Title: Keeping the Balance (Interlude)
Author: sun_and_rain
Rating: PG-13
Warning: deals with issues of consent, homophobia, and memory loss
Summary: No one recognized the name when Kurt first spoke it–a name he'd found buried somewhere in his dreams–but he couldn't shake the feeling that it was important: "Blaine". Whatever had been taken from them had something to do with Blaine.

Chapter Summary: One last memory.

A/N: Yep. I'm still alive. I'm just absolutely terrible at juggling life-outside-college with fandom. I promise I will finish this fic! And probably very soon. In the meantime, here's a little something to tide you over.

First Interlude: But Wait, There's More!

"Just tell us what's wrong. We can help!"

Of course David had found him.

The words shoved and pressed against his lips valiantly, but Erickson's Command rendered him artificially silent. As if the Warblers knew what they had gotten into—what they'd gotten him into—anyway. He shook his head. "No."

"You're being childish."

"I said no, David," he snapped. "And you can tell Wes to stop making you ask."

"Running away doesn't solve anything, Blaine."

Of course it didn't, not for Dalton. But for Blaine...

They'll find you. They'll always find you. That primal voice that had awoken inside the Evorsor's office clawed its way around his ribs. He shivered.

"Please. We're just worried."

Blaine rolled his eyes, testing the next window. Also locked. "Then alert the faculty. I'm sure they'll stop me."

"Blaine—"

"I can't," he said suddenly. I can't tell you. I can't do this. I can't be here anymore. He leaned heavily against the third window (also locked), a desperate, screaming denial filling his veins. "I…" Words wouldn't come. They choked on their way up his esophagus and he knew he'd said he'd spy on Erickson for them, and he knew Wes thought they could protect him, but they couldn't. They didn't understand what Erickson was capable of. They didn't understand what Blaine was capable of.

" I'm sorry, I just… I can't."

David stared at him hard. "If you do this, you put all of us in danger."

Blaine knew.

If I stay, he wanted so desperately to say, I put a whole race in danger.

David had a determined glint in his eye that Blaine recognized.

"Blaine," he started—and Blaine sucked in a breath.

"Don't. Please. Please."

"Blaine." No, not his one way out, no, not his one way out—

"David, don't—!"

"Stay."

He couldn't leave.

He could kill him. He could rip him apart, he could shatter the window, he could scream. He breathed, fast and huge, battling hyperventilation with a desperate, forced calm.

"That's not fair," he tried to reason. "You know that's not fair."

David was steel. "If it's the only way to keep you here, then I think it's the fairest thing in the world."

"Wes told you to, didn't he?" It burst out of his mouth. "That's why he sent you this time, instead of coming to talk to me himself." He pressed his head to his hands, and hyperventilation won out. "Plotting bastard."

"He's worried about you—"

"If he were so worried, he would be helping me leave!" Blaine snapped, nerves exposed wires.

"You don't know what's out there, Blaine."

"But I know what's in here! I—Maybe you could, maybe you, or Wes, or Jeff, or—god, maybe Jeremiah could, I don't know! But I—" He wasn't making sense, he knew he wasn't making sense, the words caught in Command and stoppered inside his throat for eternity. You can't tell anyone. David, so smart, and Wes, so strategic, maybe they could help him figure out how to turn Erikson's horrible plan on its head if only he could speak to them, could tell them, but he couldn't.

"You're being selfish."

He fought his own tongue. No words. "I can't—do it—David. I can't. "

He didn't know. David just thought he was afraid of Erickson, but that wasn't it. He was trapped.

"I can't."

Erickson was going to destroy him.

Something of the words he had trapped inside of him must have shown in his eyes, because David suddenly stepped away from him. Betrayal and disappointment upset his usually-comforting brown eyes.

"Don't stay, then," he said lowly. "Go."

And, suddenly, there was air. Blaine wanted to collapse with relief.

"…Thank you," he breathed.

"I'm not doing it for you," David suddenly scowled. Blaine swallowed. "I'm doing it for us."

For a brief moment, Blaine felt a pang of guilt. Escaping put all of the Warblers in danger. They'd be the first suspects in aiding his escape: the commons were locked, and he couldn't have gotten in without help. Everyone knew David and Wes were his friends.

But he had to do this. It was his only option.

He checked another window: bingo. Unlocked. Blaine pushed it open, and looked down.

"Just don't come back," David suddenly said, that well-worn concern beginning to color his voice again. "If you leave and they find you trying to come back…" He didn't need to finish the sentence. Blaine knew what Dalton would do to him if they found him again. "Just… Just don't come back."

Swallowing thickly, he looked back at David. This was probably the last time they would ever see each other.

Impulsively, he grabbed the other boy and hugged him tightly, pouring as much comfort and appreciation as he could out of his hands and into David.

"I never planned to," he said honestly.

Then, he let go. Went up to the window.

And fell.

It felt like flying. It felt like freedom. He reveled in it, before instinct moved his fingers to search for the edges of reality and space.

Then two things happened at once.

The first: Space ripped through his fingers as he called on all of his strength to open a doorway. He spun through it, the light of the portal blinding him.

The second: a foreign voice suddenly ripped through every wall of his mind, shattering his defenses like so much glass.

Help me! Someone, both of them, said/thought/shouted.

And then he hit the ground.