Blaine was beautiful.

It wasn't like Kurt was a stranger to that fact. Looking at him, no matter what he was doing, he was beautiful. His skin was a color that not only seemed to make any room he walked into warmer, but it highlighted his dark features into a kind of glow. His curls when he didn't have them gelled spilled over and tangled with themselves and flopped around casually, setting shadows dancing off of them and onto Blaine's cheeks. When it was gelled, it was easier to see his eyes, sometimes golden, sometimes gray, sometimes a mixture of both and occasionally he'd see flecks of blue and green hiding amongst the twine-like colors. His eyelashes were long and rested just above the height of his cheekbones when he looked down, and his eyebrows were adorably descriptive as to his mood; most times they were somehow triangular, but when they were flat at all something was very, very wrong. And his lips were soft and supple and delicate while still being strong, and the words and music that came out of them were just as pleasing. His facial structure in general was amazing, and his body looked sculpted by some artist Kurt needed to thank a million times over; not because it was perfect, or buff, or built, but because it was strong and toned and realistic, and small, and bouncy and still in control.

There had been one time when Kurt had spent the night at Blaine's house because nobody else was going to be home, and they'd taken advantage of the solitude. That was a fantastic memory and one he relived more often than he should, but not just because of how intimate it had been in the physical way. They'd fallen asleep swaddled in blankets and hidden among pillows, clutching each other close. When Kurt had woken up, Blaine hadn't been there. He'd felt just the briefest twinge of panic before he spotted Blaine, standing in front of the window.

He hadn't bothered getting dressed. He was standing, his hands clasped behind his back loosely, his fingers intertwining and just twisting lazily among each other. The edges of the glass in the pane were frosted over, the tiny, intricate pattern fading quickly to show the outside world already covered in the white that was falling slowly from the sky. The world outside would have been dark with the remnants of night if not for the snow. The contrast that Blaine's body was thrown into letting the light from the frozen crystals collecting outside wash over him in the midst of a dark room set every contour of his body into half-shadow, outlined but still a glossy, familiar silhouette.

The air was still and every movement was so pronounced it stole Kurt's breath. Blaine seemed to know exactly when he woke up, because he turned to face him, his eyes standing out brightly against the lingeringly still light and lack of it that slipped and slid over his features. "It's snow," he had said, his voice low and rich but quiet, demanding the attention of everything that had ever been created and receiving it unequivocally. Not It has snowed, not It's snowing, but a statement that the temporarily placed white flakes drifting from a white sky were as beautiful as Kurt found Blaine.

That was part that Kurt remembered when he thought about that night; waking up in the middle of it, warm and cozy, staring right at the most breathtaking person to have ever existed. Kurt often found himself short of breath even recalling it.

That beauty had never left. Looking at Blaine now, the curls still draping themselves over his forehead and resting on his pillow, the blanket tucked up over top of his shoulder, his eyes shut and his lips parted just a little, he was still that same person. He was covered now, and barely any of him was barely visible, but even the lump under the covers were enough to bring a different lump back to Kurt's throat.

He really was the most utterly and heart-shatteringly beautiful person Kurt had ever met and he wished desperately he could ever hope to meet someone to challenge that title, because finding Blaine beautiful - and Kurt knew there were plenty of other words he could use instead but beautiful was the only one to really do him justice and that hardly came close - was not supposed to happen anymore.

He knew there were arguments against it. The whole "I can find them attractive without being attracted to them" that he and Blaine had used numerous times when describing women, but the truth was that Kurt could apply that honestly to everyone but Blaine. Blaine was always the anomaly, and even with cuts and bruises and medication to take and sleep to catch up on, he was remarkable, he was radiant.

"Kurt?" Rachel's voice called, the sound of the curtain pulling back behind him accompanying it. "Are you ready to go?"

"Yeah," he said. Putting Blaine to sleep had been easy. He was exhausted anyways, and it was late. He'd stayed up longer than he should have talking to Burt and then Cooper and then Sam, and it had worn him out; so Kurt had tucked him in like he used to when he'd had surgery on his eye, and had hummed him a lullaby. The song hadn't even registered with him, but he knew subconsciously it would lull him to sleep. It wasn't until Blaine had already started doing his half-silent snores that Kurt had recognized the tune as Blackbird. "Yeah, I just... wanted to make sure he got to sleep."

"He's asleep now," Rachel pointed out. "We need to go home. Santana can take care of him."

"Rachel?"

"Yes?"

"Do you think he'd hate me if I read the rest of the journal?"

Rachel sighed. "I have no clue what the deal is with this journal, Kurt, but though I think Blaine would be really angry, I'm positive that he will never hate you."

"Good." Kurt bent down and opened the drawer in the nightstand and pulled out the book he'd seen Blaine stuff in hastily, thinking nobody would see, probably so he could hide it better later. The guilt and disappointment in himself came back as soon as his fingers brushed the cover, but he knew he had to finish reading it. If he left off where he had forever, he'd be stuck thinking like Blaine had, warping good things into bad things and being perpetually sad. He needed to know what Santana knew... he loved Blaine. He was his best friend. You're supposed to love best friends, right?

Not the way you love him.

Kurt silenced the voice in his head but he couldn't silence Rachel. "Kurt..." she warned.

"Let him be mad at me," Kurt said, finally tearing his eyes away from the sleeping figure. Rachel was looking at him with pity and something else he recognized but only just as worry; she was good at masking that. Nonetheless, she held out a hand for him to take, and he took it. Her grasp was firm and she squeezed his palm gently, so he squeezed back, and then she led him away. Kurt couldn't held glancing back. Blaine hadn't moved, but the way Kurt viewed him had. It was a whole new kind of beautiful mixed with the old. A sad kind.

Santana saw him carrying the journal. She was sitting on the couch, flipping through TV channels restlessly, a bored expression on her face, when she caught sight of the book in his hands. Her eyes flickered from it to him to it again and then back up. By the time he stood in front of the door, she'd done the change more times than necessary, and looked more forlorn each time.

Kurt waited for her to say something, but she didn't, and so he said, "Bye, Santana."

She pursed her lips and then licked them, as if she were going to respond; but they waited much longer than they needed to, and she still didn't talk. And so Rachel waved awkwardly and then opened the door, sliding through it and pulling Kurt with her.

Right before it closed, he heard her whisper, "Bye," back to them - or maybe just to him.

Kurt was staying late for a collaboration project in one of the classes he didn't have with Rachel. Her meeting with her professor had gone well, the one she'd finished with right before the accident happened (Kurt still needed a new truck but he was refusing to let his dad help out out of guilt) where he'd asked her to re-try the song she'd had to record and told her he'd gotten her an audition for a new musical that was supposed to be respectable if not modest. Oddly enough, his advice had been similar to Santana's in a lot of ways, more about becoming a character than just playing one... she'd been more willing to listen when the person talking had an influence on her academic future, though.

But she sat at home, going over her scales once again, looking at the mirror and going over the information on the audition she'd been given yet again. With each tick of the clock she went up a note, and when it got so high not even she could hit it she went down until she couldn't reach again. It got boring after a while, but Rachel just liked hearing her voice; nobody else tended to listen to her, so someone had to, even if it was just her.

Kurt's phone rang.

It had been vibrating constantly with new texts since a little after she got home and it had been about two hours, and she was fed up with it. She immediately stopped her singing in the middle of a high F (ah, what memories that note brought back) and answered it. "Hello, Kurt's phone."

"Rachel?"

The voice on the other line was strained and breathless and just the slightest bit hoarse, and Rachel had a feeling the caller had been shouting for help for quite a long time. "Blaine?"

"Where's Kurt?"

"He's still at school, he left his phone here," Rachel said. "Have you been the one texting?"

"Yes," Blaine responded, and there was a sound like shuffling and Blaine swore through what was obviously gritted teeth.

"What happened?" Rachel asked, her brow furrowing. "You sound hurt. Did you take your meds?"

"I was going to," Blaine answered. "I was trying to find the bottle but I couldn't see and everything was blurry and I got dizzy and I... fell." He sounded so sheepish admitting it Rachel almost wanted to pet him. "And I can't get up."

"So you've fallen and you can't get up?"

"I'd be the perfect new image for a revival of that commercial," he sighed. "I need... um... help. Help! That's right. Sorry, I blanked there for a minute."

"Blaine, hold your hand out in front of you." She needed to know how many fingers he saw, just to get a basic idea of how bad off his sight was.

"Um... I can't."

"Why not?"

"I kind of... landed on my arm wrong and I can't... move... it..."

"Oh. Oh, sweetie," Rachel cried out, jumping to her feet. "I'll be there in ten minutes."

"Don't hang up!" He was begging now. "Don't hang up, I'm scared."

"I won't hang up," Rachel promised, sliding her free arm into her jacket and shifting her phone from one hand to the next so she could mirror the movement on the other side. "I'll stay on the phone the whole way there, okay? I'll be there."

"It hurts."

"I know, sweetie, I know," she crooned. "Can you tell me how you landed?"

"No." The frustration had made his voice thick and she could tell tears were coming. "I can't - I can't see, and everything is weird and half of me is numb and I c-can't -"

"Shh, Blaine, it's alright," Rachel soothed, bolting out the door and barely remembering to lock it behind her. "You're alright. Can you tell me what parts of your body are numb?"

"Um... um, my right arm," Blaine started. She'd never heard him use the word 'um' so much. "And my right shoulder, and I can barely feel my neck. And my back is all stiff and it's hard to move my legs. I think I'm bleeding but I don't know where from and I can't see it. I can't see anything. I can't see, I can't see, I can't -"

"You're going to be perfectly fine," Rachel assured him, doubting her words even as they came out. "You're going to be okay, I swear it. I'm getting a cab now." So that was a lie, she still wasn't out of the building, but she was close to it, on the last flight of stairs before she could rush out the door. "Why do you think your back is stiff?"

"I d-don't know!"

"Calm, Blaine, I need you to stay calm for me," she reminded, almost plead with, him. "I know it's hard and you're scared, but I need you to stay calm."

"Santana won't pick up her phone," Blaine wept, and Rachel realized that yes, he was weeping, but she didn't have any clue why. "She just won't. And Kurt wasn't answering and I know why now but I've been shouting for help and nobody can get to me and I can't move."

So he was scared. That was a perfectly normal reaction to his situation, but she'd never thought Blaine would break down like this. Blaine was strong and sure and certain of his abilities and even if he was wrong sometimes he was respectful. He seemed to have deteriorated in the span of just a few minutes from simply ashamed to terrorized. What had him so frightened?

"I know, I know, I'm coming," Rachel told him, honestly this time as she slipped inside the cab. She held the phone away from her ear for a moment and covered the mouthpiece to tell the driver the address and fling some money over the seat at him to cover the short distance, and when she brought it back Blaine was full-out panicking.

"Rachel, Rachel, I don't know what to do, I just want to be able to take my medicine, I want to go to sleep but I want to do my homework and I want to go home but this is supposed to be home but it's not because I'm alone here and home is where being alone doesn't happen -"

"That's not true," she interrupted him. "Alone happens at home sometimes, but in a real home you never get lonely. Alone and lonely are two vastly different things. Right now, you're lonely. But you aren't alone, I swear. I'm coming."

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry -"

"Hey, shh sweetie, don't be sorry, it's not your fault -"

"Yes it is, it all is, it's all my fault, I'm so sorry -"

"All you did was fall down -"

"I was the one that distracted Kurt when he was driving -"

"It was the other driver's fault -"

"- and if I hadn't done that I wouldn't have a concussion -"

"You had no way of changing what happened -"

"- and then I wouldn't have scared everyone so much -"

"You're scaring me right now -"

"- and then I wouldn't have fallen -"

"Falling wasn't your fault, I promise -"

"- and then you wouldn't have to bother with me -"

"You're not a bother, Blaine -"

"- and waste your time on me and I would be able to take care of myself -"

"Sometimes even the best of us can't do that, it's not something personal, we all go through it -"

"- and I just want to sleep and sleep -"

"It's okay to be tired -"

"- and never wake up."

"What?"

The driver was looking at her in the mirror as if she were insane, but she didn't care. "I don't ever want to wake up," Blaine cried, "Waking up hurts, and falling asleep hurts, and breathing hurts and crying about it hurts and there's so much hurt everywhere -"

"Who's hurting you?" Rachel murmured. Had someone been bullying him somehow? Who would do that? It was only his third week at NYADA and he'd just been in an accident.

"Not me," Blaine sobbed, "Not just me, them. Everyone. Everyone hurts and I - I c-can't stop it and that's what hurts the m-most is that I w-want t-to help but I can't -"

"We're here," the driver told her, and she was out of the vehicle faster than he could give her her change, and flying into the building, her hair whipping behind her.

"I'm almost there, Blaine," Rachel assured him, racing for the stairs. "I'm in the building, I'm coming up."

"I can't unlock the d-door."

"I've got the key," she reminded him. As she jumped the stairs two at a time, never more glad for her rigorous morning exercise routine, she could feel her heartbeat accelerating more than it already was. "I'm almost there, I'm on your floor. I'm coming, I'm coming," she added, when a choking and/or tearing sound crossed the line. She sprinted down the hallway and stomped to a halt outside the door to their apartment, shoving the key into the lock and twisting it forcefully, flinging the door open and tossing the phone aside. "Blaine?!" she called out.

"Rachel."

"I'm here, right here!" She wished she could keep the tremor out of her voice. She yanked the key out of the lock and slammed the door, dropping the key and discarding her jacket as she tried to find his voice. She didn't see him anywhere in the small apartment; he didn't seem to be around, but she knew he was somewhere, she'd heard his voice. "I came, I came, I'm right here," she blabbered.

"Rachel, I'm in the k-kitchen -"

"Oh!" So that's why she couldn't see him. She turned and lurched forward, jumping through the small entryway into their tiny, cramped kitchen. She'd barely stepped into it when she saw him, and her breath caught in her throat and brought tears to her eyes immediately. "Blaine."

He'd landed painfully, and that was more than obvious. His right arm was underneath him, twisted further than it ever should have been, his elbow caught between his back and the cold, tiled floor. She could see why his back was stiff; he must have landed hard enough to have had his elbow dig into his spine, the lower and more sensitive part at that, and his legs were indeed completely still as they lay in front of him. But his shoulder's stitches, the ones that were supposed to take care of the cut from the glass wound he'd gotten in the accident, had apparently failed, and the entire sleeve from that point on was drenched in red; that same red trickled down and pooled on the floor beneath him. His shoulder was out of place, too, and she hoped that the wrong set of the bones was simply a dislocation and not a bone having broken and stuck itself totally out of place.

But his face was the worst part. Never mind that his lower lip was the tiniest bit bloody and his right eye was swelling, he was sobbing, and red, and gasping for breath, and chanting her name under his breath again and again, his hair, finally gelled how he liked for the day, starting to soak up some of the crimson from the floor. His face was covered in spots of blood and trails of tears and was ashen in color; he didn't move his neck, so he couldn't see her enter, though he could hear her just fine; the moment she said his name, he gasped and spasmed with the arm that had been holding his phone and sent it flying.

"Shh, shh," she dropped to her knees, trying to keep her clothes and hands away from the ever-growing pool. "Blaine, I'm here. I'm going to take care of you, you'll be alright."

"I'm sorry, I'm s-sorry, I'm so done I'm so sorry just let me sleep I want to sleep I want to die -"

"You're not going to die and you can't fall asleep on me now," Rachel held firm the words, though her voice shook when it carried them. "I need you to stay awake and tell me where it hurts."

But she learned he couldn't tell her. At least half an hour passed before she figured it out; he was in so much pain his body had numbed itself and had basically shut off the parts of his brain that could recognize where the pain came from, and he was so far gone and terrified he couldn't tell her even if he'd been fine. And she had no clue why he was so scared. He'd been remarkably put together the entire time he'd been in New York; save for his fights with Santana, which anyone would expect, and the occasional but understandable exhaustion, he'd been handling everything really well, or so it had seemed. Why was this his breaking point? What was so profound in this occurrence in his mind that triggered such a huge response?

She was almost too busy trying to figure out how to help to remember to feel.

Almost, but not quite.

Her hands shook and her voice quavered and her hair was brushed out of her face several times and it took forever for her to just sit Blaine upright and by then they were both crying, though Rachel was for more in control. Every time she touched him Blaine flinched, and though it must have only caused him more pain he'd only grow more silent and yet louder by comparison. When he could no longer hold in a yelp, he wailed it, tears streaming down and mingling with the blood she tried to slow by wrapping a dish towel around it.

She sat him up so his back was on the cupboards and started cleaning him. She cleaned his lip and his eye and washed his face (not that it mattered, it was shining with fresh tears within moment) and had him practice wiggling his feet and moving his legs. She had him turn his head this way and that, using his neck, and checked his sight with the fingers trick. She held up three. His answer was one, and when she inhaled sharply, he begged her forgiveness and said he could do better.

Every word out of his mouth sent a knife twisting more and more angrily in the pit of her stomach.

He was shaking so badly by the time she got to looking at his shoulder, and had lost so much blood, she was sure he would pass out before he calmed down, and the thought was even more heartbreaking than even this was. Rachel was really clueless; she had no idea what to do. It was fairly easy to tell by the faint amount of swelling around the shoulder that it was just a dislocation, but she'd be damned before she fixed it herself; and the cut on his shoulder was ghastly. Open and raw, she saw more of the insides of a human body than she ever thought she would outside of school, and it repulsed her knowing that the thick, sticky liquid she washed out of Blaine's hair along with his gel was the thing that kept him alive and yet was leaving him.

Blaine's cries grew weaker and weaker until at last he closed his eyes.

The first thing Rachel did was scream and they flew open again. "DON'T!" she bellowed, "DON'T EVER CLOSE YOUR EYES ON ME!"

He couldn't even manage a response.

The dislocation had been so violent and sudden it had ripped the stitches - or rather, from the look of it, ripped what the stitches were sewn into. It was truly horrific and Rachel fought down the urge to vomit several hundred times before she managed to get him to his feet.

As soon as he was standing upright - more like being carried by her while dragging his feet - the front door opened. "Anderson, I'm home."

"San," Blaine muttered, his speech slurred and barely even spoken for how soft it was. Rachel was ready to cry out the heart that had somehow become lodged in her windpipe.

"Santana!" Rachel called, desperation controlling her voice, "You have to help!"

Santana was in the room before she finished her sentence and went as pale as a slab of pure marble when she saw Blaine. Santana had facial expressions for shock, and hurt, and anger, and fear, and guilt - but Rachel had only ever seen her the way she was now once before, and that was when Finn had asked her why she didn't just come out of the closet and she'd been standing in the hallway, incapable of moving, or speaking, or doing anything.

This was the same look, but she looked ready to have literally used nothing but her hand to saw a man in half. She was livid. But Rachel couldn't find it in her to care.

"He fell," Rachel explained. "I've been trying to help, but we need to get him to a hospital. He lost so much blood -"

Santana's eyes flickered to the pool on the floor and she shuddered, and then said, "Let's go."

Could he not catch a break for one minute?!

One minute. That would be great, just one minute of no pain or worry or concerns, just existing in a state of wonderful, oblivious contentment. Could he not just have that?!

Although, in all honestly, he did feel a bit like that now. It was so difficult to focus on everything around him that it made it seem like there was nothing to focus on; and though he was cold, and tired, and felt like screaming in agony every time Santana accidentally jostled his shoulder, things weren't so bad. Kurt was safe. He wasn't sure about happy, but Kurt was safe. That thought tended to make everything seem brighter.

But, to answer his own question, no, he couldn't get a break, not even for a minute. He hadn't meant to fall. Anyone could have seen that. He really hadn't meant to fall. He'd gotten home after school while Santana was starting her shift at Callbacks, and he'd been due to take his medicine an hour ago. He hadn't brought it with him to NYADA, he'd forgotten, but he thought an hour wouldn't make a difference. By the time he got to the kitchen, he was so dizzy he was incapable of telling where he was, if he hadn't known already he was in the kitchen - he tried reaching up for a cabinet and the next thing he knew the counter was slamming into his face and he was crumpling on the ground in a blaze of hurt.

And now he was - somewhere. Outside, possibly, because there was wind. Or maybe that was his imagination. Santana and Rachel's voices still hovered around his head but he couldn't make sense of what they were saying.

This wasn't happening. It was bad enough that he'd gotten hurt in the first place; he didn't need this. None of them needed this. How was he supposed to stop being a burden to others if things like this kept happening?

Wait, the wind was gone. There were quiet but a few loud things here, but he couldn't tell what they were. People. There were people. Sad people? He couldn't tell. Why were there sad people? Something had happened.

He was being jostled again. He heard Santana apologize like she had the last few times, but it didn't feel like her hands that were moving him. A whimper passed his lips... right? He couldn't tell. He couldn't see, he was blind, he couldn't see, no, he could see but he couldn't understand, that was it. He could see but he couldn't understand.

And everything was fading.

"You had really better be kidding me."

"I'm not."

"Santana, you had really better be kidding me."

"For the last time, Lips McGee, I'm not." Santana tapped her heel against the floor in rapid beats, her knee bobbing up and down repeatedly as her heeled boots propelled it.

"But he's okay, right?"

"He will be." Santana was really tired of that question being asked and the fact that she could only ever answer in the future tense. She wanted to say yes. God, did she ever want to say yes more than she did now? But she couldn't because he wasn't. All she had was hope he would be.

"That's not what I asked."

"I know what you asked," Santana hissed, "And I know what I answered. No, he's not okay. I don't know how long it will take him to be okay. I don't know how he's going to become okay. But I know that unless God himself pokes his head through the cloud and welcomes him home I will not let him get any worse."

Sam's breath was labored on the other line. "Where's Kurt?"

"On his way. I probably won't be able to convince them to let Blaine come home again this time, though. He'll be stuck here overnight."

"He's going to hate that."

"And he's not going to say anything."

They both knew it was true. Blaine would hate not being able to go home. Blaine would hate the stark-white walls and the silence that reigned in his room, and he would hate that people were worrying about him again, and he would hate that he couldn't just tell people he was fine without lying. He'd hate it all. And he wouldn't say anything. He'd hate that, too. He'd hate his cowardice.

But he's not cowardly. Santana sighed, and Rachel looked at her with a semi-supportive, semi-"support me" smile. Santana smiled back and patted her knee reassuringly.

From what Rachel had told her, Blaine had been a wreck. He'd said he wanted to die at least twice, and probably more when Rachel was too focused to hear him, and he'd cried and sobbed and said he was scared and talked like nobody would listen. Those had been Rachel's words: "He talked like he didn't think anybody would listen." Rachel had said she'd never seen him so broken.

Santana loathed herself for understanding more than Rachel did. She loathed herself for having read that journal and knowing why Blaine had broken down. If she'd witnessed it herself she might understand more, but she hadn't. And he loathed herself for that.

But mostly she loathed herself for not answering the damn phone.

He'd called her, and texted her, and she'd sent a few texts back that said she was at work and her phone was about to die and couldn't talk. She'd been worried, but her phone had died shortly - which she didn't discover until they were at the hospital (Santana picked her charger out of her bag and plugged it in) - and she'd assumed that he'd fixed whatever was wrong and was fine.

She was wrong. So very, very wrong

A passage from his journal came flooding back when Sam said, "Yeah, you're right. Not unless you force him."

Right:
Didn't say anything

Wrong:
Didn't say anything
Ignored their questions
Hurt people's feelings
Made Sam angry
Did something to make Tina angry too
Made everyone angry
Why do I make people angry
Stop making people angry
Stop it
You're making yourself angry
CAN'T YOU DO ANYTHING, BLAINE
Stop shouting
Stop crying
God damn it you're supposed to be getting better
Couldn't get better
Cried
Shouted
Cut
Didn't say anything
Didn't say anything
I need to say something
Didn't say anything

Santana remembered that one page more than the others for some reason. That and the page where he'd first mentioned cutting, which was, thanks to what she'd gleaned in their fight yesterday, when he'd started. This was after that, several pages after, beyond even what Kurt read. The passages did get slightly better over time and he did start marking the days it had been since he last cut. At the end of the journal it had been four and a half weeks.

So two weeks before moving to New York, he'd sliced his skin and watched himself bleed yet again, and he'd felt the horrible sense of relief and that build-up of tension he went on about over and over again in the passages.

Santana had seen Blaine shed a tear maybe twice since knowing him; once was when he had an eye injury, and that wasn't actually crying, just excess tears falling from his injured eye because it was injured, and the second time had been when she'd seen him coming out of the boy's bathroom maybe a week after the break-up and was wiping at his eyes. She was sure Kurt had seen him cry more often than that, but not nearly as often as he put in the journal.

In almost every page since the Chandler incident - yes, that far back - he'd put 'Cried' on the 'Wrong' list.

"Sam?" She hadn't meant to use his actual name, but she was suddenly gad she had - it made it clear that the topic was changed and her seriousness had increased with it, and she heard his breath catch before he asked:

"Yeah?"

"Were you ever mad at Blaine?"

"What, like, ever?"

"No, not ever, because I know there have been times when you have been," Santana tried to clarify. "I mean, maybe a month before graduating. Were you and Tina and maybe some others mad at him?"

"Um... no, not really." Sam thought for a moment and she let him. "But now that you mention it, maybe it came off that way. We were having a group discussion about songs and Blaine said we could all choose, and when we asked his opinion he really didn't want to give it, and we kinda pressed him for it. He was our male lead, so it was kinda odd that he didn't want to have his say, but we just assumed he was being nice and so we kept bugging him about it. And then... I think he got upset by it, but he didn't say anything, you know how he is. He said it didn't matter anyway, we wouldn't like his song choices, and that we could go ahead and pick. And so we did, but we were so busy with it and he wasn't trying to be included we ended up ignoring him without meaning to. But no, we weren't mad. Why, did he say something?"

"No," Santana answered the last question, mentally categorizing all the information she'd just been given and making a split-second decision. "At least, not to me. Or anyone else. To himself."

"Did he, like, write it in a diary or something?"

"Yup," Santana answered.

Sam groaned. "You read his diary? He has a diary?"

"It's a journal, really, and it's just lists of things he does right and wrong every day." She looked at Rachel out of the corner of her eye and saw she'd gained the brunette's attention. Good. "And it's... Sam, if I tell you a secret, like, a really, really big secret, do you promise not to tell anyone else?"

Sam thought about it and she let him. "Is it something bad about Blaine?"

"Yes."

"Then don't tell me," Sam decided. "If he wrote it in a private journal and it's really that huge, he doesn't want me to know. So long as he knows that I'm here to listen when he needs to talk about it, I'm good."

"But that's just it, he doesn't know that," Santana said. "He's afraid he'd taking everyone for granted all the time. He doesn't think he's worth the effort of listening to."

"What?" Sam scoffed. "That's crazy."

"No, what's crazy is that he'd cut himself to make himself feel better."

Rachel made a noise similar to that of a cat drowning and clamped a hand over her mouth when everyone looked their direction. Santana loathed herself again. He had told her he didn't want to be told, and it was Blaine's secret to tell... but Sam was, besides Kurt, Blaine's best friend, and even if he was playing football for the University of Kentucky so far away he would still "be there" in a sense. Sam, on the other line, had fallen silent.

"I don't believe you."

"I'm sorry," Santana whispered the words, struck at the fact that she was saying them and that she needed to. Why had she done that? This was major, this was personal, not the kind of thing to do over a phone call, let alone when it wasn't her secret. "I shouldn't have -"

"Where?"

"What?"

"Where did he... because it's not his hips, or his knees, or his wrists, but I've seen all of those when he changed in the locker room during gym. Where?"

"I - I shouldn't -"

"Santana."

"His ankles." That ridiculous fashion sense he had, especially lately with how he'd taken to wearing actual normal pants and his usual high socks, seemed awful to her now. Before it had been unsightly, but now it was just awful in every sense. Underneath those socks - and why would the doctors check there? No wonder they'd let him come home - were dozens of scars, scabs, thick and thin and deep and light, all remains of what he used to do.

"Does... does he still -" That was when she realized Sam was crying and that was when she realized she really should not have done what she did.

"No."

"How... how long since..."

"Five weeks, if we assume the date in the journal was correct."

"So he's... better? He's okay?"

I really hate that question. "He will be." I really hate that answer.

"B-But that's not what I asked!"

"I don't know how to answer what you asked."

"Then why did you make me ask it?"

Why had she made him ask it? She didn't know. "I have to go." And she hung up.

"Santana Diabla Lopez!" Rachel whisper-shrieked, punching her shoulder forcefully, and Santana winced when her fist made contact and glared at Rachel.

"Don't hit me," she ordered, her voice low.

"That is not how you should have handled that situation!"

"Do not hit me."

"I won't hit you again, fine!" Rachel slammed her fist down on the chair and made everyone in the room jump and look at them. "But what the hell was that?!"

"The truth."

"A truth that doesn't belong to you!" Rachel was crying, too, Santana realized with a jolt. It wasn't the first time she'd seen it happen, but Berry didn't usually cry so angrily, did she? She gave over to the dejection and didn't fight back. But she was fighting back now. "You're not supposed to tell truths that belong to other people. That was Blaine's truth, Blaine's secret, and Blaine's friend you told it to over the phone. That's not okay!"

"I know."

"Then why did you do it?"

Santana looked her square in the eyes and watched her shrink back. "I don't know."