"Ex Memoria"

13. Necessary Truths

May 2012 – Lima, Ohio

Kurt had spent the whole of the presentation silently watching the others. It was dark, but he knew where they sat, and he could tell they were talking amongst themselves. He could guess what those conversations were.

After the presentation was done, Kurt and Blaine got up to follow everyone as they exited, at the same time 'rescuing' Sam from being trampled when they saw he'd fallen asleep.

"I hope there wasn't going to be a quiz," Sam yawned as they walked out, and the tour carried on. "Dude, what's wrong?" Sam asked, seeing the expression on Kurt's face.

"Nothing's 'wrong,'" he promised, standing tall.

"But…" Sam prodded, seeing there had to be something. Kurt hesitated, first looking to both Blaine and Sam, then spotting out where the others were, and finally making sure there was no one too close before finally confiding in hushed tones.

"The others, Puck, and Santana, and Sugar and the rest, they're going to try to tell Mike and Tina about the Doctor."

"They are?" Blaine asked, looking around to see them, too.

"They told you that?" Sam asked.

"That's the thing, they didn't say, and they're not going to. They don't want to include us, I guess, because they've met him-slash-her."

"And we haven't," Blaine added. Kurt said nothing. Sam also said nothing, but in this case, Kurt had a feeling there was some other reasoning behind it. He knew that Sam had had much more difficulty believing that this was all real. It was hard to say if Blaine would have been harder to convince, too, if it hadn't been for that note from his future self, which Gemma had acquired.

"Hey, can you go and see about when we're stopping to have lunch?" Kurt found himself asking Blaine. He didn't know why he did it, expect now his boyfriend was off, and he was alone with Sam, so he took his chance. "I need to tell you something. You can't tell anyone, especially Blaine."

"You didn't cheat on him, did you?" Sam asked with a protective air.

"What? No, I would never, I…" he took another quick look around. "There's something I haven't told you guys, and I can't say it, but…" he sighed. "A few weeks ago, I met him." There was no need to specify who 'he' was. Sam blinked, staring at Kurt like he was trying to decide if this was his version of pulling his leg. "He showed up, at school."

"What?"

"The thing is, I'd sort of met him before. I didn't know about the whole alien thing, the space travel, time travel… But I'd met him. Then he showed up a few weeks ago, and that's when I learned the truth. The thing is, in a few years, he's going to run into Blaine, and he's going to take him to another world. Something's going to happen, and before Blaine comes home, he's going to ask the Doctor if he'd take me somewhere, too, because he'll still think I haven't been. But when the Doctor kept his promise, he came now, or at least weeks ago, so before Blaine asked."

"So that means…" Sam asked, making sure he had it right.

"It means Blaine can't know I've met the Doctor like this, or he'll never ask, and… yeah… So I can't tell the others either. They have no idea."

"So why did you tell me then?"

"Because I know you still have trouble believing it, and I get that. But I swear, everything they've said is real." Sam didn't reply, and Kurt let him process it all.

"Mr. Schue says about twenty minutes." Kurt startled, then smiled when he saw Blaine was back. "So, what do we do, about Tina and Mike and the rest of them?" he asked, oblivious to anything Kurt and Sam had been discussing.

Sam looked to Kurt for a moment. He didn't know why it was that he still had that one last thread hanging on, always ready to jump back into disbelief, but it was there. Maybe now it was getting easier, the more he saw, the more he heard. It was going much too elaborate to be a prank.

"I just don't get why it has to be all of us, why it has to be specific people at specific times… Why Mike and Tina, why now, both of them?" Sam asked, because he needed to know, wanted to know.

"I don't know," Kurt admitted. He had ideas on subject, but he couldn't say without 'revealing' himself, and since he was almost sure Blaine had the same idea of it, he turned to him for 'help.'

"From what I've heard, the Doctor is going to need us, all of us, at some point, to do something. We won't know what it is, or why it has to be this way, until the time comes."

"And now it's Mike and Tina's turn," Sam spoke, and then paused. "They don't want us to help," he indicated the others again.

"Then let's just let them do their thing for now, and we'll see what happens. The way I see it, they're going to have to try it a couple of times," Kurt nodded.

"Yeah, Tina might be hard to convince," Blaine guessed.

"Hey," Sam had a thought. "So if they haven't met the Doctor, but we have to convince them together, do you think that means they'll get married someday or something?"

"Maybe," Kurt blinked. He hadn't even thought of that. Maybe the Doctor would meet them in the future? He'd met Blaine, or would meet Blaine in the future after all. That would explain part of it.

"Hey, we better hurry up, if we fall behind, Sylvester's going to lose it," Sam nodded over to the cheerleading coach, who was looking over the group like a hawk.

TO BE CONTINUED (TOMORROW)