaining to the faculty about it. After my father found out why I was getting picked on, he freaked out. My mom was better about it, but…

"Anyway. It just kept getting worse and worse, until one week it just…stopped. The voice in my head was gone, and people were leaving me alone. I thought that it was a miracle, that one of my prayers had finally been answered, maybe. The choir that I stopped going to when people stopped talking to me invited me to go with them to the winter formal. I thought that it was too good to be true, and it was. When I got there, they all went in. The jocks and Troy and his girlfriend held me back because faggots weren't allowed in the gym with normal kids. They took me outside where the teachers weren't, and he kissed her in front of me and told me that I was a filthy, disgusting faggot and that he was going to make sure I made it to hell that night."

Kurt's mouth hung open, bile rising in his throat as Blaine clenched his fists and continued tonelessly. "They beat me bad. I was on the ground already, and I was scared, and hurt, and then Troy came up to give me a good kick, make sure I stayed down. I did the only thing I could think to do – I pushed him, the only way I knew how. He went down, and since nobody saw me touch him, they all freaked out long enough for me to get away. But they reported it to the teachers. They all blamed me, and the teachers believed them. They called my parents and told them that I would be suspended. That night, the voice came back, and he…I saw him, really, the whole way, for the first time. He held me in his arms in the bathroom when I took the razor to my wrists."

"When?" Kurt demanded, something horrible fermenting in his stomach, a thought in the back of his head he didn't want to voice. Blaine looked at him oddly.

"About three years ago, now, I suppose?" he said slowly.

Kurt bolted up from the bed and dove into the bathroom, collapsing to his knees in front of the toilet and violently throwing up everything in his stomach. He was vaguely aware of Blaine behind him, touching his back, trying to calm him down through the dry heaves, the choking. But Kurt couldn't void the knowledge from his mind as much as he would have loved to try. Three years ago, Dr. Shane had finally struck on the right dosage of medication that, combined with Kurt's newfound love of numbness, stopped him from seeing Leomaris, until he had joined New Directions and for that last year hadn't taken pills at all. He hadn't had one vision, one incident in all that time…because Blaine's life was being destroyed at the time. This was his fault.

"No, Kurt, no," Blaine whispered. "He would have found me anyway."

"Get out of my head," Kurt protested weakly, resting his sweating forehead on the cold porcelain of the toilet. Blaine chuckled fondly and helped Kurt to his shaking knees, to the sink where he could wash his face and brush his teeth. Kurt went through three cups of mouthwash to get the disgusting taste of vomit out of his mouth. Blaine held his hand through it, quiet and soothing but there. This time, Kurt followed Blaine to the bed, and they sat down together, side to side, not looking at each other but touching.

"When it first happened, I caught glimpses of others he's done this to. I saw the nightmares that you were having in our room," Blaine continued softly, as if there'd been no interruption, no waves of guilt rolling off of Kurt. "It all started with her – but even I don't know that entire story. But I know that I died, or enough of me did, that he could bind his spirit to mine. That was how he started possessing me. When the veil between life and death is weak enough, he can come in, and then once he's in, you don't have any defences against him.

"My parents thought that it was just the trauma affecting my new attitude; when the story of my attempted suicide hit the rest of the town one of the girls watching the attack that night freaked out and told my parents and the teachers what really happened. My mom sued the school and had Troy expelled, which really didn't win our family any favours – he was the star quarterback, and she lost him his football scholarship for the town faggot. But he already had a solution to this: Dalton Academy, with their prestige and power and, of course most importantly, their no-tolerance bullying policy. My parents transferred their jobs and I transferred schools.

"I could see and hear, but I couldn't act – it was horrible, like being imprisoned in your mind. He made friends, influenced people. He's so powerful; he had everyone in that school eating out of his hand before a week was gone. He and my father became the best of friends, of course, the perfect family for the perfect boy. But all that time, he was just biding his time, until you came to Dalton Academy. I could see it in his head then: you would find me attractive, and I would be gay with a story just like yours, and a singing voice to match yours. You wouldn't have any defences, because he had already gotten rid of them all. We met, you invited me and thus him into your life, and the rest is history."

The most ridiculous thing about it all was that Blaine looked guilty, like this was all somehow his fault. Kurt could have screamed, his skin was crawling so wretchedly. "But…how did I meet you, then?" he finally arrived on, trying to sort through the tornado that was his thoughts.

"He's never possessed someone like this for so long, being corporeal, in a sense. He's a spirit, as far as I can tell, and he's never concentrated like this for so long before. It's draining. He can feed energy off of people – off of the people like us that he kills. He thought that he would be strong enough, but he wasn't. The times he has to let go of me, I go to sleep – like a coma. Then when I wake up he's back, and I never had a chance to do anything…until you called." Blaine was looking at him now like Kurt was the answer to all of his prayers, and Kurt felt so overwhelmed with inadequacy at that look, he didn't even know what to say. "That night, I woke up, in my own skin, for the first time in such a long time that I didn't even know what to do. But I just knew that I had to pick up that phone call – and it was you.

"I hated him talking to you, that day; I could see so much between us, and I knew what he was going to do to you. All I wanted to do was tell you that it was going to be okay, and that was my chance. I just didn't count on having that chance. I didn't sleep that whole night, and when he took me back that morning he was furious – but you were fighting him, even back then; he had to expend so much energy the day that you were expelled that I just had to find a way to wake myself up when he would leave me. Some days when you refused to let him in, he would spend so much energy influencing everyone around you to try to get into your head that I wouldn't even fall asleep in the first place; I would just wake up and be back."

Kurt nodded. It was all falling into place, in a sick sort of way. But it still left one thing. "Why me? Why has it always been me?"

"He calls us witches, and so do some people," Blaine said softly. "Others call us psychic or gifted or freaks. I don't know what we are or how, but people like you and me can do things. And you, Kurt – you shine like a sun compared to the rest of us." Kurt was shaking his head, and Blaine surged forward. "I've seen him watching you, Kurt. You can completely resist his influence; you can influence people as well. That's what scared him so much at sectionals; he didn't think that anyone other than him could do that. You're strong enough to move things with your mind that would knock me unconscious if I really tried. You can make things grow or die in the earth; he watched you do it with your mother when you were a child. Sometimes even the weather reacts to you – you change the air around you, Kurt, and that's why he wants you!"

"What the hell—the weather?" Kurt asked weakly.

"It wasn't supposed to rain today," Blaine noted. "Whenever you're really sad, it always seems to rain."

"Being sad when it rains isn't completely uncommon!" Kurt protested weakly.

"No, Kurt – it rains because you're sad," Blaine said quietly, and Kurt just stared. Every class that had ever come to him natural as breathing, because he'd just seemed to know what the teacher was going to say. Every time he'd wake up after a bad nightmare to see his room torn apart and thought that it was part of the sleepwalking. Every strange memory of his mother that had never made sense in the light of day…dear god, was Kurt actually going to believe this?

"Let me show you, then?" Blaine asked, and Kurt nodded dumbly. Blaine leaned forward, taking both of Kurt's hands in his, and Kurt gasped as he felt something crackle between them like energy – like aura. Kurt had seen this, those times when he zoned out and the world around him seemed to shift like a molecular rubics cube. Let me in, Blaine whispered in Kurt's mind, and Kurt finally just relaxed, defeated. Blaine moved his hands and gently placed them on Kurt's cheeks, cradling his head, and pushed into Kurt's mind. It was so alien, so foreign, that Kurt recoiled, yet Blaine persisted.

It was the most intense, private thing that Kurt had ever felt – this was Blaine, the very feeling of him deep inside of his mind, the taste of him; Blaine was showing Kurt into the deepest parts of his soul and it was terrifying and yet exhilarating at the same time. Then, Blaine was delving into Kurt, into that icy maelstrom where Kurt hid his deepest self, and Kurt gasped as something glowing and practically orgasmic surged through him and he opened his eyes to see Blaine's pupils dilated strangely, his breathing uneven, but a wondrous smile on his face as he whispered into Kurt's mind, Look.

Every piece of furniture in the room – everything bolted down, even – was hovering in the air, including the bed that they were on. Kurt felt the strain in his mind, like using a muscle rarely exercised but there, and experimentally he pushed, just a little, and watched as the chair began to twirl lazily in the air. The water in the cup next to his bed formed a lazy current, droplets of it separating like molecules returning to simple state, lifting from the glass; the lamps in the room began to flicker and the hands on the clock twitched back and forth lazily.

It was easy, it was glorious; the world around him was moving at his command and…and…

Another memory – a boy, alone, powerful, standing above David Karofsky screaming in agony on the stairs with a sneer on his face. Kurt remembered vividly with such suddenness that it took his breath away that feeling, that knowledge that he could do this, affect the world around him on a scale that no human being should ever be able to reach, and how easy it was to be seduced into just…acting.

Kurt let go of that glowing kernel that Blaine had uncovered, but there was no pushing it back to where it was. Kurt was awake now, alive in ways that he had never anticipated being, and there was no turning back. Blaine was staring at him in awe, but more than that; his cheeks were blushing and Kurt smiled lazily as he realised the thoughts flickering through his mind like fireflies were actually Blaine's memories of the nights that they had shared together, of holding hands through Burlesque and sleeping in each other's arms, and abruptly Kurt heard the rest of Blaine's earlier thought:

I never thought that I would fall in love with you.

When they kissed, it was the most natural thing in the world to both of them. It was smooth and easy, slow and wickedly luscious. There was no time or space or dimension to the world but the two of them, lips moving in an ageless dance. It was innocent and free, a fragile piece of hope flaring to life between the two of them, that set Kurt's heart to pounding as he realised what he'd been fighting for over a month now: he was utterly in love with Blaine. Blaine drew back, grinning like a moron, and Kurt realised that Blaine had heard him through the bond that he had created, and Kurt blushed but he smiled as well; he wouldn't take it back.

But Blaine's smile dimmed, and the link between them grew weaker, and Kurt protested wordlessly – why would Blaine want that blissful link between the two of them to end? But one thought loomed in Blaine's mind—one name. Kurt sighed, but they didn't let go of each other's hands as they lowered back down with a gentle bump, the world righting itself.

"He sent you here, didn't he?" Kurt guessed tiredly.

"He can't find your mind amongst the mad," Blaine said simply. "I wasn't supposed to tell you all of this – just to help you find your power. I suppose I did. He knows that you won't wait in here forever. He's obsessed with you, Kurt – he's been watching you since you were a child and he's convinced that the two of you are going to be together forever. That's why I let him do this to me today – because I had to warn you to run."

"And what happens to you if I do?" Kurt asked tiredly. Blaine frowned murderously.

"Don't you dare put yourself at risk just for me, Kurt!" he snapped angrily. "I couldn't bare it—"

"And you think I could?" Kurt snapped suddenly, surging up from the bed. "What if I'm not thinking about you, Blaine? What if I'm thinking about the next person he kills to get to me – the next person who dies because of me? He killed Karofsky, didn't he? Didn't he?"

"Yes," Blaine said hoarsely. "But you don't understand – the way he's bound himself to me, I can hold him back so that you could run away—"

"And if you die, then he's free again!" Kurt snarled.

"But if you give him what he wants—" Blaine protested.

"What does he want?" Kurt demanded. "What does he want from me?"

"He wants a corporeal body – and you can give him that, with your power," Blaine said quietly. "He wants to live, as he puts it. But if he does get what he wants, Kurt…he'll never die. He'll never end. He'll have all of his powers, but concentrated all the time. He could do things…he wants to do things – be worshipped, even! And he wants to do it all with you by his side, willing or not! He can make you willing; you might be able to resist the watered-down version of him but not if you give in to him!"

"But if I don't he'll kill you," Kurt concluded quietly. Blaine clenched his eyes shut, and Kurt knew that he'd struck gold with that one: Leomaris would never stop coming after him, or the people that he loved.

"You can't care about that, Kurt."

"You're only saying that because you love me," Kurt said quietly. "But you need to understand something here, Blaine – I love you too. I love you, Blaine Anderson, and if you think for one second that I'm going to stand here and let him kill you if I can do something to stop it, you're an idiot!"

When they kissed this time, it was like the Big Bang. Kurt's entire body responded; he could feel Blaine within him down to his toes. Their teeth clicked and their tongues tangled and Kurt felt hot and his heart filled. Blaine was crying and Kurt kissed away every tear, and Blaine held him close enough that he could barely get enough air. Kurt flicked out a thought, and the door locked, his iPod flicked music on louder than it should be able to, and the two tumbled together into the bed.

If I could have just a moment of you

Would I be wanting more?

If I could have just a…taste, of you

Would I be addicted?

If I could have just a touch of you

Could I tear myself away?

They moved together, two components of the oldest power in the universe, and Kurt saw the stars.

I would pray to be the rain that over and in your skin

With no consequence

To be the liquid in your glass that falls around your lips and mouth

Swallow me…

888

Against the wishes of Dr. Shane, Kurt filled his prescriptions and left the clinic on Sunday to return to Dalton Academy. He didn't say goodbye to his friends – now wasn't the time for that. He'd woken up Sunday morning alone, which didn't come as an enormous surprise to him. He'd know that Blaine had been a temporary gift from whatever higher powers there might have been smiling down on him, and he didn't think over-hard on it. Instead, he plugged in music so he wouldn't have to think, and drove to Westerville as the skies darkened into twilight.

I just woke up from a fuzzy dream

You never would believe the things that I have seen

I looked in the mirror and I saw your face

You looked right through me, you were miles away

All my dreams, they fade away

I'll never be the same

If you could see me the way you see yourself—

I can't pretend to be someone else

You always love me more, miles away

I hear it in your voice, we're miles away

You're not afraid to tell me, miles away

I guess we're at our best, we're miles away

So far away, so far away…

He threw his things back into their places and left a note on the desk, if he even needed the note. Kurt wasn't bothering trying to hide himself anymore; boys in the halls were staring at him without being able to really explain why, and Kurt felt slightly guilty; he didn't mean to push them, but it was sort of happening. He shrugged; he wasn't hurting them and he didn't have the time to stop and apologise. That precipice that he'd been hurtling towards was finally close enough to see, and he was nearing the edge – but one piece hadn't fallen into place.

Fingering the phoenix pendant he wore, he hoped his mother could see him now as he sat calmly at one of the benches in the conservatory and waited.

Blaine's body walked into the room twenty minutes later. "Hello, Leomaris," Kurt said softly, and Blaine's face split into a slightly insane smile that Kurt found wretchedly disturbing after last night, but he didn't allow one jolt of this to show through to the possessed body in front of him.

"Kurt," Leomaris said reverently. "You have no idea how long I've waited for you to call me by my name."

"It might have happened sooner if you weren't possessing an innocent boy's body," Kurt noted evenly.

"You aren't happy," Leomaris noted, frowning.

"You're right," Kurt nodded. Quinn thought that she could play at being an icy bitch, Kurt thought with an inner smirk. "I'm locked in a room with a psychotic supernatural murderer who's been stalking me since childhood. I should be thrilled."

"You can't hide behind your words with me, Kurt," Leomaris said, stepping further into the room. The door swung shut behind him and clicked into the lock, though no one was touching it. "I've known you longer than anyone on this earth."

"You don't know one damn thing about me," Kurt said, standing up and joining Leomaris in the circling game that he was playing. Kurt wasn't about to be intimidated from this. "That I would never forgive you for murdering innocent people to get to me, for one."

"I would hardly call David Karofsky innocent," Leomaris said with a shrug, stepping lithely in the current of air the two were creating between them, the air itself tense as a storm. "He hurt you."

"He would never have gone as far as he did if you hadn't haunted him," Kurt returned coldly. "The way that you haunted me."

"It didn't require much of a push, actually," Leomaris said lazily. "He was particularly easy to control – not like you. But then, I knew that you would be powerful enough to resist me. Your power is like a torch in the darkness, Kurt. And I will show that to you, in time."

"I won't do what you want me to do," Kurt rejected, and Leomaris smirked.

"Falling back onto that sweet afternoon in the rain?" he said, and Kurt narrowed his eyes. "Yes, I saw how this weak little boy seduced you – not so weak after all, I suppose. But Blaine has served his purpose, and made himself a nuisance to me. It would hurt you to see him dead?"

"I saw what Amelia did to you," Kurt said, stepping forward. Leomaris' eyes narrowed, and he took a step back. "If you hurt him, I will scatter you to the winds and you will never, ever be able to take shape again."

"You could certainly try, my little phoenix," Leomaris said indulgently. "But you are just a witch, Kurt. You have no real comprehension of what I am."

"Then if you're so powerful, why don't you do this yourself?" Kurt demanded. "Why do you need me?"

"I love you, Kurt," Leomaris said simply. Kurt felt like gagging, but he swallowed it back. "I would have you beside me – and besides, I am of a different world than you. To gain physical shape in this world, I need a witch of this world – as powerful as you – to grant me that corporeality. Feeding off of the blood of those villagers gave me immediacy, those hundreds of years ago, but it wasn't until I drank Amelia's soul, her power, that I realised that I could gain shape in this world. For years, I searched the world for a light that burnt as strong as hers had, but every witch merely died. I could drink of their powers like the vampires of human stories, but that only allowed me…immediacy, in this world – not the life that I was seeking… Until I met your mother."

"My mother?" Kurt gasped, stunned. Leomaris smiled indulgently, taking advantage of Kurt's shock to move forward, caress Kurt's cheek lightly until Kurt pulled back. The spirit smiled a Cheshire cat grin, and Kurt felt sick. "Oh, yes, she was immensely powerful, but she was strong enough to fight me off. I couldn't influence her; but the child she conceived on the night of the summer solstice? The babe that she nurtured under the light of the full moon and whispered her power into its veins? When you were born, you were the most beautiful sight that I had ever seen, and so I watched you – watched you grow until you stand before me now…exquisite."

The words were perverse, paedophilic praise, and Kurt jerked away from Leomaris with a horrified cry escaping his lips. He felt filthy. "Did you…did…"

"Did I 'murder' your mother, as you put it? No," Leomaris answered after a moment. "As the future has advanced, the illnesses of the time I came to be aware in have evolved. Your mother's illness was…terrifying. She was so powerful, and yet struck down…" For the first time, Kurt heard a quiver of weakness in Leomaris' voice, and the thought was so simple, so childish, that Kurt froze.

"You're afraid to die," he whispered, and Leomaris made a small, noncommittal noise.

"Aren't you?" the spirit countered.

"Yes," Kurt nodded.

"I don't want to die," Leomaris said. "I suppose that that makes me human, does it not?"

"Don't flatter yourself," Kurt said, weakly snapping. Leomaris smirked.

"This world is an exquisite torture – the senses of a human! To hold the skull between one's hands, holding the human brain, the most amazing thing…to feel it crack, and watch that force of life slipping from someone's eyes…" Leomaris took a breath. "When you give me what I am seeking, my power will be absolute, and your power will increase because of it. You will never have to die either, Kurt, and you'll see how we can change this world together."

He moved, taking Kurt's hand in his, and Kurt shivered as something like the alchemy between him and Blaine took place as Leomaris placed Kurt's hand on the soil of one of the tree sapling stands. Kurt watched in fascination as green vines slowly ripened to bud from where his fingers touched, stretching toward the tree, wrapping themselves around its trunk. "But one cannot give without taking," Leomaris whispered, and Kurt watched with an aching sadness as the sapling began to die, wilting slowly, its life only spurring the vines on, until all that was left in the pot were thorny vines that bore a single blood-red rose.

"That's a plant," Kurt bit out, jerking away, the heady rush of life and death tingling through his body like wildfire. "You're talking about human beings – you influence people, take their free wills away – you're talking about people's souls! You're a murderer!"

"Why should that plant not have a soul as well?" Leomaris asked carelessly. "Or the animals that you eat for supper? The laws of nature state simply, kill or be killed. Nature is not good or evil, Kurt, it is. You can join me by making your choice. I will have you by my side, one way or another – but one way is to willingly give me what I want rather than see your precious Blaine at knifepoint. Join me, or stay shivering in terror because the night is dark. But never, ever forget that I am offering you to join my side as a god."

Leomaris walked away from the room, the door closing behind him, and his voice echoed powerfully through Kurt's consciousness. Wednesday night is the full moon, little phoenix. That is the night that it will happen. Meet me in the library before midnight…and make your choice.

Kurt felt him withdraw, and he looked into the depths of the blood rose and wept.

888

"Hey, Momma," Kurt whispered, tracing his mother's name upon her grave. "I know that I haven't visited in a while, but…I really wish you were here. I'm so scared…" She didn't answer. His mother was dead and gone. Kurt lay out upon her grave and sobbed.

It was Monday, and he'd skipped school. He knew that Dalton had most likely called his father, who would be panicking by now. Kurt snorted bitterly and straightened up after several long minutes. His father had said that he was just like his mother, but Kurt felt nothing like Elizabeth Hummel. His mother had been graceful and beautiful and kind. She'd never been arbitrarily mean, like Kurt could be. She would help anyone and everyone, and she would know exactly what to do in this situation.

"Any problem can be solved with love, Kurt," Elizabeth had told him when he was a small child. "Love is the strongest thing in this entire universe. When two people love each other, they bind each other's souls. Darkness can cover everything, but it never wins, because in the end you only need a candle to make the darkness go away. Well, love isn't a candle. Love is a fire that can ignite the stars."

"Mommy, I don't understand," Kurt whined. He wanted to play outside in the garden. Elizabeth smiled sadly, pressing a hand to the pain in her lungs.

"One day, you will," she said simply, and kissed his forehead.

She would do what was right, Kurt thought. "The hardest thing in this world is to live in it," Buffy the Vampire Slayer had once said. Kurt had never thought that he would understand what she had meant. "Goodbye, Momma," Kurt whispered, and pushed himself up from the cold earth. He knew exactly what his mother would do. He was her son. He would make her proud.

When Kurt walked away from the cemetery, he didn't see a lone, beautiful, white lily bloom into life over Elizabeth Hummel's grave.

888

Kurt spent the rest of the day with Burt, who took the day off of work and had one of his workers cover the shift. He didn't ask, and Kurt didn't have to tell him. Instead, they went for a drive, the way that they used to right after Elizabeth's death. Kurt took his father's hand and squeezed it, and he thought that Burt understood, because he didn't say anything; he just squeezed back.

At home, they watched home movies – Burt, teaching Kurt to ride a bike; Kurt teaching Burt how to participate in the tea parties his mother had been so good at. They both had a good laugh at the look on film-Burt's face when he'd had to lift his pinkie to sip at the delicate china, and the exasperated look on Kurt's smaller face when he accused his father of being hopeless.

They cooked dinner together, a big, slopping glob of unhealthy meat and potatoes, and reminisced about the times when a hard financial hit had struck the auto shop and that winter Burt had had to briefly get a second job, and how some nights he would wake Kurt up from sleep and they would cook a late dinner together.

Over the table, Kurt told Burt about Blaine, every last detail that he could think of from the wave of his curls to the warmth of his chocolate eyes to the little oddly-shaped freckle just beneath his left eye. Burt wondered aloud about meeting Blaine with a shotgun in hand, and Kurt promptly gave him a good whack upside the head, laughing when Burt gave Kurt a dopey, hurt look, and then a fierce hug when Burt made sure that Kurt understood that as long as Blaine made Kurt happy, that was what mattered.

That night, Burt tucked Kurt into bed like Kurt was a small child, and Kurt drifted to sleep with a smile on his face.

888

Quinn stepped out of the shower with a smile on her face. She had always been a morning person, and she was, somewhat selfishly, looking forward to whatever antics Puck was going to try to pull that day. She hummed to herself as she pulled on the outfit she had picked out for herself the night before. Grabbing her backpack, she lightly headed down the stairs, frowning when she didn't hear her mother in the kitchen.

"Hi, Quinn," said a soft voice from the living room, and Quinn let out a startled shriek when she saw Kurt sitting in the rocking chair near the television. "Sorry; I didn't mean to scare you," he said, but he was smirking slightly.

"You are a jerk," Quinn pronounced, shaking her head. "What's going on?"

"Your mother said that you were in the shower. I suppose I'm too gay for her to consider me a threat, leaving me alone in the house to wait for you," Kurt said apologetically. "I apologise for my inability to ravish you in the shower properly." There was a beat, maybe two, before they both cracked up, laughing harder than Quinn could remember laughing in a good while. She rolled her eyes and moved forward, pulling Kurt into a hug, surprised when she thought for just a moment that she felt him trembling. But it passed as quickly as it began, and she was sure she must have imagined it.

"You look…different," she said, before she could stop herself – and it was true. Kurt was holding himself with easy grace, his body announcing…presence, almost, in her living room. It was a bit unnerving, but she shrugged it off. "What brings you by?"

"I…need to ask you a personal question," Kurt said after a moment. Quinn frowned.

"The kind that you don't need a phone for?" she said leadingly, and when he nodded, she felt a pang of worry. "Okay, then."

They sat down, facing each other across the coffee table, and then six words that she had never, ever thought she'd hear falling from Kurt's lips rang through her living room. "Why do you believe in God?"

"Um…excuse me?" Quinn asked, taken aback. Kurt's eyes were shining, serious and bright, and Quinn had the uneasy feeling that this was one of the most loaded questions that she had ever been asked.

"You told me once that I needed to have faith in something. Why do you have faith?" Kurt asked, leaning forward. Quinn sat back a moment and thought, carefully wording her answer.

"When I wake up in the morning, I think, why did I wake up?" she began slowly. "There's so much of this world that we take for granted. I know about theories of evolution and all, but I can't see the world around me, or the people in it, and not believe in God. To me, He's all around us, every day."

"You know, one thing about Christianity that always struck me as hypocritical was the idea of Hell – you know, do good things or you'll go to the bad place. How do you know the real difference between if what you're doing is right or wrong? How do you make a choice, knowing that the outcome is either one or the other but not both?" Kurt wasn't meeting her eyes, and Quinn leaned forward, taking his hands in hers.

"Some Christians don't even believe in Hell, per se," Quinn said, hoping to get through to him. "When God created us, He gave us free will. It isn't…the choices that we make are what defines us," Quinn settled on finally. "I think that I'm going to Heaven when I die – or, I'd like to think that. I also think that I'll see plenty of non-believers in paradise too, because they led good lives. If you choose – if you make a choice, and you know that the choice was good, and it doesn't hurt other people, then it was the right choice. You don't have to believe in my God to be a good person, Kurt."

"Quinn…" Kurt faltered; then he gripped her hands, weighing his words. "I have faith in something now. I want to make the choice to do the right thing. But I'm scared." When Quinn tried to question this, Kurt shook his head. "I can't talk about it – just trust me. I just need you to tell me something: can I be scared of doing the right thing, even though I know that it's the right thing?"

"Of course you can," Quinn said strongly. "There's a world of difference between what's right and what's easy – but that's what makes us humans, right? That we keep trying, even though we screw up." Kurt closed his eyes, and he smiled briefly, before he leaned forward and enveloped her in a hug.

"Promise me that you and I will make the right choice, not the easy one," Kurt whispered in her ear, and Quinn nodded when she hugged him back. If he was really talking about what she thought that he was talking about, and she'd talked him down… Tears smarted in her eyes, and she held on fiercely. But if he wasn't actually talking about…that, then there was no way she could suggest that to him. So when they pulled back, she didn't say anything; she just walked him to the door, hand in hand.

"Kurt?" she said finally, once he'd started walking out of the door. He turned back, and she smiled. "You know that I love you, right?"

"Of course I know that," Kurt said with a smile. "I've always known that. You know that I love you too, right?" She nodded, and he gave her his trademark picture-perfect smile and Hollywood wave as he turned away and walked down her driveway. Quinn watched him drive toward the rising sun until the light was bright enough to hurt her eyes and she had to look away.

888

Kurt walked the length of the pond alone Tuesday afternoon, after he'd pulled back into Westerville. It had been a long drive, and he'd taken it slowly, taking as many detours as he liked. His mother had been that way, too; it was why on their few family vacations that Kurt remembered, they had usually flown, as Elizabeth would insist on stopping for the scenery at every rest stop to the point that it had gotten on Burt's nerves; a younger Kurt had simply appreciated never having to hold in the need to wee and had gotten to stretch his legs as much as he liked as they were constantly stopping.

The wind rippled, and he imagined deliriously that he could hear the mermaids singing humans to their deaths in the mysterious depths of the water.

His favourite memory was of the time that Burt and Elizabeth had planned around Elizabeth's constant desire to stop, so they'd taken a day trip to Virginia and had spent the following day driving along a stretch of the Blue Ridge Parkway, stopping at the scenic overlooks for pictures and a picnic lunch. The next day they had kept driving, finally arriving at Virginia Beach and spending the afternoon on the sand. It had been the first time that Kurt had ever seen the ocean, and he'd been astounded and slightly terrified of the endless sea, stretching farther than the eye could see and seemingly endless.

Kurt sat down near the willow tree he had marked as his favourite earlier that year, when he'd been happily oblivious to the world around him, and leaned back against its trunk, watching the sun sink over the water, turning the pond to fiery liquid, its secrets masked to the world above. The day was slowly dying, and the night would take its place. Rather than watch the moon rise, Kurt chose to go inside. The boys around him remained oblivious to his presence, just the way he wished it. Kurt walked the halls of Dalton, stopping by the choir room the Warblers used and admiring the trophy he had helped them win, proudly on display at the front of the room. Pavarotti chirped musically at him and Kurt whistled softly back to him as he shut the door.

Back in his dorm room, Kurt gently ran his hands over the bed that he and Blaine had shared those treasured nights – Blaine, a beautiful boy who had had his life stolen from him too early. He turned away and undressed, carefully putting his things away. He dressed in an elegant long-sleeved white shirt, and slipped on a pair of black slacks. Kurt finally slipped his mother's necklace on, fingering it slowly.

There was nothing to do now but let fate play its course. He was at the edge of the precipice, and he could see the other side – but how to leap over the chasm? Kurt smiled wryly, before he turned and grabbed the crystal-handled letter opener from the desk, tucking it into his pocket and heading toward his destiny.

8

The Dalton Academy Library was a large place with two levels, and at the centre of the lower level was a large study space. Kurt wasn't duly surprised when he walked in to find that the tables had been swept carelessly to the side. The moonlight was shining through the domed glass ceiling, bathing the world in an otherworldly glow, and Blaine's body stood, prone, like some statue of a pagan god at the centre of the light.

"Kurt," Leomaris whispered, and Kurt stepped forward. The door swung shut behind him and the lock latched into place, sealing him off from the world around him. "You came."

"Yes," Kurt answered, walking forward. Leomaris turned around and smiled then.

"My bride," he said, holding his hand out for Kurt to take.

"I'm not a girl," Kurt responded automatically.

"Semantics," Leomaris said pleasantly. Kurt slipped his hand into the offered one, and shivered as he felt Leomaris' influence wash over him, dizzyingly powerful; he'd obviously been building himself up in the days since Kurt had seen him last. It was making it hard to think, shadowing Kurt's mind with doubts and questions. His heart beat painfully fast. "You will be my eternal companion, my father and my lover and my child," Leomaris went on. Kurt shivered as the spirit's power wrapped around him like the touch of a lover, shifting and caressing, and he looked down to see that he was now barefoot, his pants black as night and shining like a spider's web, his shirt a shimmering white material that glowed in the moonlight. It was like wedding garb from a nightmarish faerie tale, and Kurt pulled away.

"Come now, my love – it's far too late to be shy," Leomaris chided, chuckling as if he found Kurt's horror adorable. "Tonight is the night that we will be bound together forever – that this world will witness the birth of its new gods."

"I don't even know how to do what you want me to do," Kurt whispered. His mind was still in scrambles; he fought through the fog in his mind, trying to think. This was wrong; he was barely seventeen years old – what on earth could he do in this situation faced with this power, this ancient…

Kurt shook his head again, struggling sluggishly against Leomaris' hold on him, and the spirit once more laughed, a cold sound and nothing like Blaine's warm rumble… Kurt felt a small flame curl into life in his stomach. Blaine.

"I do know, don't you worry about that," Leomaris said carelessly. "You'll simply have to bind us together, and I will do the rest." He stepped forward, behind Kurt, wrapping his arms around Kurt's waist and kissing him lightly on the neck. Kurt's skin crawled, the clarity of the fire in his being coming forward, but Leomaris wasn't trying to read him; after all, he already had Kurt under his influence. What could Kurt do?

"Wait," Kurt said, turning within the confines of Leomaris' dark embrace. "What about Blaine?"

"What about him?" Leomaris asked carelessly.

"Will he die, if you leave him?" Kurt asked, keeping his voice small and tremulous. Leomaris sighed fondly and kissed Kurt's forehead.

"No; his body is very much alive. I could kill him, if you like…" Kurt shook his head mutely, and Leomaris sighed. "I don't like that you would think of him, now; he's nothing to either of us."

"Think of it as a…wedding present," Kurt suggested, pleading with his eyes, all strength and defiance gone. "He's no threat to you – or us. Like you said, we'll be bound together, you and I; what could he do to either of us? With our power?"

Leomaris threw back his head and laughed. "You have such a heart, Kurt, one that I will so enjoy corrupting. You think to play me on my weakness for you?" When Kurt tried to shake his head, Leomaris merely laughed once more and pulled him in for another kiss, dizzying and hard and draining, and Kurt stumbled back from it, feeling cold. "But, it will be as you wish it; I'll leave him alive until you wish otherwise."

"Thank you," Kurt whispered, his eyes tearing up. Leomaris gently wiped his tears away.

"It's time, my love. Are you ready?"

"Yes," Kurt breathed.

"Then open up to me, pretty – give me everything," the spirit whispered, and leaned down to kiss Kurt. Their lips met, and Kurt was caught in a maelstrom. Every single fibre of his being felt Leomaris joining to him; their spirits mingled until Kurt could feel him with every breath he took, every step forward or back—surely he would be driven mad, feeling two beings alive within him at once. It was too much, too much, and the world was spiralling into a circle, an eternity, and Kurt was lost to it, hopelessly lost, with no hope of recovery…

"Kurt?" Blaine rasped, and Kurt stumbled back, holding on to one of the tables for support. Leomaris stood between the two of them, vaguely there, like an old photograph – his phantom form, a form that had haunted Kurt's dreams, his every waking moment, since he was a small child. Kurt stared at him dumbly, and Leomaris smiled. "Oh, god, Kurt, no, what did you do—"

"What he was always meant to do," Leomaris said, cutting Blaine off. His voice echoed with power, vibrating through Kurt's very being. "Now, Kurt, it's time to finish it."

"Kurt, no!" Blaine yelled. "You can't—"

"I have to," Kurt said fiercely. "This, Blaine, this is everything." Blaine stared at him in horror as Leomaris smiled delightedly, his black predator's eyes lighting up with delight as Kurt stepped into his embrace.

The skies darkened overhead; a storm was rolling in. Kurt was trapped in Leomaris' gaze, the black eyes holding him trapped as they had for so many years. This time, however, Kurt stepped toward those eyes, those eyes that gazed at him so possessively, owning his entire being. Kurt slipped his hands into those of his phantom's, charged with electricity, and felt Leomaris surge through him, naked and inside out before him as Leomaris touched that most intimate part of Kurt's being and Kurt felt that glowing kernel of power respond to Leomaris' touch.

Power ripped through Kurt like a volcanic eruption; it burnt like fire and it hurt beyond any pain that he had ever known before, tearing through his entire being. He screamed as every muscle of his body worked on overdrive to support that part of himself, straining beyond recognition. He couldn't do this, it was killing him; but Leomaris would not let him stop. The pain didn't just continue, it increased, it knocked him straight to his knees and he felt Blaine's hands around his waist; Kurt wanted to apologise but he couldn't find the words as he automatically leeched power from Blaine that he could feel from the other boy, knowing that he was hurting Blaine but unable to stop.

Lightning split the sky like a sword through paper and the wind howled outside as a profane birth took place; Leomaris was screaming as well as spirit was melded to the atoms around it, excited to life; his facsimile of flesh became real and the spirit screamed in pain as a heart began to beat, the newborn muscles working to develop as he took his first breath and the pain of his lungs expanding knocked him to his knees. The once-spirit wept as a newborn, the pain increasing and increasing until finally it started to slow.

All three of them were collapsed on the floor as the storm began to abate, the clouds beginning to clear as the cold light of the moon sliced into the library. Blaine choked, a horrified sound, and Kurt lifted his head weakly, staring in horrified fascination as Leomaris struggled to his knees. There was silence in the room except for the ragged sound of their breathing. Kurt felt vaguely sick; his world was spinning in disorientation as he was simultaneously sharing his vision, his life, with Leomaris' newborn human body – every feeling, every scent, every taste and touch and sound and sight flooding the man…spirit…thing's body was reoccurring to Kurt's overwhelmed brain and he whimpered in pain, curling further into the calming waves emanating from Blaine's psyche.

When Leomaris had forcibly thrust open all centres of Kurt's power, there was no way to close them; Kurt could see the entire world around him as a burning firelight of molecules and cosmic swirls. His brain couldn't process the information at once and he felt like he might go blind. No human was meant to see the world like this, stripped down to the core, and the fact that he could terrified Kurt to the depths of his heart; if he could do this, what then could Leomaris accomplish?

The daemon seemed to wonder the same thing, as he slowly stumbled to his feet, laughing at the difficulties of walking in his new form. Leomaris looked around the world with a burning hunger in his eyes, and Kurt could feel the echoes of that hunger down to his core. It was like a child learning the world for the first time, but the base of this wasn't knowledge, but a desire for ownership and control. There was something almost…seductive about seeing the world in such an extreme view of black and white, choices unfettered by moral scruples. Leomaris was a god, or as close as any creature could come to becoming one. What did it matter, what frail human philosophy could possibly shutter his desire to become master over everything?

Leomaris held on to a table for balance, and at his mere touch the wood excited itself, becoming supple and snappy as a sapling; the solid oak legs trembled and wavered as if caught in a high wind. The wood creaked and groaned and protested, shifting in a dizzyingly sped-up state of entropy before, with a squeal, something gave and the table exploded in a shower of splinters, the debris raining down to scatter on the floor in particles small as ashes, blown away to nothing in a matter of seconds. Leomaris stared at his hands with a giddy delight, and waved one with a small amount of force. Kurt barely registered the intent behind that movement, not even a complete thought, in the back of his mind before three enormous tables, solid oak and heavy as grand pianos on their own, lifted up and flew into the wall with a sickening crunch, one right after the other.

"My god," Blaine whispered behind him, but Kurt couldn't tear his eyes away from the display as Leomaris closed his eyes in rapture, stretching his senses out beyond what should have even been possible.

His aura mingled with Kurt's with a crackling of primal energies, heavy and dark, and Kurt felt every coherent thought in his head scatter like fireflies into the night; dizzy, disoriented, he stumbled back into Blaine as Leomaris blocked Kurt's access to his power. It left him feeling sluggish and weak as a lost lamb, like he'd lost a limb. His eyes adjusting, Kurt really beheld what he had created for the first time.

Leomaris stood before the two of them. He was tall, with fair skin. His raven-dark hair had bloody streaks playing through it in subtle waves. His features were as perfect as a carving on a Greco-Roman coin, his chest as muscled as Michelangelo's statue of David. Unconcerned by his nudity, Leomaris preened slightly as he felt Kurt's acknowledgment of his attractiveness, but by shutting off Kurt's powers, a part of Kurt's mind was once more hidden from his demonic suitor and Kurt kept that part of himself as secret as possible, hiding his urge to scream and cry like a child trapped in a nightmare: Leomaris had captured the form that he had used to haunt Kurt, and in the sharing of their minds, their memories, Kurt had seen the more than thirty witches that Leomaris had killed in his centuries-long quest to find someone like Kurt to fulfil his plans. And his eyes; of course, his eyes – they were pure black, hidden no longer through a façade of humanity he had maintained through his possessions; doll's eyes, predator's eyes, they burnt with the fire of creation at the centre and held absolutely no mercy nor compassion in their depths.

And Kurt saw himself in Leomaris' eyes: layers upon layers of obsession, a desire so strong that Kurt thought he might drown in it. Leomaris would never let him go. But then, that had been something that he'd figured out long ago, hadn't it? Leomaris caught his eye in that dizzying way of his, and Kurt felt himself losing hope. "You have no idea, my love…the power—and it need not just be destruction," he added, as if playing to Kurt's sensibilities. "Look!"

The daemon reached into the air around him, drawing molecules and particles to him like a magnet, swirling around him like a miniature hurricane; they formed in front of him to a conical shape that was moving faster and faster, like a planet's orbit but sped up to the speed of a cartoon. It glowed, small at first but brighter and brighter until Kurt had to slam his eyes shut as the searing pain of what he was witnessing hit his retinas; the world around him was shaking in protest as things were warped beyond nature's intentions and his head was spinning with a constant vertiginous nausea. Just when he thought it was too much, it was over, and Leomaris was whispering, "Look, my love – a wedding gift."

Kurt chanced a look and stopped. Spinning lazily in the centre of the room was a small globe of what looked like water, but was more solid—a mass, like a miniature moon, built up of the basic cosmic dust in the air around them. Leomaris chuckled as Kurt stared dumbly at the thing, so tiny, so pointless, and yet it filled him with revulsion as his brain rejected the fact of its existence: a perversion of the natural order. And Kurt could sense the effort put into making it: the carbon stolen from the air around them, the elements from the ground beneath them. An entire generation of plant life would never grow for the meaningless little satellite's existence. If he can create that out of potential plant life…what will he do with us humans when he gets bored with pyrotechnics?

"You see it now, Kurt," Leomaris said softly, moving forward. "You understand? You are the only person alive who could even understand the simple mechanics behind this. You have so much power, and when you finally unleash yourself you will join me at my side. They will worship us, Kurt! Think—all those who have hated you, tormented you, and you are on a higher plane, so far above them that crushing them will be as simple as the death of an ant hive."

With that came a memory.

—"Oh my god!" a girl screamed, but she did nothing to actually help. God? Kurt thought contemptuously. He was God, and he was furious. He wondered giddily what would happen if he wished for Karofsky to die. The boy made a strangled noise as blood began to seep from his nose. Kurt watched in wretched fascination, not knowing or caring about how's or why's, nor that people were pointing at him and backing away like he had the plague; no, what mattered now was that he owed Karofsky pain. He felt capable then of anything, and he had a seductively nightmarish image of him floating amongst the ashes of this school like some pagan god, tearing McKinley to nothing. These people were animals, brutish creatures; they thought and believed in nothing and he could make them nothing—

He could feel it within him, too – that mass of power, lit up like a hand grenade so briefly within him like a dark, primal song that Leomaris had tapped into for his own creation. Though it had hurt like fire to access it, the actual rush of using it had hit him like an orgasm from his own endorphins; it was like speed, like crack, headier than heroine, even, to be like Leomaris and to create and consume and destroy in the blink of an eye for the sheer joy of letting go. Isn't that what all humans truly desired? Their freedom? The subconscious, the seat of all emotion, unfettered by moral principals or ideas of right or wrong. When you're a god, who is there to tell you what is right or wrong? Kurt thought, rocking backward.

But there were other memories behind the dark sea that Leomaris was pulling him under. Kurt dove down below the surface, searching, searching for the light that he had found when he had come here in the first place – memories of home, family, love. He remembered the night that he and Blaine had shared together and held on to it tightly; he remembered his father holding his hand as they'd walked away from his mother's grave and then again when Burt had seemed dead and his recovery a miracle; he remembered his mother when she whispered in his ear, "Any problem can be solved with love, Kurt," Elizabeth had told him when he was a small child. "Love is the strongest thing in this entire universe. When two people love each other, they bind each other's souls. Darkness can cover everything, but it never wins, because in the end you only need a candle to make the darkness go away. Well, love isn't a candle. Love is a fire that can ignite the stars." He hadn't understood her then, but, oh, did he feel her with him now.

Kurt held on to that with everything he had when he stood up and crossed to Leomaris, joining their hands together. "Kurt, no—" Blaine choked, but Leomaris carelessly turned to him and thought, Pain and Blaine curled in on himself on the ground, whimpering as every nerve ending in his body began to burn.

"What do you want, Kurt?" Leomaris asked, his voice echoing in Kurt's ears and in his mind all at once, an utterly overwhelming sensation.

"I want to believe again," Kurt said simply, and Leomaris frowned. Where Kurt's mind hid in the light of his loved ones, though, the daemon couldn't follow, and Kurt could feel him trying desperately.

"I can make you believe," Leomaris offered, unsure.

"You already have," Kurt whispered, his eyes filling up with tears and his heart filling with song. "Kiss me?" Leomaris smiled, triumphant, and cradled Kurt's head in his hands, bending down, kissing away each tear, his skin cold as a corpse. Kurt shivered, and Leomaris smirked against his skin, believing his beloved in delight. He bent down and joined their lips in a kiss powerful enough to burn the world to cinders, a kiss that Kurt felt through his entire being. Behind that kiss was power and control, but not love: obsession.

Kurt pulled back, and joined his mind to Blaine, so that Blaine could hear in every last centimetre of his being the words that Kurt had longed to say to him for so long. "I love you," Kurt said, feeling his declaration heard on every plane of existence, feeling Blaine still. Kurt smiled, never more at peace in his entire life. Leomaris pulled back, and Kurt kissed him again, just a brush of lips, and whispered, "Goodbye."

With that, he stepped back, reached into his pocket, withdrew the small knife, and stabbed Leomaris straight through the heart.

Blaine

When Blaine felt the pain ease back from his body, he felt a shiver wrack through him, painful enough to make his aching muscles scream in protest, but he dragged himself to his knees anyway—and froze. Kurt and Leomaris were a bare foot from each other, but Blaine could see the cold edge of the moonlight glinting off of the hilt of the crystal letter-opener from his desk. He felt despair pulse through him – stupid, brave Kurt; Leomaris had made sure that the body that he was given was immortal; it was half the reason for his grand scheme!

He couldn't really process that Leomaris' mouth was open in horror, or that the black ichors dripping from the corners of his mouth was blood. There was no way… "Kurt…you…I…" Kurt took a faltering step forward and grasped Leomaris' hands in his own, holding him, something indescribable passing over his face – almost ecstatic, almost mournful, but mysterious and powerful. Blaine, who had in his imprisonment become a connoisseur of Kurt's expressive facial movements, had nothing for this. "I…feel…I…"

"I know," Kurt whispered gently. "You're human." Leomaris tried to speak again, to say something, but he choked, and Blaine watched as blood began to drip like tears from his eyes; his entire body stiffened and he collapsed. Blaine watched him fall so slowly, his mind registering the fall of this demon that had been so much; it seemed to take forever until Leomaris' head hit the floor of the library with a crack, his face marred by blood but still impossibly beautiful, a young god in repose – a sleep from which he would never awaken.

He was dead.

Kurt stumbled back from the body and stared at it, something like hysterical laughter or tears escaping him – maybe both. Blaine was numb with too much feeling: he was free, they were both free…but how?

When Kurt made a small gasping noise, Blaine's heart turned to stone. He already knew the answer, of course, but he didn't really want to believe it until he turned to see Kurt breathing hard, clutching at his heart uselessly. "No," Blaine whispered, the scream in his head echoing over and over as he burst out, "NO!" What have you done, Kurt? he screamed in his mind, stumbling over himself in idiotic, clumsy bumbling as he rushed to Kurt's side, gathering the other boy's precious head in his lap, wiping the hair back from his face. Kurt was white as a sheet and obviously in pain, but he smiled beatifically when he saw Blaine's face and Blaine's heart hurt so much he thought that he would never be whole again.

"He told me," Kurt gasped, answering Blaine's question, chuckling weakly, a pale imitation of Kurt's movie-star laugh. "He had to join himself to my soul so that we could do the work together, but I didn't cut the connection…"

Like an umbilical cord, Blaine thought, the knowledge shooting through him from Kurt – because Kurt was getting weaker, he couldn't talk… While he was still tied to me, he was still mortal. He never thought that was a danger…he never thought that I would do this.

"Kurt – you…you…"

"Killed myself, Blaine," Kurt answered for him, his voice stronger, until he jerked back. His heartbeat was weakening; Blaine could feel it through the connection he and Kurt had opened between them. "And I would do it again."

"Oh, god, Kurt," Blaine whispered. "No, please, I'm begging you—"

It's okay, Blaine, Kurt whispered soothingly into Blaine's mind. Their souls were mingling together in a cruel parody of their lovemaking, and Blaine stubbornly jerked away from Kurt's contact and shoved himself deeper into Kurt, delving into the depths of his soul and pushing. Kurt, sensing what he was doing, tried to push Blaine away, but Blaine stubbornly held on.

Then the pain hit his heart, and he gasped, shaking; Kurt was shaking his head but his heart was rallying—

"No," Kurt said, and Blaine felt him summoning up some last vestiges of that vast power within him and shoving Blaine away. Blaine felt immediately better, stronger, but Kurt was weaker than ever, paling on his lap, fading away…

"Please, Kurt, please—I love you, I can do this, I can give you me and you can live!" Blaine pleaded desperately. "Please! Please!"

"I love you too," Kurt whispered, bringing a hand up to trace over Blaine's lips. "I have from the night I first met you. My heart has always been bound to you. I'm giving this to you…" Kurt choked; shook; gasped for air, and Blaine choked, the tears running down his face to mingle, and Kurt gave up on words, breathing out, "Oh…" and simply joined his mind to Blaine's, to let Blaine see what he was seeing: light, pure, glorious light, transcendent and wonderful, and Blaine cried out as it became too much to bear. But it was beckoning to Kurt, taking him away, and Blaine felt his heart turn to stone as he realised that there was nothing he could do to stop it.

"I…I love…I love…"

Kurt's hand fell away from Blaine's face to hit the ground with a thud, cold, resolute, and final, his breath leaving him like one last musical note on the final crescendo of a symphony, beautiful and pure.

He was dead.

Quinn

"Kurt!" Quinn screamed, horrified, confused, as her best friend's impossibly pale body was cradled by a shaking, sobbing Blaine Anderson. On the floor next to them was a dead body, naked, with some kind of knife sticking out of him and blood pooling out from him on the floor, like the tears of acid that Pandora wept upon opening her fatal Box. None of that mattered, though; in a matter of seconds Quinn streaked to collapse on her knees, shaking Kurt and then screaming, uncontrollable, when she felt the coolness of his body – there was no heartbeat.

"What the hell happened?" Quinn screamed, turning her eyes on Blaine. "I knew that we couldn't trust you! What did you do?"

"There isn't time for this!" Blaine snarled, and lunged at her. Kurt's body fell with a weak thud and Quinn's stomach roiled; before she could process the strong desire to vomit, Blaine's fingers were digging painfully into her skull; she yelled and shoved at him, trying to break free, before she screamed. What felt like a spike was drilling into her head, the most intense migraine that she'd ever experienced: it wasn't until that first blinding flash of pain struck her that she began to understand that names, faces, images, memories were flooding her head like a torrent. Quinn gasped and fell back, clutching her head and shaking all over; it was impossible but Blaine was shaking her and calling her name, over and over, and she clutched to that like a lifeline as she felt him guiding her back to herself.

"Oh my God!" she choked out, jerking away from him. "You…I…what the hell is going on?" But as she breathed, she already knew the answer—Blaine had given her the answer. "This is impossible," she breathed, staring at him…but Kurt lay dead between them, as pale as the dead monster near her whose blood was pooling beneath her like some hellish baptism, stark evidence of the insane story spun in her mind from the boy in front of her, tears streaking down his face like a river.

"Quinn," he said frantically, talking so fast that if he weren't speaking into her head as well she would never have understood what he was saying. "You were a mother – you gave birth to new life; that was why Leomaris could never influence you: you had the same power that all women have and when you gave birth to your baby it just strengthened so he couldn't get into your head. You're just like me and Kurt, you always have been, but that doesn't matter; what matters now is that you can be a mother again: you can bring Kurt back!"

He was hurling more and more knowledge into her, things that Leomaris had revealed to him during his possession, and Quinn suddenly understood exactly what he was saying. "You're asking me to suck the life out of you and put it back into him," Quinn summarised dumbly, echoing Blaine's desperate thoughts. "You want me to kill you."

"It wouldn't be murder if you only did it to give someone else life again!" Blaine said desperately. "He killed himself to save us—save all of us; he doesn't deserve to die!"

And, God help her, she could do what he was asking – he'd all but shoved a blueprint down her throat. All she would have to do would be to put one hand over Blaine's heart, another over his head, and pull the animus that made both function toward her, then place her hand over Kurt's heart and channel the energy into it, like a defibrillator for his entire body. It wouldn't even be difficult, the process; her body would handle most of it like going through the primal instincts of childbirth. Which was exactly why Blaine had called to her, why he'd dragged her here: his life in exchange for Kurt's.

Either way, she would be a murderer. If she went along with Blaine's plan, she would be murdering him. But if she had a chance to save Kurt and she refused, wouldn't she be effectively killing him as well? How could Blaine put this choice in her hands? She looked up through tears, meeting Blaine's eyes, and he leaned forward again, taking her hands in his. "You love him too, don't you, Quinn?" he asked, his voice pleading, and she'd not heard such raw desperation in a man before. They were still connected in the most intimate way possible, and she could feel the pain in his heart echoing through her soul, and it took her breath away. "Please? Please, save him! You don't even know me; I'm not anything. We have to do this now, it has to be now while his soul is still close enough, while the death is still fresh enough to reach him; he hasn't crossed over yet, I can feel it!"

His eyes were just as desperate as Kurt's were that morning…

—"Promise me that you and I will make the right choice, not the easy one," Kurt whispered.—

"No," Quinn said clearly, her heart splitting in two.

"'No?'" Blaine echoed, his eyes insanely wide. "You can't—"

This time, it was Quinn who took his head in hers and took him into her memories. She showed him Kurt. When he had accepted Rachel as his friend despite their animosity and apologised to her for his behaviour during the Finn incident. When he had gotten thrown into lockers for standing up for Tina during Gaga week, ignoring the danger to himself. When he had taken a slushie for his friends, letting Finn off of the hook. She showed him how Kurt had held her after she'd given up Beth, and how she'd told him the fairly traumatising memory of losing her virginity and the guilt the morning afterwards, how she'd prayed and prayed for something she could never get back again alone in the church the following morning, and how Kurt, in turn, had told her the entire story of the "Defying Gravity" debacle. She showed him Kurt overcoming his aversion of religion to go to church with Mercedes, just to make her feel better. Quinn showed Blaine every single memory she had of Kurt sacrificing his own happiness, and she showed him her memory of their conversation that morning.

"He planned this," Blaine whispered, pulling back from her. They were both sobbing, their tears mingling and streaking like paint on a fresh canvas; it was painting an image of sorrow, but sorrow born from love. It was a darker beauty, but one that Quinn could appreciate just the same. "Every last step of it, so that I wouldn't…I couldn't…"

"He loved you," Quinn said simply, smiling through her tears. "He loved you so much, Blaine. He said that he'd found a reason to believe, and I think that we both know what that was." Quinn reached back into the torrent of memories of the night that Blaine had imprinted within her, and found that final, transcendent light that had taken Kurt from both of them, and she bathed Blaine in the glow as he collapsed in sobs into her lap. Quinn was still, as she held Blaine, stroking her fingers through his curls the way that she had never gotten the chance to hold her daughter. She poured love through her fingers, letting her tears drip onto his face like a healing rain.

It had hurt, saying no – like scraping her heart over broken glass. She loved Kurt like the little brother that she had never had. But weighing the decisions over, she'd looked at her friend. He was dead, gone, on the floor, but on his still face was a look of such…peace. And Quinn had realised that she had seen that look once before, on the face of her grandmother. Grandmother Fabray had been more than 90 years old when she finally passed on in her sleep. They had tried not to let Quinn, who had been twelve at the time, see the body, but it hadn't horrified the little girl at the time: she'd seen her grandma, her lips curved slightly in a secretive smile, her body relaxed, no traces of dementia or arthritis pain marring her face. Quinn hadn't feared death, and in the end, neither had Kurt.

Kurt wouldn't have wanted her to bring him back, just because she and Blaine were selfish in their love of him and couldn't imagine a world without him in it. It hadn't been her choice to make: Kurt had made it for both of them, and it was the right choice.

She held Blaine while he wept, while that awful, awful night stretched into the predawn hours, as the school began to awaken around them from the strange sleep that had descended upon it. Soon the real world would intrude, and Quinn imagined that there would be so much to face upon meeting it. She had no idea what the future would hold, but she knew that she was alive, and that she could love again, and that was a miracle that Kurt had given her. The brilliant light of dawn broke through the night, the sun illuminating the world around her like fire, and for just one second Quinn could have sworn she heard a beautiful, beautiful song through the room.

One last tear descended down her cheek to land over Blaine's heart, and he finally slept. Quinn looked down when he moved fitfully, and her heart went into her throat when his hand moved across the floor, away from her. His hand clasped Kurt's, their fingers entangled, and Blaine found rest.

A small smile curved her lips.

And so, if you care to find me—look to the western skies!

As someone told me lately: everyone deserves a chance to fly!

And if I'm flying solo—at least I'm flying free!

To those who'd ground me, take a message back from me!

Tell them how I am defying gravity!

I'm flying high, defying gravity!

And soon I'll match them in renown!

And nobody in all of Oz—no Wizard that there is or was

Is ever going to bring me down!

—from "Defying Gravity", from Wicked

"I was happy. Wherever I was, I was…happy. At peace. I knew that everyone I cared about was alright. I knew it. Time…didn't mean anything; nothing had form—but I was still me, you know? And I was warm, and I was loved, and I was…finished. Complete. I don't understand about theology or dimensions or…any of it, really. But…I think that I was in Heaven."

—from "Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season Six, Episode Three—"Afterlife""