AN: Hope people are still interested in this. Perhaps not a lot happened last chapter, but it was necessary. We move on now, but I would really appreciate feedback; I know what I want to accomplish with this, but I'm finding it difficult to actually do. I'd love to know if I'm on the right track or not!

"I... have a confession to make." Tina looked up at them, sheepishly biting her lip.

"Yeah?" Karofsky prompted.

"I've never... actually done any magic." There was a moment of silence, and she continued. "I've tried out a few spells from the book, of course — I mean, how could I not, right? — but they didn't work."

"Well, now you know magic exists, right?" Dave said. "Maybe now you'll be... I dunno, faithful or something? Maybe now that you can believe, it'll work."

"Huh."

Karofsky turned to Blaine. "What?"

Blaine shook his head. "Nothing." He'd been about to compliment Karofsky on his insight, but knew that if he actually tried to voice the opinion, he'd sound way too astonished and condescending. Tension was the last thing Tina, the last thing they, needed right now. "Besides, we have faith in you. Right, Dave?"

Dave nodded without hesitation. "Yeah. If anyone can understand and do this shit, it's you."

Tina blushed for a moment, then returned her eyes to the grimoire. "Well, they do say that the magician's belief is a prime force in their power," she said thoughtfully. "It's worth a shot."

"So you know what to do?" Blaine asked, unable to keep the eagerness out of his voice.

"I think so. If the spells our magician used to erase Dave is anything like the ones in this book, I think we can undo them."

"And if they're not?" Dave asked with a wince.

"The counters should still work. Magick, no matter from what era or culture, is all interconnected with each other. I mean, there's only so many ways to manipulate the basic forces of the universe, right?" She gave a "duh" eye roll; the boys smiled and nodded to humor her. "Now, whatever the magician did left shards of our memories — the way the world was when it remembered Dave — intact."

Blaine nodded thoughtfully. "Makes sense. I'm living proof."

"Right. That's actually the big thing working in our favor. Your having memories of Dave means that the spell of forgetting was incomplete or flawed somehow. We can attack those flaws to unravel the whole thing."

"So how do we do that?" Dave's face was focused, serious; Blaine would've thought that such a look would've been restricted to football play charts or big screen TVs blasting Call of Duty. But then, it was Karofsky's whole existence at stake, wasn't it?

"According to the grimoire, there should be tokens out there — physical objects representing Dave's existence. We need to gather them. Their power will tell us where the original ritual was performed. That's important, because we'll need to be there, at the focus of the magician's power, to undo the spell."

Blaine's brow furrowed. "Um... Won't that also mean that the magician, whoever he is, will probably also be there? And be able to mess with us? He's already demonstrated that he's really powerful..."

"Or really talented," Tina added pointedly. "Still, you're right... Hmm." She thought for a moment, then nodded to herself. She rotated her chair to face her desk, then opened a box tucked away in a corner. She pulled out two small leather pouches hanging from long leather thongs knotted together to form a necklace. Tina handed one to each boy, then put on a third. "Here."

Dave put his on; Blaine turned over his in his hand. "What is this?"

"It's a protective charm, straight from the grimoire. It'll protect us from direct magical attacks... I hope. I mean, I made them because they seemed cool, and I figured if having something like it made you feel safer, it didn't matter if magick was real. Now that it actually has to work..." She swallowed audibly. "If it doesn't, I don't give refunds." Her lightheartedness sounded forced.

Blaine shrugged and looped the charm around his neck, tucking the pouch under his shirt. Worked, didn't work... Either way, it couldn't hurt, right?

"So where do we find these... tokens?" Dave asked.

"They'll be in places of great personal significance to you. We'll need at least three to even have a chance of undoing the spell."

Dave thought for a moment. "Well, there's home... and McKinley, of course... I dunno where a third would be..."

"Well, that's enough to start with." Tina picked up her backpack and started emptying it of books. "We'll need to work fast. The longer this spell is in place, the harder it'll be to get everyone's memories back. I need to start gathering materials for the rituals I need to do; you guys will have to get the tokens. Where are you going to start?"

"McKinley," Dave and Blaine chorused. They glanced at each other in equal parts annoyance and amusement before Blaine continued. "We... met Dave's father. He'll remember us if we get anywhere close to Dave's house."

"You'll have to figure out a way to get in there somehow. We need those tokens, and his house is a prime location. Maybe you two could split up and—"

"No," the two declared, again in unison, again drawing half-amused, half-annoyed glares from each other. Blaine knew that Dave was probably afraid he'd disappear if he were left out of Blaine's sight for too long. He knew this because he felt close to the same thing; Dave was his only tangible proof that he wasn't insane. Lose that... what did he have left?

Tina, for her part, merely shrugged. "Okay." She slipped the grimoire into her backpack and zipped it shut, rising as she slung it on her shoulder. "You still have my phone number, right?" she asked Blaine; he answered with a nod. "Keep an eye out for clues. If the magician is as powerful..."

"Or as talented..." Blaine cut in with a smile.

Tina nodded approvingly. "... As he seems to be, he'll have made a mark on reality itself. Little hints about who he might be could slip in here and there in really subtle ways."

Dave sucked in an audible breath as the three left the room. Blaine regarded his almost constipated look as Tina made excuses to her parents. "What?"

"It's... this is not what I thought I'd be doing when I woke up this morning, y'know?" Dave grinned a little — a pained, halfhearted grin.

"You and me both."

McKinley High was long closed by the time Blaine and Dave arrived, of course. Fortunately, the latter knew a way in. "Busted door near the gym. Sometimes the hockey team uses it to sneak in and drink beer in the auditorium."

When they entered, Blaine made a point of grabbing a mop discarded by a careless janitor and threading it between the door handles. Dave stared.

"Don't need anyone surprising us," Blaine replied with a shrug.

The empty school was eerie, full of silence and shadows that caused a shiver to run up Blaine's spine. The flashlights Tina gave them did little but cast pools of light that were somehow even less comforting for their isolation amongst the gloom.

"So," Blaine breathed, trying not to reveal his nervousness to Karofsky, "places of special significance to you. Where do we start?" There was a silence so profound that Blaine had to turn to make sure Karofsky was still right behind him. "Well?"

"I can think of two off the top of my head. You..." He heaved a sigh. "You know both of them." Blaine cocked his head. "The closest one's over there. C'mon." With a frown set on his face, he charged forward, nearly knocking Blaine aside in his haste. He regained his balance, resisting the urge to snap, and followed.

In spite of the dark, Karofsky seemed to know exactly where he was going. A left here, a right here, and soon Blaine, new as he was to McKinley, had lost total track of where they were. Karofsky shoved open a set of doors leading towards the central quad; he took the nearby stairs two at a time, then halted, his flashlight playing over the cold concrete steps.

Blaine finally caught up, breathless. He looked around; in the harsh yet dim light of the still-rising moon and nearby streetlights, he finally recognized this place. "Oh."

"Yeah," Karofsky replied snappishly. He knelt on the landing, his light jerkily searching the corners and edges. Not knowing what else to say or do, Blaine turned away, casting his own light over the steps up to the second floor. "Why'd you do it?" Karofsky's tight voice suddenly asked.

"Do what?"

"Confront me here? In the middle of school? Where anyone could've heard you? Were you trying to out me or something?"

"No," Blaine replied stiffly, "we were trying to help you. Not that you cared. I was the one who told Kurt to talk to you in public."

"I figured." The tone was decidedly not friendly.

"Because," he continued, teeth gritted, "he'd be safe. He wouldn't have to worry about being beaten up... or being alone with you again. Yes, people could've heard us, but my first priority was Kurt's and my safety."

"So to hell with me, right?"

"You'd been assaulting Kurt for weeks. What was I supposed to think you'd do, give us roses?"

"So instead of at least trying to meet me somewhere public outside of school, you decide to do the one thing guaranteed to scare the shit out of me?"

"Maybe you're right," Blaine replied sarcastically. "Considering what you did when you felt threatened, maybe I should've been even more careful."

Blaine's back was to Karofsky, but he could sense the other teenager freeze. He tried to ignore this, ignore the fact that turned his back to Dave Karofsky without a second thought to begin with, continuing his search for the token. The seconds stretched by. Finally, Karofsky spoke again, his voice low and hoarse. "I wouldn't have done it, you know."

"Done what?"

"Killed him. I... I was scared. I know I shouldn't have said it, but I wouldn't have done it."

"How could Kurt know that?" Blaine asked evenly. "How could I? You'd already done so much to him. How was I supposed to know how much... further you'd be willing to go?"

"Shit, really? You... you really think that of me?"

"Like I said, Karofsky, what else could I think? What have you done that would make me think otherwise? I didn't know you. I still don't know you. We've never actually talked. And we have a LOT of baggage between us that's just been rotting ever since we first met. All I had to go on was Kurt, and you know what he thought of you." Blaine almost added the word "then" to the end of that sentence; he bit it off, not really sure what made him want to add it, or what made him not say it. Instead, he turned to Karofsky, to look him straight in the eye. "All I knew of was a physically violent, emotionally unstable bully. Gay or not, that's what mattered. That's why we had to be protected. For all I knew, you could've decided to shoot up the school if Kurt said or did the wrong thing."

"Then you're right," Karofsky said flatly. "You don't know me." His eyes dropped back to the floor with a sigh as he continued (or pretended to continue) to search. Karofsky's next words were so soft, so breathy, that Blaine almost didn't hear them, and he wasn't sure he was meant to. "I'm not sure who does." He fell silent again, and Blaine was sure it was over. Then Karofsky's voice rose again. "Gay or not..."

"What?"

"What you said... Gay or not... It didn't matter to you, did it?"

Blaine snorted. "Seeing as how I'm gay too, of course not. It's just one facet of you. It doesn't define you completely as a person."

Karofsky chuckled, a completely mirthless sound. "That's what my therapist says. Wish everyone thought that."

"Yeah," Blaine said with an exhale. "I definitely agree." Another silence passed. "I don't see anything here," he finally said, his voice still a little raw.

"Me neither. Then let's try the other place." He started down the stairs, without even a glance behind him to see if Blaine was following.

"I assume you mean...?"

"Yeah. It's this way."

Blaine let Karofsky's flashlight guide him as he considered their destination. He'd been in it himself, of course, as had Kurt, since the incident. He himself was necessarily detached from what had happened there, so he was able to use the room normally, and even he knew better than to ask Kurt how he handled it. Maybe it was the current situation (okay, it almost certainly was), but for the first time, Blaine couldn't help but wonder what Karofsky thought, having to use that room almost every afternoon, be in the very spot where it happened, when he must've thought the whole world was crashing down around him...

No wonder he went crazy.

The thought came to him before he could stop it. What, he was making excuses for Dave Karofsky now? Maybe he really was going insane.

The flashlight ahead of him paused at a familiar door. It was pushed open, revealing a yawning chasm of pure black. There was a click, and Blaine had to turn away for a moment to keep from being dazzled by the sudden explosion of brightness. The dull florescent lights buzzed as they illuminated red-painted lockers and low wooden benches. The air still held the barest tinge of sweat and deodorant and a wisp of humidity.

Dave sucked in an audible breath as he turned off his flashlight. "C'mon, let's get this over with already." He began poking around, opening lockers that didn't have padlocks on them. He recoiled at the second one he opened. "Shit! God, it fucking stinks! Does this guy know what soap is?"

Blaine chuckled. "You'd think Dalton would be better. But no. Guys are the same all over, I guess." He knelt down to look under a bench. The words escaped him before he could fully process them. "Hey, you okay?"

Dave turned towards him with a startled look. "Uh, considering I don't fucking exist, no, I'm not..."

"No, I mean... Being here..."

"Oh." He leaned against the lockers, his hands thrust in his pockets. He was staring at a point in the floor; the intensity of the stare told Blaine that it was probably the exact spot where it had happened. "What, you give a shit for my well being all of the sudden?"

Blaine barely managed to bite off the sarcastic truth that he was tempted to let fly. "Well, considering we have the same goals for once, we're not going to do very well at it if we're sniping at each other all the time."

Dave looked up, cocking his head slightly to the right. The thoughtful expression on his face almost made Blaine more uncomfortable than any other emotion he'd encountered from Dave, than the anger or the hate. Finally, Dave spoke, his words slow and deliberate. "I guess you're right. I suppose I'm just..." He trailed off, his eyes returning to that spot on the floor. "Still, it takes two to snipe, you know?"

Protests bubbled up in him, most of them along the lines of "but I'm right" and "I'm the victim, here." Somehow, he managed to say instead, "yeah." He didn't trust himself not to explode if he said any more.

They searched in silence for a couple of minutes before Dave's voice came up again. "You too, huh?"

Blaine froze. "What?"

"It's happened to you too, hasn't it? You've had your life turned to shit by guys like me. Well, maybe not exactly like me, but you get the idea." Dave turned to him, his face set and serious. "I've learned what it looks like. The first time I saw it in Kurt's eyes, I almost..." He closed his own eyes, sighing. "And I saw it in the mirror, after Thurston, and..." He shook his head. "Just now... I saw a little of it in you."

Blaine exhaled. "Yeah, well, I'm an openly gay Midwestern teenager who doesn't live in a big city. It sort of comes with the territory."

"I thought your school was supposed to be all gay friendly and shit."

"I wasn't always there, though. I went to a public school before." Dave winced. "Yeah, I know. In a sense, it was as bad as McKinley, maybe worse... Everyone just turned the other way when..." Blaine paused, unsure if he should continue, if he wanted to continue. But somehow, he felt like he had to. "I wasn't out then. But I wanted to be. That's why I took a chance. And it bit me. Hard."

Dave stared in disbelief. "Seriously? But you... Now..." He gestured at Blaine's sweater and bow tie, at his slicked back hair.

Blaine snorted. "It took Dalton to make me not afraid to be myself. But back then... Don't think I don't understand being afraid, Karofsky. I do. Who knows; maybe if things had just been a little different, I might've..." He trailed off.

"Might've... what?"

Been afraid of my shadow, for fear of exposure? Played up my straight interests to look normal to my friends and parents? Pushed the open kids around so I wouldn't look like the coward I was? Been like you? But it felt simultaneously insulting to both of them, so he didn't say it. Besides, even he wondered time to time — to his eventual shame — what it might've been like to be the football playing, car-fixing jock. It looked so easy... But if Dave Karofsky had shown one thing, it was anything but. It might have been the hardest thing for any teenager to do. "Might've stayed in the closet," he said out loud. "But there came a point where I had to take the plunge, or I was going to go nuts. And I paid for it. I... spent time in the hospital myself. And not by my own choice, either." It was harsher than he'd intended, but Dave's face didn't change; he must've taken it in the way he meant it.

"Oh." Dave shuffled his feet, actually looking thoughtful and ashamed.

"I left my school because of what happened. I ran to Dalton as fast as I could." Blaine laughed bitterly.

"So that's why you told Kurt to confront me? Even though it could've gotten him beaten up?"

"He needed to confront you. He needed to have courage and face his fears..."

"The way you didn't?"

It was a simple question, and a natural one. But something about it sent a cold chill through Blaine.

"Me and my therapist have been talking a lot about projection and stuff like that. Putting my emotions onto someone else," Karofsky continued. "It's a lot of why I targeted Kurt; I was jealous that he had the guts to be himself and I didn't."

"Interesting," Blaine replied stiffly, "but I don't see what you're getting at."

"Oh, yeah?" Karofsky asked with raised eyebrow. "Kurt isn't you, you know. And I didn't put you in the hospital."

"You're cut from the same cloth, though."

"I.. I know." Karofsky's voice was dry; maybe the therapy really was helping, if it got him to at least this level of self-awareness. It at least seemed to get him off the track he was on, which relieved Blaine immensely for some reason he couldn't fully articulate in his mind.

"Then why are we even talking about this? Don't we have, I don't know, your entire existence to save?"

Dave shrugged, a much more helpless gesture than it might've seemed at first glance. "Like you said, we've never talked. But you're still helping me now, and..." His face scrunched, as if he was physically trying to hold back his next words, and failing. "... And Kurt loves you, so..."

"Oh, is that it? You're trying to take him away from me again?"

Karofsky's jaw dropped. "You know?" he almost whispered.

"Of course I know. Kurt didn't have much choice but to tell me, did he? Not when one of his friends could've mentioned 'my' romantic Valentine's Day cards at any moment." Blaine glared, the weirdness and the urgency forgotten in the releasing of words long suppressed. "So back off, Karofsky. Kurt is mine, and I won't let you..."

To his surprise, Karofsky didn't respond in kind. Instead, his demeanor seemed to plunge in the opposite direction: ice cold. "Yours? So what, he's a trophy now? Your possession?"

"Of course not! I'm only saying that—"

"And since we're trying to get towards the same goal and all, I don't think we want to be talking about Sebastian Smythe right now, do we?"

Blaine swallowed, his face suddenly feeling cold. "What... what are you talking about? How do you know—"

"He's a regular at Scandals. He's got a rep. I guess that's why I thought you..." He shook his head in something akin to disgust, which somehow didn't rouse Blaine's indignation nearly as much as it should have. He refused to consider why, at least at the moment. "Anyway, I'm not going to try to steal Kurt from you. We have too much bad history, and I'm not his type anyway." Blaine thought about Finn Hudson and Sam Evans, and bit his lip to keep from saying anything. "Besides, like I said, he's in love with you." For some strange reason, Blaine's mind automatically added, knowing that was what Karofsky was thinking. "And... If I'm ever going to find someone as good as him someday... Maybe it wouldn't hurt to learn how to become the kind of guy a guy like him can love...?"

He should've thought the words, the emotion behind them, sad and pathetic. But somehow, Blaine couldn't find it in himself to muster the least bit of disgust or pity. A chord was struck deep in him, a chord he tamped down with the desperation of a lunatic. He forced himself to turn away and start scanning the floor. "We're wasting time," he said with a suddenness and force that even his ears found suspicious. "Let's just find your token and get out of here before someone finds us." It was then that his eyes picked up a pinpoint gleam coming from under a nearby locker. "Wait... What's...?"

"Yo." The foreign voice sent both boys whirling.

"Puck?"

Noah Puckerman was leaning against the door to the hall. He wore a blue cutoff shirt and shorts, and carried a baseball bat resting on his shoulder. He regarded Dave with a blank look. "Do I know you?"

"Obviously not," came the bitter reply.

Puck stared at Dave for a moment, as if trying to place his face. He shook his head. "Whatever. What are you guys doing here?"

"I could ask the same thing," Blaine said slowly. He didn't know Puck very well, despite their common musical interests; they certainly didn't otherwise run in the same circles. But something was gnawing at the back of his mind... "How did you even get inside?"

Puck broke out in a grin, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a large ring of keys. He jangled them sharply. "Borrowed these from Coach."

"She lets you borrow her keys?"

Puck shrugged, threading the large ring over his left wrist like a bracelet. "Anyway, I was just... hanging around. Practicing." He lifted the bat from his shoulder slightly, as if in salute. "You know."

Dave frowned. "I didn't know you played baseball."

"Yeah? Well, since we don't fucking know each other, you wouldn't know, would you?"

"He's right, though." Blaine started to step forward, but he stopped himself for some reason he still couldn't figure out. "Seriously, what are you doing here?"

At that moment, the usual easygoing grin dropped off Puck's face. A faraway look came to his eyes, as if he were looking at something that wasn't really there. "I... dunno."

"You don't know?" Dave repeated.

"I..." Puck shook his head viciously. "Look, stop trying to confuse me..."

"You're the one who's confusing us," Blaine said slowly. "Are you okay? Look, maybe we should just go and..."

Puck's faraway look vanished, replaced by something hard, something cold. Blaine tensed; out of the corner of his eye, he could see Dave did too. It was becoming clear that something was seriously wrong here. Puck drew the keys off his wrist. Giving them a look and a sneer, he turned. Swiftly picking out one of the many keys, he jammed it into the door lock and gave it a sharp twist. The click of the lock sliding home seemed to echo a little in the chilly room. Puck yanked the key out and put the ring back in his pocket.

Dave swallowed, almost audibly. "Uh... What did you do that for?"

Puck closed his eyes for just a moment, then opened them. "I... dunno that either. Because... I had to?"

"Had to?" Blaine repeated. But he could tell from the tone of Puck's voice that it had been just as much a question for him.

"Yeah." Puck stepped forward, his back straight, all nonchalance gone. "I'm really sorry, guys. I don't want to, and I don't know why, but..." He swung the bat, a low "woosh" breaking the air. "You two gotta die."

AN: Some reasons for some of my writing choices: remember whose POV this is being told from. Also remember that Blaine and Dave, as mentioned, have never interacted very heavily. There's a lot of ill will and unaddressed issues between them, and that's one major reason why this story is being written: to explore some of that, trace some of that, and hopefully develop both their characters for the better in the end (this is much of my concern for the right/wrong track thing expressed at the beginning, so as I said, feedback appreciated!).