Part 3 Answers:

On the flight home Kurt cried. He was devastated, and he no longer looked like Kurt. The determined, happy, lovely Kurt was gone, and left behind were a shadow of the boy who Blaine loved more than anything. The thing Kurt had been looking for, he never found, Blaine never knew what it was that Kurt had lost and needed back so badly.

Back home in the airport of Ohio, there were more tears waiting. Blaine's mother was crying hard, his father wasn't, but his face looked relieved somehow. Nothing looked the same as when they had left. Nothing was bright and promising, there were colors, sure, but they had toned down to a undecided mess.

Kurt's father was there, he was crying too, hugging Kurt. Kurt didn't seem to register him; he locked eyes with Blaine instead. There was a plea in them still, a plea to take him back out there, a restless prayer and an apology. An ''I'm so sorry Blaine, I'm sorry I couldn't keep my promises of a future together.'' Blaine was probably just imagining things.

Blaine cried too, not because he was home, but because he wasn't whole. Kurt had ripped a hole in him that he knew wouldn't heal.

***

If Blaine had known, he would never have gone away.

Burt Hummel had shown him Kurt's papers. They were endless bills, money spent on psychiatrists since the death of Elizabeth, but Kurt never became the same boy again, Burt said. He'd lost something the day his mother had left him, and he'd never found a way to find peace with it.

Kurt wasn't there now.

Blaine had a sinking feeling that it was the end to it all, that he wouldn't be seeing Kurt again. He regretted all the questions he couldn't ask, all the things he should have asked, but didn't, because it felt out of place or none of his business. He should have asked every single one of them maybe then he could have helped Kurt.

But that was just it, he thought he'd helped him reach his dream. But the thing Kurt was looking for had been himself all the way. No matter how far they travelled, how long they kept going, he would never have been able to find it.

Blaine looked up the color yellow. It meant intelligence and creativity. Blaine didn't feel like it really fit, because what he'd done hadn't been very clever, but he plastered a little note with the fact to his board anyway, like a tiny memory.

Kurt was in a better place now, a place that was right for him. Blaine felt so bad for him his chest ached. Some night he'd lay awake and think about what Kurt Hummel was doing. Was he happier now? Was he still searching?

Eventually the house beside them got sold to an old couple, Blaine wasn't curious when the truck pulled up, he just accepted that it was how it was, people got new neighbors all the time.

Rachel asked about Kurt, until she stopped, she moved on even if Blaine couldn't. He'd become another person than before they'd met. Kurt had taught him so much about himself, how to love, how not to. How to see and how to feel. He had been his first love, and he'd broken him and lifted him up. Shown him a little glimpse of the world, and how his own future would look. A promise for him to live differently, a promise for Blaine himself to never forget what they'd had, even if it had been all in his head, because first love only happen once, even if it ends.

If someone had told seventeen year old Blaine Anderson, that he would get his heart broken that same year, he wouldn't have believed you. Things like that simply didn't happen to him. But it did, and sometimes Blaine couldn't really remember if it had all been a vivid dream.

Kurt would forever be a memory to him. A happy one and an equally sad one, but a memory none the less that Blaine could look back at on quiet days, and think, 'once I met a boy who was truly brave, because his mind was a mess, and he dragged me under with him. We travelled the world for a while and he was smiling most of the time, though everything must have hurt. He kept everything inside because I didn't ask, and now it's too late to do so. But it doesn't matter anymore because we'll never meet again. I just hope he thinks of me as often as I think of him.'