Lima, Ohio

Sam almost tripped over Kurt, sitting alone in the dark on the front steps at 6am in the morning.

"What are you doing?" he asked sitting down opposite him.

"Waiting for Blaine." he said softly. "We're going to Toledo."

"What's in Toledo?"

"His mother. I'm finally getting to meet his mother."

"That's good, isn't it?" Kurt didn't sound like it was good.

"It would have been good if it was his idea. His sister forced him to do this."

"Still, you're going to meet her. And you've met his sister. Isn't that what you wanted, to meet his family?"

"I don't know what I want." he said with a short laugh. "So why are you out so early, going to another job?"

"Aren't I always?"

"I guess so. Here's Blaine now." He stood up and started towards the car. "I'll be back on Sunday."

Lima to Toledo, Ohio

Kurt stared out the window at western Ohio. This must be the quietest car trip ever. Blaine and his sister are sitting in the front set, and Kurt is realizing just how softly they both speak. They're not whispering, they're just speaking softly about people Kurt never heard of. Oh, he could write a book full of Blaine's relatives he's never heard of. The only interesting thing to happen is Blaine keeps calling her Hope and she keeps correcting him, loudly. He wished he'd remembered to put his i-pod in his coat pocket instead of in the trunk.

"Can we please stop soon? I need to get something from the trunk."

Toledo, Ohio

Kurt flipped though the Santos/Anderson family album. Carmen, Blaine's mother, is an attractive woman today and she was positively gorgeous when she was younger. Curly black hair, sparkling brown eyes, obviously where Blaine got his looks. Actually, Esperanza was also very pretty, just the way she dresses distracts from her looks, at least in Kurt's opinion. Esperanza dresses like a person who doesn't care much about clothes, a concept Kurt has a hard time grasping.

Here's a picture of the mother and daughter at a funeral. Maybe for Esperanza's father? Kurt hates funerals so he turned the page. Here's a picture of a wedding so this must be Blaine's father. He was much thinner then. At least Kurt thinks that was Blaine's father that he met briefly after Sectionals last year. Not that Kurt was actually introduced to the man, the Warblers had a party at Blaine's house and his father answered the door.

He looked at more pictures, Blaine as a baby, then a toddler, then in middle school. He wore his hair longer then. Long and curly. Kurt's trying to decide which way he likes it better when suddenly his hair is slicked back and he's wearing a Dalton uniform. Kurt compared the last picture before Dalton to that one, trying to figure out how much time had passed. Blaine seemed taller and more muscular in the Dalton picture.

"Hey" Blaine said sitting on the floor near Kurt's feet. "What are you doing?"

"Looking at this photo album." He pointed to the pre-Dalton picture. "When was this taken?"

"Looks like late fall. That tree is in our backyard. This was before..." He hesitated. "We all lived in Columbus back then."

"What year?"

"I don't remember."

"What I'm asking is – how much time between this picture and the Dalton one?"

"A year? Maybe two."

"That's a big gap, I mean compared to all the other pictures." He waited for Blaine to clarify the gap. He knew, or he thought he knew, why Blaine went to Dalton, he just hadn't realized there was such a big time difference between the public and the private schools. Somehow he'd always thought the switch was immediate, like his had been.

"I suppose." Blaine stood up. "Do you want me to show you where the guest room is?"

"Yes, thank you." Kurt closed the photo album.

Toledo to Lima

"Do you want to stop? Get a cup of coffee or something?"

"Yes, thank you. We can switch if you want. Since we left Esperanza there's no reason why you have to drive the whole way."

Kurt was staring out the window of the Starbucks when Blaine returned from the bathroom.

"I ordered for you." he said sliding the cup of coffee across the table.

"So you met my family," Blaine started. "Did it make any difference?"

"It just reinforced how little I really know about you. We've been together almost a year but I don't really know you."

"What does that mean?"

"You seemed more relaxed than I've ever seen you. Unguarded. Then I wondered why you're so guarded around me. Why you don't trust me."

"You think I don't trust you?"

"There's a whole year of your life missing, the year after you left public school and before you went to Dalton. Whatever happened that year, you don't trust me with. It's okay, you don't have to. I'm just trying to explain why...why...why we're breaking up."

"Okay. Fine." Blaine stood up with his coffee. "Are you ready to leave?"

Lima, Ohio

Blaine was just sitting there, sitting there and singing. That's the main thing everyone noticed about his performance in the choir room that day. Normally he dances while he sings, and this song could use some dancing, what with it's soaring eagles and rambling rivers. But no, he's just sitting there with a guitar and singing.

So don't ask where I'm going
Just listen when I'm gone
Far away you'll hear me singing
Softly to the dawn

Rivers belong where they can ramble
Eagles belong where they can fly
I've got to be where my spirit can run free
Gotta find my corner
Of the sky

"Principle Figgins, I've noticed that Blaine Anderson's been out of school for a week. Is something wrong?" Kurt asked.

"Have you tried calling him?" Figgins asked the pale, thin boy standing in front of his desk.

"Yes, I can't reach him."

"Well, we have strict rules about confidentiality." he said, leaning back in his chair.

"I know, but he mentioned transferring and I wondered if he had his records sent somewhere."

"No, his records are still here, there's been no request for a transfer."

"So he's still in Lima?"

"Yes, he's doing independent home study the rest of the year but technically he's still a student here." And that's a shame Figgins thought, Blaine's one of the few students that hasn't caused any trouble. What a nice school this would be if he could put most of the kids on home study. Figgins smiled thinking about that.

"Thank you." Kurt said, leaving the office.

Kurt sat in his car, watching Blaine's house, feeling like a stalker. He wasn't even sure Blaine was home, his car was there but he could be out with his family. Kurt was about to give in to the feeling of being ridiculous and go home when Blaine came out and headed down the street.

"Blaine!" he called, getting out of the car. Blaine stopped but didn't turn around. He waited until Kurt caught up and started walking again.

"How are you?"

"Okay."

"We missed you, at school."

"Okay." he shoved his hands into his pockets.

"I'm sorry if I hurt you."

"Okay."

"Are you going to say something other than okay?"

"What do you want me to say?" he asked, stopping so suddenly that Kurt almost ran into him.

"Ummm..."

"Sorry for snapping at you. I guess I'm not used to being around people these days. Sorry."

"Isn't you family home?"

"Yes, they're around, but they've been avoiding me, until this all, ahhh, blows over, as they say."

"And your mom and sister?"

"Esperanza went home and I can't show up in Toledo when I'm supposed to be in school down here, can I? Let's go back, I didn't realize it was so cold out. I'll make coffee."

Kurt looked around the kitchen. It was big, full of granite and stainless steel. The oven was large, you could feed an army from this kitchen. How many people lived here? Blaine, his two brothers, his father and stepmother. Kurt wondered if they had a lot of big parties, the kitchen was definitely set up for that. He watched Blaine make coffee.

"You want some dinner?" Blaine opened a huge refrigerator. "Everybody else is at a recital, they won't be home for hours. They left food. I think it's lasagna."

The two boys ate in the kitchen, sitting at the island in the middle of the room. "So it's decided. I'm going to Philadelphia for senior year. Esperanza set all kinds of conditions." He frowned, so many conditions. "One of them is finishing the school year here. So I'm leaving in June."

"And you're not going to Nationals with us?"

"No." He separated the onions from the rest of the salad in front of him. "You'll be fine without me."

"Blaine, please come back."

"Why?"

"I've been thinking about us." Kurt pushed around the lasagna on his plate. "Rachel thinks secrets in a relationship are bad. She thinks they just pile up and explode in the middle of an argument, making everything worse. Mercedes thinks things that happened the past are private. Maybe it might explain why a person responds in a particular way but it's the past and can't be changed. She says it takes time to feel comfortable enough to share those kinds of things." He pushed the plate away. "I think whatever happened that year is private, not a secret. If that's important to you, to keep it to yourself, then I have to respect that. It wouldn't make a difference to me anyway. I'd still love you."

He stared at Kurt for several seconds before answering. "Like you said, you don't know me."

"I love the part I know. Even if you spent that year in jail I wouldn't love you less." Kurt said staring into Blaine's brown eyes.

"I wasn't in jail."

"That's good to know." Kurt said with a small smile.

Blaine stood up and turned on more lights in the kitchen. The room was now as bright as an operating room. "Let me show you something." He sat down opposite Kurt and pushed the sleeves on his sweater up to his elbows. He put both arms down on the counter top, palms up. "See that?"

"See what?"

"That." He traced a small scar on his left wrist. "That was a test. To see if it would hurt, what would happen. It wasn't what I expected, it just dripped. So this one," he pushed his right wrist closer to Kurt. "was deeper. Not spurting like in a horror movie but it definitely bled more. I didn't know what was supposed to come next, was it going to start hurting or would I pass out? So I sat on the bed, waiting for something to happen, and I realized that it would be a big mess for somebody to clean up, that's why people do this in the bathtub. I hadn't thought of that before. That's where I was headed, to the bathroom, when I unexpectedly ran into my mother. She'd gone to work but came back for something or other. That dance I told you about was in October, then I stayed home for a while. This..." he held up his hands "was in February. Then I was in a psychiatric hospital for a while. It was too late to start at Dalton by the time I got out."

Kurt reached over and took Blaine's hands in his. He lightly kissed the scars on the shorter boy's wrists. "Thank you for telling me that."

"And you're not worried? Worried that maybe I really am crazy?"

"No, I don't think you're crazy. I thought about it and I'm not crazy. I still love you."

"But you didn't do it, did you?"

"No I didn't. You know why I didn't do it? My dad. He buried my mom, I couldn't bear the thought of him burying me too. Just visualizing him finding my body." he shrugged. "That's the only reason I didn't do it."

"I love you, Kurt. Thank you for coming here, I don't think I would have been strong enough to do that."

"Do you love me enough to come with me to see somebody for couple's therapy? I've been seeing a counsellor, it was Santana's idea, and she'd like to meet you. She thinks we should talk about why we don't talk. Why we've never talked about how i felt about West Side Story and how you felt about leaving Dalton. We've talked around it but we've never talked about it."

"So we're a couple again?"

"I'm willing to work on it if you are."

The end

Corner of the Sky (from the play Pippin)