Anna could do whatever she wanted, but she usually stuck with Kurt. When he got older, she stayed at home more, giving him his independence. But sometimes he was glad she decided to accompany him. It made him feel less alone.
One such day had been particularly rough, but a one-word text from a new friend and Anna's presence beside him spurred him into action.
He stormed into the locker room, fully intending to go off on Karofsky. As far as he could recall, he had. He spat out a few well-chosen insults and was starting to feel much better about all this when suddenly there was a pair of lips on his and he didn't want this at all. What made it worse was that Karofsky, for some reason, leaned in again, but Kurt regained the ability to move and pushed him away.
Kurt sank to the floor after Karofsky left and Anna appeared beside him.
"What's it like?" he asked softly.
"What's what like?" she replied, confused.
"Death," he said simply.
"I don't know," she admitted. "I was so young when I died; I've been dead for as long as I can remember. I never knew life."
"So… do you think it's… easy? Peaceful?"
She laughed bitterly. "What, dying or death?"
"Both, I suppose," he replied.
"I don't recall any singularly traumatic event so I guess dying itself is as I've heard, like falling asleep. As for death, this is all I've ever known; I have nothing to compare it with. I think… it's pretty peaceful. You don't have to be cautious or afraid of anything, really; you can't get hurt and you certainly can't die again." She paused. "But, you know, it's not a life I'd choose for a young person like you or me."
"Is there— anything else? Like, beyond?" he asked softly. He didn't quite believe in heaven, or even a 'Higher Being' for that matter, but the idea of heaven was certainly appealing.
"I'm not sure. I'm— I'm kind of afraid of it myself," she confessed. "I think perhaps I stayed behind because I was so young and not prepared to die, and became a guardian angel of sorts for you. I— I've heard of people 'passing on', even saw one myself, but I've never had the opportunity."
"My mother?" Kurt asked hesitantly. "Did she— pass on?"
"Yes," Anna replied. "I didn't sleep that night— I often sleep when you do although I have no biological need for it— and I saw it. Your father had taken you home, and I was the only one there. She opened her eyes, right at the end, and she looked right at me. She said my name, and then she looked past me to something I couldn't see. She smiled and I saw her leave her body and then she vanished, just like that. And she looked so happy. I wanted so much to go where she was going, but I couldn't."
Kurt wrapped an arm around Anna's shoulders and the two of them sat silently, wrapped up in their memories.
Not long after that particularly unpleasant incident, Burt got married to a woman named Carole, whom he'd been dating for a few months. Anna noted with glee the obvious improvement in Carole's son Finn's attitude. He sang to Kurt, a far cry from flinging slurs in the basement.
While things were improving in the family department, elsewhere they didn't fare as well. A threat was made on Kurt's life, and while Anna could tell Karofsky didn't quite mean it, he just wanted to scare Kurt, it came to pass that Kurt was going to transfer schools.
"He didn't intend to carry it out," Anna told him later.
"I know," Kurt said. "I would've smelt it."
"And I would've seen it," Anna said, shuddering. She'd always been able to see the reaper that appeared when people were marked for death, perhaps because she was dead herself. Kurt had never seen the reaper, but he had always been able to smell it. It had a cold, empty smell, the sort to send shivers down your spine and make every single hair stand on end. Kurt had been able to smell it hanging around his mother for a week before her accident, though he had convinced himself it came from someone else around her and continued to float contentedly down Denial River.
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TBC.