THE ROUND ROOM

Featuring Cover Art and Illustrations by riverance

With special thanks to my beta readers, vampireisabitstrong and chiasmuslovesme Any remaining flaws are not due to their diligence.

Rating: M

Wordcount: ~45,000

Pairings/Characters: Kurt, Carmen Tibideaux, Blaine Anderson, Daphne (Vogue), others in less prominence, various friendships, some complicated Kurt/Blaine

Genre: Horror/Science Fiction/Fantasy (Canon divergent AU Fusion)

Warnings: angst, horror elements including (in no particular order) mental instability and mental health issues, grisly occult artifacts, minor character death, accidental death of an animal, zombie animals, monsters, suicidal ideation, desecration of human remains, blood, violence, and injury, self harm, self mutilation, body modification, and psychological trauma

Summary: Something's not right with Carmen Tibideaux. After a strange encounter with her after hours at NYADA, Kurt cannot shake the sense he's being stalked: a whisper in his mind; a strange, cloying scent; a prickle on the back of his neck; and the return of an old, forgotten nightmare. Kurt finds clues in both his past and in his present, but none of them prepare him for the truth of what's out there. A Glee centric fusion with Cthulhu-esque horror and Star Trek: TNG. Canon divergent after 4x09 "Swan Song". Written for the 2014 kurtbigbang.

Note: Since Fanfiction Net won't let me include the illustrations here, please find them at Riverance's deviant art gallery: riveranceDOTdeviantartDOTcom or find them included in the story text on my AO3 account/on my livejournal. There are links in my profile. Thank you!

Prologue

On Valentine's Day, Blaine arrives home in the afternoon. He's just returning from the reception for Mr. Schuester and Miss Pillsbury's wedding. He had a good time with Tina, but the day has left him tender hearted, and he couldn't stay any later. He's missing Kurt, who he hasn't seen since Christmas. They haven't spoken on the phone in weeks. He's received a few inconsequential texts—mostly excuses and apologies for not sending anything more; he gets few replies to what he sends back. Burt says he hasn't heard much more than that from Kurt either, and he urges Blaine to be patient. Kurt gets like this when he's got so much going on in his life. He's always been this way, Burt tells him. And of course, Blaine knows very well that Kurt's busy with Vogue and NYADA (and Kurt had made some mention about maybe needing to get a part time job to help pay for tuition), but Blaine knows Kurt too, and he can't help but worry.

There's fresh snow in the driveway, but it's not so deep he can't park in the drive. The leather soles of his shoes slip on the fine layer of powder as he walks to the mailbox. Since it is Valentine's Day, he's been nurturing a hope for something from Kurt today, a card maybe, some kind of acknowledgment of the day. He picks his way carefully down the length of the driveway. He'll need to shovel it before his parents get home.

The cold of the winter afternoon is bitter on his face, and his breath fogs around him. The metal of the mailbox chills his fingers even through the fine wool knit of his gloves. He pulls out the wad of bills; there's no colorful card sized envelope, but he shuffles through the stack anyway, hoping. He freezes when he gets to a thick, battered business envelope that's hand addressed to him. He recognizes the handwriting; it's as familiar to him as his own. It's what he hoped to see, but it's not a card.

After weeks of so little communication, why would Kurt mail him a letter? Blaine hurries back to the house—nearly falls twice—eager to get inside and find out. His hands are numb and his heart flutters nervously. He dumps his bag on the floor in the foyer with his coat, scarf, and hat. He pulls his gloves off with his teeth as he heads to the kitchen. Drops all the mail but for Kurt's envelope on the end of the counter, and stops for a moment to gather himself. Carefully, he lays the envelope down before going to the coffee machine and setting it up for a couple of cups.

"Right," Blaine says. He takes the letter upstairs and sets it on his bed while he changes out of his dinner suit and into something more comfortable. Then he grabs his replica dagger letter opener from his desk, sits down on his bed next to Kurt's letter, and picks it up.

He runs his fingers over the envelope. The paper is soft with wear, as if the letter has been carried around for a long time before being mailed. The corners are frayed; there are smudges of dirt and a small smear of dull reddish brown that might be blood? But Kurt's handwriting is crisp and bold as ever. Then Blaine notices something strange: the postmark is Lima, dated just two days ago. So Kurt didn't send this from New York, he's in—or has been in—Ohio. Why hasn't he called? Blaine slides the dull blade of the letter opener neatly along the narrow end of the envelope and pulls out the thick sheaf of paper.

It's twenty pages at least, and written in small, cramped letters, as if Kurt's tried to fit the most words possible on each page. It's hard to read, and it takes Blaine's eye a while to adjust to the cadence and shapes of Kurt's script.

Dear Blaine,

It's been a while, I know, and I know you're probably worried about why I've been out of touch, but, please, Blaine, please read all of this letter before you consider telling anyone about it or that you've heard from me. What I'm writing is for your eyes only. I need to talk to someone who trusts me. The things that have happened to me recently defy easy belief, but I need you to try to believe me, no matter how crazy it may sound. It's hard to know where to start. I've written and rewritten this letter so many times. I always come back to the same thing.

Did I ever tell you about the recurring nightmare I had as a child? The one with the bird? No, I'm sure I didn't, because I don't remember ever telling anyone, not even my Dad. But someone needs to know about it, and about everything that's happened to me these past weeks, and you're still the person I trust most.

So the nightmare was about a bird, and it was always the same. I was very small, maybe three or four? And this little bird—it was a sparrow or a finch? She flew right into the glass sliding doors that led out on the back patio. I was playing inside on the floor, and I saw it. I heard the awful crunching thunk, I saw the smear of blood on the glass, and the tiny body lying still on the concrete. It was the first time I saw something die.

I cried, and I called for my mother, but she didn't come. I called for my Dad. He didn't come either. So I got up and struggled with the heavy door, went outside and looked at the bird. My parents had told me never to pick up birds because they're dirty, but the little thing, with its neck bent all wrong, didn't look dirty to me, so I picked her up.

She was so light in my hands, like there was nothing to her but air and feathers. And she was very dead. I didn't want her to be dead. I could feel the warmth lingering in her tiny body, and I closed my eyes and cupped my hands around her and wished as hard as I could that I could keep that body warm with mine, that I could make her heart beat again and she could fly away, off up into the hawthorn tree where she liked to eat berries in the fall and where she'd sing in the spring.

There was movement, then, in my hands. A soft flutter of motion, feeble but unmistakable. Amazed, I opened my eyes. Had I been mistaken? Was the bird not as badly injured as I thought? Was my body heat enough to revive her? Happiness and relief filled my heart.

Except, no. Not exactly. What moved in my hands wasn't the sprightly little sparrow, but a lurching marionette. Her eyes were milky, her head hung to the side, and a black liquid drooled from her open beak. She struggled spasmodically and her tiny talons bit into my palms. Then she pecked my thumb—hard—and drew blood. I yelped in pain and surprise. She pecked again at the same spot, tore my skin and swallowed it. Horrified and in pain, I dropped her, but undeterred, she hopped toward me making the most awful pained sound. And I guess, the bird really wasn't a she any more, but some kind of reanimated thing. It attacked my bare foot. I screamed and kicked it as hard as I could. It came back at me with one wing broken and dragging.

There was a loose brick nearby. I was crying when I picked it up in both hands. It was heavy. I hope I don't need to tell you what I did. It sickened me. I felt, in that moment, as thought I had been unutterably cruel. I had committed a terrible evil.

I buried what remained of that little bird under the gardenia bush on the south side of the house. I don't know why my dream didn't just stop when the bird pecked me, but I remember burying her. The sweet pall of the gardenia, the chunky dry mulch, the gritty loam under my fingernails, mixing with my blood and my tears, the ruined little body I tucked away like a terrible secret into the ground.

I've told myself, over and over, that this was a nightmare, and eventually I stopped having it. Until recently, shortly before Christmas, I started having it again. It was something I shouldn't have forgotten, something I needed to know about myself.

Blaine blinks and lowers the pages to his lap, exhales a long, unsteady breath. His phone is on his dresser. Should he call Kurt straight away? This is... strange—more than strange—and not like Kurt, not in any way that's familiar to Blaine. But, he decides, Kurt will have expected him to read the whole letter because he trusts Blaine. So Blaine turns the page and keeps reading.

When I try to pinpoint when this all started, I come back to one particular night in mid December. I was at NYADA with Rachel, Carmen Tibideaux's office light was on, and I thought I'd go see her to thank her for my admissions letter...

.

I.

Approaching the winter solstice, the night lay heavily upon Manhattan, a glowering darkness with its velvet belly scraping the spires of the buildings. There were no clouds to reflect any light back down and too much ambient illumination to make out the stars. Featureless black hung above Kurt as he walked with Rachel up the ice and salt gritted concrete. Light spilled from the glass doors, wan and weak, upon their path to the main entrance of the Dance Department. Rachel wanted to spend some extra time in the dance studio tonight, and Kurt had volunteered to be her dance partner. He needed the practice before facing Dance 101 next month.

It still took him a moment, every time he thought of it, to reestablish the knowledge that he had got in. This would be his school soon. The pain of last summer's rejection no longer mattered, for he'd made it—this far anyway. The real work would begin soon enough, but until then, he was grateful, and he was preparing himself with renewed motivation.

Across the small courtyard, Kurt looked up at the blackened windows of the Vocal Performance wing. All but for one: from between the closed, slatted blinds of Mme Tibideaux's office a warm glow leaked. It had been a week since his admission letter came. He should take this opportunity to go say thank you, and she would also see that he was taking his admission seriously, working hard in advance of his classes. She'd made the right decision to admit him.

Kurt left Rachel in the dance studio warming up. There were two other students rehearsing late, so she wouldn't feel abandoned.

After hours, motion triggered the lights in the NYADA corridors. As Kurt made his way up two flights of stairs, the stairwell descended below him into gloom, and the click and bright splash of fluorescents bloomed above. Along the hall, it brightened around him only to fall silently back into darkness at his back. The skin between his shoulder blades tingled, like there were something shrouded in the darkness following along behind him.

He passed through the heavy swinging door labeled "Vocal Performance" and turned down the hallway where Mme Tibideaux's office was located. And promptly gagged.

Nausea surged up his throat and his stomach twisted with sudden cramps. The horrible smell that curdled in his nose and throat was like someone had mixed up a steaming vat of vomit, diesel, and cheap women's perfume.

Kurt choked on the air his lungs refused to take in, and he quickly pressed the cuff of his sleeve to cover his nose and mouth. The clean herbaceous scent of his own cologne took the place of the sickening reek hanging in the corridor. Kurt paused on the verge of turning back, but ahead of him, Mme Tibideaux's door stood ajar, and a soft dread chilled his nausea. Something wasn't right.

Breathing through his sleeve, Kurt approached her open door.

Carmen Tibideaux knelt on her floor in front of her wide wooden desk. Strewn about her, shards of broken porcelain shone on her thick Persian carpet. She held a lace edged handkerchief over her mouth with one hand. Some sort of metallic object was firmly clasped in her other hand.

"Professor?" Kurt said from the door. His voice was muffled, but she heard him, for swiftly, she straightened and her hand slipped hastily into a hip pocket. For a flashbulb instant, her expression appeared terrified, but it returned so fast to placidity, Kurt couldn't be sure it wasn't merely a trick of the light.

"Mr. Hummel?" Mme Tibideaux asked, and, with a grimace, lowered her handkerchief. She rose to her feet with an agility that surprised Kurt, and she glanced over her shoulder toward a shadowy corner of the ceiling.

"Um, is everything all right?" he asked. "That smell—"

"A gas leak," she said evenly. "I've called maintenance, but we should leave here." She crowded him backward through the door, and then she took him by the forearm, forcefully turning him away from her doorway. "Quickly now, Mr. Hummel." she said. "The Round Room will be safe."

Carmen Tibideaux let go of him and walked swiftlyly. Even with his long stride, Kurt was pressed to keep pace. It reminded him of being a child at the mall with his father, trailing behind to admire the window displays of the women's boutiques while his father strode blithely onward, only wishing to get what they had come for.

"Professor?" Kurt said again, skipping ahead to open the next door and hold it for her. She looked at him, inscrutable as ever, but bowed her head in acknowledgment of his courtesy. "If I may—?" he began.

"In The Round Room, Mr Hummel," she said over her shoulder, and moved away from him smoothly and even more quickly. Kurt wondered if she actually had legs under all those colorful swirling layers she wore, or if she'd modified a Segway somehow. He jogged to catch up. Her handkerchief was clutched tightly in her hand, by her side. Kurt saw, in the angle of light flaring from a wall sconce, the bright stain of red upon the white lace.

He waited to speak again until they were standing outside the door to The Round Room and she was fishing a key from her skirts to unlock it.

"Madame Tibideaux," Kurt said, "your hand is bleeding."

"Yes, I am aware. Come in." She stepped into the room, gestured for him to follow.

The lights came up slowly, an indirect glow around the perimeter of the space. The graceful bow of the golden hued timbers arced overhead like the interior of an antique ship. The quality of even the smallest sound changed, coming into this room: their footsteps, the soft rustle of clothing all fell softly and evaporated without echo. The room held its contents in perfect stillness. He looked forward to singing here again.

Mme Tibideaux sighed deeply, and Kurt saw relief in the fall of her shoulders. Then she made her way to a solitary antique armchair and eased herself down, to sit like a queen about to hold court, regal and impassive as she regarded Kurt. "What can I do for you this evening, Mr. Hummel?"

"Oh, I—" Kurt came closer, deeper into the room, grasping reflexively the strap of his satchel. "I wanted to thank you."

Her hairless eyebrows rose a millimeter and the smallest smile bent her lips. "You're welcome."

Kurt pressed his lips together and rocked forward onto his toes. She continued to gaze at him with patient and bland expectation. "Was that all?" she asked.

"Yes, ma'am," Kurt said. "That was it."

A measuring look of approval in reply. "Well, then, I suppose this has been an unexpected adventure for us both tonight." Then she narrowed her eyes thoughtfully. "Can you still smell it? The gas?"

"No," Kurt said, and his gaze returned to her hand. "But your hand," he said. "I have a first aid kit in my bag." Kurt shrugged the strap off his shoulder, dropped his bag to the floor, and crouched to open the flap.

"Were you a boy scout as a child, Mr. Hummel?" she asked.

Kurt looked up, surprised. After all, no one had ever thought him boy scout material at any age. It took him a moment to realize she was aiming for levity. "I took ballet," Kurt said. "The boy scouts would have held me back." He dared to grin.

"Of course." She seemed amused.

The first aid kit Kurt carried with him was small but well stocked with all the essentials. He'd made it himself, from the coordinating plaid on stripe quilted case with all its custom sized pockets, to the particular selection of band-aids and sterile gauze, alcohol swabs and moist towlettes, tweezers and tape, aspirin and antihistamines, antibiotic ointment, chapstick, hand sanitizer, and a compact Leatherman pocket knife with fold out scissors. It had saved him from many trips to the school nurse throughout his time in high school. Carrying it remained a habit.

Kurt began with applying the hand sanitizer to himself. Then he pulled two chairs over, one on which to lay out his kit and the other upon which to sit opposite Mme Tibideaux. And then he hesitated. She didn't exactly seem like a person Kurt should be touching. But, she was unwrapping the blood stained handkerchief from her hand and offering it to him without any apparent hesitation. Gingerly he took her hand and turned it to examine the cut.

It didn't look like she would need stitches. A jagged and shallow tear in the thick pad of muscle at the base of her thumb. No serious harm done, just a lot of bleeding, but it would probably scar.

"Well," Kurt said, tearing open a moist towelette. "I don't think your piano playing should be hampered." He glanced up with a smile.

"I don't play the piano, Mr. Hummel," she replied.

Apparently there was a limit to Mme Tibideux's good humor. Right. He shouldn't be too familiar; they were not equals. Now was not the time to make a new bad impression. Kurt pressed his lips together with a short nod and returned his attention to cleaning and dressing her wound, hoped it would heal well.

Just as he was smoothing the last piece of tape along the edge of the gauze dressing, his phone gave a pulse of vibration from his pocket. "Excuse me," he said. He found a text from Rachel when he checked.

"Ah," Kurt said, raising a sheepish look to Mme Tibideaux, who was flexing her thumb carefully and examining the dressing. "That was Rachel. She's waiting for me in the dance studio."

"Then I thank you for your assistance, and I shall send you on your way."

Kurt stood and bent over the chair to gather up his supplies. Though Mme Tibideaux's continued scrutiny pricked a self-conscious kind of anxiety along his nerves, Kurt took care that everything went back in its assigned locations, with the trash neatly collected for disposal. He dragged the chairs back into place with an unsettling graunch upon the wood floor. He winced, but Mme Tibideaux remained unperturbed. She'd withdrawn a smart phone from one of her pockets and now attended to it. His presence was no longer required or wanted.

"Good night then," Kurt said as he hoisted his bag onto his shoulder and made his way to the doors.

"To you as well," she replied without looking up. "I'll see you next month in class. Be well prepared."

##

The halls seemed to have drawn in even more narrowly as Kurt made his way back to the dance studio. Empty buildings after hours were always creepy, so he shook away the chill crawling up his spine. Since Kurt didn't know any path back other than the one that brought him here, he kept to the halls that were most familiar and cautiously opened the door to the vocal performance wing.

The smell was gone and there was no sign of maintenance people. It mustn't have been very serious. Relieved, Kurt squared his shoulders and pushed through the door.

But he couldn't help but pause outside Mme Tibideaux's open office. It was only curiosity, he told himself. He wasn't being nosy to just look through an open door. Her light was still on anyway; perhaps he should turn it off. Kurt stopped and stood at the threshold, glancing around the room and then looking at the broken ornament on the floor. The stark white of the porcelain lay in contrast to the wood and brass, the darker, warmer materials, the deep red and bronze of the rug. Kurt tried to make out what it had been.

To get a better look, he took a step in. An immediate wave of nausea overtook him, along with a pain in his head so sharp it made his eyes water.

He stumbled back, one hand pressed to his throat. The pain and nausea vanished.

"What the hell?" Kurt muttered. His phone vibrated in his pocket again. Probably another text from Rachel. He straightened and turned and quickened his step. Whatever was going on, it wasn't his business. He was a new student—and barely that—not staff. But all the way back to the dance studio he felt haunted, like there were eyes on his back. And where the pain had been in his head, it was like an itch lingered in the back of his mind. He rubbed at the base of his skull, but couldn't dislodge the sensation.

##

On the subway ride home, the train was sparsely populated. Rachel dozed, her head against his shoulder, swaying and bumping along with the jerk and clatter of the train. While they were above ground, Kurt took his phone out and tapped out a text to Blaine. "I've had a very strange evening," he wrote. Hitting send was still accompanied by a very specific bittersweet pang, regret and longing tightly wound together. It was inevitable to feel the conflict. He accepted it, even as he tried to ignore his sadness in favor of focusing on simpler warm feelings. He was grateful to have Blaine's friendship restored.

Kurt let his hand holding his phone fall to his lap, and stared at the screen until it faded out. This hour, on a weeknight, he didn't expect a reply. But within a minute, his phone buzzed in his loose grip. "How strange is strange?" Blaine asked.

Kurt smiled as he typed back, "What do you think the chances are of a ghost haunting NYADA?"

Blaine's reply came quickly, "You don't believe in ghosts, Kurt." Kurt could easily imagine the affectionate tone of Blaine's voice.

"True," Kurt said out loud to himself and chuckled softly. He texted back, "Good point." Then he sent a question, "Why are you up so late anyway?"

But the train dived down under the river before Kurt got a reply from Blaine. "Shoot," Kurt muttered under his breath, glaring at the loss of signal. He forgot to tell Blaine where he was, but there was nothing to be done but wait. He yawned to pop his ears as the pressure changed and the tunnel went black outside the windows. The shuddering metallic scream of the train roared to a deafening volume. Kurt tipped his head against Rachel's but kept his eyes open.

##

It was too late to catch the bus from the station to the apartment, so they walked, Rachel clinging to Kurt's arm and glancing nervously into every alley they passed. "Thank you for coming with me tonight," she said.

"Do you want to stop for anything at the corner store?"

She shook her head. "I just want to crash."

"Almost there," Kurt said, as the store fronts gave way to the scrubby park across the street from their building. They waited at the intersection for the signal to cross, and behind them came a loud, largely unintelligible but possibly obscene, yell. It was the usual, random verbal onslaught from the homeless man who lived in the park. Mostly he seemed harmless—Kurt had never seen him do anything more than yell at people—but he still always startled.

"Oh, god, don't look him," Rachel said, and pressed closer to Kurt. "That guy gives me the creeps."

But Kurt did glance back over his shoulder at the guy, sitting beneath a pair of old coats on the park bench, and staring at the pair of them with red rimmed eyes. It was hard to tell how old he was. Kurt wondered what his story was, but pity and curiosity weren't enough to keep Kurt from crossing the road quickly with Rachel when the light turned. The city was full of sad stories, and Rachel was right, the guy was creepy. Kurt dismissed him from his mind.

Once safely back in the warmth of the loft, Kurt sprawled gratefully upon his bed and caught up reading Blaine's texts while Rachel showered.

"Boring reason, homework," was Blaine's first reply, followed five minutes by, "Are you still there?" And five minutes after that, "Did you fall asleep?" After another, shorter three minute interval, "Sweet dreams, Kurt. I'll talk to you tomorrow."

Kurt typed quickly: "Was on the subway, sorry! Went under the river. Back now & home, if you're still up?"

But there was no response, so Kurt plugged his phone in and changed for bed.

He was just pulling his sleep tee over his head when the hair on the back of his neck prickled and he heard a faint murmur, like distant voices, just at the edge of his hearing.

Slowly, he smoothed down his t-shirt and turned his head, this way and that, to seek the source, but he couldn't quite bring it into focus. Maybe Rachel left something buffering on her computer. He ventured out of his partition. The shower was still running. Rachel's laptop bag lay closed upon the kitchen table.

The chill spread from his neck, down his chest and arms, but he still couldn't isolate the sound. It must be the downstairs neighbors, and he was just over tired and feeling bad about being too late replying to Blaine's texts. That was all. He filled the kettle, rinsed out the tea pot, and finds the chamomile tea.

##

A large disco ball hung over the broad, open staircase before him, and above the disco ball stretched a wide peaked skylight showing the orange lit underbelly of the partial cloud cover. "Edge of Glory" pumped from the speakers. With a groan, Kurt leaned over to speak into Rachel's ear, "Oh, god, Nationals flashback." Her fingers tightened on his forearm. "You okay?" he asked. Rachel nodded and smiled in bright defiance of nostalgia.

Even in his favorite Paul Smith pants and a brand new Burberry jacket, Kurt immediately felt too small town for this bar, with all its sleek wood and metal and exposed brick. Isabelle stood beside him and Chase was on the other side of Rachel. This was definitely not Scandals. Famous people came to this bar; Isabelle had dropped more than a few names in persuading him on the outing. It was his first time in a Manhattan gay bar. Isabelle insisted on taking him out for a celebratory drink after the news of his NYADA admission. So here they were, in Hell's Kitchen, at a swank, popular bar called Therapy.

"Are you suggesting I need therapy?" he'd asked her when she invited him.

To which, Isabelle had laughed and said, "We all do every now and then."

It was crowded already on the ground floor—mostly, but not exclusively men—and the swelling mumble of conversation interleaved with the music. Isabelle led them upstairs with a hand gesture. Tiny fragments of light glittered around them as they climbed up. Isabelle caught the eye of a pretty blond guy in a tight shirt holding aloft a tray of shot glasses. He came over, they exchanged words Kurt couldn't make out, and then the guy led them to a table against the wall, but near the stage. Kurt mostly focused on not gawking at their waiter or his surroundings. He could be cool.

He ended up seated against the wall, across from Isabelle with Rachel beside him. Chase asked the table for their drink preferences. "One drink," Isabelle promised him with a wink. "You've earned it." Kurt asked for something fruity and sweet, and Chase went to the bar to order. Kurt picked up the bar snacks menu to give his hands something to do. The music, though quieter upstairs, was still too loud for easy conversation.

Maybe it was because he was still sober, but Kurt found the environment overwhelming enough that he hoped a drink would help. Places like this, he was certain, were designed to be enjoyed best through a minimum slight haze of inebriation. Regardless, it was nice to be out of the loft and out of the office, somewhere new; and Isabelle had never taken him anywhere he didn't enjoy. But there'd been a strange, vague anxiety crawling beneath his skin this week that he hadn't been able to shake. The excess sound and activity around him wasn't settling it, instead seemed to be rubbing his skin the wrong way. He felt twitchy, like a cat with mussed fur. Too many people around him in a new location when he wasn't performing felt like too much potential scrutiny. He had to keep reminding himself, he was no longer in Ohio.

It could be that Christmas was coming up in a few days. He hadn't bought a plane ticket home. Had explained to his father that he needed to save the money for rent and tuition, which was true, but it wasn't the only reason. Seeing Blaine again held too much ambivalence for his heart, and his promise to talk with Blaine seemed too big a thing to face. He hadn't even managed a simple phone call to tell Blaine that he wouldn't be coming back to Ohio for the holiday after all. It was already the twentieth.

Rachel was away on Christmas Eve, on a cruise with her Dads for the holiday, so he'd be in the loft alone, which he was looking forward to. Living with Rachel in the loft hadn't permitted much privacy, quiet, or solitude. But it was Christmas, and that was hard to think about spending alone when he knew the family home in Lima would be filled with people. Carole's sister and brother-in-law would be visiting from Zanesville, along with a selection of Finn's cousins. Kurt had never spent a Christmas without his Dad.

"Penny for your thoughts?" Isabelle asked.

They chatted, mostly talk about work, an exhibition opening to which Isabelle was contributing some of her work from the early nineties, and the year's most Oscar worthy films. Chase returned, handing Kurt a pale drink called a Pearanoia. Rachel giggled over her cocktail, dubbed a Size Queen, and batted her eyelashes at Chase. It was very strange. Kurt took a long, grateful sip through his straw. Expected a gasoline taste, but was instead greeted by the sweet and clean flavor of pears with a more complex warmth lingering on the back of his tongue.

In retrospect, he probably drank it too fast. The subtle alcohol overlaid with sweet fruit was surprisingly compelling and went down easily. His self-consciousness fuzzed at the edges, and Kurt could feel himself relaxing as if all his tension had become liquid and was slowly draining down his spine and away. They talked and laughed, and it was so good, hanging out with Rachel and Isabelle and Chase (and Kurt spent a good amount of time pondering Chase's sexuality, but Chase carefully maintained his air of friendly enigma, and eventually Kurt gave it up as a pointless endeavor anyway.)

At some point, food appeared on their table. Chicken skewers and nachos and pizza—all very tasty and fresh. Shortly after that, Kurt decided he needed to empty his bladder and wash his hands, so he excused himself and made his way back down the wide stairs, carefully trying to minimize the inevitable bumping against other patrons heading up the other way.

The sound fell away markedly in the bathroom, and Kurt was pleased to find it decently clean and not too densely occupied. He did his business and went to wash his hands. And then he felt it, the increasingly familiar prickle on the back of his neck, like someone was watching him. But a sweep of the room behind him in the mirror revealed no particular attention. His stomach twisted in discomfort and his head swam with a brief surge of dizziness. He held tightly to the edge of the sink and breathed. It was probably just the alcohol, too much stimulation, and the exhaustion of the week. He wet his fingers and fussed with hair until he felt steady again. But then caught the edge of a whisper close to ear, but no one was there. "Get it together, Hummel," he mumbled under his breath.

This was a night for celebration, not for indulging weird bouts of anxious fatigue. He'd call Blaine tomorrow and apologize. Blaine would understand, and anyway, he no longer had a specific obligation there. Which seemed an uncharitable thought, but it was hard to think kind thoughts when an uncomfortable heat was breaking out on Kurt's skin, sticking his shirt to his chest. God, he hoped he wasn't getting sick.

After exiting the bathroom, Kurt was still smoothing his jacket and straightening his cuffs as he made his way toward the stairs, when someone touched his arm. Deliberately. Kurt looked up into the face of a rather attractive dark-haired man. At least, in the low light, Kurt was content to assume attractiveness. "Yes?" he asked. He probably had toilet paper stuck to his shoe.

"Hi," the man said, "I'm sure I would remember you if we'd met here before." His warm gaze was steady and shockingly intimate. Kurt clenched his hands and felt the heat of a blush on his cheeks, couldn't stop himself from grinning as he fumbled with words to reply with some semblance of wit.

"Oh, I, um—" he stammered, failing.

"So you must be new to the city?" the guy asked, as if he were genuinely interested.

"Yes," Kurt said, relieved. "Completely."

"And are you here on your own?" He moved closer, pressing past the usual boundaries of Kurt's personal space.

"With friends," Kurt said. "Upstairs."

"Then, if they won't miss you too much, may I buy you a drink?"

Technically, he was single, and the guy seemed nice enough, so, "Sure," Kurt said, and the guy waved over one of the lovely boys carrying a tray of shots.

Two vodka shots later, Kurt was dancing with the guy, whose name he had told Kurt, but Kurt couldn't actually remember. He didn't really care, the dancing was enough. His body had shed the discomfort from the bathroom, and it felt so good to let the music into his muscles without worrying about form and balance and control, to just move and be and have someone looking at him like he was worth looking at.

And maybe more too. It was remarkably, wonderfully easy to sway into the man's touch on his waist. Undeniably thrilling to let himself be reeled in closer until their bodies were brushing and Kurt could feel the man's breath across his cheek. He felt good, he was single, he was young, the world was his. Letting go felt amazing. This was what his life in the city should be, the fearless embrace of new wonderful experiences. He grinned at the man, the man grinned back and pulled Kurt in closer, into the rhythm and heat of his body and masculine scent of his cologne.

But then, out of nowhere, Rachel was right there, beside him, tugging at his shoulder like an impatient child and making him step back from the guy he was dancing with. He offered the man an apologetic smile and turned toward Rachel. "What?"

"Kurt, oh my god," she said, and then she leaned in so close to his ear he felt her lips against his skin. "Where were you? It's past time to go. You wanted to get home before midnight, remember?"

"Sorry," Kurt called to his dance partner. "I've got to go. Thanks for... everything?" He was sure he was being awfully rude, but Rachel had a fierce grip on his arm, dragging him toward the doors.

"Kurt, that guy was almost as old as Mr. Schue!" she hissed in his ear. "When I said you should move on and date other guys, this is not what I meant!"

He managed a shrug. "He was hot and looking at me like..." He trailed off with an illustrative hand gesture that Rachel didn't seem to understand. "I was having fun."

She stopped and looked at him critically. She brushed a cool hand across his forehead. "He wasn't that hot," she said. "Are you okay? You're burning up. How much have you had to drink?"

"Just... three... things?"

"Well, you look like you're about to hurl."

"I'm fine," he protested, but as she dragged him out the doors and the cold night air hit his face, it made him feel better enough that he realized perhaps he wasn't entirely fine.

Chase and Isabelle stood on the street, waiting. Chase gave Kurt a raised eyebrow, but passed Kurt his coat and scarf without comment. Isabelle said, "I'll pay for a cab to get you kids home safely."

"Sorry for kind of ditching you," Kurt mumbled as he shrugged on his coat and fiddled with the toggles of it. It was too complex a motor task, so he gave up and tied his scarf into a simple knot. "I was dancing."

"So long as you had fun," Isabelle said, not unkindly. "Drink plenty of water when you get home. I don't want you hungover at work tomorrow." Then she packed them into a cab with a smile and a squeeze of Kurt's shoulder. "Sleep well."

##

Back home, Rachel poured him a tall glass of water and put him to bed.

As he lay on his bed with Rachel pulling his boots off, all the while sighing dramatically as if horribly put upon by his irresponsible behavior, he could hear the whispering filtering in again, louder. Loud enough that it seemed he should be able to make out words, if he just listened closely enough. "Can you hear that?"

"Hear what?" Rachel asked, and said, and then she straightened, turned away, and faced his curtain. "You're going to have to take your own pants off if you don't want to sleep in them."

Kurt pushed himself up and untucked his shirt before undoing his pants and shimmying out of them. "There's a voice or someone talking nearby. I can't make out any words. Can you hear it?"

"No," she said, staring at the ceiling, "I don't hear anything." She kept her gaze averted as she leaned over to reach under his pillow to retrieve his pajamas. She handed them to him. "Drink the rest of your water and go to sleep, Kurt. You'll feel better in the morning."

"Okay," he replied, shaking out the folds from his sleep pants before pulling them up his legs. "But can you, please, stay with me?" He reached out and grabbed for her hand. "Just for a little while?"

She glanced back at him with a smile. "Yeah, all right," she said and he scooted over to make room for her. She kicked off her shoes and climbed onto the bed, still in her dress. Kurt pulled the blanket over to cover them both and she curled against his side, head pillowed on his shoulder.

"Are you mad at me?" he asked her.

"No," Rachel said. "You just scared me a little bit."

"Scared you?"

"That guy? I'm ninety-nine percent sure he didn't want to date you, Kurt, and you were... not at your best. I didn't want you to do anything you were going to regret. I know you've been lonely since Blaine—"

"Things are fine with Blaine," Kurt said. He wasn't in the mood to hear Rachel disparage Blaine's character tonight. He knew she meant well, was trying to show solidarity, but the truth was, he wasn't lonely for just anyone. The guy at the bar had been a mistake; he'd gained enough distance and sobriety to feel a sharp pang of regret and embarrassment at what could have been if Rachel hadn't interrupted him. "Thank you for getting me home without mishap," he said. "I don't remember the guy's name, and I probably wouldn't have, and you're right, that's not what I want."

"It's okay," she said. "It's good for you to put yourself out there, you know? Meet new guys, have new experiences. Just be more discerning. It's healthy to want to connect with someone, and you're single now, so—"

"It's not by choice," Kurt said softly. "I'm not lonely, Rachel. Honestly, I miss him. I miss Blaine. It's just too hard to figure things out right now with everything that's happened and the distance, and... ugh." He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. "I'm getting a headache."

"Hey," Rachel said, and she petted across his chest soothingly. "You're just having one of those nights. It'll all look better in the morning, I promise. Just think about all the amazing things we've got going for us here in New York. I mean, come on, Kurt, we just went to a famous bar with Isabelle Wright, and we'll be in class together at NYADA next month. You just said you and Blaine are fine, right? So just enjoy being friends again, see how it goes. Don't pressure yourself needlessly."

Kurt sighed through a smile. "You're right," he said.

"Of course I am," she said and kissed his cheek before extricating herself from his embrace. "I'll see you in the morning."

##

He dreamed that night. An old nightmare from his childhood. The little bird, dead. And then not dead, broken and awful and hungry.

In the morning, he woke, still feeling slightly dizzy from having drank too much alcohol, and his mouth tasted like something had died in there. The nightmare hung in the back of his consciousness all day, right along with his hangover. He moved through the day, heavy with ineffable dread. Isabelle teased him gently and sent him home early.

That evening, he got an email from his Dad. Attached was an e-ticket home for Christmas. The relief it brought surprised him. Tears pricked Kurt's eyes, and he called his Dad immediately to thank him, and then, with only mild hesitation, he called Blaine with the good news. He could push all his reservations and regrets from his mind and take Rachel's advice.

##

The house was full—too full—on Christmas day, Kurt spent most of the morning in the kitchen cooking with Carole. Family passed through from time to time, getting snacks and drinks and in the way. Finn's cousins were both younger and louder than Kurt had anticipated. By the time the afternoon came around, and Finn and his Dad were clearing the table, Kurt was more than ready to see Blaine for their scheduled ice skating and hot chocolate date.

When the doorbell rang, Kurt excused himself hastily and nearly jogged to answer the door.

On the doorstep, Blaine stood, pink cheeked, smiling, and so handsome it stole the breath from Kurt's lungs. It was so good to see him now that Kurt felt able to look again. "Hi," he said.

"Got your skates?" Blaine asked in reply. Nice and uncomplicated. Kurt picked them up from beside the door with a grin and a flourish, and they went.

Blaine drove them to the park by the river. Skeletal trees stood stark and black against the pale winter sky. The sun hung low behind them, growing orangey and fat as the winter afternoon waned and the temperatures dropped. Fortunately, there was no breeze, and on Christmas day, the park was empty of others. They sat together on a hard wooden bench to lace up their skates. Blaine hit the ice before Kurt, pushing off into graceful curving paths across the frozen white river.

Kurt made his way down the snowy bank and gingerly stepped out, the loss of friction beneath his feet always disoriented him, and it had been a while since he'd done this. It was not like riding a bicycle. He swayed and held his breath as he found his balance and then carefully sent himself gliding toward Blaine.

Blaine grinned as Kurt approached, and he turned to meet him. Blaine caught Kurt by his forearms when Kurt didn't manage to slow himself; then he pulled Kurt into a slow spin that inadvertently threw Kurt off balance entirely. Kurt fell, backward, pulling Blaine down with him.

His backside and Blaine's knees hit the ice hard.

"Ow, ow, fucking ow," he swore. Blaine was leaning over him, bracing himself either side of Kurt's torso, against the ice with straight arms, but his head was bowed, his expression hidden. "Are you all right?" Kurt asked, tentatively touching Blaine's upper arm.

Blaine shoulders shook and he lifted his head. Amusement lit his eyes and he laughed. "I thought you said you could skate," Blaine said.

His face was very close to Kurt's, his eyes bright and happy, and his cheeks flushed. Kurt stopped breathing.

"It's been a while," Kurt said hushed and nervous, couldn't stop himself from looking down at Blaine's lips. Found them looking soft beneath the sheen of chapstick, parted around Blaine's fogging breath.

"Evidently," Blaine said, his voice just as soft as his lips looked, and his gaze searched Kurt's. Kurt didn't look away, even though there was something sharp in his throat, urgent but stuck, words whose shape he couldn't give form or sound to.

And then Blaine's mouth was pressed lightly to his, a silent question in a fleeting, uncertain kiss. Blaine withdrew, his eyes wide and brimming with questions Kurt didn't know how to answer.

"Blaine, I—" Kurt started and broke off with a hiccuping breath. Blinked a sudden hot rush of tears back. "I..." He still didn't know exactly what he wanted to say.

Blaine looked away and sat back to give Kurt room. "Crap, I'm sorry, Kurt." He grimaced and ran a hand over his knitted hat; it was a familiar, reflexive gesture. Comforting in a way. "I really shouldn't have… done that."

"It's okay," Kurt said automatically. He didn't mind Blaine kissing him, even if he couldn't tell if he wanted to do it again or not, because kissing Blaine meant things he didn't know if he could mean again, not yet. "I just—" He broke off with a helpless shrug.

"I know, we need to talk," Blaine said, with matter-of-fact acknowledgment and a rueful smile.

"Yeah," Kurt said and sighed into a smile of his own. For all the things he didn't know how to say to Blaine, there were just as many he did know. It was less daunting a thing now than it had seemed in New York. Here, on the ice, with Blaine near him, smiling and safe. He knew they'd be able to find the words together.

Blaine clambered to his feet and looked down at Kurt. "Sing a song with me first? And then we can... go somewhere else?" He reached down with a gloved hand for Kurt.

Kurt reached back and Blaine helped him up. "Well, it is our tradition," Kurt said.

"We'll take it slow, okay?" Blaine said; he held Kurt's hands and skated backwards, coaxing Kurt to follow along with him. "I promise, I won't let you fall again."

"So what are we singing?" Kurt asked, pushing back against the ice with more confidence to stay near Blaine. His body was beginning to remember how to do this.

"Just hear those sleigh bells jingling...?" Blaine started slowly, a playful query. His smile shone performance bright, but the warmth in his eyes was completely sincere. Kurt grinned and joined in on the "Ring-ting-tingling..."

Kurt didn't fall again. They sang the song, and skated some more with Kurt feeling enough confidence to swing himself through some figure eights and loops up the length of the river. But in a race straight back down to where the car was parked, Blaine still won easily.

The winter sun squatted on the horizon and a bitter wind roused from the north. Kurt shivered as he sat beside Blaine and swapped the skates back for his boots. "I'm ready for that hot chocolate," he said. "Where to now?"

With a thoughtful press of his lips together Blaine considered him. "I was wondering if, um, my place would be okay? I've been trying out different hot chocolate recipes, and we'll have some privacy... to, you know, talk. My parents will be heading over to a neighbor's for their annual Christmas evening drinks. They're never back before midnight, so..."

Kurt blinked at him, and Blaine winced.

"Or we can go to Starbucks. I'm really not meaning to… push," he let out a long gusty breath and slumped in some kind of resignation. "I don't know what I'm doing," he said to his knees. "I really miss you, Kurt, so much, and I've been looking forward to seeing you. I wanted everything to be perfect today, but—"

"Hey," Kurt interrupted him. Smiled when Blaine cautiously tilted his head to look back at him. "It's been perfect so far, and I'd love to try one of your new hot chocolate recipes."

"Yeah?"

Kurt reached over to give Blaine's thigh a friendly squeeze. "Yeah."

##

They talked in the Andersons' spacious kitchen, sitting at the table, nibbling sugar cookies and drinking Blaine's chosen best hot chocolate recipe: real chocolate melted into cream with a dash of chili. They talked for over an hour. Mostly it was Blaine talking and Kurt listening, and as Blaine spoke, more candid and vulnerable than Kurt had ever seen him, Kurt refrained from trying to soothe away his sadness with glib reassurances. He just listened, and he came to understand some things he hadn't.

"I'm sorry you felt that way, Blaine. I had no idea."

Blaine's smile was weak, but genuine.

"I want you to know, I was thinking of you, all the time. You got my post cards, right?"

Blaine nodded. "I'm sorry."

"I know, but it's going to take me a while to..." Kurt waved his hands in a vague gesture.

"Trust me? Forgive me?"

"I do forgive you, but it's a process. The trust is harder. I can hardly bear to think about... the physical things."

"So is there any hope for us?"

It was hard to say it, but Kurt knew honesty was necessary here. "I still want what we had together, Blaine. I do. I just can't right now."

"Right," Blaine said and glanced down at his empty mug.

"Look, I want us to be friends, okay? I meant it when I said you're still my best friend. You're still someone I want in my life—I miss you too much when you're not, but..."

"But not as your boyfriend."

Kurt hesitated, bit his lip and had to look away. "I need to do what I'm doing in New York. Focus on that, Vogue and NYADA. Long distance wasn't working for us, but maybe when you get to New York—"

"If, Kurt. I haven't been accepted yet. I don't even know if I've made the first cut."

"No. When. When you're there, we can, maybe, start fresh?"

"Really?" Blaine was so tender and hopeful. "You'd be willing to try again?"

Kurt reached for Blaine's hand and squeezed. "With you, yes."

##

Later that night, after Blaine had dropped him off with a long hug on the doorstep, the house was still quieting from the busyness of the day. Carole was back in the kitchen with his Dad cleaning up, and Finn ferried Christmas gifts upstairs and wrapping paper out to the garage. All the lights inside were still on, making everything brighter than a typical evening, and the stereo had cycled around to Carole's classic Christmas playlist with Bing Crosby smoothly crooning "White Christmas". With a lingering warmth and lightness in his chest, Kurt hung up his coat and set to work, tidying up the living room, collecting all the remaining glasses soiled with eggnog and wine, small plates with scraps of crackers and crudites, and half full serving bowls of nuts and chips to take back to the kitchen. It looked like everyone had had a good time, but Kurt wasn't sad he'd missed the evening.

For the first time, his heart and his head felt like they'd found a quiet accord. He could think of Blaine and smile without pain. His being was peaceful. Resting and waiting and ready to meet the new challenges of New York. In this moment, as he wiped down the coffee table for crumbs and stray spills, he felt uncomplicated optimism.

##

It was the bird again. Within the dream, Kurt was aware he dreamed, but he couldn't change the course of it, couldn't stop his young dream self from reaching up to the handle of the heavy glass door and dragging it open, couldn't stop himself from picking up the bird, couldn't wake himself until it'd played out with all the horror of dropping the brick and collecting the horrible remains and digging, digging, digging under the gardenia until his fingers ached.

But one thing was different. This time when he buried the bird, the feathers and flesh melted away from the thin white bones, and on the sightless skull it flared like fire: an irregular, five pointed star with an eye in the center. His dream self blinked at the brightness and the afterimage marring his vision. When it faded, what remained on the smooth bone was the shape of the star with the eye, marked in black char. The shape looked completely familiar, and it urged him to understand it.

And suddenly, he was looking, not at the remains of the bird, but at his own dirty hands, and they were his hands as an adult, and night was falling fast around him. A cold wind picked up, biting bitterly at his back and shoulders as he crouched beside the gardenia. Leaves fell around him in the moonlit night, tossed by the winter wind. Then he woke up.

And immediately felt he was not alone. The whispering, sibilant and curious, curdled in his mind. And he lay in bed, frozen, feeling the sensation of being watched so strongly, he could barely breathe. A sliver of moonlight brightened his curtains, illuminated enough of his room that he knew there was nothing there but himself. He hated how the recurring nightmare lingered. Except, it was different tonight, like he was actually there, transported somehow in time or space or... It made no sense, but there was an impulse—no, a compulsion—burgeoning within him. Kurt sat up and turned on his light.

He didn't question the urgent need that drove his heart to beat faster. He pulled on his dressing gown and thickest socks, and crept downstairs. The murmuring followed him, though he tried to tell himself it wasn't real, there was nothing there. Rachel didn't hear it, after all. Auditory hallucinations were not uncommon, he told himself. But it didn't turn him back toward his room. The memory of the dream was pushing him. He got his coat and boots and hat, his Dad's keys, and quietly let himself out the back door. There was a rusting trowel on the planting bench on the patio. He took it.

The night was freezing, and Kurt was glad his Dad's truck was still parked on the street. He didn't need to wake the house. It was a ten minute drive to the house where he grew up, barely enough time for the engine to heat up.

The half moon was still rising, bright in the dark night as Kurt parked at the end of the street and keyed off the ignition. The houses were quiet, but Christmas lights lined the eaves and windows of a few. Their old next door neighbor still put lights on his neatly trimmed junipers. Kurt hoped his being here wouldn't disturb anyone, but he had to know.

He shivered and walked briskly down the old familiar lane. It's where he learned to ride his bicycle. Where his Dad took him Trick or Treating. With a smile, he recalled the year he wanted to go as Inigo Montoya, so his father went as The Dread Pirate Roberts. But Kurt's warmth at the memory faded when he got to their old house. It looked so small and shabby now. Timeworn and forgotten, and somehow foreign as well as familiar, like it was a forbidden place now that it was no longer his home. The hawthorn hedge was gone—it would've been laden with berries now if it weren't—as was the old oak tree, which had been dying anyway, but it made Kurt sad to see the yard so bare. He hoped the gardenia was still there.

Quietly, he picked his way across the snowy yard, keeping to the places where the snow was already well trodden. A half melted snowman leered crookedly up at him from where its head had melted into its torso. He crept around to the side of the house where the gardenia grew near the AC unit. It was still there. Kurt let out a breath of relief, but his next breath in was full of fresh trepidation. The handle of the trowel was solid in his hand. He knelt down, grateful for the moon rising higher before him, and he began to break through the icy snow to get at the hard ground beneath.

He didn't have to dig far below the bark chip mulch before he found it. White shards of bone in the black dirt. He pulled off his gloves, set aside the trowel, and, heedless of the dirt getting under his nails and the freezing chill of the ground, touched with his bare fingers, pushed and scraped through the cold hard dirt until he uncovered the skull. It was half crushed and unmarked but for the stain of dirt and time, but the remains were there, unmistakably. It crumbled in his hand, and he let go.

Numb from cold and realization, Kurt sat back on his heels. A cold gust of wind shook the gardenia and he forced himself to breathe. It was not a nightmare, but a memory. He didn't even know how it could be possible, only that, having uncovered the evidence, he felt its veracity down to his own bones. Part of him, he suspected, had always known it was a memory, but it was so terrible and so incredible, he convinced himself it was a dream.

Robotically, Kurt pushed the dirt back into place, tried to arrange the bark chips and snow on top so it wouldn't look like someone had been digging around here. He wiped his hands on his coat, picked up the trowel, and retraced his path back to the truck. Drove home while barely attending to the streets. He ran at least one stop sign. Thanked his luck that there was no traffic at three AM on the day after Christmas. And he ended up back at home, letting himself back in the back door and shivering uncontrollably.

He silenced the questions in his mind and focused on washing his hands in the laundry sink, thoroughly and with warm water. Then he filled a mug with milk and stuck it in the microwave. He hugged himself as he stood in front of the microwave, watching his mug slowly rotate behind the perforated shielding of the door.

When the milk was warm, he sat at the island and stirred cocoa mix into the milk, kept stirring so a skin wouldn't form. Kept stirring while he tried to not think. And he listened as he sat and stirred. Waited for the creeping low volume of the wordless voice to return. And it did, soft and sinister, and he wondered if it were somehow real too. "Who are you?" he asked it. Could it be the bird? Was he being stalked by some kind of vengeful bird spirit? It sounded ridiculous. He couldn't seriously entertain the notion, and yet, something was altogether off kilter. He wasn't sure what he should believe now. Maybe he was losing his mind.

He got up to get the pad and pen from beside the phone and then sat back down with his cocoa. On the pad, he tried to draw the shape from his dream, the five pointed star with the eye in the middle. It looked so familiar, but he was sure he'd never seen it before.

He stared at it as he sipped his cocoa. Stared and stared until his vision blurred and its shape seemed to writhe upon the paper. Then he remembered the locket. His Aunt Mildred gave it to him when he was young, told him it had belonged to her grandmother. It was special, a good luck charm. Kurt thought it was ugly, too plain, just a tarnished gold lump of a disc with the star engraved on it, messy and uneven like someone had hand drawn it in a hurry. Inside the locket wasn't a photo, but a coiled lock of light brown hair set behind a time-dulled piece of glass.

Kurt rinsed out his mug and crumpled up the piece of paper upon which he'd drawn. Upstairs, he opened his closet and went to the back where he still stored some personal items. There was a shoe box of mementos, and within that box was a threadbare green velvet box, and within that box was the locket. He took it out. It was warm in his palm, and quite suddenly, the whisper at the edge of his hearing went silent.

.

II.

Winter afternoons turned the conference room at Vogue dot com into a glasshouse. The sun drifted low in the sky and glared through the triple glazing. Kurt loosened the scarf knotted tightly at his throat and reached for his bottle of iced water. Under his shirt, his great grandmother's locket pressed a warm, alien weight against his sternum. He resisted the urge to rub at it through the material of his shirt. The lump of it remained hidden by the tails of his scarf.

At the head of the table, Isabelle shuffled some papers nervously and flicked a smile at Chase as he seated himself to her left. Daphne drifted in five minutes late, slim and severe in a black wool suit and shiny red stiletto ankle boots that matched her lips. She settled beside Kurt with her usual blank demeanor. Her hair was so sleek and done so perfectly, Kurt wondered if she actually wore a wig.

"We're all here, then?" Isabelle asked, redundantly.

Kurt took another mouthful of water. He hadn't been sleeping well since he returned to the city, and his first full day back at work dragged at him, an incessant trap of time when he wanted to be nearly anywhere else. His first class at NYADA would be tomorrow, first thing in the morning. But that wasn't all it was. These group meetings were typically the highlights of his work days. He got a break from running errands and answering phones to participate in creative work. Today he couldn't enjoy it. The work seemed less important, a distant concern when there were more immediate things worrying at his concentration.

The pale splinters of bone in the cold black dirt beneath the gardenia flashed behind his eyelids when he took too long a blink. The nightmares hadn't stopped. He'd been wearing the locket at night too, in the irrational hope it would ward the bad dreams, but if anything they'd become more vivid, more urgent, as if there were something for him to learn about the strange star-shaped symbol and the purpose of his own hands. Kurt stifled a yawn against his knuckles.

The locket did seem to settle the whispering in his mind at least, even if the dreams persisted. Curious, he had experimented with it first, to try to isolate the nature of the perceived sound. Without wearing the locket, first, he'd had tried blocking the murmuring out with his noise canceling headphones, then with his white noise machine, and finally with drug store earplugs. But the sinister voice at the edge of his understanding was just as present, even with his iPod turned up uncomfortably loudly, pumping pink noise directly into his ears. The confirmation that the sound was somehow originating in his own head had turned him cold.

He'd refrained from looking up the symptoms online, afraid of what he'd find. A brain tumor or some other degenerative neurological disease. Or he was going crazy. Or maybe it was just temporary tinnitus and a change in the weather would fix it. Or it was actually nothing, he was just over tired. But the locket helped, unmistakeably so, which made for a peculiar placebo. It had to be a placebo effect, for there was no mechanism by which it should work. But then, nor was there anything about it that should make his brain believe in its efficacy enough for it to seem to work. And then, just as hard to accept and believe: the bones of the bird were actually there under the gardenia.

Since their discovery, over and over he'd told himself, his memory must be faulty. He'd simply buried the bird after she'd hit the window. The terrible reanimation was nothing more than a fantastical nightmare. The resurgence of those nightmares, no matter how they dogged him, meant nothing more than he was tired and anxious. It was a normal way for his psyche to try to exorcize his nerves over starting at NYADA. Digging up the bones of the bird was symbolic of him dredging up old anxieties about starting at a new school. That had to be it. Still, the locket hung around his neck, unnaturally warm, growing hotter than his body temperature over the course of the morning and into the afternoon.

"... what do you think, Kurt?" Isabelle was asking him, and Kurt snapped back to the present with a startled blink. Beside him, Daphne mirrored his blink slowly. In Kurt's sudden discomfiture, it felt like casual mockery, though he doubted that it were. Daphne simply unsettled him.

"Um," Kurt began, and he straightened in his seat, trying to find some trace of awareness of what the table had been discussing during his space out. "About which aspect?" he said, trying to adopt a thoughtful air.

"Doing an historical piece," she said.

"The history of leather," Chase clarified, offering Kurt a reassuring smile from across the table.

Kurt returned it with gratitude, and he straightened in his chair, cleared his throat. "Right."

"I still want to do something with Amanda's idea," Isabelle said, almost apologetically.

"Looking back could be interesting, it provides context for modern designs," Kurt said quickly, hoping he wasn't repeating anything others had contributed already. "Something like the evolution of trends in animal hide?"

"Exactly," Isabelle said with a relieved smile. "All right, then, I want Kurt and Daphne to work on this piece together. One of the directors at the Design and Fashions Arts museum owes me a favor. I'll arrange for you to have access to their full collection, to get some good ideas. It doesn't have to be a big piece, but find some unique items that our readers will appreciate."

"Okay," Kurt said, and Daphne nodded vacantly before turning her attention out the window.

Great. Kurt squelched his disappointment and thanked Isabelle for the opportunity, told Daphne he'd email her his NYADA schedule so they could set up a meeting at the museum.

##

It was barely five AM when Kurt woke to Rachel shaking his shoulder and sing-songing too loudly and cheerfully, "Good morning, good morning! You've slept the whole night through!" It was far more energy than any human being should possess at this hour. Outside his window it was still black.

Kurt grunted as he pushed her hand away. He squinted and gritted out with a sleep raspy voice: "That's not how that song goes." Nor did he bother to correct her assumption. He had only managed to fall asleep properly after three. His psyche was falling into a regular schedule of fall asleep, have nightmare, wake up, toss and turn, and then, as morning grew close, eventually find some respite in unconsciousness.

"It's a Berry family variation," Rachel said primly. Then with a sunny smile, she added, "I've made your coffee. Happy first day at NYADA!"

"I was planning to sleep for at least another hour," Kurt said.

"You don't want to be late or groggy for your first dance class, Kurt, trust me," she said. "Do you want soy milk with your oatmeal?"

"Yeah, sure, thanks," Kurt said and he sat up; the covers fell away from his shoulders bringing the cold of the morning to cling unfriendlily to his bare arms. He covered his mouth as he yawned and Rachel turned on his bedside lamp.

"What's that?" Rachel asked, pointing to the gold locket. It had slipped free of the neck of his t-shirt overnight.

"Oh," Kurt closed one hand around it self-consciously. "Just a good luck charm. Old family heirloom."

"Can I see?" she asked.

"Yeah," Kurt said, because he couldn't think of a good reason to say no, but he didn't expect her to reach for the chain and lift it to take it off him. Determinedly, he didn't flinch—that would be ridiculous—as she pulled it off over his head. Kurt took a deep breath in and out, and began to relax, hoping there'd be no adverse effect. But, sure enough, the the creeping presence and whispering returned. He flushed hot, his head swam, and his stomach twisted. He pressed a hand to his stomach and pinched his eyes shut with a gasp. This shouldn't be real. He swallowed thickly and reached to Rachel to take the pendant back.

With a frown, "Are you okay?" Rachel asked him, but she relinquished her hold on the necklace.

"It's five in the morning, of course I'm not okay," Kurt said, and he took the locket back, put it back on. Immediately, he felt better. But correlation was not causation, he reminded himself. Then he got up, and pulled on his robe.

"It's kind of ugly," Rachel said with a critical twist of her mouth. It was refreshing in a way, Rachel's critique: familiar, expected and—best of all—normal. He needed more of that.

With a tepid smile, Kurt shrugged, and then he prompted, "You said you made coffee?" He just wanted to get through the day intact.

##

Kurt made it through his first eight AM Dance 101 class without passing out or being singled out by Cassandra July. Perhaps he'd made a decent enough impression back in November. He texted Rachel an extra thank you for the dairy free, green protein smoothie she made him drink before she let him out the door.

With an hour to kill before Vocal Performance, Kurt had planned to meet Rachel in the Student Union. The coffee stand, where they were to rendezvous, was an easy landmark. There was no sign of Rachel yet, and no response to his text, so he ordered a double-shot mocha for himself, grabbed an extra packet of sugar to keep his energy up, and found a clean table to sit and wait. As he cooled off after the exertion of class, his legs were beginning to feel about as robust as wilted lettuce. Kurt took the lid off his coffee and stirred in the sugar as he watched the between class hub-bub around him.

It resembled high school, but for the sloppier standards of dress and personal grooming—a girl had just walked by wearing a rumpled duffel coat over her pajamas. He saw signs of cliques, recognized the shared body language, aesthetic, and attitudes of small social tribes. Starting a semester late, he knew would be a detriment to fitting in, but he had hoped it would be easier here. He worried he'd still find himself on the outside looking in. He wondered what the NYADA equivalent of New Directions would be.

Idly, he glanced over at the bulletins boards and kiosks where fliers and posters advertising clubs and events hung. There was an older student, blond with a coarse knit beanie—very New York hipster—taping up orange and red posters, but Kurt couldn't make out the words. He caught Kurt's eye and flashed him an unexpectedly bright smile. Kurt glanced back down to his coffee and his cheeks warmed. He definitely didn't need the complication of a cute flirtatious boy this week.

He still had Blaine, sort of. So Kurt pulled out his phone and tapped through to send Blaine a text. He smiled as he typed out a brief message: "I survived Cassandra July."

While Kurt waited for a response, he tried to recall what class Blaine would be in second period. Was it some kind of elective Art class? Or Sewing? Crafts? It wasn't long before he got a reply from Blaine, "Off to a good start. I'm glad! :)"

Kurt smiled and typed back, "Vocal Performance looms next, so I may yet succumb to doom."

"But Mme T likes you, right?" Blaine reminded him.

"It's not impossible," Kurt wrote, "but IDK if that means I merely have higher expectations to disappoint."

"There you go," Blaine sent back. "Always looking on the bright side of life."

Kurt covered his mouth to quiet his sudden bark of laughter. Blaine's text brought a warm upsurge of nostalgia: a Monty Python movie marathon over the summer accompanied by homemade peach ice cream and vanilla cookies. Kurt bit into his smile as he typed back, "? 'Life's a piece of shit / When you look at it.' ? "

"That's the spirit!"

"Honestly, I do feel like I am about to be crucified. Figuratively, anyway."

"You'll be fine so long as that isn't the song you've prepared to perform today."

"I'm doing my solo arrangement of 'Alone in the Universe'" Kurt sent. "It's both whimsical and poignant."

"Good choice. You know I love it when you sing that one." Another text follows immediately. "I'm sorry I'm not there to make it a duet."

That brought a melancholy pang to diminish his smile. He missed Blaine as much as ever, but he'd gotten better at avoiding the feeling. Most of the time anyway. "Maybe in the spring," he typed, and then he changed the subject to something less emotionally fraught. "How's your week going?"

"Busy," he got immediately. He waited for a follow up. "Glee club is still having a tough time with rehearsal space, and Tina's organizing a Sadie Hawkins dance."

"Oh," Kurt said out loud, wrote back to Blaine, "Well, that's awkward."

"Yeah," Blaine replied, and Kurt waited for more again, but that was all he got. He frowned and tried to imagine Blaine, sitting in his art class, how he must be feeling.

"Are you going to ask anyone?" Kurt typed, hoping to give any permission that Blaine may feel he required. He didn't, but Kurt knew how Blaine could sometimes feel obliged to others.

"No." And then nothing more.

Kurt sighed. "I hope I'm not the reason?"

It was a few minutes before he received Blaine's response. He told himself it was because the teacher interrupted, and not because Blaine was having trouble with words. "If you were here, I would ask you," Blaine sent.

"No other out and eligible gay or bi guys at school?"

"You know that's not the reason.""

This was turning more serious than Kurt was prepared for this morning. He checked the time and glanced around the space. Still no sign of Rachel, and class was in just fifteen minutes.

"Blaine," he typed back, "I'm really sorry to end this here, but I have to get going and find Rachel before class. Later?"

"Of course."

Kurt heard his name then, in Rachel's familiar call. A glance up, showed her walking along the second level toward the open staircase, Brody at her side. Kurt sent a final quick wish for Blaine to have a good day, swallowed his regret, and pocketed his phone.

"Sorry," Rachel said, jogging down the last few steps as he approached her, She gave him a quick one armed hug. "Brody's decided to audition for the stage version of Magic Mike, and he needed me to run lines with him, and—"

"It's fine," Kurt said.

"Hey, Kurt," said Brody.

"It's best to get to Vocal early," Rachel said, "To make sure we get seats in the front."

Front and center was not, strictly speaking, Kurt's seating preference in the class room, but he knew it was Rachel's and since it would seem strange to sit apart from her, he nodded and followed along.

Despite their being ten minutes early, Mme Tibideaux was already there, appearing much the same as every other time Kurt had seen her. Something about her presence, the way she took up more more volume of a space than her physical self alone, made her seem a fixture or feature of the room itself. She sat in her leather upholstered armchair with a tablet in her lap, and greeted them with a silent nod and an evaluatory glance over the top of her glasses. There was no trace of familiarity in her gaze as it slid over Kurt.

Rachel tried—and failed—to initiate small talk with Mme Tibideaux, while Brody and Kurt sat, leaving a seat vacant between them for Rachel. Kurt removed a pen and slim notebook from his bag before tucking it beneath his chair.

"Nervous?" Brody asked quietly.

With a tight smile, Kurt said, "Yes."

"That's healthy," Brody said, "But you're good, so try to relax. Breathe."

"Thanks," Kurt said, and turned his attention from Brody to where the pianist had come in and was seating himself. Kurt had emailed his song selection last week. Felt a pang at the lack of a good luck wish from Blaine. He knew the sentiment was there though, he just hadn't heard it. His Dad had given him a pep talk last night over the phone. Told Kurt he'd kick ass.

Kurt took a moment to close his eyes and take Brody's advice. There was a puff of air and a waft of Rachel's floral perfume beside him. Kurt breathed and tried to relax himself piece by piece, from his toes to his scalp. The rustle of arriving students, the textured whine of the stringed instruments tuning, Brody and Rachel murmuring to each other, it all dissolved into soothing meaninglessness in the acoustics of The Round Room.

It was silent otherwise inside his head, no trace of the tension or disorientation he'd been having on and off for these past weeks. The pendant was unusually cool against his chest. He hummed softly the first bars of his song, and felt calm. This was nothing after the shock of the Winter Showcase.

Mme Tibideaux didn't call on him first. After her brief introduction to the class, and the acknowledgment of two new students joining them this semester, she called on a round faced girl with curly blonde hair. The girl skittered nervously to the stage, her fair skin flushed and her eyes unblinking wide.

She announced she'd be performing "Think of Me" from Phantom.

Rachel leaned in to tell Kurt this girl was cut last year, and had to reapply for the spring. Kurt glanced toward Mme Tibideaux and recalled her talk of granting rare second chances. This girl, Rachel, himself. The evidence contradicted her words.

The girl's performance was solid if constrained. When she finished, she smiled tentatively and looked to Mme Tibideaux.

Impassively, Mme Tibideaux regarded the girl in a silence that must've lasted mere seconds, but Kurt could feel the way it stretched into interminability for the girl as she waited, her fingertips twitching against her corduroy skirt.

Finally, an inclination of Mme Tibideaux's head and the words, "Much improved, Miss McClaine. You still have a lot of work ahead of you this semester. Your technique is better, but your expression is lacking."

Quietly, Kurt reassured himself that he could do better. Not that this was a competition, but if this standard were acceptable, then he was confident he could exceed it. He'd been practicing for weeks. Had been singing this song as part of his regular morning shower rotation for years. His arrangement infused the song with tenderness and longing, and given the recent weeks, it was emotion close to the surface, easy to tap.

Two upperclassmen were called to perform before him, and Kurt began to wonder if he would be asked to perform today. He shifted in his seat restlessly, and Rachel reached over and squeezed his hand once to reassure.

The seniors received smiles in response to their performances. Mme Tibideaux spoke to the class after each, drawing attention to their performance strengths. Kurt jotted down a few notes.

And then, "Kurt Hummel," Mme Tibideaux called.

He stood quickly, smoothing the front of his trousers and turning to face her before going to the stage, expecting something more than his name for some reason, a mention of his Winter Showcase performance, or something. But she merely raised an expectant eyebrow, said nothing, and so he went to the stage and turned to face the class. A glance at the accompanying musicians, a nod from the pianist, and Kurt announced his song choice, "I'll be performing my own solo arrangement of 'Alone in the Universe' from Seussical the Musical."

The piano started, Kurt took a breath, and he sang. He slipped easily into the feeling of the song, added some embellishment with gesture and movement, but aimed to keep the performance focused in his voice. No distracting bells or whistles, but he must be himself. He felt still that he had something more to prove to Mme Tibideaux about himself as an artist. Whimsy could be sincere, it could blend with and reveal deep emotion and truth.

"I've been guarding this clover
For over a week,
Getting laughed at
For thinking a dust speck can speak."

Some of the students were smiling already, but not actually laughing, and Kurt let himself be fortified by that. He remembered his childhood years, living with the laughter of others. Feeling like an outsider because he saw things differently, felt them differently, loved and desired different things. He remembered his mother smoothing his hair and wiping his tears, and telling him he had a sensitive soul, and there was nothing wrong with him for that.

"Well, let them all laugh
I'll try not to mind,
For I have found something
That they'll never find!"

And he never would apologize for his passions or his pursuits. Not in kindergarten or ballet class, not at McKinley, and not here at NYADA either. He was here to become the best possible version of himself, and so himself he would unflinchingly be. He closed his eyes and sang, remembering a day when another boy had turned to look at him, had seen him and smiled, and then took his hand.

"And one day soon
I know there you'll be
One small voice in the universe
One true friend in the universe
Who believes in me... "

Kurt had sung this song to himself in the car driving back from having coffee with Blaine at Dalton that first time. He had even more recent memories of singing this with Blaine in the car together. It was a way to remind each other that they had, after all their separate loneliness, found each other. He blinked back the blur of unshed tears from his gaze as he finished up the song.

Rachel beamed at him as she clapped. Mme Tibideaux tapped at her tablet. Kurt waited for her to turn her attention to him, hoped for a smile, some kind of acknowledgment, perhaps some praise.

"An interesting choice, Mr. Hummel," she said. "Thank you." And then she called the next student.

His eyes widened and his stomach sank in disappointment. Kurt moved back to his seat and sat numbly. "That's it?" he whispered to Rachel. "I was good though, right?"

Rachel shrugged. "I thought so."

Interesting? He wasn't sure if that were good or bad.

##

Neither Rachel nor Brody wanted to join him for lunch after class. Rachel said she had to practice her monologue for acting class, and Brody had to get ready for work. So Kurt grabbed a sandwich to go, and headed for the Vogue offices. If he started early, then he could either go home early, or bank a few hours for another day when he might need the time for something else.

It was after nine when he made it home, and there was no sign of Rachel. Kurt made himself a pot of green tea, reheated some leftover Chinese takeout, grabbed the box of bakery doughnuts from the cupboard, and took it all to the living room to eat in front of the television. While he ate, he caught up on the backlog of Chopped episodes on the DVR. Between episodes, he texted his Dad, Blaine, and Mercedes; and replied to an old text from Tina.

Then he went for his evening shower, pleased that without Rachel home, he could take his time. In the bathroom, he undressed, glanced into the mirror, and hesitated when the glint of locket caught his attention. He considered it, lying cool against his skin. Today, he'd ended up feeling all right after everything, even with the poor night's sleep and too early morning. He fingered the heavy gold pendant between his fingertips. The last thing he needed was to develop some crazy new superstition for when he got anxious. Better to stick with his usual rituals and colored socks than branch out into believing he owned magical jewelry.

With determination, Kurt met his own gaze in the mirror, took a deep breath, and carefully pulled the locket off. He curled his fingers around it for one long moment and then set it down on the porcelain edge of the sink. He waited, didn't exhale as he counted to sixty. Exhaled, inhaled, and then counted to one-hundred-twenty, and then to one-hundred-eighty. Nothing disturbed his hearing or his mind. No prickle on the back of his neck or squirming discomfort in his belly.

Cautiously, Kurt turned his head. All remained silent but for the muted rattle of the exhaust fan. His heart sped in relieved excitement, and he let his shoulders relax. His shower was leisurely and undisturbed, and Kurt went to bed warm and relaxed. His first day of classes was done, he did well enough, maybe not as well as he'd hoped, but it was going to be fine.

##

All Kurt had Friday was dance class in the morning, so he and Daphne planned to meet at the museum after that. The week had sped past, but he felt he was regaining his balance back in the new year, finding a rhythm of work and school and home responsibilities. He'd been making sure to text his Dad every day and Blaine every morning and evening. They hadn't tried to resume any regular phone or Skype schedule yet. Kurt didn't want to overcommit, because that could only lead to disappointment, no matter how good his intentions were. So it was a careful balance, keeping the future possibilities with Blaine alive while not overburdening the present. Blaine seemed to be okay with things as they were, and Kurt hoped he truly was.

The locket remained in a wooden box on his nightstand, wrapped in a handkerchief. Kurt had taken it out every night before bed and looked at it, opened it to trace the curl of his great grandmother's hair behind the time dimmed glass. Wondered at the hand that had made it, for it looked so very much handmade, almost as if he looked closely enough he'd be able to discern the shapes of its maker's fingerprints pressed into the soft gold. He didn't put it back on, for he didn't have cause to.

On his way to the museum, Kurt was grateful for the long walk. It was a relief to stretch the ache of his legs after dance class to keep the muscles from stiffening. The day shone clear and bright, and the sunlight glared across his vision with every blinding slash across the bumpers and windscreens of the cars that surged endlessly up and down the avenues. Kurt squinted behind his sunglasses, and walked briskly with the pulse of the city.

The Museum of Design and Fashion Arts sat squeezed into the middle of a city block: a relatively compact facade of polished black granite between two sky scraping towers of glass and steel. He'd expected something grander, with wide marble steps and multistory columns. He took off his sunglasses and entered.

Inside was dim light and pale walls. Kurt blinked away the hazy afterimages of the street as his eyes adjusted, and he slipped his glasses into his inner breast pocket. Thickly varnished wood floors softened the echo of his boot heels. Daphne stood by a reception desk next to an older woman in a black pencil shirt and dove gray twinset. Her red lipstick was as bright as Daphne's, and her white hair was twisted up in an intricate braided knot. She must be Isabelle's director friend.

"Kurt Hummel," he introduced himself, stretching a hand out to shake.

"Isabelle speaks highly of you," the woman said and reached back with a firm grip. "I'm Lenore." She glanced between them and then simply said, "Let's go back."

Kurt let Daphne precede him, lagged back to survey the exhibits they passed. Behind wide panes of glass, elaborate gowns sparkled and gleamed on their matte black mannequins. There was one with a skirt of bead-scattered gauze draped over hoops of thorned vines with densely packed white flowers spiraling about the bodice. Another sinuous sheath of blue and green feathers with a sequined skull cap to match. And another, lace dyed in a gradient from saturated deep red at the bottom to bone white at the top. No unexpected leather to be found, all sumptuous, formal gowns.

He began to sketch out something in his mind about the raw imitation of the forms and textures of nature in formal wear. The way the lace dress looked like draining blood, the feathered dress was reminiscent of the supple flash of fish scales, and the thorned dress, a hedge for the modern witch to wear. If the leather project didn't work out, he wanted to have some other theme to pitch to Isabelle. They could still incorporate some animal hide elements to satisfy Amanda.

He was so absorbed in his thoughts as he trailed along behind Daphne that he missed it. It came tissue soft at the edge of his mind, little more than a mental breeze, a sigh that brushed cool up the back of his neck and cascaded forward beneath the skin of his scalp. The skin pimpled up the length of his spine. He mistook it for the rush of air conditioning.

Lenore swiped a key card and let them through a wide steel fire door into a brightly lit, door-lined corridor.

Back in the store rooms, she showed them to a wide table upon which there rested a black brick of an old IBM laptop with pixelated angelfish swimming across its screen. Lenore woke the machine and logged in.

"Isabelle said you were looking for unusual, historical pieces. The collection database is here," she said, and went on to explain how to use its search features, and the way the accession numbers worked. It wasn't too dissimilar to a library. Kurt nodded along.

"If you need to look at anything in cool storage," she pointed to a door and laid a key-card on the table, "Make sure you keep the door closed, it's temperature and humidity controlled, and wear gloves if you touch anything. Make note of any objects you want photographed, so we can set that up." She moved a basket of white cotton gloves from the counter along the wall to the table. "Text me if you need anything further. I'll be upstairs in my office."

Then she left them to it. Kurt smiled at Daphne, "So I guess now we look for the leather undergarments."

She looked at him with little expression, and he wondered if she were as disappointed at the prospects of working with him as he was with her. Being tasked with the intern had to be the short straw. He watched her slide her tablet from her handbag and unfold its stand. Then Daphne sat with barely a rustle at the head of the table, leaving the laptop for Kurt to use.

"Right," Kurt said and he sat in front of the computer.

Most of the items in the database had photographs accompanying them, so it was easy to get an idea of items to mark for a closer look. Daphne kept a list of what they agreed might be relevant. They focused on finding items with interesting embellishments, beading and mixed materials, or that made compelling use of color and shape. They sought common themes in design, patterns which resonated with modern collections, and common themes across cultures. Many pieces were marked as replicas, rather than originals, which made sense, given how perishable leather and other textiles were. There were a few items with only written descriptions. And then, as Kurt was scrolling through the search results for 'leather trousers' he came upon an odd entry.

"Necropants?" he queried aloud, half-laughing at the bizarre name. Daphne just looked at him and said nothing.

He clicked to open the full entry, found no photographs and little by way of written description. Someone had typed, 'unusual grisly artifact', and nothing more. He read it to Daphne. "Unusual sounds promising?" Kurt said. He was less optimistic about grisly, but he was curious. "Shall we take a look?"

Daphne shrugged and reached for the basket of cotton gloves. She passed Kurt a pair, and he scribbled the accession number on a post-it before picking up the key card.

The store room was cool and narrow, lined with deep gray metal cabinets. Daphne found the number first, on a drawer in a bank labeled 'unclassified leather garments'. "Kurt," she said, drawing his attention. "Here."

Kurt stood next to her, and she pulled the drawer out. A foam form wore the trousers, and they were draped in thin, translucent protective material. Daphne carefully pulled it back, so they could get a better look.

There was definitely a smell: pungent, old leather and an unpleasant chemical waft of whatever had been used to preserve them. Kurt wrinkled his nose, breathed through his mouth, and tried to understand what he was looking at.

The realization came slowly and reluctantly: the necropants were not exactly pants. A sickening swell of revulsion billowed up in Kurt's stomach. He glanced at Daphne to seek some companionable sympathy, but she appeared unfazed.

Gently, she touched one of the legs and commented, "These are human skin."

"You mean..." Kurt trailed off, because it was difficult to deny her assertion. They weren't even sewn trousers, but—at least appeared to be—the wholly intact skin from the bottom half of a man. Disturbingly, clearly a man, for the scrotum and penis were present, hollowed out but intact. There was a collection of foreign black marks, some kind of runes or sigils, on the shriveled balls. One of which was not that different from the five pointed star with the eye on Kurt's locket, and he cursed himself for leaving it at home this morning. "Oh my god," Kurt said, and he covered his face with one gloved hand. "What on earth are these?" he asked. He didn't expect an answer.

"That mark," Daphne said, pointing to the familiar star, "is for protection." then she pointed to the one next to it. "And that one is for wealth. I'm not sure about the others, but I think that one below might be friendship or family. Some kind of bond of affection." It was the most Daphne had said all morning. Her brow creased in thought and her lips pursed, and that was more expression than Kurt had ever seen on her face.

"How do you know that, Daphne?"

She shrugged and her face relaxed back into placidity. "I know things," she stated simply.

Nausea ground deep in Kurt's stomach. It made him grateful for having skipped lunch. He opened his mouth to suggest they put these away, there was such a thing as too much unexpected leather. They couldn't use these. And he really wanted to get out of the room, away from the smell, away from the idea of these 'pants'.

But, before he could speak, he felt it, the cold trickle clawing under his skull and a curious, distant whisper. Swiftly, it turned blisteringly hot, and somehow, bizarrely loud, rushing and roaring in his ears. "Fuck," is what fell from his lips, and he clutched at his head, the pain seared behind his eyes, serrated barbs of agony. Static zigzagged across his vision and his knees trembled. He had to reach for the side of the drawer to remain standing.

"Are you all right?" came Daphne's voice, weirdly distorted, as if she were at the end of a long, echoing tunnel.

"Need air," Kurt mumbled, and he pushed himself away from the grotesque artifact and stumbled toward the door.

"Kurt?" Daphne said, and she almost sounded concerned.

He made it out of the storage room, back through the room where they'd been working, and into the corridor. He had the irrational sense that there was something right behind him, right over his shoulder, panting down his neck with hot breath and ill intention. He fled down the passageway, toward the illuminated EXIT sign above heavy double doors at the end.

With as hard a push as he could give, Kurt tripped out the doors into an alleyway, swearing under his breath and sweating with pain. He went down on his knees, heedless of marring the tweed of his trousers, and retched up an acidic mouthful of thick bile. Gritty asphalt pressed sharp beneath his palms.

It all stopped. Silence expanded in his head, clear and fresh. All the tension, pain, and nausea drained away. Kurt straightened, sat back on his heels, and blinked in the shaded sunlight. "I'm going crazy," he said to the dumpster across the alley.

There was little to be done to clean up his mess. Kurt quashed his pride, and spat a bitter wad of tainted saliva to the ground, winced at the clinging taste of vomit in his mouth, the slime of it on his teeth, and the stench of it in his nose. He had both a water bottle and breath mints in his satchel, along with a travel toothbrush and toothpaste. But that was all inside, on the table. He was reluctant to go back, in case—

No. He shook his head and scrambled to his feet. Brushed the grit from his hands and then from his trousers. If he were losing his mind, he wasn't going to make it easy and give in to paranoia and delusion that easily. He turned back to the door and grabbed the handle. The door didn't budge, didn't even rattle.

Locked. Of course it was. His phone was in his pocket at least. He sent Daphne a text, briefly explaining his situation and asking if she could please come let him in.

He waited several long minutes before the door clicked, and Daphne stepped out. She was wearing her coat with her handbag looped over her arm. She passed Kurt his jacket and his messenger bag.

"Thank you," Kurt said. "Are we leaving the back way?" he smiled to try make it lighthearted and easy (hoped she wouldn't notice that he had just thrown up). "How clandestine."

"I told Lenore we had enough to work with for today and that you'd come out this way to have a cigarette."

Surprised that Daphne would have covered for his strange spell of illness, Kurt slipped his jacket on. "I don't smoke."

"I know," she said, and he caught her glance down at the ground. "Do you need something? I have Advil and gum."

He shook his head and pulled his water bottle from his bag, took a mouthful. Swished it around to clear the bad taste, and then he turned away, took a few steps before he spat it out with as much grace and discretion as could be managed given the circumstance. Then he dug out his roll of Lifesavers, popped two into his mouth and replied around them, "I'll be okay. I think I just need something to eat, I missed lunch."

Daphne nodded, and proceeded to pick her way carefully down the alley toward the street. Kurt followed.

At a narrow cafe, Daphne urged Kurt to sit while she ordered for them. She returned with ginger tea for him, to help settle his stomach, she said, and a cup of Oolong tea with a jasmine blossom floating in it for herself. "Food is coming," she said. "I ordered soup and bread for us both."

"Thank you," Kurt said. He regarded Daphne with curiosity. At the office she didn't talk much, had little affect, never seemed particularly engaged with or interested in anything. And yet, here she was, showing both insight and care for him. And she knew what some of those symbols on the pants had been, including the one that matched Kurt's locket.

"May I ask you something?" he ventured into the silence between them.

She indicated yes. Or, rather, she didn't indicate no, so Kurt pressed ahead with a question: "Um, I was wondering, how do you... know things?"

The smallest frown wrinkled Daphne's brow and she glanced down at her tea. She replied quietly and carefully, as if afraid of being either overheard or misunderstood. "I used to belong to a... club, I guess you'd call it."

"What sort of club?"

She avoided meeting his gaze, looked out the window at the passersby and said, "I really can't talk about it. I'm sorry."

Kurt wanted to press her for more information, but the thin line of her red lips didn't encourage him. He sipped his tea and tried to summon up some inspiration for small talk that wouldn't seem too forced. But then Daphne looked at him and asked, "Have you seen something like that before?"

"Like the, uh, pants?" Kurt asked. "No. Just, one of those symbols looked familiar, like something my, um, grandmother had on a necklace."

That seemed to satisfy Daphne. She didn't mention anything else about either the necropants or Kurt's odd episode. The waitress brought the soup and Daphne got her tablet out so they could discuss how to best organize the garments they'd highlighted into a narrative to please Isabelle.

##

At home that evening, the creeping whisper returned. Less immediately awful than at the museum, but much like it had been in the past weeks, lurking right at the edge of acuity and comprehension, a burr at the edge of his consciousness. Kurt took the locket out and just the weight of it cupped in his hand soothed the noise and irritation. He let go of the locket and the murmur returned. Protection. But from what? His own mind? And, he resolved, as long as he could function well enough, he wouldn't give into this insanity. The locket went back in its box, and Kurt cranked up his white noise machine so he could pretend to focus on that.

He dreamed of the bird again, but differently. She was alive and inside the loft and he was himself as he was now. The bird was terrified and battering herself against the walls and beams and the high skylight ceiling. Kurt climbed the ladder with a broom in hand to try to coax the bird toward the open window of the fire escape.

When the bird fell to the floor, Kurt scrambled down the ladder, fearing the worst. Only to find her exhausted and stunned, not dead. He carried her carefully, cradled protectively in his hands, to the open window, climbed out onto the fire escape and sat on the cold metal step with her slight weight resting in his open palms. He wished desperately for the bird not to die, and he felt warmth tingling down his arms and into hands, drawing, it seemed, straight from his heart. The bird stirred and stood up. Cocked her head and looks up at him with one bright brown eye, and then she leaped up and spread her wings. Flew away.

##

Over the weekend, the murmuring came and went, like there was a knob on a distant radio randomly cycling back and forth between staticky reception and dead air. Kurt ignored it and got on with living, broke his days down into the things that needed to be done, and he did them with singular focus on anything not related to the fear of losing his mind. He reorganized all of his drawers and clothing. Cleaned the kitchen and bathroom from top to bottom, swept, vacuumed, dusted. Did his reading for the week. Sang, and practiced dance basics. Called his Dad on Saturday and Blaine on Sunday. Emailed Daphne with a few ideas he had while cleaning the shower. Updated his Facebook status. Made an appointment for a haircut, gave himself a manicure. Filled the cookie tin with cocoa brownies and peanut butter cookies. Rachel spent most of her weekend with Brody, and Kurt was grateful for the solitude.

##

Tuesday, in Vocal Performance class, Mme Tibideaux barely even looked at him. Admittedly, she treated all of her students with an air of distance, but he had hoped for something more. They had a history of sorts, brief and small though it was. He wondered if he'd disappointed her already, if she were regretting his admission. Perhaps the number from Seussical was a bad choice after all. Rachel had chided him over it when he expressed his concerns to her over breakfast.

After class, Kurt waited, hoping to take a moment to speak to Mme Tibideaux. But there were other students lining up for her attention, and Kurt saw in their nervous fidgets and too-wide smiles how hungry they all were for her feedback and praise; he didn't want to be among the desperate, so he turned and left.

At work, Isabelle was unsure of what he and Daphne had put together so far on the history of leather. She asked them to go back and rework it, make it more dynamic, try to incorporate some multimedia ideas, because right now it was too dry and static.

He and Daphne spent the late afternoon and early evening in the conference room, Kurt at the white board and Daphne seated with her ankles crossed and propped up on the table, tossing ideas at him. He made lists and crossed things off, circled promising leads, even entertained the more bizarre notions she offered, though the longer they went at it, the more he began to discern a very dry sense of humor.

Finally, she deadpanned a suggestion of "Shamanic swimwear."

"Seriously?" Kurt rolled his eyes, capped the whiteboard marker, and threw it at her.

She dodged it and began to laugh, while he sank into a chair and dropped his head into his hands. His answering laughter was mostly at the absurdity of it all. Nothing was sparking.

"Come on," she said, and stood up, "We've been cooped up in here too long. Let's go get Thai for dinner."

##

By the time Kurt let himself into the apartment building that night, he was doubly discouraged by his day. It was late, and he'd been looking forward to the pint of Americone Dream in the the freezer for the entire trip home. He'd had a headache nagging all evening, too, and had grown increasingly irritable. It felt like a nest of wasps had taken up residence in his brain as he trudged up the stairs to the loft.

But when he slid open the wide door, instead of the solace of home, he was greeted not by the comfort and quiet, but with cardboard boxes and suitcases—and Brody and Rachel discussing loudly that Brody could have the left third of her wardrobe for his clothes, but she really needed all of the bureau.

"Rachel, what the hell?" Kurt interrupted them.

"Brody's moving in," Rachel said and went back to finding empty hangers for Brody to use.

Anger flared like tinder catching a spark. "Since when?" Kurt demanded evenly.

Brody at least had the decency to look apologetic when he asked Rachel, "You didn't tell him?"

"No, she certainly did not tell me," Kurt snapped, then he took Rachel by the elbow and led her into the kitchen. He let go and faced her. "He can't live here."

"Kurt, come on, splitting the rent three ways—"

"You didn't even ask me! That's my name on the lease."

"It's hard for him to make the trip out here every night, I thought this would be great for all of us."

"I don't care! This is my home too, you can't just—" The pressure was building in his head along with the noise, like the murmuring was trying to drown him out, which only made him raise his voice louder. "This is unacceptable."

Rachel matched his volume with an angry reply, about how he was just jealous because he was alone. Brody, fortunately, stayed out of it, hanging back somewhere in Rachel's room.

Kurt finally cut her off. "No. Rachel, no. Brody can't live here, and that's final. I'm not discussing this with you, I'm telling you: no." He went to his room long enough to grab a warmer coat and a hat; he hesitated a moment and grabbed the locket too, but he didn't wear it, just pocketed it. Then he hefted his satchel back over his shoulder and returned to the door. He needed to walk off the anger and clear his head.

Rachel yelled something at his back, about him being unreasonable and selfish, he ignored her.

It was quiet on the street. Kurt even welcomed the usual verbal harassment by the homeless guy in the park as one of the routine markers in his life. But then the homeless guy said, "It's watching you, so you better be careful, pretty boy," and Kurt paused to look at him. "It's safer out here," the guy said solemnly. "But you already know that, don't you?"

Kurt shook it off and kept walking. The guy didn't know anything about him. He put his hands in his pockets and rubbed his thumb over the engraved shape on the pendant. It shouldn't make him feel better, but it did.

##

Fortunately, when Kurt got home the next evening, Brody was gone. Rachel was sullen and silent, and marching about the loft with the drama of an aggrieved diva. She stopped sitting with Kurt in the classes they shared. She was collecting new friends and admirers, anyway. None of this was helped by Mme Tibideaux, who invited Rachel to demonstrate some vocal techniques for the class. Kurt kept the locket in his trouser pocket all week with his keys.

Worst of all, Kurt knew he was jealous. But he felt, too, that he wasn't been given enough credit of his own. He hadn't come to New York to be sidelined and invisible again. He knew his voice was special.

That week, in the evenings, Kurt spent more time on the phone with Blaine; he needed both the affirmation and the advice—and the distraction, as well as something to look forward to at the end of increasingly frustrating days. Coming home to Blaine, even if only to his voice, became a precious kind of haven.

##

Monday Mme Tibideaux had office hours, so, though he didn't have class, Kurt skipped work and went into NYADA. After listening to Kurt's grumbling about the trials of his week, particularly the lack of any real feedback from Mme Tibideaux, Blaine had suggested to Kurt that if he were truly concerned, he could go speak to her directly and candidly. Then he'd know for certain if there were an issue, and he could address it. And if there weren't a problem, then he'd have one less thing disrupting his sleep. Kurt had confessed his insomnia to Blaine, but had avoided mentioning the cause of it as anything more than stress over his too full days.

Kurt didn't find Mme Tibideaux in her office, and while he was running later than his intention, there were still fifteen minutes left of the hours posted on her door. But the door was locked and even repeated knocking provided no response.

"Damn it," Kurt muttered under his breath. He turned and sighed, scanning the length of the hall. Since he was missing work for this, he didn't want to leave having accomplished nothing. If she had a class starting at the next hour, then she might be in The Round Room already. He might be able to catch her there and, if nothing else, he could express his concerns and make an appointment to talk later in the week.

Silently, Kurt rehearsed in his mind what he planned to say to her, and headed for The Round Room. He nearly bumped into her coming around a corner into an otherwise empty, window-lined exterior hall. She was exiting the faculty restroom.

"Excuse me," she said and walked briskly right on ahead of him, crossing through the bright morning sunbeams. He didn't even warrant a 'Mr. Hummel' today.

"Mme Tibideaux," he called after her, and regretted immediately the splinter of exasperation he couldn't keep from his voice. "I need to talk to you."

"See me after class tomorrow," she said, without pausing or even turning her head.

He lengthened his stride to catch up. "May I talk to you now, please?" he pressed.

She scowled at him. "This is not a good time, Mr. Hummel."

"It's important."

"I'm sure it is," she said.

He stepped in front of her and turned to face her. She raised her eyebrows in surprise and pulled up short. "Excuse me, please," she said and stepped to the side.

It was a childish impulse, he knew, but he stepped to block her. "Have I done something wrong, Professor? I know the song I chose wasn't—"

"Mr. Hummel," she said, with a firm urgency in her tone. "I said now is not a good—" She broke off and her eyes widened, but she wasn't looking at him.

He smelled it at the same time he felt it. The same awful stomach strangling stench of that night back in December burned in his sinuses just as a horrible voice clawed at his skull, inside and out. There were no words he could make out, but it melded uncomfortable frequencies, high and low, into an evil sounding gibberish that seemed to tear at the tissue of his brain.

Kurt clutched at his head and stared at Mme Tibideaux. Surely she must hear it too. Her attention was fixed over his shoulder, and she held one hand up with her fingers arranged in a sign he didn't recognize from his modest knowledge of ASL.

"What is that?" he gritted out.

Her attention flicked to him briefly, and she spoke calmly. "I need you to come with me, and don't turn around."

"What?" he asked, right as she grabbed his wrist in a firm hand. There was a hissing and crackling coming behind him, clearly audible and not limited to the inside of his head, and, against her advice (because Kurt was always a curious boy), he turned his head as she dragged him to follow her.

He shouldn't have. He pulled his hand from her grip and stared. It was hard to know what he was looking at. Fragments of paint and plaster crumbled from the corner of where the floor of the corridor intersected with a peaked archway. Tendrils of something dense and black—like thick smoke—curled away from the space like live worms, squirming and seeking. And then something began to emerge from the center of the black twisting shapes: it was pale, long, and angular; and it came with an overwhelming impression of hatred. Kurt caught a glimpse of eyes glowing blue, a flash of sharp teeth, and then Mme Tibideaux jerked painfully hard on his arm.

"Mr. Hummel!" she said, an edge of terror marring her voice. "We have to hurry."

It was if all of reality were breaking, the cracks starting at that one corner where some awful thing was crawling through. As if in slow motion, Kurt gave in to the impulse of her hold. Dreamlike, he turned his attention away from it and raced along after her as she moved swiftly for the high wooden doors of The Round Room. Behind them, it moved fast, too; he could feel it, a dreadful pressure in his mind like his brain were about to implode, a terrible psychic scream of hunger, fury, and death. His vision began to fade as the pain came over him; his legs weakened and his stomach rebelled.

And he remembered: protection. He slipped his free hand into his trouser pocket to find his great grandmother's locket. As his fingers curled around it, it quickly warmed in his hand. He jerked it free; the chain tangled around his fingers. The pendant blazed hot in his fist, searing against his palm, and Kurt let it swing free. The acrid odor of burning hair overpowered the horrendous smell of the other terrible thing.

Then, a flash of light, blinding bright like a camera flash, and a weird subsonic popping boom. Kurt lost his footing as a wave of invisible force collided with him, and then nothing.

.

III.

A burning throb in his hand and the fine metallic tinkle of a chain falling roused Kurt. He found himself seated upright. There was a rustle of fabric, a dull thunk, and silence in his head. No pressure or gnawing irritation or pain, nothing but a tender ache near his temple where he must have bumped it. Gingerly, he opened his eyes.

The chair in which he was seated was Mme Tibideaux's comfortable armchair in The Round Room. She sat cross-legged on the floor, his great grandmother's pendant dangled from one hand, blackened and dull, and some unfamiliar metallic object sat on the floor in front of her. Kurt pushed himself to sit up straight and winced. He looked at his injured hand, found it wrapped in the silk scarf he'd had tucked in his bag. It was damp, and the palm of his hand stung. It felt like a burn, but not too bad. On the chair next to him rested his first aid kit and bottle of water. His satchel sat, open, against the leg of the chair.

The ache in his hand from his locket overheating connected to the bright light and the weird implosion in the hall. And somehow they were safe. When he found his voice, Kurt asked, "Is it... my necklace broken?"

"Possibly," she replied, and she looked up at him. "Probably," she amended, no trace of a smile on her face. "How do you feel, Mr. Hummel?"

There wasn't a word that came to him sufficient to encompass the present strangeness. He was not entirely sure he was even awake. He settled on, "Sore and confused."

She nodded. "Where did you get this pendant?"

"It belonged to my great grandmother. My Aunt Mildred gave it to me I was little." Mme Tibideaux just kept nodding, and Kurt realized he would have to ask the obvious question. "What happened out there?"

She sighed and looked up at him. "What did it look like?" she asked, not in a mocking or disparaging way, but as if she genuinely needed to know the answer. "To you?"

"Um?" Kurt squirmed in the chair, brought his feet back under the chair so he didn't feel so off kilter. "It looked like a... hole? Something was coming through. I know that sounds impossible—"

"Not impossible," she said. "That is what you saw," she confirmed. "And you heard it, too?"

Kurt nodded slowly, unblinking. "I've been hearing it for weeks, on and off."

"Have you?" she measured Kurt with an impenetrable gaze. "Since that night?"

All the odd occurrences had begun then. "That wasn't a gas leak."

"No, Mr. Hummel, that was not a gas leak." Her smile was thin and tired, but there was warmth in it.

"Is it still out there?" Kurt asked. "Are people in danger?"

"No," she said, "thanks to you and your great grandmother's necklace. Although, it's not gone entirely. It's not occupying the same... dimension presently. We're safe in this room. It can't manifest itself in here."

Dimension? Manifest? Kurt sat, unmoving, and he closed his eyes. "This can't be real," he said. "I'm going to wake up soon."

"I'm truly sorry," Mme Tibideaux said. "I was afraid something like this would happen. I didn't want to involve anyone else in this, but you...?"

The inquisitive way in which she trailed off, prompted Kurt to open his eyes again. Nothing had changed. "What about me?"

"I suspect you have some interesting family history," she said. "The hound is hunting only me, you shouldn't have been able to hear it, and I don't know why it would have been following you, unless—" She looked down at her hand, the one Kurt recalled bandaging the night of the 'gas leak'. "I had wondered," she said more softly.

"What?"

"Did I show the scar from where I cut my hand that night?"

"No," Kurt said,

"There isn't one," Mme Tibideaux said. "It healed completely within a day. It should have left some mark, but there's nothing. It's as if it never happened."

"I don't understand anything right now," Kurt admitted. And he turned his attention to the wet scarf around his own hand. Carefully, he unwound it. His palm was red and inflamed, and certainly sore, but there were no blisters or broken skin. He exhaled in relief. "What happened? What was that... thing ? Did you all it a hound?"

Mme Tibideaux smiled at him, almost fondly, and she got to her feet. She pulled another chair near and sat down, facing him. "Hound is not entirely accurate, but it is descriptive enough," she said. "The creature you glimpsed doesn't dwell in the same space or time that we do."

"So it's..." Kurt paused and rubbed his hands over his face. Saying the word felt like committing himself to an outrageous idea. "...an alien?"

"Yes, in a manner of speaking. They inhabit the..." Mme Tibideaux pursed her lips. "Angles of time, we live in the curves. They are as old as time itself. Older than either of us. Normally our worlds would never intersect, but sometimes, someone draws their ire. They can follow the angles we build, we make it possible for them to enter our space, in certain places."

"They?"

"The Hounds of Tindalos."

"Tindalos?" Kurt desperately wished this were something from which he would wake up.

"I don't know the origin, only that that is how they are called here."

"And one of these hounds is hunting you?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"It has its reasons, but my understanding of them is limited. Once one begins to hunt someone, they are unwavering in their pursuit, and said to be single-minded in their goal, until they catch their prey. They are attracted to hunt those who use what you would think of as magic and those who travel in time. "

Kurt raised an eyebrow. "So are you telling me you're a wizard or a witch? Shouldn't you be teaching at Hogwarts instead of NYADA?"

Mme Tibideaux laughed. Actually laughed, full-throated and rich. It filled the space wonderfully, and it made Kurt feel better immediately. He managed a smile of his own.

"No, Mr. Hummel, I am neither a wizard nor a witch, but I have been close to those who have traveled in time. I have been, myself, caught out of time. I have seen things and been places that few would believe or understand."

"I think right now, I'd believe nearly anything."

"I had hoped I'd lost the hound when I came here, but, as you know, it found me. That was what happened that night. I wasn't as well prepared as I had hoped to be. It had been long enough since I'd seen it that I became complacent."

With a frown, Kurt struggled to believe the incomprehensible. He had seen what he had seen, and since this wasn't a dream, then Mme Tibideaux's corroboration made this not a hallucination either, but something real. Unless she were somehow trying to trick him. And that honestly seemed to be a far more paranoid and crazy option than the existence of some monstrous alien inhabiting 'the angles of time'.

There was so much he didn't understand, things he wasn't sure he could understand, things he didn't want to understand. But he was involved in this bizarre drama whether he liked it or not. Perhaps knowing what was happening would help stop it from continuing to happen and he could get back to a more normal life. "So what do we do now?"

Mme Tibideaux turned over the hand in which she held the metallic object. "I want to ensure your safety Mr. Hummel, and I realize that, to accomplish that goal, I will need to find a way to depart, to draw the hound away from you. But, sadly, I am not sure how to accomplish this. As far as I can tell, this requires some kind of recharging," she said. "But I haven't discovered how to do that."

"What is it?"

"It's a device," she said. "Made by a race older and more advanced than either of us. It allows for the manipulation of the membranes separating universes and dimensions." She paused for a moment. "It's how I came to be here, in your universe."

With a frown, Kurt closed his eyes. He had no energy left for incredulity. He opened his eyes again. "So you're not... local?"

That earned Kurt another smile. "I attracted the hound's attention, and in an attempt to escape it, used this device to move to a different, but similar, universe. This one. I knew the hound might find me again, so I made some accommodations.

"For example," she continued. "I commissioned the construction of this room, which—in addition to its perfect acoustics—has no angles or corners, only curves, and therefore remains impenetrable to the hound. And this device I acquired, which not only let me travel here, but can also block its ability to cross into this dimension for a brief while." Mme Tibideaux looked at the device with regret. "Unfortunately, the travel between universes drained it of much of its power, and the span time for which it can stabilize our spacetime against intrusion is growing shorter each time I use it. The person who sold it to me, assured me it was rechargeable, but they failed to provide an instruction manual. I thought I'd have time to work it out."

"Ah, well, that's not helpful," Kurt said, for he didn't know what else to say. He felt pressed to offer help, but had little idea of what he could offer.

"I thought perhaps your pendant might provide some insight when I saw what it did, but it seems to be terrestrial in origin, and not as old. I'm not sure they function in the same way."

"May I look at them?" Kurt asked, and Mme Tibideaux handed him both the necklace and her device.

"Just don't touch the top of it. The symbols there activate its different modes, and I'm trying to save what energy it has left."

"I understand," Kurt says. He set the device in his lap and looked at the locket first. Inside, the glass was shattered and the surface black with soot. The hair had burned up when the locket did whatever it did to banish the hound. The metal remained the same shape as always, but felt both colder and heavier in his hand.

"Stopping the hound seems to have used up whatever power it had," Mme Tibideaux said. "I'm grateful you had it and thought to use it."

"It was protecting me," Kurt says with a shake of his head. "I think... I think it was a ward of some kind. It... when the hound was watching me, it blocked out the sound of it in my head." He still felt outside himself saying such a thing, as if he were mired in a surreal dreamscape, but it was a relief to finally put into words some of the peculiarity of his life in recent week—and to have someone look at him like he was speaking truth.

He slipped the pendant back into his pocket and picked up Mme Tibideaux's device. It was surprisingly light in his hand, had a rounded pentagonal shape, and a smooth metallic surface, though it felt in his hand softer, like worn stone. He couldn't identify it as anything familiar, not even when he tried to recall ninth grade geology class. Into the top of it were inscribed five glyphs whose lines were comprised of a series of tiny, depressed dots. The shape of them could almost be a different font face of the same symbolic language on the necropants and his locket, though he didn't recognize any particular shape. He wondered if Daphne would.

"Do you know what these symbols mean?" Kurt asked, as he realized perhaps he could help, even if only as a proxy between Mme Tibideaux and Daphne.

Mme Tibideaux shook her head. "Unfortunately not."

"I know someone," Kurt said. "Who might."

"Someone trustworthy?"

"I don't know," Kurt said, "But if you need to recharge it, we need to know more." He considered options. "And you can't leave this room for very long, can you? Unless it's working?"

"That is the unfortunate truth of the situation. The device currently allows me less than ten minutes of free movement before I need to return to somewhere safe."

"Will it attack me if I leave the room?"

"I don't think so. If it were hunting you, you would not be sitting here with me now. You have its attention, but perhaps, let us hope, only its curiosity. My best guess is that it's working out your relation to me and whether you may provide it information or opportunity to catch me. But you should be careful, I can't guarantee your safety."

"No time travel or magic, I promise," Kurt said and forced his tone to be light even though the knowledge of what lurked outside this room, what had been following him, chilled his heart, turned his bones to jelly, and made him wish for the days of simpler, kinder magics: a night light, an open closet door, and his father double-checking behind the dresser mirror.

But Mme Tibideaux was serious when she replied, "Something about you has drawn its interest, Mr. Hummel. It may be more than your association with me. At least, I am not aware of it observing any of my other students. First of all, you could hear it, which is a rare ability, for the hounds have no voice. But even before you caught its attention, your aunt had given you a very special family item, one that has served to protect you now. You need to take care."

In the meantime, Kurt wondered what he could do to help that was more immediate, perhaps even more mundane and practical. There were, and Mme Tibideaux was clearly relieved by his offer. She needed clean clothes from her apartment, and could he please bring her a hot breakfast the next morning?

##

The trip to her apartment Kurt kept as brief as possible. It made him uncomfortable venturing into her personal space. Her home was much as he expected, furnished with an eclectic assortment of antiques and art from around the world. She had traveled extensively in her career. Photographs and mementos cluttered the top of her dresser and the fronts of her bookshelves. One picture caught his attention in particular: it was an old, sepia toned daguerreotype photograph of her in period costume standing with someone made up to look like Mark Twain. Kurt wondered what show it was from.

Now that he knew what the sensation prickling his mind was, it was both more difficult and simpler to ignore it. His fear had coalesced into something known. There was some relief in that: he wasn't suffering from a brain disorder or losing his marbles. On the other hand, an extra-dimensional monster was watching him. He could feel it, slipping along around him, watching, while he made his way about Mme Tibideaux's bedroom. He could sense its patient curiosity.

Mme Tibideaux had explained in more detail that the hounds required the intersections of solid planes forming angles of less than 120 degrees to follow. They could only anchor themselves to enter this dimension in places where three planes intersected, and then, only when those intersections were contained within an interior space—whatever that meant. Outdoors wasn't entirely safe, especially not in urban environments, but there were far fewer paths for them to find and follow, and many fewer stable anchor points.

Kurt found a small roller bag in the bottom of Mme Tibideaux's wardrobe right where she'd told him it would be, and he packed it with a few changes of clothes as well as a blanket and pillow from her bed. He dropped it off with her that evening, along with take out from the pasta place nearby, and then he took the train back to Bushwick.

On the train, Kurt scanned the interior of the car for those paths and angles that the hound could use. He wasn't sure he understood its limitations or requirements well enough to determine if the curved edges and slanted panels were friendly to the hound's needs or not. But nothing more than his own thoughts occupied his mind as the train squealed and shook along its tracks. The lights flickered as they went under the river, and Kurt kept watch. Every unpleasant scent wafting from the strangers clustered in the car—a neatly dressed woman's stale body odor, an old man's greasy brown bagged dinner, a toddler with a messy face—had him tensing and looking, listening. He made his way quickly out of the subway station, even though the crawling goose bumps along his skin were only due to his own anxiety. His mind was still quiet. The hound hadn't caught up with him here yet. He wondered if it were waiting in the loft, knowing that was his home, biding its time. Or perhaps it had remained at NYADA, waiting for another opportunity there.

The thought of returning to the loft, if it were there already, slowed his steps. But where else was he to go? Staying in The Round Room with Mme Tibideaux was too much like giving in—and also inappropriate. Maintaining some sense of decorum remained important. She was still his teacher, and he her student.

So Kurt stood on the street across from his building and considered options. He looked back toward the small park, winter brown and cluttered with debris. The homeless man, huddled under his coats, was glaring at him from the wooden bench, but he didn't say anything today.

Hastily, Kurt returned his attention back to the street. Rachel lived in the loft, too, and leaving her alone in there with the hound, even if she remained oblivious to it, didn't strike Kurt as terribly chivalrous. The light changed, and he crossed.

The ache of fatigue hung dull in his limbs and in his chest. Home was what he wanted. His space, his things, his familiar haven. He wanted to have a hot shower, put on some show tunes, curl up on the futon, and zone out with a magazine.

Despite his determination, at the door to his building, he hesitated. His sense of things, his memories of the day he'd had, they inverted for a moment, in a woozy sort of disbelief. Did any of it truly happen? He slipped his hand into his pocket and withdrew the locket. It remained cold, scorched and shattered inside. It had happened, and he couldn't go back. That was always the way of it, whether it had been death, or bullies, or his father in the hospital—or a rejection letter, or his boyfriend telling him he'd been with someone. The only way out was through, and the only way through was forward. Keep moving. Anyway, as his father liked to say, no one pushed the Hummels around. Not even a dimension hopping monster.

Kurt went inside. The hound wasn't there, not yet anyway, and neither was Rachel.

It turned out that Kurt couldn't quite bring himself to take his evening shower while expecting the return of the hound's presence. He stood in the bathroom, hugging himself while contemplating the shower curtain. It wasn't childish to be afraid if the monster was actually real. He didn't want to be naked and enclosed when it showed up. He'd wait until Rachel got home.

Instead of a shower, Kurt made cookies. He was taking the last sheet out of the oven when his phone dinged with a text notification. It was from Blaine, a simple query: "How'd it go with Mme T?"

Kurt set the phone down with a sigh and picked up the spatula to transfer the cookies to the cooling rack. How was he to respond? He couldn't tell Blaine the truth, but Blaine would expect details, certainly something more than a texted 'fine'. And since he didn't actually talk about Vocal Performance with Mme Tibideaux today, there was nothing for him to work with at all. Kurt hung the pot holder on the wall behind the sink and then picked up his phone. He typed a simple message back: "Really tired tonight. I'll call you tomorrow? Sleep well!" He hoped that would suffice. Didn't want Blaine to feel like he was blowing him off again.

Kurt settled on the futon with a plate of warm cookies, a glass of cold milk, and the TV muted on CNN. There was one phone call he did need to make, for his own peace of mind. Kurt pulled the afghan down from the back of the futon to cover his feet and he dialed his Dad.

"What's the occasion?" his Dad answered, "It's late. Everything okay?"

"Hey Dad," Kurt said. The concern in his father's voice was sufficient to ease much of the ache in his heart. "I'm just a little homesick today," Kurt replied. He wouldn't divulge any details to worry his father, for he never wanted his Dad to worry. He knew his Dad: any indication of trouble or danger to Kurt, and his father would move mountains to try to fix it. But this was nothing so mundane as a mountain and well outside his father's ability to repair.

"Any particular reason?" his Dad asked, so Kurt told him about the current loft cold war with Rachel. He embellished and exaggerated for comic effect, and the sound of his Dad's laughter cheered him. Made everything feel normal for the duration of the call. With his belly full of cookies and milk, and the comfort of his Dad's voice, sleepiness encroached. Kurt ended the call and let himself hope: maybe the hound wasn't coming tonight. Maybe his great grandmother's necklace had done more than Kurt understood. Maybe he'd be safe.

##

The next morning Kurt woke, still on the futon, still dressed, lights on and the television still going. There was no sign of Rachel, which was disappointing. She'd been spending more time with Brody, but not usually on weeknights. But, Brody did live closer to NYADA, so maybe this was efficient for her. Kurt did worry that he'd been too adamant the other night about Brody not living there. But this was better, having the occasional night to himself, an extra measure of quiet and privacy. Though it would have been nice to have had someone wake him and send him to bed so he wouldn't have woken up in yesterday's clothes.

Fortunately, there was no sign of the hound either. Every muscle felt stiff and ancient as he sat and stretched to loosen his spine. He checked his phone for the time: half past six. He needed to hurry not to be late for dance class. Though he felt gross having missed his evening shower, he'd be showering at NYADA after dance anyway. He packed his gym bag with extra supplies, wolfed down some whole wheat toast and peanut butter and chugged a glass of orange juice. Then he dressed in his dance gear, layered sweats over the top, and jammed on a hat to flatten his hair. He'd pick up coffee on the way.

He dropped off a breakfast sandwich, fruit salad, and tea with Mme Tibideaux, but didn't have time for any exchange with her beyond that. He was five minutes late to Dance already. Luckily, Brody was teaching this morning. Mostly he ignored Kurt, it was a polite enough neglect. That was fine.

All day, Kurt kept expecting something to go wrong or weird or horribly amiss, but even Vocal was normal. Mme Tibideaux remained as even-keeled as ever. Even knowing she'd spent her night in this room, Kurt couldn't discern anything different about her. She did gesture to him to approach her at the end of class though.

"Mr. Hummel," she said after he came over. Other students were waiting to speak to her, so they couldn't speak candidly. "Would you do me a favor, please, and go to my office. You know the way?"

He nodded as she passed him the key. "Yes ma'am."

"There's a red folder in the top drawer on the left side. It contains some music I think would interest you. Could you please bring it to me?"

Kurt did as she asked, and when he returned, she was alone again. She tucked the folder of sheet music under her tablet on the small side table by her chair and looked at Kurt with a measuring gaze and a small, inquisitive smile. "How are you today?" she asked.

"Fine," Kurt said, automatically. Then he grimaced and amended, "I mean, I'm all right. It didn't bother me last night. I don't know why."

"Were you planning on talking to your friend today?" she asked. "The one who may be able to decipher the device?"

"I can if you'd like me to," Kurt said. "I'll be seeing her at work."

Mme Tibideaux inclined her head in assent. "All right. I would appreciate that," she said. "The sooner we can restore my device to full power, the sooner I can depart your universe, and then, the hound should be fully occupied trying to find me again, and you'll be left alone and safe."

Left alone and safe sounded good, but he felt selfish in his desire for exactly that. Mme Tibideaux would be leaving her entire life behind, all her work, all her friends and colleagues, her accomplishments and ambitions. In a way it was like dying. Except this was her opportunity to live again in a new life, rather than come to a horrible end. That was a better way to think about it. "How long will it take to find you again?"

"I'll have plenty of time to prepare for it," she said. "Now, did you want to take some photographs of the device to show your friend? I'd prefer to keep it with me."

"Sure," Kurt said and reached for his camera. "Oh, and, Mme Tibideaux, there's one other thing I was wondering about—"

"I think, Kurt, at this point, I would prefer that you call me Carmen."

"Oh, thank you, ma'am, uh, Carmen."

"Now, what were you wondering?"

"I know you said it's hunting you and it would probably leave me alone, but if it did decide to... attack me. What should I do?"

She shook her head. "Run, get to a place where it can't follow you, outside is best, the more natural the setting, the fewer paths it may fine. Avoid enclosed spaces.

##

During the four o'clock lull in the Vogue dot com offices, Kurt sought out Daphne. She was in the conference room, alone, splitting her attention between her tablet and phone. She looked up when he came in.

"May I talk to you? Privately?" Kurt asked.

They went to his office, and he closed the door.

"Is this about the day at the museum?" she asked.

"Yes," Kurt said. "Sort of. I need to ask you something."

Daphne pressed her lips together and leaned back against the door. She crossed her arms over her chest. "I may not be able to answer."

"Right, that's... fine, but a, um, friend of mine needs my help, and it's a very odd situation."

"And you assume I have some experience with odd situations?"

Kurt met the challenge in her gaze without flinching. She wasn't that much older than he was, and though he was an intern, Isabelle trusted them both, gave them equal creative input on projects. They were peers. Plus, she'd helped him once before. "Am I wrong?" he asked.

Her lips quirked into a wry smile. "No."

"Thank you," Kurt said and then sighed, relieved. Daphne cautiously moved away from the door and perched on the edge of his desk. Kurt opened his satchel. He removed his grandmother's pendant and offered it to Daphne. "This... broke yesterday. I wanted to know if there was a way to, uh, repair it?"

She took the necklace and peered at it critically. "This is old," she said. "How long has it been in your family?"

"I don't really know." Kurt said. "I know it belonged to my mother's grandmother, who emigrated with her parents to the US from Brittany."

"What was in here?" She tapped the broken glass with a purple lacquered fingernail.

"A lock of hair," Kurt answered.

"How did it break, Kurt?" She looked at him, her gaze clear and sharp.

It was Kurt's turn for reluctance. Would she believe the truth? Could he trust her with it? That was his ultimate purpose here, to find out if he could trust her with Mme Tibideaux's device, but still, the full story was bizarre and hard to believe. "Do you really need to know?"

She gave him an exasperated sigh. "Look," she said, "if you want my help, I need to know exactly what happened, as best as you can tell it."

"Will you believe me?" Kurt asked.

"If you tell me the truth, I will."

It took him a while to speak. She waited patiently, the locket in her hand.

He didn't mention Mme Tibideaux by name, just called her a friend. Didn't divulge the location of the event. Explained his own sense of being followed these past weeks, what had happened in the museum that day with her, that he had learned what it was, that it had tried to come through and attack his friend yesterday morning. His necklace had stopped it and burnt itself out in the process.

When he finished, Daphne looked even paler than usual. "Is it here?" she asked.

"Not right now," he said. "I haven't heard it since, uh, yesterday. Do you think it's gone?"

"Not gone, just patient. But it's been here, at Vogue?"

"Yes. Here, NYADA, home, the museum. It's gotten pretty good at finding me."

"It'll be waiting for your friend to make another mistake, while she's alone," Daphne said.

"So you know about these creatures?"

"I've heard of them," she said. "But never met anyone who had experienced one."

"Can I fix the locket so it'll work again the way it did?"

She considered the damaged pendant. "It takes a lot to make a talisman like this. From what I understand, once they're burnt out, they're finished. You'd have to make a new one, and that requires special knowledge and a particular, specific process."

"You mean magic?"

Daphne smiled, barely. "I wouldn't say you were wrong to call it that," she said.

"My friend said doing... that kind of thing can attract unwanted attention."

"It usually does, yes," Daphne said.

She handed the pendant back to him. "I'm sorry I can't help you more."

"Right," Kurt said, and he pulled out his phone. "There's something else I'd like to show you."

Daphne leaned over to look at the screen of his phone as he tapped through to the gallery. Kurt brought up the first photograph of Mme Tibideaux's device. "Do you know what this is?"

##

He still hadn't called Blaine to talk. His phone had collected a bunch of text messages throughout the day that he hadn't replied to. They'd grown increasingly concerned. Guilt lodged in Kurt's chest; he didn't want Blaine to feel shut out, but he didn't know what he could possibly say to him either.

That evening, at home, he sat at the kitchen table shuffling a brand new deck of cards, but not playing anything. He just shuffled, ruffling the cards between his fingers soothed him, the vibration of the cascade, the movement from order to deliberate disorder. He wondered if it were possible to shuffle the cards enough times to get back to the original sequence. It seemed liked one of those hypothetical thought exercises, of whether infinite monkeys, given infinite time and, he presumed, infinite typewriters, could eventually produce a work of Shakespeare. If so, then, given infinite time, Kurt would eventually shuffle his cards back into their original order. It would happen. It was unlikely to happen tonight at his kitchen table. Nor was his discovering the exact right thing to say to his best friend cum ex-boyfriend cum future flame. He just needed to do it.

Kurt straightened the edges of the cards and slipped them back into their box. He picked up his phone, went to his contacts, and tapped the call button by Blaine's name.

"Kurt!" Blaine answered.

"Hey," Kurt said, "Sorry it took me so long to call."

"Well, you're calling me now," Blaine said. "That's what matters. It's good to hear your voice."

And it was desperately good to hear Blaine's. So good that Kurt had to bite his lip and exhale the terrible poignancy of it. "Yeah," he said. "Things have been so crazy here," he said, because that was true without being specific or causing concern.

"But you're okay?" Blaine asked. "Everything went all right when you talked to Mme Tibideaux?"

To the best of his recollection, Kurt had never deliberately, outright lied to Blaine before. Something within him broke when he forced his tone to lightness and said, "Yeah, that was... It turned out I was worried over nothing. She liked my performance. I'm fine, things are going great actually, I'm just so busy with so many things, and it's tiring. I can't wait to sleep in this weekend."

There was nothing of consequence in the content of their continuing conversation. It was a casual exchange of their days, Kurt told Blaine what small, true things he could think of to flesh out the things he said that were not true. Blaine was generous with his own details, forging the connection and intimacy between them for himself, while Kurt, holding back with his half truths, felt like he was shutting himself off from it. He didn't think he'd ever felt so out of sync with Blaine, and it made him miss Blaine, and worry that this rift he was creating would be harder to heal than the one left by Blaine's infidelity.

When he hung up the phone, Blaine's warm wishes to sleep well and have sweet dreams were such a small comfort hanging in his consciousness, Kurt had never felt more lonely in his life.

##

Rachel moved out Wednesday. It was overcast, muggy, and unseasonably warm after the freezing temperatures of the previous week. She'd given him no warning—though with hindsight, Kurt really should have seen it coming. It all went less dramatically than he expected, and it hurt a lot more.

The hound slipped in and out a few times, as if it were just poking its head in to make sure he was where it had last left him. Kurt found some bitter relief in knowing that Rachel would be safer with Brody than she would be here. He didn't want her to ever discover the truth. So he didn't try to talk her out of leaving. Helped her gather her things from the shared spaces and taped up her boxes as she filled them.

Rachel remained stoic while packing. Brody was there to help, and he remained cheerful and polite as he ferried everything down to the rental van parked on the street. As Kurt ran out of useful things to do, he hovered, unhelpful and uncertain, and growing ever more tired. So he went for a walk to pick up a late lunch: sandwiches and coffee from the deli down the street. Rachel smiled at him when he set it all on the table.

At the end of the day, when the after work rush had died down in the streets, she hugged him one last time and pressed her keys and access card into his hand. "I'll see you in class," she said and kissed him on the cheek.

"Take care," he replied, and he swallowed the tension in his throat, blinked back the heat blurring his vision.

##

Alone in the apartment, Kurt rearranged furniture. Today, the hound was with him, and Kurt had to keep busy lest the anxiety fizzing in his nerves send him running outside like some crazy person. He wasn't crazy. But, the way every corner and straight line inside the apartment drew his attention, the way he jumped at every odd sound or flicker of light from the traffic outside, made him feel less than steady within himself. So he rearranged everything. He moved all the living room furniture into what had been Rachel's bedroom. That way, he could enjoy the window over the fire escape while sitting on the couch. It also gave him a faster potential exit if he needed it.

Lying on the kitchen table was a hand drawn map Daphne had made for him; the key she gave him was in his pocket. Drawn neatly in purple ink, he had directions to hidden places beneath the city where she said he may find the information he sought. Carmen's device was down to seven minutes. She couldn't live in The Round Room indefinitely. He didn't want to go under the city, but he had to do something.

Once the furniture was all in its new locations, he realized any further fussing with his environment was only procrastination. So Kurt set about getting himself as ready as he could. First, he dusted off an old backpack in which to carry anything he found that he needed to bring back out. He stuck a couple bottles of water from the fridge inside and an unopened box of vegan protein bars Rachel had left behind. He grabbed every flashlight he owned: the long, heavy metal one collecting cobwebs under his bed, the emergency hand-crank one packed in with the storm supplies, and he pulled his tiny LED keychain flashlight off his keyring.

Then he dressed in his heaviest jeans, thick socks, and most comfortable Docs. He layered for warmth: a long sleeved t-shirt, turtleneck, shirt and pullover sweater. He took his spare battery for his phone, his first aid kit, and a pair of work gloves. He should probably have something like rope, but all he had were belts and scarves. He made sure to wear his sturdiest belt, and he strapped on a wristwatch. It felt like he was playing at some ridiculous hero role, like if he were serious about all this he'd have a Batman style grappling hook or some clever James Bond style gadget—or at least a fedora and a bullwhip. But all he had was himself. The last thing he took was his warmest hooded coat.

For once in his life, he was grateful for attracting no attention due to his clothing choices as he walked to the subway station. He felt conspicuous within himself though, dressed in such an unfamiliar manner. He had to backtrack on the subway, taking the L train from Montrose to Broadway station before changing to the J and heading west for the Brooklyn Bridge station. That was the easy part.

Rush hour had long passed, and he managed to discreetly find the door to the maintenance tunnels for which he had the key. He let himself through quickly, his fingers clinging to the key nervously. It was dark on the other side, this particular way having been abandoned after the Worth Street station up the line closed. That was his first way point. Kurt tucked the key back into his front pocket and snapped on his flashlight. He wouldn't need the map yet; there was only one direction to go.

Through antique access tunnels, all tidy brick work, brass, and painted cast iron, like something from a steampunk adventure, he made his way. The squeak and skitter of rats ahead of him sounded so much like something out of a film, he welcomed it. A known, expected presence was a welcome one.

Eventually, he came to the abandoned station, and the pale beam of his flashlight arced over graffitied tile walls and trash littered floors. A forlorn stairwell led up into black nowhere. So far so good.

Now he checked Daphne's map, to make sure he found the gap in the bricked wall just up the tracks. He stepped down into the tracks carefully, he had a little time before the next train. It was enough time, but he stepped carefully, mindful of the danger of electrocution, and found the small break in the wall, hidden in darkness and easy to miss unless one were on foot and knew to seek it. There was just enough room for him to squeeze through if he took off his backpack and pushed it through first.

That was his first burst of real fear, shoving his necessary belongings blindly through a hole into an unknown space. He kept his mind on the action required, tried to avoid any paranoid speculation about what might be on the other side. Then he turned sideways and stepped through. The dull scrape of the bricks against the back of his head sent an unpleasant shiver down his spine. Kurt gritted his teeth and ignored it.

Here was what remained of an older, earlier attempt at a subway tunnel, back when it was the newest pneumatic technology. The old brickwork was dull with neglect, but precise in its graceful arc over his head. He took a turn into a narrower passage with a lower ceiling, and he passed abandoned, rusting equipment from the day. It was silent down here; there was no litter or scurrying rats. Just the empty length of old, abandoned tunnels.

Eventually the brickwork gave way to raw, dug earth, and Kurt slowed his pace to check the map again. The next turn off shouldn't be much farther. The beam of his flashlight caught on an orange reflector up ahead. He spotted the gap in the side of the tunnel, and before it sat a modern looking barrier with a big red sign proclaiming DANGER: Keep Out.

Daphne said the warning was a real one. Her old friends—her coven, Kurt had guessed by now—had brought the sign down after they had discovered they were not alone down here and had ceased using these old tunnels. Turning back remained an option. He'd not gone that far yet. But Kurt knew, if he left now, it would be that much harder to return.

Kurt looked more closely at the barrier, saw some of the occult symbols there, adding their own warning in a language he still couldn't read. He wouldn't turn back now, but he did hesitate. The barrier felt like a threshold. Would he step, willfully, from the life he wanted in New York into something entirely different? Even though the purpose of this journey was to find his way back to his intended life, he couldn't help but feel a swell of sad realization, that the life he desired to build here, had already slipped away. This experience was going to be part of him forever.

And with that sadness tight in his throat, Kurt stepped through.

Past the barrier, the tunnels were lined, not with bricks, but with broad square stones. They formed smoothly curved walls, and that brought Kurt some ease: there were no angles for the hound to follow here. Beneath his boots, the ground was damp, bringing an inorganic mineral smell. He checked the compass on his phone, and found he had no signal, so he wouldn't be able to call anyone for help.

Daphne was the only one who knew where he was. If he didn't make it back, no one would know what happened to him. He'd just be gone.

The passage sloped steadily down and bent gently, and Kurt understood he was following a coil deeper into the earth. Along the way, black openings gaped at him like blindly opening mouths. He counted the ones on the exterior, just to give himself a sense of distance.

It was colder down here than he expected. He zipped up his coat and pulled up his hood.

As he carried on, he grew more uncertain of his path. The darkness weighed more heavily upon him, as if it held the weight of the city above him, and all the weight of the time since these tunnels were first made. Daphne said they discovered they were far older than the city. He didn't want to dwell too much on why these tunnels were already here to be discovered when the subway was first dug.

It must've been miles he walked. But from when he last checked his wristwatch, it'd only been twenty minutes.

Then he heard something, indistinct, like a memory of sound, but definitely not the hound. He stopped and held his breath. Suddenly, the full implication of Daphne's warning and her urgency in making sure he understood that he wouldn't be alone down here sank into his bones. He thought of the length and distance of passageways behind him, everything that lay between him and the surface, and he nearly threw up.

His legs felt like jelly and his hands were clumsy on the flashlight, which suddenly seemed like nothing more than a big fucking beacon to announce his presence. He turned it off and squatted down near the wall. In the darkness he waited, and it was such a complete darkness, it made him dizzy. He listened, but could only hear the knock of his own heartbeat in his ears and the faint rasp of air through his nose.

The longer he stayed in the dark, the more the entoptic play of his vision became apparent. Closing his eyes made no difference. Strange, unreal shapes and colors bloomed and morphed.

Kurt couldn't stay like this, crouching here while his ankles and knees protested his immobility. Cowering.

"Courage," he said to himself. And he turned the flashlight back on. Then he stood back up, wincing at the numb buzz of blood flow returning to his legs.

And then, he realized with a sinking lump of dread, that he'd forgotten his count of side passages. Daphne said the turn to take would be marked, but he didn't want to lose track of where he was in relation to where he'd been.

Still, he wasn't lost yet. All he had to do was turn around and go back up if he wanted to. He was fine.

Anyway, he could always forget about Carmen. The hound would eventually leave him alone if he did. She'd been getting by without his help this long.

But that was not who he was; the thought didn't warrant his seriousness. But sometimes it was important to know he was making a choice. Kurt firmed his jaw and his determination and kept going.

It became a strange, anxious kind of mediation, for Kurt was so embedded in his present moment, jittering on a sharp blade of fear, but maintaining his balance. Eventually, he found the opening with the red sigil of Daphne's coven. This corridor was square, but the chances of the hound having even thought to come down here seemed remote. But not impossible. Kurt stood at the rectangle of what seemed an even deeper darkness and offered a silent plea to the universe, to both fortune and circumstance, that it not find him down here.

He needed Daphne's map again, and he hoped her memory was good. The maze of corridors he had to navigate was narrow and tall, its walls an unfamiliar greenish-gray stone, ground silk smooth beneath his fingertips. There were very shallow engravings. Geometric and abstract patterns that lacked any pleasing symmetry or proportion. The closer Kurt looked at them, the more peculiar they appeared. The aesthetic was entirely alien and skittered an uneasiness beneath his skin.

So he stopped looking at the walls any more than he had too. Moved slowly, deeper into the darkness, cautiously swinging his thin beam of light back and forth. An occasional waft of air tickled his bare face and brought with it a fetid, muddy scent.

Another sound interrupted him then. He stopped so the tread of his rubber soles upon the fine grit of the floor wouldn't obscure it. It was a low, barely audible gasp that dragged through the air from somewhere ahead. He couldn't pinpoint the direction beyond that.

He hoped it wasn't anything alive. Whatever the source of the breeze was, it must be responsible for it. It repeated at regular intervals, as if some giant beast lay ahead, slumbering, like Smaug upon his hoard of treasure.

And somehow that thought helped. To think of this place in those terms. Something not unlike the ancient halls of the Dwarves didn't seem so daunting. He could pretend, like he used to as a child. And the memory of going to see The Hobbit with Blaine and Sam over Christmas helped too.

He took several marked turns in a row until he no longer had an intuitive sense of the way back. Wondered if, like Hansel and Gretel, he needed to be laying a trail of bread crumbs or pebbles. If he lost Daphne's map, he'd be lost down here forever. The only trouble was, if there were something else down here with him, a trail would lead it straight to him. If it were even more cunning and malevolent, it could rearrange his trail to get him lost deliberately on his way back. Like Sarah in the labyrinth.

He kept on, letting his mind toy with whatever piece of a story seemed familiar or relevant to his current circumstance. It helped. Meanwhile, his feet grew cold, which made it harder to step quietly. According to Daphne's map, he should be close to the room her club had used. She'd told him that when they first discovered the tunnels, they'd spent time exploring, and everything they found they collected in this one space they dubbed The Art Room. They also brought their occult books and trinkets from above to keep safe down here. The information he needed to solve the mystery of Carmen's device might be here.

Except it had turned out it wasn't safe after all. Daphne didn't know what it was down here, but she had watched a friend die, she said. The thing, whatever it had been, had been shapeless and dark—and terribly quick.

"Whatever you do, Kurt," she'd told him before she agreed to draw him the map. "Don't tell people what you're doing, what you find, or what you see. They won't believe you. They'll think you're crazy. I ended up in a mental hospital upstate for two months. Thank goodness Isabelle is as generous a friend as she is, when I came out and needed help getting back to my life, she gave me a job." Then Daphne had smiled. "I was an intern, like you."

He found the room. He stepped in and knew immediately this was the place. It was star-shaped and the ceiling high enough that he could only gain the vaguest sense of its vaulted architecture. The walls here were inscribed too, but less abstractly. There appeared to be drawings of strange figures accompanied by the same strange dotted writing, like fine inverted braille, that was on Carmen's device. It seemed this was some kind of ancient temple or tomb. Except, he could tell, without looking too closely, that the figures were not human, nor any terrestrial animal he knew. Some fanciful creation of the imaginations of whoever built this place. Or—and he didn't like the thought, because it still sounded to his mind outrageous—aliens who lived here and built this before humanity's ancestors were even walking upright.

He'd seen some of the documentaries on the History channel when Sam lived with his family. Aliens built the Pyramids or the Egyptian gods were reptilian aliens from Orion's belt. It was Men in Black level stuff, and he still considered himself a skeptic.

But there was Carmen, who said she wasn't from around here. She seemed human enough, but she could have tentacles under her skirts and loose pants for all Kurt knew—or horns or scales or a transparent skull under the headwrap she wore.

There were, about the edges of the room, low slabs of stone, altar like. Upon them were collected the items of Daphne's coven. It surprised him they'd never returned for them. He moved to investigate and remained uncomfortably aware of the open door behind him being the only exit from this space. If he were cornered in here...

Kurt did not wish to linger. He moved toward the slab which contained the largest collection of items, and sought anything that appeared to be of use. There were a few leather bound books to put in his backpack straight away, a dagger with a faintly glowing ruby pommel and strange sigils carved into the blade. He could use it to defend himself if necessary. And, ah-there was an object that immediately reminded him of Carmen's device. It was roughly the shape of a soccer ball, polished warm stone-smooth metal, that fit in the palm of his hand. There was a different dotted symbol on each face. Slowly, he turned it in his hand, examining each face in turn beneath the pale beam of his flashlight, looking for familiar shapes.

Then, quite abruptly, Kurt couldn't feel the floor beneath him. The space around him spun with a disorienting vertigo, and the dots on the surface of the stone soccer ball glowed green and swam beneath his gaze. The flashlight slipped from his hand and fell to the ground with the sharp sound of popping glass. Kurt swooned.

He couldn't tell if he were on the floor, or somehow—as unlikely as it would be—floating. His mind had been forced wide open in the face of a deluge: strobe-quick visions of things, terrible, indescribable things, an incomprehensible amount of data and time, as though he were mainlining the whole universe. Or had been plugged into the Matrix. He experienced the pouring in of knowledge as inchoate sensation, like it was being fed through his consciousness and straight into his unconscious brain. He couldn't keep up.

New stars ignited and old ones exploded, galaxies turned, nebula coalesced, life began in so many places, and all the while, in the shadows were hungry things. The hounds stalked the angles of time right from the beginning (and he understood, in a blinding, mad instant exactly what that meant though he could never put words to it) and great god like entities hungered and slept in the centers of galaxies. Stars had memories and children. Elder races spawned through the cosmos, traveling and shaping younger worlds to their own whims. Taking what they wanted, and destroying the rest.

Others, kinder beings, preserved fragile life and worlds. Younger races, still ancient compared to humanity, came and went. Empires spanning hundreds of worlds rose and fell to ruin after thousands of years.

##

Kurt came around with a blinding headache and promptly emptied the contents of his stomach. He was on the floor, and it was cold. And he knew, immediately and without the smallest doubt, that he was not alone here and he knew exactly what it was that was down here with him, though his mind skittered away from even naming it. The thought was too terrible to hold. He needed to leave. He understood what Carmen's device required. He understood other things, but it was a tangled mass of too much information and he had too little conscious bandwidth to process it all. For now he needed to get out. Get out. Get out.

He couldn't retrace his steps, because he knew it knew he was here; it could smell him and every step he'd taken. But there was another way out, if he could find it. He had to trust himself. Kurt fished his key chain light from his pocket.

He left the icosahedron where he found it. It should never be brought up.

His head throbbed, raw pain, like a deep bruise. His whole body ached, even the surface of his skin, as if he had influenza. He was too cold and then too hot, light headed and ravenously hungry. There were the protein bars and water in his bag, but he didn't have time.

He ran. Taking turns decisively and for reasons he could not articulate. It was like there were a compass in his breast bone.

And the stone corridors come to mad life around him—or so it seemed. The patterns on the walls writhed grotesquely. Movement flickered in his peripheral vision, uncoiling tentacles reached for him. He heard things, echoes of the past. Horrible discordant music, a sanity piercing piping. Terrible wailing and remnants of torturous enslavement and death.

He had to get out. He careened to a halt at a passage that ended with a precipice. There was nothing ahead of him, nothing below but blackness. But, as he crouched down and groped below the edge, he found there were handholds cut into the rock. Smooth shallow grooves. He put his flashlight in his mouth, turned and lowered himself down. This was the way to go. Down first, and then back up.

The black space swallowed him. It unnerved him to be hanging in an empty void like this, and his heart raced from more than exertion. His hands sweated and he feared he'd lose his grip. It was like all of space had yawned open behind him and all the terrible hidden things with sharp teeth hung just out of reach.

God, he knew what was out there, and he wanted to forget. It'd been so much easier to think the universe void of will.

He had to stop to catch his breath, and carefully, one hand at a time, he wiped his fingers and palms dry on his pants. He wasn't sure how much farther down, but up was a long way above.

He concentrated on his breathing, moving each foot down to seek the next groove, stepping his hands down one at a time. Tried to remain present in just that necessary movement.

The bottom, when it came, startled him. His foot landed with a splash in shallow black water. The water made being silent impossible, and his steps echoed in the volume of the cavern around him. He kept to the perimeter and eventually found a raw cut opening in a more familiar hard glittering rock. He touched it and knew its age. This rock was far older than the dinosaurs, and had formed during a time when most of the life on Earth perished in a massive freezing of nearly the entire globe.

Kurt shook off the strange knowledge, and forged ahead. The tunnel he followed wound an uneven way toward the surface, and it was a relief, the more irregular shape of it, sized more favorably to his proportions. There was no more unnaturally perfect geometry and discordant asymmetry.

His thighs and calves burned a special kind of agony as he made his way up. It wasn't something he'd thought about on the way down, how he'd be working against gravity all the way back up. Dance class left his legs tired enough.

Eventually, he had to stop to catch his breath and stretch. He swung his pack down and rummaged for water and a protein bar. Urgency still pricked up his spine, and every second spent not moving gave the thing that lived down there time to catch him. But his legs wouldn't carry him much farther without a small break, and his body needed fuel. Kurt leaned against the wall and took a bite of the protein bar. It was dry and sharp tasting—didn't taste very much like either chocolate or peanut butter as labeled—but his mouth flooded with saliva as if it were the best thing he'd ever had. He washed down each thoroughly chewed bite with a swig of water, and slowly the worst of the haze eased from his mind.

A sound then, behind him, a sort of watery plink and slither. Though it didn't sound close, Kurt stuffed the empty wrapper into his pocket, jammed the bottle back in his pack, and got moving again. His awareness dissolved into taking just the next step. "Just one more step," he repeated to himself hoarsely. "One more, and one more, and one more, and you'll be able to go home. Come on, Kurt, one more."

When the first fresh breath of cool night air touched his face, it reinvigorated him. He lifted his head and strode ahead. It was another five or ten minutes before he saw the light ahead and switched off his flashlight. The opening in the schist was narrow and covered with shrubbery. Kurt had to fight his way out, but after everything, the touch of something as vital and natural as a plant, he welcomed.

The city night glowed so brightly after being beneath it, his eyes watered and he gasped at the simple beauty of lights in apartment windows filtering through the copse of small trees into which he'd just emerged. He took a step farther, into the gentle, beautiful night and his foot promptly landed in a generous pile of dog crap.

All he could do was laugh. Then he cleaned off the sole of his boot, and tried to work out where he was.

A brief investigation turned up that he was still in Manhattan, thankfully, but not very close to where he'd started. He was at Homer's Dog Run in Inwood, far to the north. Kurt took out his phone and checked the bus routes. It would be a long journey home.

##

Despite his fatigue, he could not sleep that night. His brain was wired with too much everything. Every time he tried to close his eyes to rest, it became an unbearable buzz, an urgent sort of itching in his head, and he had to get up and move around to ease it into something bearable. So he was still horribly alert when he left the loft before dawn to go see Carmen.

She was already awake when he arrived, bearing breakfast sandwiches, the tea she favored, and coffee for himself.

After he passed her her food, he took a seat.

"What did you find out?" she asked.

Kurt described the highlights of his journey, but tried to avoid telling her of his fears and struggles, didn't tell her of the magnitude of the incident with the icosahedron. But he did tell her he learned what her device required to be able to open a way for her to travel to a new universe again.

"Plutonium would be easier to acquire," Kurt tried to joke, because the truth needed some levity to precede it. She waited for him to continue. "Because, actually, it needs... a life. And someone who, um—" and there had to break off with a shudder. There were things about himself he understood better now, too.

"Someone?" she asked, raising an eyebrow and looking at him expectantly.

"Someone who can be a conduit for the, uh, transfer of life energy."

"And where do we find someone like that?" she asked.

The nightmare of the bird that had morphed into something happier, it had been trying to tell him all this time. It was his touch and his will that had inadvertently given its corpse some life back. It had been his life force, some of his own neural energy, transferred in his moment of grief. He remembered too what Carmen said about the wound on her hand; he dressed it, and it healed quickly. He wondered if she had already suspected this about him.

It was more than those two incidents though. When the doctors didn't believe his father would make it, and Kurt had sat at his bedside, holding his hand and wishing fervently to bring him home. His father had defied his prognosis and returned to Kurt, weakened but well.

Blaine was meant to lose his eye, the doctors all said so. The damage was too severe. But, like with his father, Kurt had sat by his bed, holding his hand, and wishing for his recovery.

And finally, there had been David Karofsky and his broken spirit.

In the enormous burst of data that had flooded his brain, he learned things about himself, the ancestry of his family and how it traced back to the magicians of mythology. Who, it turned out, were not so mythological after all. A Child of Thoth, Daphne's people would call him. Kurt didn't know what he'd call himself. The realization, as it had unfurled in his mind and he pieced the evidence together, had left him shaken. "Me," Kurt whispered. "I can do it. At least I think I can.

"I mean, in theory," he amended. "Someone has to give up their life for this. I'm not going to just..."

"You're not going to murder someone," Carmen said firmly..

"No," Kurt agreed, and he folded his arms around himself, chilled by the thought of it. "There's too much death in the world. I'm not going to add to it."

"Death is everywhere, Kurt," she said. "That's true. So I wonder, would you help someone who is already dying?"

"You mean like euthanasia?" he looked up at Carmen, and found the weight of her gaze sympathetic but probing.

"Yes, when it's a mercy."

"I... I don't know," Kurt said. It was another thing that, in theory, made perfect sense to him. He'd seen his mother suffering near the end of her life, but in practice. He simply didn't know.

"It's your decision," Carmen said gently. "But please think about it."

"How long have you got left?"

"Just over six minutes now."

"Maybe I can charge it a little bit? Not enough for you to travel, but enough that you can at least take a decent length shower?" He tried to smile.

Carmen shook her head. "I don't want you giving any more of your own life."

Kurt wasn't inclined to argue. "I don't suppose you know anyone who's dying?"

##

He ended up walking around the city in the afternoon, thinking it over, feeling like he was waiting for death: an animal hit on the street or a person mortally injured in a car accident. It was an awful kind of vigilance.

And then he got a text from Carmen with a name, room number, and the address of a hospice. He called her on his way to tell her his decision.

"He's a old friend," Carmen told him. "The doctors say he has only days. Tell him I sent you, he might be able to hear you. Sing to him, and he'll go with you."

"What should I sing?"

"I trust you to know the right piece, Kurt."

On the bus, Kurt Googled the man's name. He had been a performer when Carmen was younger. A mentor, the occasional leading man, a friend at the very least. Kurt recalled a photo of him from Carmen's apartment, part of the cast photo for a production of Faust.

##

Holding the energy of someone's life—Kurt still wasn't inclined to think of it as a soul—felt like being a corked champagne bottle, if such an object could actually possess sentience. His skin felt like electricity was arcing between every fine hair, shifting and crawling over his body everywhere; and his blood was carbonated, fizzing and popping through his veins with every strong, steady heartbeat. His senses seemed sharper, his mind clearer and quicker, and he'd had an erection for the past hour. Which he was doing his best to ignore for now. Holding all of this within him made him feel like he could conquer the world, or at the very least, run a marathon and win.

Carmen's friend, Vincent, had had a lucid moment while Kurt had sang, "Oh, there will be an answer / Let it be," Their eyes had met, and there was an understanding somehow, an acceptance, and relief.

Even so, Kurt kept tearing up with the fullness of it, what the man had, in the finish, let Kurt take. He'd been as gentle as he could, though he had little explicit understanding of how this worked. He'd concentrated on the song he sang, as if he were singing it only for the man himself. But it had been a song Kurt always sang with thoughts of his mother, and he sang it as much for himself and for her memory.

But it was strange now. Though he remembered how he had felt sitting at Vincent's bedside, he wasn't feeling sad or regretful right now. His melancholy was more poignant and expansive than that. And he was no longer scared at all. Those bad feelings were remote. He hadn't felt this good since performing on stage at Nationals with New Directions. He was terribly, joltingly alive and young and full of potential and he could feel all of it, vibrant and bursting into every moment.

The day was getting old, streaks of vermillion painted the sky. He spotted the sign for Therapy ahead, and remembered that night, the exhilaration of dancing with a handsome stranger, the things that could have happened, the possibilities of which had embarrassed him once he'd sobered up. They didn't seem so embarrassing now, and he found himself almost ashamed of his past timidity.

And so Kurt's steps slowed as he approached the doors. Inside. He could go inside and find someone to share this sharp edge of euphoria, maybe blunt the edge a little bit so it didn't feel quite so much like he was about to break out of his own skin and fly away. A beautiful stranger to touch him and be touched, to share some lovely, ephemeral intimacy. Because he hadn't felt this good in such a long time, and he knew could feel even better, and he could also make someone else feel just as good.

He went in, and suddenly, he was slipping. All his extra sensitivity and desire swamped him when surrounded with the sound and heat and smell. All the music and people and activity that had overwhelmed him back in December threatened to drown him now. "Hey," a young man with a sweet smile asked him, hand upon Kurt's elbow, and the touch made Kurt shiver. Kurt looked at the man's hand upon him and his head swam, hot and strange. "Are you okay, man?" the guy asked.

If he touched another person with actual desire while he was like this, let any of the energy burning beneath his skin slip from himself to them—or worse, drew more from them—it would harm them both. He needed to get to Carmen so he could offload the excess. It required effort still, to look back up and speak. "I need to go," he said, and he turned around and stepped back out onto the street.

##

Kurt pushed his way through the doors to The Round Room with violently trembling arms. "Where is it?" he asked. Carmen came to him, took him by the arm and led him to a chair. "You don't look well," she said. Her hand was cool and dry on his forehead.

"It's too much," he said. She brought the device out from her pocket and he reached for it. He turned it over. He knew what the symbols meant, so he knew how to do this, the sequence to touch before the metal moved, smoothly, like liquid, and a small aperture opened at the top of it. He laid his palm over it as Carmen watched, and he felt the connection immediately.

He didn't have any control over it. It pulled hard, drawing the excess heat and energy from his nerves. Until it had taken all of what he had of Vincent and he felt paralyzed to let go. It started to hurt, and Kurt gasped in pain as the device kept drawing, started taking his own energy. "Help," Kurt managed, and Carmen wrenched it away from him. Then he collapsed. He remained conscious, but dazed, weak, and confused.

He was cold again, horribly so, and aching. Carmen held him in her lap, petting his hair, and talking to soothe him like a mother would. She apologized to him, and she thanked him, and she told him it was all going to be all right, but Kurt could hear the uncertainty in her voice.

.

IV.

"Take my hand," Carmen said.

Kurt opened his eyes and looked up her blearily. "No," he whispered, and struggled to move away from her. "I can't." Every muscle felt like he'd just finished a grueling workout with too heavy weights. His arms quivered and his elbows nearly buckled when he pushed himself to sit up.

"It's the least I can do," she said, but she didn't try to stop his moving away, her hands fell away from his shoulders.

The thought of taking from her, even when she offered freely? He didn't want to do that again to anyone. "I'll be okay," he said. "I just need to rest." He hadn't slept in too long, had pushed his body too hard, and he didn't know how much he'd lost to the device, what proportion of his own vitality, but he trusted that he would recover with time, rest, and some food. The most important thing was: "Did it work?"

With a smile, Carmen held out the device. Around its edge, there was a thin ring of light, a slowly throbbing pale green glow. "Yes," she said.

Kurt moistened his lips and cleared his throat of static. "So you can..." He almost said 'go home', but she wouldn't be, she'd be going somewhere new, a whole new universe. It was still hard to grasp. "Uh, leave now."

"I'll wait until I'm certain you're all right," she said. "What do you need most right now?"

"Calories," Kurt said. "And sleep, but I don't think I can actually sleep yet."

With the device in hand, Carmen stood with a swirl of her colorful skirt. "I'll find you something to eat. This has more than enough power to let me do that and still travel later." Her smile was slim but sincere.

Kurt collected his strength enough to get up off the floor and into a chair. Then he zoned out while she was away. His mind wandered without purpose, as if he were on the verge of sleep, but he remained entirely, obnoxiously conscious.

Carmen returned a short time later with a paper bag and a large takeout coffee cup with a clear domed lid. Kurt could see the generous swirl of whipped cream. "A double shot mocha with extra whipped cream and two slices of pound cake," she said.

It made Kurt warm with anticipation, that sounded perfect; just the smell of the coffee was enough to fortify him. He summoned a wider smile for her. "How did you know?"

"Lucky guess," she said. "Sometimes there's really no substitute for sugar."

"True," Kurt said, and he took a first, glorious sip of the mocha, sweet-bitter richness and heat mingled with the silky cool cream. And he looked at her then, really looked. Saw the fatigue in her face, too, beyond her calm and kindness. How long she'd been running from this thing was a dark weight behind her warm gaze. Kurt wondered at the people she had to have left behind to stay alive herself. Her endurance in the face of it. He missed his father. He missed Finn and Carole. He missed Blaine. He missed Rachel. This should all be over soon, though, and he'd be able to make amends and reconnect.

"Is there any chance you'll end up back where you started? See your family again?" he asked her as he unfolded a napkin and took out a slice of pound cake. It looked good, dense and buttery with a cinnamon swirl.

Carmen's smile turned wistful before it faded to something gentler and sadder. "No," she said. "Even if chance should take me home, I lost my family a long time ago. Although, I suppose from your perspective, I won't lose them for another two centuries."

Trying to make sense of the timeline between universes was too daunting. "I'm sorry," Kurt said around a mouthful of cake. It was so much better than the protein bar had been

"Thank you."

"Was it because of the hound?"

She shook her head. "It happened before that, when I was a younger woman. My whole world perished in an invasion. I was among the few survivors."

"Oh," Kurt said, and he took a moment to swallow his cake and digest the information, for there was so much implication in so few words. Genocide and distant planets and an entire existence wholly separate from what Kurt knew of Mme Tibideaux. "So you really aren't from here? Not just this universe, but you're not even—" Kurt fumbled with the word; it seemed rude to say. "Human?"

"That's right," she said.

Kurt attempted some levity. "Well, honestly? That's not the strangest thing I've learned this week," he said, and sobered. "I truly am sorry you lost so much."

"It was hard," she said. "For a long time, I thought I was the only one. I was..." Her gaze upon him softened with affection. "All alone in the universe."

Kurt's eyes widened. He never had asked her what she thought of his performance. "You didn't hate my performance. I thought maybe you had, that I'd disappointed you."

"Not at all," she said, "I loved it. There's a kind of loneliness that finds us all eventually," she said. "I'm sorry you've experienced it in your life already. You've lost someone too."

Astonished, Kurt blinked at her.

"I'm a good listener," she said. "Which means I hear these things. It's why I'm good at what I do, and," she said, "It's also how I recognize in you the potential to be a great artist."

Kurt cast his gaze down, flustered beyond words, and his mind still a scramble, too much to not speak candidly. A particular sympathy in Mme Tibideaux's eyes seemed to pull the words from him. "I hope to be," he said. "All my life, I've felt something... missing. Maybe it's because I lost my mother, I don't know, but, I think it's always been there within me, like..." he trailed off with a frown and a sudden, wide yawn.

"You're sensitive to the void," Carmen said, "it's what drives us. The longing to make our lives meaningful, to experience truth and beauty, and to find something enduring. To create something greater than ourselves in order to connect with others. To feel less alone in the time we have. That though our lives are brief flickers in a long dark night, for the time we share together, we may matter."

Kurt was growing drowsy as he filled his stomach, picking apart the cake with his fingers. "Is it ever enough?" he asked; the question came idly, but as he spoke, he knew it was a serious one.

"Not for me, and I expect, not for you."

Strangely, that comforted him. "I'll miss you." he said, indulging the sentimental urge. No need to hold it back any longer. She'd be gone and he'd be back to his life, as best as he could return, knowing the things he knew now. He wondered if he'd ever be able to share it with someone. To truly feel connected again, intimately, to anyone.

He thought of Blaine, and the regret of pushing him away wrung his heart. Sadness replaced comfort.

"What's on your mind?" Carmen asked him.

"Just feeling a little lonely," he said. "Missing people."

"Tell me about them," Carmen said, "the people you miss."

So Kurt told her about Blaine, his father, his mother, Carole, Finn, and Rachel, his other friends back in Ohio. His hopes for new friends here in New York. She listened attentively, offering the occasional affirmation or question to draw his thoughts or feelings. They spoke until his speech slurred with sleepiness, and she got her blanket and pillow for him and made him comfortable enough to drift off into unconsciousness.

##

They made plans for Carmen's departure. She could taking nothing with her and was concerned about rousing suspicions surrounding her disappearance. She didn't wish for Kurt to be drawn into any potential investigation. She spoke to friends on the phone and sent emails, filled them with details to divert any attention from him. Warned Kurt that the hound would come again when she tried to leave. They wouldn't have much time.

It was raining the morning of the day Carmen planned to leave. Kurt traveled to NYADA on a Sunday. Carmen had given him a faculty access card. He met her in The Round Room. They had breakfast together, as had become a semi regular habit, and she gave him a parting gift, a shiny black box with a silver satin ribbon. Within was a small brass elephant, for memory, she told him. It was a miniature twin to the one that sat upon her desk.

Then they went to her office. There would be a window of time between changing the device over from blocking dimensional rifts to actually opening one where they would be vulnerable.

She set the device on the edge of her desk and tapped the sequence of symbols to activate it. It hummed as it warmed up. They stood together in silence, Carmen near the center of the room, Kurt near the wall. He couldn't think of anything to say.

Until Kurt heard the hound, its arrival grating along his nerves. "It's coming," he told her.

Carmen nodded in acceptance.

Then the smell billowed into the air, overwhelming and rank. Carmen held her handkerchief over her nose, and Kurt tried to breath through his mouth. The fabric of reality rippled rhythmically around them as Carmen's device gathered its power, while the black smoke gathering in the corner of the room began to spawn writhing tendrils. With him, Kurt had the ruby-hilted dagger he'd found below the city. Stage combat class had at least taught him to look convincing while holding it. He brandished it and faced the corner.

The hound came through just as the portal began to unfurl a strange shimmering disc in two dimensions. The portal hung between Kurt and the hound; the waves radiating from its edges distorted his view. The blinds on the window rattled and the art on the walls banged. Beneath his feet, the floor shuddered, and whatever lay upon the surfaces of the room shook. A force that was neither wind nor gravity, pulled at the loose edges of his clothing.

The hound moved, a quick pale blur, loping around the edge of the ceiling like lightning and then leaping for Carmen unerringly.

The portal was still small when Carmen dove for it. The ripples in spacetime marred Kurt's view, but she disappeared and the hole began to shrink.

And just then, caught in the vortex of the collapsing portal, the hound's luminous blue gaze locked with his own, and it roared in his mind, a limitless fury and a terrible intention. In its ancient countenance, Kurt perceived a restless hunger, wholly fixed upon himself. And he perceived that the monster possessed a strange knowledge, that it knew this happening was Kurt's doing. Perhaps it smelled his essence in the energy of the device, but he looked at its gaunt, terrible face, and he knew it knew.

But then it got sucked down into nothing with the portal's closure. And everything went abruptly still and silent, like a heavy book had just clapped shut. Kurt unclenched his hand from the hilt of the dagger and took an unsteady breath. Though the hound had been watching him for weeks, this was the first time he'd truly felt seen.

There was blood on the floorboards below where the portal had formed, and the device remained on the edge of the desk; Carmen hadn't had time to grab it—but she was gone, and so was the hound. The worst thing was Kurt didn't know if she'd made it, if she were safe. He couldn't know, and that was an even sicker feeling than the hound's cruel gaze.

Cross-legged, Kurt sat down on the floor because he couldn't think of anything else to do in that moment. His mind slipped away from an answer every time he asked himself, "What next?"

He sat like that for hours, listening to the tap tap tap of the rain upon the window panes as the day darkened beneath heavy clouds, and his spot on the surface of the Earth spun away from the light of the sun. If he closed his eyes, he could almost feel it: the gravity that held him in place as the planet rotated beneath him, caught in its revolution about the sun, which, in turn, made its own path around the edge of the galaxy, which moved tirelessly through the vast, unempty expanse of this universe.

Unmoving, he sat for hours, lost within—or without—himself. He had no means to determine which it was, or if it were both. He felt like Schrodinger's Cat in its box. Unable to resolve his own state while by himself. Which was perhaps for the best; he didn't want company; he didn't want to be fixed in place by another. He needed time to exhale, to exist in flux.

Eventually, he unfolded joints made stiff through his prolonged stillness, stood up, cleaned up carefully, and then he left.

##

An unshakeable mental distortion lingered on throughout the evening. He stopped at a grocer on his way home to buy fresh vegetables. Above him, the shop's fluorescent lights buzzed deafeningly, the flicker of them an insistent, irritating flutter at the edges of his vision. It made his stomach twist with mild revulsion and his hands shake. But Kurt took his time, attending to just one thing at a time. His focus kept wanting to stall, hang in one place for too long. The texture of the sweet potato's skin beneath his fingers, earthy, irregular, and rough. The gradient of color on the apple, shiny saturated red to vapid yellowish green. The leathery, frilled blue edges of the kale. He could see the recursion in the shape of the leaves, the fractal patterns of growth. It was hard to look away.

It took him an hour just to select the basket full of items for his dinner. He didn't have anything in mind, just bought what pulled at his desire, colors and textures and healthy, vibrant smells that soothed. He also bought a frozen cheesecake.

The cheesecake ended up being his dinner; he ate a quarter of it only half thawed, and put the vegetables and fruit away untouched.

He woke the next morning as exhausted as he'd been before he slept. He was so tired, running only on the memory of fumes. He took a long hot shower, luxuriated in the heat and steam and the sense of washing away the past weeks. With every pass of his washcloth across his skin, he felt lighter, but no less tired. Doing his hair, he couldn't avoid looking at his face. In the mirror, he appeared older, dark circles bruised the delicate skin beneath his eyes, his cheekbones had gained prominence, and the corners of his mouth drooped. No amount of care with his skin care regimen could disguise it. He was halfway through dressing for work when he changed his mind about going in and called in sick instead. He could begin his life again tomorrow.

He texted Daphne and Isabelle, told them he'd do what work he could from home. They could IM or text him if they needed to discuss anything. He booted up his computer and logged into his work email and messenger accounts, then he undressed again and put his pajamas back on. If this were to be a sick day, he'd make the most of it.

The rain outside continued intermittently, never heavy, just periodic spatters and drips against the windows and the gurgling rush down the building's spouting. Kurt relocated, with his pillows and duvet, to the futon, put on some music, and tried to work.

It was a good day. By late afternoon he was feeling rested and clear-headed. He showered again and got dressed in jeans and a comfortable old sweatshirt. Then he went into the kitchen. His chef's knife had a thin coat of dust on its handle from disuse. He wiped it off, retrieved the vegetables from the fridge, and set to making himself a proper dinner.

He was singing along with the Les Miserables original cast recording and methodically cutting the kale into thin ribbons when the hair on the back of his neck prickled and the whisper passed through his mind with a familiar cloying dread. Kurt dropped the knife and turned in disbelief. Over the savory scent of sauteing onions and garlic, the insidious, unmistakeable reek came: vomit and diesel and cheap perfume.

He had just enough time to turn off the stove and bolt for the door. He caught a glimpse of black wisps uncoiling from the corner in the emptied living room, and then he was out of the apartment, flying down the hall, and bursting through the door to the stairwell.

Faster, faster, he urged. Don't look back. Just get outside. It was behind him, above him, sliding like water along the interior angles. Kurt's lungs burned; his heart beat like it was battering its way through his ribcage. His palms slammed into the fire exit at the bottom of the stairs, and he was out. He didn't stop running until he was down the alley and crossing the street, wrecklessly trusting the reaction times and brakes of the drivers in the road. He heard swearing and horns and the squealing tires, but he made it, stumbling over the curb, but catching himself before he fell. Then he was in the park across the street, and he couldn't smell it or feel it any longer.

He slowed and stopped, doubled over, squeezing the stitch of pain in his side, and gulping for air. His feet stung, and his socks were soaked through and filthy. He didn't have shoes on. Nor did he have his phone, his wallet, or his keys. The rain had softened to drizzle, but the cold and the chill rapidly took hold in his muscles. Adrenaline jittered and jumped beneath his skin. His mind raced for a solution: he couldn't go back inside.

##

He could go to NYADA with Carmen's access card, to get to the safety of The Round Room, but he knew he wouldn't get far enough into the building to make it all the way. Plus, it was a location the hound would expect, and it could never be a long term solution. The hound knew that territory too well, and Kurt had no wards left to use. The alien device was flat. Running was all that could keep him safe for now. He needed to come up with a plan. He considered, and then dismissed, going back beneath the city. That would just be swapping one danger for another, and there were fewer resources for him to draw on down there.

In the absence of any other bright idea, and the need for at least his shoes, coat, and phone, Kurt found a grungy payphone on the wall outside the corner store and called Daphne collect.

He waited by the door to his building, shrugging helplessly at passersby who looked at with too much curiosity. Eventually, he heard the distinct cadence of Daphne's stride, the clip of her heels. "Hey," he said when she was close enough he didn't need to raise his voice. "It found me, and I can't go back inside. The door's unlocked."

She slowed to a stop, looked at him sadly, and asked, "What do you need from inside?"

He gave her a verbal list: warmer clothes to layer; dry socks and his winter boots; his coat, gloves, warmest scarf, and a hat; his satchel which contained essentials including his wallet, and his phone along with its charger from his nightstand. He asked if she'd be able to help him again if he needed to get anything else from inside. She said she would be.

Then she went to get burgers, fries, and shakes from the diner up the street while Kurt ducked back into the alley and dressed himself more warmly. He tossed the wet socks into a dumpster. Then he joined her back on the street, and they walked together, keeping to the well lit areas in front of open shops, while they ate.

He took the locket out of his satchel and asked her, "I've been wondering, how does it work? Things like this and, um, those pants, and the device."

Daphne took a long pull from the straw of her milkshake before she answered. "Sacrifice is always required," she said. "The more lost, the more pain, the more powerful the magic. And for the ward to be truly potent, love makes a difference."

"But I didn't know my great grandmother," Kurt said. "She died before I was even conceived, so she couldn't have loved me."

"She had enough love for her family at the time she made it."

"And the necropants?" Kurt asked.

"They're a product of a pact between friends, so there's love there too, believe it or not. The sacrifice is given freely upon the natural death of the person."

"And that's what's needed to make the star symbol work?"

"Often," Daphne said. "The Elder Sign can be used for different things, depending on what the person making it needs, but for the protection of a person, yes, love is essential to make it strong."

"So is it possible to make one that doesn't burn out?"

"If the love is strong enough, and the value of the sacrifice high enough, I don't see why not."

Kurt nodded. And he thought about the implications of what she'd told him. Daphne asked Kurt where he would sleep tonight. She could loan him a sleeping bag.

"I don't think I can sleep out here," Kurt said. "I'm just going to walk it off and try to figure out what to do."

"All right," she said, and her gaze was sad. "I'll tell Isabelle not to expect you back yet, and you let me know if you need anything else from your apartment or want that sleeping bag."

"Thank you," Kurt said, and he watched her go.

He walked all night to bleed off the adrenaline and fear. It didn't help to cling to it. So he walked and he walked, long past the point where he would normally stop. He'd been so busy getting by in New York, he'd neglected many of the more obvious and iconic activities the city offered. He'd never been across the Brooklyn Bridge on foot, so he made that his destination. The path through the poor areas of Bushwick kept him awake and wary and moving quickly. But he slowed as he passed the old Navy Yards, craning his neck to get a glimpse beyond the buildings at the antique cranes and the abandoned piers and drydocks.

He made it to the bridge without mishap while still pondering his options. The drizzle clung a cold mist around him, fuzzing the midnight lights of the city and the motion of the traffic into soft focus. The river surged below, tireless and glittering in the night. At the center of the bridge he stopped and gazed out over the water. He breathed deeply and relaxed the tension in his shoulders and simply looked, tried to let himself break free of his own concerns and appreciate what lay before him. This was a view he didn't want to give up. It represented the life he'd worked toward for so long, the sparkling towers of opportunities in a city full of art and vision and unrelenting forward motion. New York was the most perfect crucible for his dreams and ambitions.

He took out his phone and snapped a series of shots for a panorama. He wished he were with someone to share this small moment of beauty. Without any reluctance, he texted the photo to Blaine with the sincere message: "I wish you were here." Then he sniffed, blinked back his tears, and kept walking.

In Manhattan, on the street, the shops and restaurants might as well have been locked or boarded up, for he couldn't go inside any of them. Kurt had often felt apart from people before, but never like this, never as if some sharp transparent blade were carving his existence away from that of others. He saw the man from the club that he had danced with so long ago, the man who said he would have remembered Kurt had they met before. But they passed on the sidewalk, and Kurt met his gaze. There was no recognition returned, just a fleeting, uninterested glance. The regret went down bitterly. Even the trivial moments were lost to him.

But he knew what he had to do.

##

Returning to Lima was a challenge. He took seriously Carmen's advice to avoid enclosed spaces, which ruled out any conventional means of making the trip. But he had his bicycle and acquired, with Daphne's help, some minimal camping gear. So he packed the things he needed most for the trip, left the rest of it with Daphne, and set off.

Not being an accomplished cyclist or athlete, he overdid it the first day, pushing himself to cover thirty miles before he finally stopped, exhausted. He found a sheltered place not too far from the road, and set up his tiny, portable one-man tent, and he trusted the flexible material to provide no anchor for the hound while still giving him some protection from the elements. He fell into a fitful sleep, full of half formed dreams made of memory and horror.

The next morning, he found he could barely stand. It required a long session of gentle stretches to get moving, and he swore bitterly about the impossibility of a shower. His skin felt like an extra, unwanted layer had spawned overnight. He did his best with baby wipes and moist towelettes, but that mostly just left him feeling sticky and smelling of flowers. And his hair wasn't even worth thinking about. He'd kept it hidden under the helmet all day and tied a bandana over it that night to spare himself the disgust at how lank and unkempt it had become. He did the best he could hygiene wise—which was unsatisfyingly little, but at least he had clean underwear and socks. Then he packed up his things, and walked with his bicycle until his muscles had warmed enough to try riding again. He only made it ten more miles that day, but he slept better that night.

He relied on a diet of granola bars, protein bars, and chocolate to keep his energy up. In the finish it took him just over two weeks before he was coasting past the Welcome to Allen County sign. Throughout his journey, he sent vague but reassuring texts and excuses to Isabelle, to his professors at NYADA, to his father and to Blaine. He hated having to mislead so many people he cared about, but he couldn't see anyway not to. The truth was both too difficult and too dangerous. He understood now, the distance Carmen had cultivated with the people around her.

Every night on his way, once he'd stabilized his energy and he was tucked away safely in his tent, by the light of his hand cranked LED light, Kurt poured over the cryptic books he had found below the city. There was so much he still didn't understand—and so much he resisted understanding. He skimmed for only what he needed most. And those things he memorized, diligently. Rituals and magic that may save him, now that he was the hound's chosen prey. He found and learned the things he required to execute his plan. He tried very hard not to learn too much of the terrible things within the books, because he could sense the way the knowledge wanted to take hold of his mind and unravel him, to put him in the thrall of beings even worse than the hound.

Some nights, while falling asleep, he thought of his ninth grade History teacher, who liked to quote Nietzsche.

"That which does not kill us makes us stronger," was his teacher's favorite, but everyone knew that one: it was practically a cliche, offered without critical thought, as if it were some broadly know tautology. But Kurt remained undecided on the truth of it; he'd often hoped it were true, that every setback he'd faced was forging him into a better version of himself. Recent events made him less hopeful; with every passing day, he felt more brittle.

"If you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you." That one seemed accurate; it was why he was trying not to look too hard.

"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster." This Kurt took to heart as a solemn warning, and he considered that maybe Nietzsche knew the big scary things too. Kurt would be careful. He knew enough for that.

Thus, when he finally got to Lima, he avoided the pull to go to his home, nor did he go by McKinley. He didn't see anyone. Instead he went directly to the cemetery and found his mother's gravestone. He sat in the dry, dead grass beside her for a long time. He talked to her, and he cried. He even asked her advice, but none came.

Then, after dark, he dried his tears and got out the small, portable shovel from his bag. He assembled it, and carefully cut a square of turf from the top of her grave. Then he started digging. The hollow aluminum of the handle warmed in his hands as he worked, and he had to dig deeply into the uniform brown soil. His shoulders ached, but he hadn't had a day without pain for so long, he was able to put it from his mind.

Eventually, with a hollow thunk, the blade of his shovel hit the wooden top of the box containing her urn. He reached down with bare hands to scrape the dirt away from the top of it and clear enough space that he wouldn't need to unseat it from the earth and bring it up. "If there's anyone listening, please forgive me," he said, and then he wrenched open the top of the box with the blade of the shovel.

He took only as much as he'd need from her urn. Packed the ashes inside two sturdy zip-lock baggies, and tucked them carefully into a discreet zippered pocket in his backpack. Then he did his best to return everything to the way he found it. The last thing he wanted was for his his father to discover her grave had been disturbed.

Then Kurt simply turned around and made his way back to New York. At a rest stop, he found an outdoor spigot where he stripped down to his underwear and cleaned himself up. It was the cleanest he'd been in weeks, and even shivering in the cold night as he put his dirty clothes back on, he felt reinvigorated by the simple, if inadequate, ritual of bathing.

Otherwise, he was like a machine. He'd gone beyond exhaustion, so flattened out inside and aching, all he could do was endure it. There were times he wondered, as he rode, had he undergone some kind of psychotic break? That he'd desecrated his own mother's grave, just like that? He didn't feel remorse for what he'd done, more vague distress for how easily he'd ended up doing it.

That was all he had available to him though: the doing of things. One action to lead to another action, and he would string them together in a logical progression of cause and effect to try to solve his current problem. Kurt didn't stop. Just kept moving to maintain precious momentum. He kept pushing down on the pedals, kept getting up in the morning, kept his eyes up and looking forward. His mother would tell him not to give up, and, with her help, he wouldn't.

##

When he finally got back to the city, he didn't contact Daphne. She'd already done so much for him, more than he would have expected from anyone. Any further involvement at this point could only endanger her. His vanity, too, didn't wish for him to be seen in his current state by people whom he respected.

The only thing left was he needed something to buy himself time. Carmen's device was completely flat after her trip. He didn't want to skip universes, just wanted to find himself fifteen minutes of safety inside the loft. (Or, maybe thirty minutes so he could have a hot shower).

Using his phone and the wifi of a nearby Starbucks, Kurt ordered everything else he would need from Amazon and paid for next day delivery. Then, he set himself up against the low concrete wall in the park across from his apartment to wait until it were delivered. He would need to be fast, to catch the UPS guy before he entered the building.

While he waited, he began writing a letter to Blaine. He didn't know if he would send it, but he wanted an account of everything that he'd been through to exist, in case he didn't survive. Someone should know, and he couldn't tell his father.

It was after dark, and Kurt had been unable to stop himself from drifting off. The ambient sounds of traffic lulled him into vulnerability. He woke with a start when a rough hand closed around his throat.

A startled grunt was all he managed, the man's grip was so tight. It was the homeless man, the one who always yelled and jeered at him and Rachel and the other passersby. His eyes were wide and wild, bloodshot and crusted. His breath was a fetid fog of sourness in Kurt's face. Kurt scrambled to get his feet beneath himself and grabbed at the man's arm, tried to break his hold.

The guy babbled under his breath, and it was hard to make out his words, but Kurt heard him repeat a desire for a reward, if he were the one to kill "the boy", then "it" would be pleased and grant him favor. Kurt gritted his teeth and got a knee aimed at the man's groin, but only managed to hit him hard in the thigh. But it was enough to throw off the man's balance and they tipped over, and Kurt pursued the moment of advantage, rolling the man to his back and jamming his other knee into the man's belly, which made him howl.

"There's no hope for you," the man sang, and stars burst at the edges of Kurt's vision. He tightened his hands on the man's wrist; the man's sleeve slid up his arm and bared skin. Kurt took the opportunity to dig his nails in, and the the man winced and giggled. "There's no hope for any of us," he said, with such force his spittle hit Kurt in the face.

"Fuck you," Kurt gritted out with little air to spare. His vision dimmed at the edges. He was not going to die like this. Something beyond panic bloomed in his veins, a hot and urgent need.

"The idiot god hungers as he sleeps," the man babbled. "All we are is his nightmare..."

"No," Kurt said—to himself, to the man, to the very notion of a idiot god—and he felt the gathering of it in his body, a pulling from deep within him, it dragged from his hands upon the man's bare forearms, drew a warm blossom of power down into his belly.

"And when he wakes— Wait! What are you—?" The man broke off with an animal scream of pain, and his hands fell away from Kurt's neck.

Kurt shoved him off and scrambled to his feet. His palms burned with vital heat, and his blood pumped with vigor. All his fatigue vanished. His mind was clear and certain, and this man was nothing to him. "You should run," Kurt told him.

The man cowered on the ground, ashen-faced and dazed. Kurt stared down at him without pity, watched him as he crawled away, cringing and fearful, before he stumbled to his feet and limped away.

"And I'm still a fucking atheist," Kurt yelled at his back, because monsters weren't gods.

He turned back to his things, his tipped over backpack and rumpled blanket, the sheets of Blaine's letter strewn about. He gathered them up with a sigh and shuffled them into the correct order. The adrenaline faded, though the energy remained, and Kurt grew queasy with the knowledge of what he'd just done, what it had cost him to save his own life. That it was done in self-defense didn't reassure him; he'd had so little control in the moment, had felt within himself the cruelty of a stranger. Stealing from another person like that, no matter how deranged and violent the person was... He refused to become a monster himself.

And yet here was the opportunity he required. He bent over and dug into the bottom of his backpack, withdrew the device. With the surplus, unwanted energy from the man humming in his nerves, Kurt could give something to it. And, he supposed, it would be a sacrifice from a man who would want to please its makers, if not Kurt. That might be enough. It would have to be. He couldn't continue living on the streets and outdoors indefinitely. The homeless man's aggression was warning enough.

##

Kurt needed to practice drawing the Elder Sign, and the lines of it had to be precise for it to hold power. He also practiced another, simpler temporary ward he'd learned, that he would use to buy himself even more time than the device would give him, enough time and safety to make the Elder Sign itself.

When he was ready, and could no longer put off the inevitable, he returned to the loft with his belongings, the device, and his box from Amazon. Inside, Kurt ignored the compost stench of the kale rotting in the sink, and took the briefest shower possible, shaved his chest, and dressed in just an old pair of dance pants. He gathered his supplies and lit candles to work by. He got out the book he'd been reading to double check his work by its diagrams. Carefully he worked though the steps to draw a heptagram on the floor, invoking the names of planets and their corresponding long dead gods at each point, and he hoped it would last long enough for what he needed. He was careful not to scuff any of the chalk lines as he stepped into the center of it.

It didn't feel any different standing there. This ward wasn't blocking anything, just making a small point where he could sit unmolested while he worked.

To make the more permanent, more effective ward, he needed his other supplies: a mirror, rubbing alcohol, disposable scalpels, his mother's ashes, iodine, and the incantation. He also had gauze, medical tape, and steri-strips. First, he doused a cotton ball in rubbing alcohol. The fumes burned in his sinuses and it was cold as he wiped methodically over his chest. His freshly shaved skin stung and then chilled as it dried, causing goosebumps to break out across his torso. He should have thought to turn the heat up. Never mind.

Once he was sure all of the alcohol had evaporated, he picked up the mirror in his left hand, and a black Sharpie in his right. Carefully, Kurt held the tip of the pen against his chest and made the first sweeping line upon his own skin. Studied it to make sure it was right. He could not afford a mistake.

The instant the device failed, Kurt knew. A sort of psychi white noise rose to a low volume in his consciousness, barely audible, but he'd become so sensitive, he noticed it instantly. He didn't sense the hound yet. Maybe it didn't expect him to come back here. Didn't expect its prey to be so stupid. Fortune favored the bold, Kurt told himself. He couldn't remember who said that one. Alexander the Great or Aristotle? Maybe it was Betty White.

With a steady hand, he drew the next line. It was precise and correct. The tip of the pen tickled as it dragged across his skin. He'd successfully oriented his first line so that the second avoided his nipple, and Kurt smiled his relief at that smallest of mercies. His vanity might have been less than it once was, but this still mattered.

On the third line, his hand grew less steady. He exhaled the breath he was holding and that helped keep the line as it was meant to be. He pushed ahead, wanted to get as far as possible before the hound caught up with him. Lines four and five required more speed to capture their arc with accuracy. He shivered and then adjusted his grip on the pen and the angle of his wrist to draw the eye at the center. It required the most detail and fine work to capture its peculiar asymmetry, and he was glad he had practiced drawing it backwards.

It took Kurt a while—it felt like tens of minutes passed though it must only be seconds, artificially bloated by his reluctance and trepidation—to reach for the scalpel. It was only going to be pain, he reminded himself. It wouldn't last. (And he wished he'd thought to bring pain killers into the heptagram to kill the pain after). As for the Elder Sign, he needed that to last. He recalled the brief time he considered getting "courage" tattooed on the inside of his forearm. This wasn't that different.

The cold made his hands clumsy as he unpacked one of the sterile scalpels. His grip on the instrument felt too weak and unnatural. He'd practiced with a pen only, and the flat handle of the scalpel didn't fit in his fingers in any familiar way. It was neither a pen nor a chef's knife. He fiddled with it, spun it in his fingers, tried to find the grip that was strongest and most comfortable. Realized he was procrastinating and firmed his hold on it.

But the mirror tipped in his left hand, slewing up to reflect his face. It caught him for a moment, how calm he looked. He didn't realize that's how he wore fear and resignation. He reoriented the mirror, took a breath, and brought the sharp blade to the first line upon his skin. Offered up a silent wish to the universe, for the blade to be sharp enough that he wouldn't feel it too much. Pleaded within himself to be brave enough not to flinch. Hoped the hound would stay away. Tears were hot collecting in his eyes. He blinked them back and pressed in.

The pain was filament thin, but ferocious. A focused line blazed down his opening skin. Blood beaded bright along the fine incision, but he couldn't stop to staunch it.

"Fuck," he said to make the air come out of his lungs and his teeth unclench. "Breathe," he told himself. And then, more wryly, "Courage, Kurt." He heard the echo of Blaine's voice.

He got to the end of the black ink line and lifted the blade from his skin with relief. Cold sweat broke out all over his bared skin, and the bright pain of the cut sank into the deeper ache of injury; it told his body things were terribly wrong. His fingers were slippery as he adjusted his grip and prepared to make the second cut.

The murmur began just as he was sinking the blade into the second line and gritting his teeth against the sharp flash of pain and the overwhelming reflex to just stop. The whisper, vile and insistent, seethed in his brain and Kurt tried to swallow the viscous wad of nausea gathering in his throat. He tightened his grip on the scalpel and made himself keep going, pushed deeper as the sharp blade glided through his skin. It hurt, fuck it hurt. His heart pounded, urging flight or fight, to stop, to leave, to hide, to faint away, to scream or cry or... He couldn't.

He didn't look away from the reflection in the mirror, his own hand, his own flesh, his own blood. He tried to distance the pain from himself, bit into his lip so hard he tasted the iron tang. It was dull and familiar and did nothing to distract. And meanwhile, the growl of the hound built in his mind and the disgusting stench of it gathered in his nostrils.

The heptagram should keep it at bay, he reassured himself, and if it didn't, then, the homeless guy was right: there was no hope left for him anyway. There wasn't enough time to get outside. The ruby dagger lay by his leg. He could try to fight the hound. But he knew his chances weren't good against an immortal creature from the birth of time. The enchantment on the dagger wasn't a strong one.

"Fuck off," he said to the hound, but he still refused to look, not even to see where it was coming through. There was an audible splintering sound, and the snarl in his head increased in volume, trying to overwhelm every other thought he held, to replace it with mindless terror.

So he thought of his mother as he turned the scalpel in his hand and approached the third line. The combination of adrenaline and endorphins was smoothing the pain from sharp, squirming agony to duller throbbing heat. Movement came in his peripheral vision, slickly moving and pale, skirting along the edge of the floor. Kurt didn't let it distract him. He kept his attention on his hand and the blade and the line he was following, and he tried to retrieve his earliest memory of his mother.

Lying in the sun on a soft flannel blanket watching her cut flowers, irises and tulips, she had named them. They fascinated him when she lay them on the blanket next to him and let his tiny fingers touch the petals. The world had been so large and full of color.

The recollection was vague, Kurt wasn't sure if it were even a true memory, if the magic lay there, but it steadied his hand down the line. When the third incision was complete, he couldn't stop himself from looking up.

The hound paced around him, fluid, gaunt, and unhurried. It hung on the edge of the candle light, its long, sharp toothed mouth gaped open and its electric blue eyes glowed, pitiless and alien. Its body looked like it contained too many bones, disjointed and wrong, with too little of its thin hairless skin stretched over them. It felt, in his mind, content to wait for an opening, for him to falter. And of course it would be patient; it had all the time in the universe. He was the fragile mortal here, not it. It had never experienced anything like the fear it invoked in its prey.

The fear, growing again, was stealing the strength from Kurt's hands. His fingers were nearly numb with it, refusing a sturdy hold as he brought the blade to the fourth line. The thin metal wavered; his hand trembled, and the blade glanced his skin off to the side of the mark. Fortunately it only scratched, no damage done. He closed his eyes and breathed as deeply as he could, through the reeking odor the hound brought with it, and he tried again to banish his fear with memories of love. Thought of last Christmas, the afternoon with Blaine, skating. The last perfect moment he could easily recall. But it was both so remote and so recent. The dichotomy fed too much regret.

So instead he returned to thoughts of his mother; it was her love he needed most to invoke tonight:

The first day of school, her helping him choose his outfit—sky blue slacks, a bright yellow shirt with a green plaid bow tie, and brand new penny loafers. She let him stand in front of her full length mirror and smiled at him as he turned and posed as if he were a model. Then, she waited with his father at the end of the driveway while he clambered up the tall steps of the bus, and as the bus pulled away, they waved at him from the street until he was out of sight. She wore a skirt with purple flowers on it, irises.

Too common a memory, perhaps, but the warmth it held was real.

And the hound stalked him, round and round. Kurt watched; his chest burned and ached. The scalpel was motionless in his hand. He looked away from the monster to the blade. He lined it up with the next intended cut, and then the absurdity of it all struck him like a blow to the head. The hound was here. It may never leave. He was maiming himself. Defiling his mother's memory. For what?

For what? To get back to his life? Could he? Even if this worked, it didn't mean he'd won. He just endured. Coming to New York was meant to be a new life, not another test of how much crap he could withstand while hoping for a better day. Nietzsche was full of garbage. The ward might work, but the hound would always be here. And for it to be here hunting him now, it must have caught Carmen. It's the first time he'd admitted the likelihood of that to himself. That she'd perished.

Which meant everything he did, everything he'd seen and learned and suffered amounted to being completely worthless after all. He couldn't save her. Everything she had endured led only to to the worst possible end, the thing she'd tried to hard to avoid, so she could have her life. Or a life. He was a fool to resist the inevitable.

He could kill himself. Right now, like this. The sharp edge of the blade would sink into his wrist almost painlessly compared to what he'd just done to himself. He'd barely feel it. He'd bleed out on the floor. His blood would run over the careful chalk lines of the heptagram. The hound would come for him, then, but he'd already have passed out. He wouldn't feel it; he'd already be gone. Maybe he couldn't win, but the hound would lose. And he'd be finished, nothing more to worry about.

There were tears in his eyes.

Who would find him? What would they find? Would there be enough left to identify him. Someone would call his father. They would have to tell him, "Your son is dead."

"How?" his father would ask.

"Suicide," they would reply.

And, all right, it might not go exactly like that. But, his father would... His father would...

Kurt sobbed, tears came, fast and copious, wet down his faces, running onto his chest, mixing with his blood and stinging in the wounds. Snot and tears and an open sobbing mouth. His father could never know.

The hound looked on. It didn't care.

And, then, in a bizarre wave of calmness that overtook him in the face of the hound's impassiveness, his tears stopped. And suddenly all Kurt wanted was to talk to someone. Needed to. Yearned to hear Blaine's voice and to tell him everything. If anyone would listen and not judge him, it would be Blaine. But his phone was across the loft, on the kitchen table. He'd been foolish. He was rarely so unprepared.

But he didn't want to die. He wanted to talk to Blaine again. Wanted to see him. Wanted, too, to spend Christmas with his family again.

Kurt dried his cheeks and he settled. He stared back at the hound without flinching, watched it as it watched him. Looked at its horrible form until it was familiar enough to him that his hands no longer shook.

He finished cutting the Elder Sign into his chest, and then he methodically packed the cuts with his mother's ashes. It took a long time—hours maybe, making sure he didn't waste anything. It was horribly painful, bloody, and harrowing. The hound whispered to him the whole time. When the job was done, and he'd affixed the steri-clips to the wounds and dabbed them with iodine, Kurt had no will left to stop himself from passing out on the floor.

##

Morning came. Bright and hot and too much. Kurt woke stiff, with agony bursting in every cell of his body. He groaned and looked for the hound. Listened. Smelled. The hound was gone. It must have left him alone after he lost consciousness. For a being with infinite patience, Kurt didn't understand why it didn't wait. But he was glad it had gone, because his bladder was bursting. Kurt crawled out of the heptagram.

With a wince and a grunt of pain, he stood up and shuffled to the bathroom, grabbed some painkillers from the medicine cabinet. Then he gently taped gauze over the angry red and ocher stained cuts. He got a good look at himself in the mirror, and found a mess. He couldn't shower with the freshly packed wounds on his chest, wondered if he could risk a shallow bath. He still didn't sense anything, so he indulged himself.

Maybe it worked. Maybe he'd be safe now.

He bathed, shaved, exfoliated, moisturized, it was amazing. Then he went to his bedroom, touched his clothes, remembered all their fine colors and textures. And then he lay down on the bed, and considered what now. Thought about calling people again, but only thought about it. It was too soon. Got up again because he was hungry and needed protein. Pulled on a pair of jeans, but didn't put a shirt on. Then he went to the kitchen. The milk was sour, and the bread mold spotted and stale, but the eggs were okay. He scooped the rotten vegetable mass from the sink and washed his hands. Really should have asked Daphne to do something about that weeks ago.

Kurt scrounged up a meal of eggs and crustless toast and took his time in both making it and eating. It wasn't great, but it was his food in his kitchen in his home—and it wasn't a processed bar of any sort. He was still hungry after he'd done the dishes, so he ate some crackers and peanut butter, washed them down with bitter, black coffee.

He was still alone. Was he safe?

He ended up going down to the bodega on the corner and to buy more groceries. Then he came back to the apartment, ate again, and caught up watching DVR'ed episodes of American Idol that he'd missed since he'd left. Eventually he fell asleep.

Kurt woke around midnight, refreshed, warm and comfortable. His chest ached and itched beneath the bandages, which he took as a good sign. Again he thought about getting back in touch with people. The absence of fear was odd. It felt like a wholly unnatural state for him to be in. Surely if the hound were going to come for him again, it would have already. So the ward must be working. It was keeping the hound away and blocking his awareness of it. He considered going back to class in the morning and Vogue in the afternoon.

##

Unfortunately Kurt underestimated the hound's sadism.

The hound came that same night, having left him just enough time to hope again. The whisper roused Kurt from a comfortable slumber in his bed, but at first, he wasn't sure what had disturbed his sleep. It was the smell that made him sit up and realize. Quickly he stripped off his t-shirt with the intention to expose the Elder Sign. He ripped at the tape and gauze, but the tape was stuck too firmly to his skin to shift easily. He caught a fingernail in a scab and whimpered in pain. Heat crackled beneath the lines anyway, so maybe it was doing something even while covered. He left the bandages alone. The ruby hilted dagger was on his nightstand. He picked it up.

Surprisingly, he wasn't afraid as he moved about the loft, seeking where it was coming through. It approached him in the emptied out old living room. The blurred chalk marks were still on the floor. The hound was salivating, hungry, and whispering cloying seduction in his mind. Kurt stepped toward it. It stopped, and he saw, for the first time, caution. That was interesting. They stood, regarding each other. And Kurt decided to go for it. He stepped forward as quickly as he could and grabbed for the monster.

In his hands, it was slippery and cold and the very touch of it ached. It bit down into his upper left arm, and its teeth sank into his muscle and bone as easily as if it were tearing wet tissue. Kurt sobbed at the searing white agony beyond his comprehension. Unthinking, Kurt jammed the knife against its side, and that was about as effective as trying to spear a cabbage with a butter knife. Its jaw only tightened on him, crushing, deafening pain. Kurt gagged and gasped for air, and fell to his knees. The dagger fell from his hand, and, in his desperation, he grabbed the hound by the head. It's bony skull stabbed into his palm. Kurt remembered the bird: a dead thing he gave some mockery of life to.

What, then, could he take from an immortal creature that had never been born? With sweat falling into his eyes and his entire body raging with pain, Kurt tried to do the reverse of what he'd done to the bird, to consciously take instead of give. It was entirely different from easing the passage of Carmen's friend; and different again from his panicked stealing from the homeless man. This was a struggle: his will versus the hound's. The agony in his arm lanced through his chest, excruciating and violent, seemed to wrap right around his heart and tried to stop its beat. Roared and gibbered in his mind, even louder than the hound. But Kurt didn't let go.

This thing didn't deserve its life, so Kurt tried to take it. It was futile, he knew, there was little he could take from an infinite well. But he could feel the draw from it to within himself, burning cold and strange. And eventually the hound's body shuddered and it collapsed into itself, back to where it had come from. Kurt fell to his back on the floorboards. The scars on his chest throbbed hotly, but they were not harming him. A blueish glow emanated from beneath the gauze covering. The sign might not have worked entirely as he'd hoped. It still had to heal, but it had allowed him the opportunity to injure the hound. Though it was a small injury, it was an injury nonetheless. The monster hadn't enjoyed being in pain.

Kurt turned his head and looked at his arm. It was a wreck of bloody torn skin and deep gashes, and he couldn't move his fingers. Kurt rolled and pushed himself up to his knees with his good arm. He knee-walked into the kitchen, bleeding everywhere, with a horrible chill taking hold of his arm and creeping toward his heart. There was no one to call to for help. Wry, he hummed to himself a few bars—all alone in the universe—and reached for the dishtowel where it hung on the oven door. Perhaps there was some victory to be had in surviving to fight another day.

.

Epilogue

Kurt's letter concludes: "I'm staying in Ohio for a few days. If you want to meet, come to the Caverns after dark on the fourteenth or fifteenth. I'll be there."

There's no signature at the bottom of the letter. Blaine holds the thick sheaf of handwritten pages, shuffles the last page to the back, and doesn't do anything for a long moment. Today is the fourteenth. Blaine doesn't move, doesn't think, doesn't even breathe. Doesn't question the incredible tale he's just read. His decision was made before he even opened the mailbox. In his heart, where Kurt is concerned, the decision has always been made.

He doesn't wait until his parents come home, leaves the driveway unshoveled and them a note explaining that he's gone to the library to do research on a Physics paper. He won't be home until after dinner, may even crash at Sam's if he doesn't get finished until late. He'll text them if he won't be home.

He has a few errands to run before dark. Things he's sure Kurt will need, some other things that may help him. Then Blaine drives the hour out to the state park just as dusk settles, indigo and blue, in the western sky.

It's not hard to get in after dark, but Blaine avoids the main road in, climbs a fence in the dark with his shopping bags, and it feels like a real adventure for a moment. But it's not play. Whatever has happened to Kurt, whether what he wrote is literally true or not, has been anything but fun. And Blaine knows Kurt, knows he wouldn't make up something so elaborately horrible if it were only a game.

Unfortunately, Kurt didn't say where in the park he would be, so Blaine heads down toward the small lake. He's not sure he'll find Kurt in the caverns, but the water, he knows, Kurt will find calming.

The picnic tables are all vacant, and the moon rises, bright upon the water. Blaine keeps looking, walking around the perimeter of the lake, looking back toward the trees and limestone hills, unsure whether he should call out.

Then from behind, he hears his name, spoken softly in such a familiar voice and with such fragile wondering, Blaine's heart fumbles its next beat.

He turns around, not knowing what to expect, but hoping. Hoping.

Kurt's wrapped up in his dark coat, the hood pulled low to obscure his face, but Blaine would recognize the lines and stance of his body anywhere. "Kurt," he exhales, and he goes to him.

But instead of coming into a welcoming embrace, Kurt takes a step back and turns his head. The moonlight catches his face. His gaze is fever bright and wary. "You're alone?" Kurt asks.

"Yes," Blaine says.

"No one knows you're here?"

Blaine shakes his head. "I haven't told anyone anything, Kurt. I promise. My parents think I'm at the library."

"Okay," Kurt says. "Let's go in." He turns away and walks up the slope toward the cavern entrance.

"Is that safe?" Blaine asks. Enclosed spaces, Kurt had written, bring danger.

"It can't come into these natural caverns, they're too irregular. It hasn't found me here yet anyway. It's not close."

"Okay," Blaine says, and he follows Kurt. He can't tell if Kurt is wholly himself, or if he is suffering a delusion of some kind. But Kurt speaks calmly enough, and he doesn't seem dangerous.

Inside the limestone cavern is a small campsite, ringed with LED lanterns that provided a dim, pale light and stretched long dark fingers of shadow about the cave walls. Kurt's belongings are there, including props from the letter's story. Blaine sees the occult books, the device, the small brass elephant. Kurt steps between two low stalagmites and slips off his coat. The pommel of the dagger at his belt glints red, and Kurt's left arm is in a makeshift sling. He's dressed in a shirt and cardigan with only a few buttons done up.

His face is drawn, and he's definitely lost weight. Fatigue darkens the skin under his eyes. He looks at Blaine nervously, and Blaine understands what he's seeing in Kurt's gaze, an unnatural brightness to the blue, almost as if Kurt's wearing colored contacts. Something has changed him.

And then Kurt smiles, and he's suddenly entirely himself, entirely known and familiar, the boy Blaine remembers, loves, and misses. "Thank you for coming," Kurt says, and he sits down on a smooth boulder, gestures for Blaine to come closer.

"You had to know I would," Blaine says, but he hesitates to sit anywhere; he sets down the shopping bags. "I'll always come if you ask me to."

Kurt blinks and casts his gaze down. "I'd never expect you to, not now. You should know that. This is all... oh, god." He shudders and then his back heaves spasmodically. Kurt brings his free hand to his face and lets out a soft sob. "Blaine," he says, and that single syllable is weighted with all the pain from the letter, all the despair; all the suffering, confusion, and fear.

"Hey," Blaine says, and he approaches Kurt slowly, holding his hands out with open palms to show he's not a threat. It's like approaching a frightened cat. "It's okay."

Kurt drops his hand and looks at him then, tears wet on his cheeks, his eyes glassy and red. "Nothing is okay," Kurt says bitterly. "You read the letter?"

"Yes," Blaine says, and he sits next to Kurt gingerly, doesn't try to touch him. "I read it."

"All of it?"

"Yes."

"And did you believe it?"

Blaine presses his lips together and keeps looking at Kurt, trying to find the answer to that simple query. "I don't know," he says at last. "I believe you've been through something terrible, but the details are hard to accept."

"Yeah," Kurt says, wry. "They really are. I wouldn't believe it myself if I got that letter."

That makes Blaine exhale a soft laugh. "All right then."

"I want you to believe me though," Kurt says more softly, and then he looks back at the shopping bags Blaine set down. "What did you bring?"

"Oh," Blaine gets up again and gets them, brings them back to where they're sitting.

"Food and clothes mostly, some toiletries for you, things I thought you could use," he says. "Take anything you want." He bends to reach into the bottom of one of the bags and brings out a small, rectangular, pink and red striped gift box and a card. "And this," he says, and hands them to Kurt, who takes them with a startled expression. "Happy Valentine's Day, Kurt." Blaine says.

Kurt takes the card and box into his lap so he can use both hands. "I didn't get you anything."

"It's not much, really," Blaine says.

Kurt opens the box first. Inside is a glass vial which holds a small measure Blaine's blood. One of Blaine's stops on the way had been at the medical labs where one of Cooper's ex-girlfriends worked as a phlebotomist. Blaine told her he needed a favor, for a Biology project.

"What is this?" Kurt demands, and his alarm pitches his voice higher.

"In the letter, you said sacrifices made with love could give power to... things. So I thought... maybe?" Blaine shrugs "The needle really hurt."

Kurt's eyes fill with tears again, and he slumps forward over the open box and whimpers. He's so fragile, Blaine realizes, and he reaches out to lays an open hand upon Kurt's back, strokes lightly to soothe. "Was that the wrong thing to do?"

But Kurt doesn't answer his question. "You must believe me, then," Kurt says. "To give me this?" He turns his face to look at Blaine and sniffs.

Blaine hadn't thought about it that way; he'd simply gone with an impulse. "I guess maybe I do?"

"I don't want this kind of thing from you, Blaine. It's not why I wanted to see you. I never want to—" Kurt breaks off with a distressed hiccup. "Take anything from you like this. It's too horrible."

Blaine attempts levity. "It's just blood. I'll make more of it."

That's enough to make Kurt smile weakly. "Honestly? I don't even know what to do with it. I'm not a vampire."

"I'm sure you'll come up with something."

"Well, thank you," Kurt says, and he straightens as his smile fades, "But if you ever do something like this again—? Please don't ever do something like this again. I couldn't bear for you to be involved or in danger."

They fall into silence then. The implication of Kurt's words sink in uncomfortably. He doesn't want Blaine to be involved. What does that mean? But before Blaine can ask, Kurt speaks up, a spark of humor in his gaze, an attempt to alleviate the increasingly awkward silence. "So I guess it's lucky for me that hanging out with Sam has made you credulous."

But Blaine can't bring himself to laugh now. He slides his hand up to Kurt's shoulder, and then reaches to brush his fingertips against Kurt's cheek. "No," he says. "It's just you."

Kurt's lips part, but he says nothing. Blaine lets his gaze drop down to the loose buttons of Kurt's shirt. He can't see any of the Elder Sign, and so he asks, "Could I see it? See you?"

The work of Kurt's jaw reveals his discomfort. "It's ugly," he says.

"But you're not," Blaine replies.

Kurt looks away for a moment, and then back at Blaine, his gaze uncertain. But, "Okay," Kurt accedes, and he stands, his back to Blaine, while he pulls the sling off over his head and sheds his layers.

Blaine stands too, and waits for Kurt. His bared shoulders are tense, and his arms stiff as he turns. And it's truly, not nearly as bad as what Blaine has braced himself for. Kurt's had time to heal, and the dark grayish raised lines of the sigil are clean, if still inflamed at the edges. As Blaine looks he sees a blueish glint skitter along the lines, like glitter catching the light. Blaine reaches a hand out and looks up at Kurt's face. "May I?"

Kurt sucks in a shallow breath and he nods faintly, blinks back the glisten of fresh tears and looks off at the cavern wall.

With wonder Blaine touches, lightly, over the relief of the shape. It's warm and tingles beneath the sensitive pads of his fingers. "Does it hurt?" he asks.

"No," Kurt whispers. "My arm does, but this is fine now."

Blaine traces the irregular star, each long line, thinks about Kurt doing this to himself. It brings his own tears to sting his eyes. "And does it... work?"

"Once it healed well enough, and it has to be visible to, um..."

"To the hound?" Blaine asks, still watching his hand on Kurt's skin, transfixed by the strangeness of it. He isn't horrified; this is just Kurt.

"Yeah," Kurt says. "So it's not as useful as I'd hoped. I mean, I can't go around shirtless like this, and I don't want to have that thing ambushing me in a grocery store."

"So it's still hunting you?" Blaine passes his palm over Kurt's heart to feel its beat and glances up at Kurt. Kurt shivers.

"It's, uh," and Kurt actually summons a stronger smile. "Think Terminator tenacious."

And it's so lovely to see, Blaine feels drawn, to lean in and press his mouth to Kurt's smile. Kurt's reply is a hastily sucked in breath, and he stiffens for a moment. Then his lips relax and part beneath the gentle pressure of Blaine's mouth, but when Blaine tries to deepen the kiss, Kurt pushes him away and shakes his head in denial. "I'm sorry, but I can't. I can't stay here, and you can't come with me. We can't do this."

"Oh," Blaine says and frowns. "So, um?" His hand falls away from where he's touching Kurt, and his gaze slides to Kurt's injuredarm, where it's bandaged, how the effect of the injury is visible beyond the neat, clean dressing. A strange dark, glistening blue runs down the veins of Kurt's forearm and up to his shoulder. "Why did you want to see me then?"

He hears the catch of Kurt's breath, and then Kurt bends to pick up his shirt. He slips it back on. "I wanted to see you one last time, and I wanted to say goodbye."

Stunned, Blaine takes a step back. "Goodbye?"

"I'm sorry," Kurt says again, "But as long as I have to live like this, I can't risk you, or my family, or anyone. This is something I have to face myself."

"You don't have to do this alone, Kurt—"

"Yes, I do, Blaine," Kurt says, an edge to hysteria creeping in to his voice. "You read my letter, you know what's hunting me, how it got to Carmen, how I couldn't help her, and how my trying to help her? All it did was bring that thing upon me. I can't let that happen to you. I can't, Blaine. I'd rather die myself."

Blaine blinks and looks away, deeper into the shadows. "So... what does that mean?"

"It means," Kurt sighs, defeated, and he sits down again. "It means, every day, I get up, and I have to fight the monster. Or the monster kills me. That's it. That's my life. That's all I have."

"I won't accept that," Blaine says.

"You have to. Please, for my sake?" Kurt pleads.

And Blaine knows, he knows Kurt well enough, he won't change Kurt's mind today. But that doesn't mean he'll abandon him to this fate. "Okay," Blaine says provisionally. "But I want you to promise me something."

"What's that?"

"That you'll still write to me and you'll still call me. That we'll stay in each other's lives, somehow."

"Blaine," Kurt says, pained.

"You promised me once," Blaine says firmly, stepping close and touching Kurt again on his good shoulder. "That you would never say goodbye to me. Maybe I can't help you defeat this thing, and maybe I can't keep you safe, but I still want to be able to support you, in any way I can. You're not alone with this. As long as I'm breathing, Kurt, you'll never be alone."

Kurt's shoulders slump and he breathes. "All right," he says, and Blaine hears relief. When Blaine reaches for him, Kurt goes willingly into Blaine's embrace, and he holds on tightly. "All right," he says again, more softly, and with such tender gratitude it almost sounds like hope. And for now, Blaine just holds him.

.

And in the end

Three hundred years later in an adjacent universe, a woman tends a bar on a shining spaceship as it warps through the far reaches of the galaxy. She has a way with people, a particular kindness and insight. Her name is Guinan, though she's gone by others, and she's a good listener.

The captain of the vessel, an old friend, comes in to see her tonight. She greets him with a smile as he sits in front of her. She reaches under the bar for the two hundred year old bottle of Rémy Martin cognac, and she pours a glass for her friend, and then one for herself. He looks tired.

"Long day, Jean-Luc?" she asks.

"Indeed," he says, and she can tell he's not in the mood to talk about it. When he's ready she will listen, but for now, she knows him. He'll want a story. And she knows a story about good people having bad days.

"Did I ever tell you about my friend Kurt Hummel?" she asks.

the end