Author's Note: I cannot believe we are at this point in the story now, especially since apparently next chapter is the last one. What? yeah, I didn't see that coming but it works and yeah...so, enjoy this one. We're back in 2036!

Disclaimer: I own nothing. Fox does...and RIB

Chapter Twenty Three

2036

"He's gone."

Kurt almost dropped his phone. Despite having seen this day coming for years – twenty four years to be exact – it still didn't hit him hard to know that his son had just gone back to the past. Kurt knew enough about what would happen in the past to not be worried about any of it – except that of course he was worried, that was his baby – what he was much more worried about was what was to come. He moved away from his office window and into his comfortable chair.

"When are we sending Sugar?" Kurt asked, trying to keep his voice from shaking.

Santana took a moment before answering. "About that," she said, "what if we don't? I know you think she's the one that sets things in motion, but Rory can still—"

Kurt cut her off, "We have to, Santana," he said, "you know better than I do what happens when we try and change things. Blaine wouldn't be here if they don't go back."

Santana sighed. "I know, I know…but, look, Rory did go. He's back there and he'll still tell you who he is and everything will happen all the same. Sugar didn't affect that."

"Sugar is the reason he gets back or don't you remember that? Sugar knows the machine. She is important to all of this and if my son has to go back there, then your daughter has to as well. Don't fight me on this, Santana, please don't. Not today."

Kurt slowly lowered the phone after Santana hung up and he sighed. Time travel was a very strange thing and he and Santana had learned all there was to it after Rory left for the future twenty four years before. And they had made plenty of mistakes along the way. But not this time. Kurt was not going to let Santana's fear of her daughter going to the past stop the course of how things were meant to go.

"Kurt, where are you?"

"In the office," Kurt called back and smiled when his husband pushed the door open.

"Hey," he said, "so, I thought today was about us having some time for us. I've been holed up in that hotel for practically a week and I can't even sleep because you're not there."

"Oh, poor you," Kurt said, "I've missed you too and pretending really is exhausting, but I think it's almost over."

"What do you mean?" Blaine asked stepping further into the room.

"He went back," Kurt said, "Rory's in the past."

"Oh," Blaine said and then, "I guess we never really knew when he left. The one thing you don't ask."

"I knew it would be one of these days," Kurt said, "I just wish we could have prepared him more for it."

The thing about having already experienced the past and knowing just what Rory was going to be up to back then made it a whole lot easier to accept, but they were parents and there was no way they couldn't worry.

"Santana doesn't want to send Sugar," Kurt added, "I don't think she realized what it would be like. But she has to. Sugar is so important to have in the past – she has to go. I can't – I can't lose you just because…"

Blaine crossed the room and grabbed Kurt's hands. "Calm down," he said, "I'm here and I'm alive and I'm not going anywhere. You just have to remember that and Rory will be just fine. We saw him off and he'll be back before we know it. Don't worry about Santana."

"You always know just what to say," Kurt sighed and let Blaine pull him into his arms.

"That's because I know you so well."

Kurt nodded.

They stood there for a while until Kurt's phone began to ring again. They looked at the screen together. It was Santana.

"Funny thing, time travel," she said, "your son's back."

Kurt let out a laugh. "Are you messing with me?"

"No," Santana said, "Rory's here. I'm going to bring him to yours. We need to hear everything from his perspective. See if Sugar going is even important anymore. You have Blaine and now Rory's back – why send Sugar?"

"Because she'll most likely be back momentarily and because we won't have this if she doesn't go. Santana, I went through exactly what you're going through right now and you have to trust me when I say it's what needs to be done."

She muttered some more, part of it in Spanish. She ended with, "see you in a bit," and then she was gone.

Santana arrived twenty minutes later with Rory who looked like he'd been crying. They had both been standing by the window waiting, but after the car pulled over in front of the house, Kurt rushed to the door and threw it open. He waited until Rory had gotten out of the car before he was running across their lawn to greet him. He heard Blaine coming behind him.

"Daddy!" Rory cried and even though Kurt had seen Rory just two hours before when he dropped him off at Santana's he wrapped his arms tightly around his son.

"I'm sorry," Rory mumbled. His voice was heavy with emotion, "I didn't save him. And I left and...oh, god you were fighting and I did that. I should have gone back. Daddy, I missed you so much."

Kurt couldn't remember the last time that Rory had called him daddy. It made his heart just warm up to hear it again, but he was also pained because his son sounded so heartbroken over something he didn't need to. He reached to push some of Rory's hair back from his forehead.

"There's someone that wants to see you," he said.

Rory pulled back and tried to wipe at his tears. "Who?" He asked, "it's not Sugar is it?"

Kurt almost laughed.

"No," Blaine said coming up behind them, "'me."

"Papa," Rory whispered, "but I thought you were..."

Kurt let him go and Rory practically flew at Blaine, throwing himself so hard into Blaine's arms that the two of them almost toppled over.

It had been almost a week of lying to Rory about Blaine's death and it was amazing to get to see them together again; all worth it because the two of them were together again and they wouldn't be separated.

"But how?" Rory asked.

They all headed back inside, Rory wrapped up around Blaine and not looking like he was going to be ready to let go any time soon. Santana followed last, quietly.

"I didn't know what to tell him," she said, "didn't think he would believe me."

Kurt nodded. He knew it all too well. "That's alright," he said, "I'm just so happy to have him home."

Blaine had taken Rory to the living room and Kurt couldn't help but smile when he saw them. Rory was practically on Blaine's lap he was so cuddled up to his papa, and Blaine seemed to want him there just as badly. Kurt knew it had been hard on him to have to stay away and to listen to Kurt as he cried on the phone because it was too hard pretending that Blaine really was gone, and he really wasn't that good an actor.

"How is this possible?" Rory asked.

"Because we're in a paradox," Blaine said, "the very example of a paradox."

Rory felt whole again. When he first realized that he was back to the same day he'd left, he'd freaked out. Aunt Santana had hugged him and tried to tell him that it was all alright, but he'd ignored her and just demanded to see his dad because apologizing to him and seeing him again was all that mattered. Santana had agreed and while she was going to grab a coat, Rory had tried to calm down. He hadn't expected that when he arrived back home it wasn't just to his dad, but also to his papa. His papa who was alive and well and just like Rory remembered him. He was confused, but there was nothing more important than to keep him close.

After he asked for an explanation the second time, he braced himself to learn of the changes that had to have happened for his papa not to die. Back at the house there had been no trace of Sugar. Could her existence have been compromised? And where was Aunt Brittany?

"A paradox?" he asked.

His dad perched himself on the couch next to him and papa, "It's like a circle," his dad, "although not really because time isn't exactly linear or circular or any shape that you may want it to be."

"But then, what happened?"

"You did," Kurt said, "when you appeared in the past you changed the very course of our lives, Rory. You see, when I figured out that your papa was going to die and when you confirmed it and gave me all you knew about it, well, that allowed your Aunt Santana and I to figure out how we could save him. We have studied that machine inside and out and we realized something: when you use it to get somewhere weather the past of future, it won't matter where else you want to go, you have to arrive back in your time which it will consider up to two months after the original time you left due to aging. So, we knew that you wouldn't be able to save him unless you took the machine again. So, you wouldn't be stopping the event. But, you made us aware that it was going to happen, so it didn't."

"Oh," Rory said and really there wasn't much else for him to say. He smiled though and snuggled back with his papa who leaned down to kiss his forehead.

Being around his dad and papa now made him realize how much he had really missed these versions of them. They were the same and yet so different than from when they were younger. Maybe it was how they looked at him with this unconditional love that had never been able to come between them and Rory in the past, or how they just knew Rory perfectly.

"So, then, you weren't dead when I left?" Rory asked.

His dads shared a look.

"That's why it's a paradox," Aunt Santana said, "your papa dies, so you rush to go to the past. The you in the past fixes it, he lives because we save him. If he's alive and well, would you go to the past? No. So, you don't go to the past. He dies. You decide to go. Like we said, it's a circle."

"And that's why," his dad said, "Sugar has to go."

Aunt Santana nodded. "I know," she said, "I know she has to. That doesn't mean I want her to. It's why you and Blaine will have to stay in this house until she goes. Sugar cannot know that you're back or that Blaine isn't dead."

"So he was alive?" Rory asked.

His papa nodded. "We're so sorry," he said, "trust me, I was against it from the beginning, but it was the only way."

"That's how it's not like a paradox," his dad said, "we're breaking it so that he lives every time and that's what the machine has allowed us to see. So we had to lie to you and make sure that you went knowing you'd come back, but not when except that it would be some time after when you originally left and it could have been months. We are so glad it was only hours."

Rory blinked away tears. He couldn't be mad, not when his going back in time had actually helped to keep his papa alive. Of course, something could still happen. One day he could leave the house and not come back, but for now he was there and Rory could appreciate that he had gone on a crazy adventure back in time to see his parents when they were just starting out so that he could come back to this family.

"I'm so glad you're here," he mumbled.

"I'm so glad you're here too, Rory," his papa said, "you don't know how it felt to hold you as a baby and know already how amazing you were going to be. To actually watch you grow up into the boy we met as teenagers and now to see that same boy again."

Rory felt tears gathering in his eyes again. He closed his eyes tight. "I love you so much," he muttered.

"How did you do it?" Rory asked later.

Santana had gone home and Kurt had decided it was time to make dinner so the three of them were in their spacious kitchen. Rory had already set the table, so he was sitting on a stool by the small island watching as Kurt chopped up vegetables and Blaine worked on seasoning their chicken.

"Do what?" he asked.

"I guess fake your death," Rory said, "I mean, there was a funeral and everything."

Blaine wiped his hands on a rag. "Well, we called in a few favors. You remember Artie from the past? Well he helped make it look like he was shooting something for the pilot of this new T.V. show he's working on now."

It had been really hard to pull off. After all, they didn't want the world to think that Blaine had actually died, but Rory and Sugar had to really believe it. So, the cameras had been hiding and yet in plain sight. Everyone at the funeral was an actor or in on it which meant that a few crucial people had been missing and Kurt had had to pretend to be mad at Cooper for not attending. He and Blaine had banked on Rory being really upset and hoping he wouldn't notice the obvious things. It had helped, though, that Artie was such an eccentric director that no one else questioned his choices in having hidden cameras to "capture the moment", or how some of the people present hadn't been cast in the pilot he was trying to get filmed.

"It was very realistic," Kurt added, "my tears were definitely not fake. It hurt to be there and consider that it was something that could have actually happened. Knowing that you would stop it from happening, it was what kept me going that day."

Rory nodded. "I guess that makes sense," he said, "and how did you save papa?"

Kurt finished chopping and then he put everything on the cutting board into a pot with water.

"We told him the truth," Kurt said, "how we knew he was going to die. I figured out eventually that everything had to happen like you told us it did. The cops coming to the house, the hospital, everything. It became a performance for us. The hardest part we will ever play."

Rory looked stunned.

"You made it all happen, then," he said.

Blaine nodded. "You know, there's this theory. The chaos theory which pretty much speaks to the idea that fate really doesn't exist. Things happen as a result to other things happening. The fact that we knew you before you were born made us better parents for you and made us prepare you in a way to be back there. It made some of our choices easy. We never watched The Princess Bride with you when you were younger, and I enjoyed watching it with you when you were sick right before leaving you. We exposed you to certain music and made sure you could pull off that Irish accent though Cooper thought it was all his idea. So, you see, we made sure you were the boy we first met and you did everything the way you did it because of that."

Rory looked at them thoughtfully and then he just smiled. "I think that thinking about it is going to make my head hurt."

Blaine laughed. He finished putting the chicken on the tray and put it in the already pre-heated oven.

"But we don't really have to anymore," Kurt said, "except to get Sugar to the past. Which means neither of you can leave this house until she is ready to go."

Rory didn't groan or complain. Instead he just smiled. He'd grown up while in the past. He'd had to fend for himself for a while back then and he and Kurt had been so young, then. They hadn't known what they were doing. Rory was their age, they didn't think they needed to parent him.

"We can do anything you want, Rory," Blaine said, "I'm off work for a few more weeks."

Rory grinned. "Yeah. Definitely. Does that mean I'm not going to school?"

Kurt shook his head. "They think you went with your papa to New York. You're expected to make up a bunch of things. Your classmates are e-mailing you notes from each class."

At that, Rory did groan. "I miss going to school in the past," he said, "it was much easier."

Blaine shook his head. "McKinley was much easier," he told him, "Dalton was about the same then as it is now."

While they were eating dinner, Rory told them about what he'd gone through in the past, explaining himself and demanding explanations and even making Kurt blush when he recalled a time when his dad was asking Rory for advice in the bedroom.

"You tainted my poor ears, dad!" Rory exclaimed.

Blaine watched his husband as he laughed and turned red and then leaned over to press a kiss on Rory's cheek. "At least we didn't have a sex tape on the internet for our child to find."

Rory shuddered. "They're still my aunts," he said.

That turned into teasing about Rory having to pretend to date Sugar.

"She's not that bad, Rors," Kurt said, "we all thought she had a crush on you when you were younger."

"That is definitely not happening," Rory said, "never."

The three of them did the clean up together and Rory for once didn't complain once about having to do the dishes which had always been a fight when it was his turn. Instead he happily did it and splashed him a little as he helped dry while Kurt put away leftovers and cleaned the counters and kitchen table.

Afterwards they all curled up in the couch and decided to watch the old glee club competition tapes that Rachel had sent over a long time before. Blaine and Kurt had always told Rory that the tapes for their senior year had gone missing much to his disappointment because that was the year that they won nationals. Now, they pulled them out and Rory laughed when he spotted himself and then Sugar.

"This looks so weird," Rory said.

Then they got to Nationals in Chicago and they all stopped and stared at the screen because Rory and Sugar were still there with the rest of the glee club.

"I don't remember this," Rory said.

"You left right before my NYADA audition," Kurt said, "a week before but it's like I've forgotten you were there for any of this."

"Because I wasn't," Rory insisted.

"Can you zoom in there," Blaine said, "just to get a good look at you on one of those frames."

Rory nodded. He was definitely more technologically advanced than his dads. He clicked a few buttons and then got it to zoom in giving them a perfect picture of Rory standing next to his much younger dad on the Nationals stage.

Blaine looked between the Rory on the screen and the Rory next to them. Did that mean that Rory and Sugar had to go back?

"Did I ever show back up in the past at any time?" Rory asked, "late on, I mean?"

Blaine shook his head, but Kurt nodded. "You did," he said, "but I didn't say anything because you were older and there are a few things about that trip that you haven't found out yet."

Blaine looked at Kurt and then at Rory.

"Later," Kurt mumbled to him and then louder, "you'll find out eventually, Rory, but first, what are we going to do about this?"

They didn't figure anything out that night and after the two of them actually tucked Rory into bed, they went back to their bedroom.

"When did he come see you?" Blaine asked.

"When he found out that you cheated on me," Kurt said, "he must have been twenty or so. He came back that weekend I was home for the wedding. Brittany found him the day before I was supposed to leave. He's the reason I extended my trip, not to mention other things."

"Oh," Blaine said, "but we promised he would never find out about any of that."

It had been years ago and really Blaine was over it all, except that he would always hate what he did to them that year. Kurt on the other hand had gotten over it after he finally forgave Blaine, going as far as to say that it was forgiven.

"I guess he does," Kurt said, "and it's a good thing. He saves us time and time again our Rory."

"He made you come back to me," Blaine said.

"Well, I was practically already there."

Author's Note: I had the hardest time writing this chapter. I don't even know how many times I restarted it. I actually wrote about half a chapter before deleting it entirely the next morning. Frankly, I just kept changing my mind about a couple of things except that I definitely did know it would take place in the future.

I originally had this entire sequence where Rory doesn't know what the date is and he's sneaking around Santana and Brittany's house and he can't find a calendar but it just kept getting more and more ridiculous until Rory (and I) was reduced to tears on Sugar's bed.

I always did plan to make him return very quickly after her left in the future's time line, and not to stop the accident, and I think once I remembered that it did make it easier to know where I had to start and that was with Kurt and from there it just flowed.

A few other things simply because this one answered a lot of questions. Yes, Blaine was never dead. But he could have been. Which leads to the crazy notion that maybe he never actually died at all and that makes it an even crazier paradox than the one that has been formed here. I always wanted this to be simply complicated in the sense that what Rory went to the past to do is to tell his dad that his papa was going to die (which he doesn't actually do, Kurt figures it out on his own), but the whole point is that Kurt knows. The idea of the chaos theory and things being in change fits in with this because without Rory and Sugar in the past then things would definitely have been different...but he is in the past and so everything remains well and good.

And lastly the last scene here addresses that pesky "but Rory and Sugar were still there to Nationals" thing...because, guess what, they are! Which leads to another thing and I don't know if it would be right to announce this in this chapter (because of other things in the next chapter), but I'm going to anyway. There will be a sequel/follow up.

It is not going to be anywhere as long as this fic was, in fact I'm currently planning for a very long one-shot/two-shot deal but I probably won't be writing it right away as I do need a little break from fic. This fic is complete however, and next chapter will be the last. So expect that probably on Friday.

I'm also on tumblr where I will probably leave little progress reports on how my writing is going and occasionally previews for upcoming chapters. So stop by. tumblr: emquin.

Thank you for reading. Hope you all liked it.

Please Review.

-Erika