"We don't have the money," Kurt explained to Rachel for the thousandth time, running his hands through his hair and trying to stand still in front of the mirror. "We can't fly out there, we're broke as Santana's cold, shriveled heart."

"That's not funny," said a voice from the other side of the door, and just for a moment Kurt's spirits lifted. He knew that voice. Blaine slid the door open and entered, Santana in tow behind him, raised eyebrows and a sour expression on her face. "Santana's heart isn't cold, shriveled or broken."

"I'm not sure about cold," Santana mused. "And you two aren't broke, Hummel. You work at Vogue."

"I know where I work," Kurt snapped. "I also know that I have today and tomorrow off and then have to go back. I have class -"

"Nope," Blaine interrupted, smiling proudly. "I gave the professors our notifications of absences and got the information on what they're going over, and you'll be back by Friday, don't worry."

"What's going on?" Rachel asked, turning to face them the same time Santana closed the door.

"Anderson got us plane tickets," Santana explained.

Both Rachel and Kurt stared for a moment. "What?" Kurt asked. "Plane tickets?"

"To Ohio," Blaine went on, noticing their lack of enthusiasm and letting it kill his smile. "To see your dad. I mean, we'll have to come back Thursday night, but if we leave now like we should we'd get there really soon." He looked around for approval. Santana nodded, but aside from that, the other occupants of the room stared at him blankly. "To see your dad..." Blaine added again, unsure of the words and barely letting them cross his lips. His eyebrows furrowed.

"To see my dad," Kurt repeated slowly.

"To see your dad," Blaine confirmed. Santana rolled her eyes.

"You have a concussion," Rachel said.

"So?" Blaine asked. "It's no big deal, I'll take my medication before we get on the plane."

"But won't it hurt? With the air pressure and stuff?" Kurt nodded in agreement with his roommate.

"Um..." Blaine looked between the two of them. "I don't think so, but even if it does it doesn't matter that much. We'll still get there -"

"It does too matter, Hobbit," Santana growled. "Just because it's you doesn't mean it's unimportant."

"I'm not... I'm not saying that," Blaine replied.

Kurt really looked at him. His cheeks, which had been flushed just moments before, were loosing color now, and his eyes, which had been gleaming with anticipation, seemed to slowly lessen their luster as they averted to the ground. His hair was gelled carefully, and though over the past week Kurt had grown even more impossibly fond of his unruly curls, he was glad to see something so normal again, so commonplace. But the bags under Blaine's eyes and the way his hands, which were lingering uncertainly in front of his pockets, trembled just slightly were not normal and he hoped they wouldn't become commonplace.

"Give it a rest, Santana," Kurt said, moving to his side and away from Rachel. Blaine seemed to grow both stronger and weaker the nearer he drew towards him - he held himself a little higher, but it seemed to take more out of him. "He's comfortable with it, so it can't be that detrimental. And I want to see my dad."

Rachel pursed her lips and Santana crossed her arms. When Kurt finally stood beside Blaine, he wrapped his arm around his waist automatically, and Blaine perked up visibly, as if he'd been handed the cure to the common cold. He was cold and clammy and Kurt could feel it through his shirt. He fought back flinching when he realized what it was and started wondering about what could have caused it - but Santana broke through his thoughts. "I'm getting really tired of giving in to you guys," she snapped.

"You could agree with us in the first place," Kurt pointed out, and she glared at him.

"You sure you're alright?" Kurt asked, for what was probably the millionth time. "You really seem kind of sick."

"I'm fine, I promise," Blaine told him.

"Really?" Kurt pressed. The airport was swarmed with people; on cellphones, on laptops, playing games, doing work, reading books, texting people, getting food, talking to their friends and family - and they were worlds away from the cabin of the airplane. Boarding, Blaine had seemed ill as it was, and Kurt had marked it down to nervousness that was entirely appropriate. But as they got closer and closer to takeoff, Blaine fidgeted more and more, and Kurt was beginning to get desperate to know what was bothering him. With Rachel talking to Santana across the isle, Kurt thought it safe to insist on discussing the issue in hushed tones.

"Yeah, I'm just... kind of tired," Blaine admitted loosely, shrugging it off as if it were no big deal. It was further than he'd gotten before when asked.

"How much sleep did you get last night?" Kurt pried. "I know you went home late, but not that late."

Blaine shook his head.

"Blaine," Kurt pressed, twining their fingers together.

"None," Blaine let he word loose with a gust of breath and then bit the inside of his cheek, ashamed. "I stayed up trying to get my parents to agree to buying the tickets." He blinked slowly. "I couldn't convince them and they hung up on me. I bought them myself, with my own money that they 'give' me monthly... if Santana didn't work we wouldn't be eating for the next week."

"Oh, Blaine," Kurt sighed. If his heart had been capable of doing so it would have been weeping, like he wanted to, and would have cracked right down the middle. "Shh, it's alright. Come here, sleep on me."

"I'm sorry," Blaine murmured, but he leaned to the side and into Kurt anyway. "I'm sorry."

"Please don't be sorry," Kurt asked of him, massaging the back of his neck gently as his boyfriend nestled into the crook of his shoulder. "There's nothing to be sorry about, you did nothing wrong."

"Why don't they love me, Kurt?"

Blaine wasn't asking because he wanted Kurt to tell him they did. And he wasn't asking because he wanted them to love him, although he undoubtedly desired it. He wasn't asking because he was naive and couldn't figure it out. No, Blaine wasn't like that. If he wanted Kurt to say someone loved him, he'd say "I love you." If he wanted his parents to love him, he'd work a million times as hard as he should have to make them do so. If he were naive he wouldn't understand that they didn't love him in the first place. Blaine was asking because he needed to know, because he needed to comprehend the answer, and because Kurt was the panacea for him; anything brought to Kurt was made better in the end, at least in his eyes, and so he brought forth the question he'd been holding back for what Kurt was sure was far too long.

But how was Kurt supposed to answer?

Blaine was alive in his arms, breathing, blood rushing around, muscles flexing, bones moving, cells living and dying every millisecond. And he was the best thing that could have possible been alive in his arms. He was kind; considerate; generous; selfless; positive; supportive; loyal... to everyone but himself. He was a good human being, not flawless but good, not perfect but stunning. He was things others were not and others were things he was not, but that could be said of every living creature on the planet, and possibly in the universe. He'd been created distantly from stardust and someday his remnants would disappear and create something new and Kurt's name would be beside his on the headstone and their children would put flowers on their grave every year.

So why would two people who should have been the first and last ones to adore him so much it physically hurt hate him? How could they find the lack of humanity?

But they weren't inhuman. Inhumane, yes, but not inhuman. Parents who hate their children aren't monsters. All the people that are called monsters are just that - people. They're not really good people, but they're not aliens. You can't just call someone something that dehumanizes them simply because they do things that don't fit your morals. They're human, they're people. They're just scary people.

And looking at Blaine, he found that he hated these particular people very, very much, because Blaine was just moments from falling asleep and still had no answer to a question that had to have been murdering him slowly since who knows when.

If Kurt had believed in Hell, he would have been certain it was empty. All the devils were up here. And when we tried to drown our own devils, both found that they didn't need to breath - and then they started swimming. That was actually a reason Kurt didn't believe in Hell or Heaven or God - Earth was Hell and the demons were people, and if either had been real, the Devil would have been God.

"I don't know," Kurt told him. "They were taught something and they cling to it, instead of clinging to the thing that could teach them something better. I don't know why." Kurt wrapped his arm around Blaine's shoulders, and in his ears he felt the pressurization of the cabin begin as the plane started taking off.

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be sorry for things you need, Blaine. None of it is your fault."

The silence told Kurt that Blaine didn't agree. "Does Burt love me?" Blaine asked instead.

Kurt kissed his temple and lowered his lips to his ear to breathe his answer: "Yes. Everyone that's important loves you."

"My parents are important."

Kurt rested his cheek on Blaine's head. "So are you." But you don't love yourself, is what he didn't say.

"Kurt?"

"Carole, we just got off the plane. Where are you?"

"I'm waiting for you just - here, right here, I see you!"

Kurt took the phone away from his ear and scanned the room. It didn't take long for him to spot Carole, waving frantically and running towards them, Finn right behind. He had eyes only for Rachel, who, as soon as she spotted him, made a sound like a dying animal and dropped her purse, running as fast as she could towards him. Santana hung back with Blaine when Kurt let go of his hand and though Blaine reached out to grab him and hold him back, he retracted his hand before it snagged the fabric of his shirt and let him run off.

"He'll be right back," Santana assured him. "He just missed her."

"I know," Blaine said, but he still felt almost naked when exposed without Kurt right beside him.

Blaine had fallen asleep during the ride to the hospital.

Carole wasn't sure when it had happened, but it had. He'd fallen asleep on Kurt's shoulder once more, but because he'd been like that since he slid into the seat next to him, he hadn't noticed it when his breaths became even and slow and he'd stopped responding to things people said. But when they parked and the car's brakes gave a short little squeal, Blaine jerked awake, pulling his head off Kurt's shoulder and blinking repeatedly, his hand twitching until he brought it up to his head and started rubbing at his eyes. "Are we there?"

He looks so young. "We're there, sweetie," Carole told him gently, smiling as much as she could at the moment. She felt brittle still and smiling caused the illusion that her face was cracking into different zones; different areas of it displayed different feelings, and she knew it was frightening. Finn had started looking away whenever she tried to smile lately but at least now he had the excuse of staring at Rachel. Blaine, on the other hand, didn't do that or look startled, like Kurt did; he just sat there and took in all the different emotions, nodded, and yawned, unphased.

She'd never loved him quite so much.

"Ready to go in?" Kurt asked him, and Blaine nodded again. Kurt took his hand, opened the door, took a deep breath -

It was in that moment that everyone saw just how really, really broken he was, and how terrified he was of what was happening. It was indescribable, the look on his face; it was as indescribable as it was silent.

And then the look was gone and he was pulling his boyfriend along and Carole wanted to cry again.

"Santana!"

If anyone else had called her name she might have hit them. If anyone else had acknowledged her, perhaps with the exception of Blaine and maybe Carole, she might had hit them. If anyone else had used that tone of voice with her, she'd have hit them. Not because it was mean or scathing or anything she'd come to expect, but because it was loving, excited, and worried beyond belief; everything everyone else was being with everyone else while she was alone.

But no - there was Brittany, sprinting down the hall toward her.

Brittany.

Her blonde hair flew out behind her; she'd remembered to brush it. Good. Santana knew it was good, but she felt a pang of jealousy when she realized that either Sam was the one reminding her to do it now or she'd grown independent enough to do it herself. But it was still golden and still shone like her eyes did as she raced closer, his strong legs pushing her forward one bound at a time. She flew along the hospital corridor. Sam was still just turning the corner, but the moment Brittany had spotted Santana from down the hall she'd taken off.

Walking through the hospital doors was made impossibly brighter just by her presence, and Santana found, to her complete (lack of) surprise, that she was running, too.

And then Brittany's arms were flying open and Santana barreled into them, ignoring the people she'd walked in with and the people in the waiting room and the nurse at the desk and Lips McGee walking toward them somberly. She shouldn't have been smiling; Burt was in a coma induced by his second heart attack, she was surrounded by sad people, and the hospital reeked of the death it tried and failed so hard to fight away just a bit longer. But as soon as Brittany's arms were around her and hers were around Brittany a wide grin spread across her face and she clutched her as tightly as she could.

"I missed you!" Brittany's voice is as sweet as it ever was, honest and straightforward and beautiful, and Santana feels like melting.

"I missed you, too," she admits - and then, to her humiliation but also amusement, she feels tears welling up in her eyes and her throat constricting. "God, I missed you."

"Were you lonely?" Brittany asked her, her voice quieter now, more serious, and Santana's smile faltered. "When we said goodbye this summer you promised me you wouldn't be lonely."

Santana had been lonely, though. Hadn't she? She'd spent nights crying herself to sleep in bed, reading through the journal of a semi-suicidal roommate who hid everything from them, texting people randomly, helping drunks at the bar, and wasting away a life in New York she thought would be great. Hadn't she been lonely?

No.

It hit her with a jolt and she squeezed Brittany tighter. She'd be alone sometimes, but she'd never been lonely. Sometimes Blaine was at school, and sometimes she was at work, and sometimes she was surrounded by other people but not really there, like she had been the whole way to the hospital since the airport. Alone, yes. But...

"I love you, San."

But had she really been lonely?

"Santana -!" he called after her in a hushed shout, but she just waved and hurried out the door again, this time not bothering to be quiet.

Or had she just been sad?

"If he doesn't come home tonight," said a voice they hadn't heard until then, one that was bitter and cutting and determined, one that belonged to Santana, "I will personally do everything I can to take down every single person who worked on him. His home is with me, with us. He is my family and I am his. I managed to get the entire current staff of a restaurant fired before, and while this might be slightly more difficult, I assure you I will not stop." And then Santana seemed to tower over her in her heels and her hair and with the flames in her eyes. "And I will succeed... unless my friend comes back. I assure you I am more than capable of handling everything that needs to be done to get him back into perfect health. But I want him home, and I want him home now."

Holding onto Brittany like she was now, reflecting on everything they'd been through in the past two weeks alone, she tried to pick out a moment where she'd felt utterly desolate and without any hope of being held like this again.

"Nice to hear from you too," Santana teased lightly.

And she couldn't.

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

There's a big difference between being lonely and being alone, and Santana knew that.

"He is able to come home tonight," the doctor awarded them with the news, though they already knew it; regardless, Santana took a breath as though it were her first clean one in years, and Kurt felt the same way.

Because when you're alone, you miss people, even if they're standing right there.

"I'm glad you told me," Blaine said in response, giving her a small smile. "I thought maybe you'd run me over with a bus before you admitted you were scared of something more than anything else in the world."

And when you're lonely, you stop feeling like a person at all.

Santana squeezed Brittany to her closely. "I don't think I was lonely," she answered honestly. "I think I was sad, but I don't think I was lonely."

Something different was in Brittany's smile when she pulled back to look at her, and said, "Good. Next time try not to be sad."

Kurt's mother had told him something once. He'd found an empty bird's nest in the tree outside their house when he was four- empty, that was, with the exception of one small, blue egg. He'd rushed inside and fetched his mom and showed it to her, and asked if he could keep it.

She laughed gently and ruffled his hair. "No, baby," she told him, "If you keep it, the Momma bird's not going to have a baby to take care of."

"But I'll take care of the baby," he insisted.

"But it's not the same," his mother told him. "If someone took you away from me but still took care of you, would you be sad?"

Kurt had nodded vigorously.

"And I would be sad, too," she smiled. "I'd be really sad if someone took my baby away from me, and your Daddy feels the same way."

"So if I keep it, I'll make it sad?"

"Yes, sweetheart."

"Are all babies sad when their Mommies and Daddies leave?"

His mother had made a face he had never wanted to see on her before or after that day. "The lucky babies are the ones that leave their Mommies and Daddies on their own," she explained. "But yes, they're sad when their Mommies and Daddies leave, if they leave."

"Momma, you're never gonna leave me, right?"

She'd taken his hand then and her hands were soft. "I'm never going to try," she promised.

A fat lot of good that promise had done. Yes, he was sad when she left. And yes, his dad was sad when he left in turn, too. And yes, it was unavoidable.

No, he hadn't gotten over it yet.

So if he lost his dad on top of all of this...

He wondered just how many people a year died of sadness. And then Blaine's hand in his tightened its grip for a moment long enough to tear him out of his reverie and back into reality - and in reality, he was laying down on the waiting room chairs as comfortably as possibly with his head in his boyfriend's lap, letting his nimble fingers work through his hair gently and absentmindedly.

"Hi," Kurt said uselessly.

Blaine smiled at him and it was weak but it was real. "My name's Blaine."

His stomach gave a swoop so long Santana could have heard it in hell. "Kurt."

They'd spent three minutes total in that waiting room before the nurse had come back and said that they could visit him now.

It was just those few words that set Rachel off, and she didn't know why, until she dug back in her head to another point, far too close time-wise for her taste, and remembered waiting at the hospital for Blaine for hours. No news, no word on if he was okay, or even alive. Nothing. Hours of nothing.

And this was just three minutes, but she doubted Burt would be walking out of here when they saw him.

"It's gonna be okay," Finn told her, and she fought down the entirely inappropriate and unnecessary urge to correct him into saying 'going to'. He rubbed her arm soothingly, and she stood up with him. Kurt had shot out of Blaine's lap like an arrow, back as straight as a board, and Blaine had reacted badly, clutching onto his arm tightly so Kurt hissed in momentary pain before Blaine let go, realizing what he did.

They'd had to wait those three minutes because Brittany and Sam had been done visiting two minutes beforehand, and there was a five-minute wait policy they were testing out.

Rachel didn't really want to be one of their lab rats at the moment.

But she walked with the others. Their footsteps all meshed together if she didn't concentrate them apart, and images blended so she was walking in a sea of white with a constant stampede rushing past her ears.

Until they reached the room.

And then everything was crystal clear.

The door was opened slowly. Wait, no, it was normal pace. It just seemed slow because she was absorbing so much information. The floors were tiled and she could see how the florescent, slightly green-tinted lights made the shadows they cast longer. No light came from the window they passed but the lights of other windows - the world outside was dark. There were chairs set outside the doors that were lined on the left side, and some doorknobs had padlocks on them. Only two of the several she could see peering down the corridor, but still, it was plural.

The hospital room Burt was in was different. The tile was the same but the walls were different, eggshell instead of snow white, and she could see the edge of the cot.

There were wires already. Strung up. And the door was opening, and she could see more. The blanket rose, it covered a lump that was his foot - then his other - and that was his arm, with a bracelet on the wrist that lay creasing the sheet, And his shoulder, past his chest, where under his hospital gown there were wires galore hooked up. And then his face, and god, how could she not have connected the paleness of his skin to his condition? He was totally colorless, black and white in a room of black shadows and white walls.

Kurt was through the door before anyone else, even the nurse, and Rachel took the advantage of him being in her line of sight to drop her eyes and close them, choosing to look at nothing instead of what she'd come to see.

Finn guided her into the room slowly, and she could feel the difference in him as he passed the threshold. He held himself a little tighter, held her a little rougher. If she'd thought it wise to open her eyes, she'd have looked to see his face, so he could see hers and know it was alright - but instead she ducked into his side so neither of them could really see the other. Where would the benefit be?

"They say he's supposed to be getting better."

Carole's voice broke the silence that had seemed like such a law that Rachel jumped, and Finn, out of instinct, she was sure, held her closer, both arms finding their way around her now.

"But is he?" Santana asked. With Brittany no longer present - and having left with Sam - she was more bitter than she had been before, and to top it off there was concern for everyone there that she couldn't deal with. "Is he getting better? Is he okay?"

Carole cleared her throat. "He will be."

"That's not what I asked."

"Stop, Santana. He will be, and that's enough." Blaine's voice was softer and didn't cut through the silence so much as merge with it. It was comforting to listen to him, even if she was sweltering under her layers and with Finn wrapped around her.

"No, it's not." Santana was stubborn. "Just 'will be' isn't good enough. Waiting around for someone else's future to happen when you can do something to help isn't good enough."

"What can we do, Santana?" Finn demanded. And then, to himself: "What can we do?"

"Everything the doctors can," Santana said. "We have the capability to fight his battle with him, we just don't have the training or knowledge."

"And without the training and knowledge we lack the capability," Blaine told her. Rachel was worried about the silence from Kurt, but she didn't dare look up. "And we are fighting his battle with him. We're just fighting our own side of it."

"You're too busy fighting your own," Santana snapped. "We all are."

"The reason nobody notices why you're sad is because they're waiting for you to see their own sadness." Carole's voice came back. "We're all fighting our own battles, Santana, but our lives are connected, and so all these battles are part of a bigger war. We can't fight his battles, we can only fight ours - but we can help win the war. It's what we're doing and it's what we can do. If you're going to get down on us all because we can't physically make him healthy I'm going to ask you to leave."

"So kick me out," Santana growled. "My words won't follow. They're going to stay behind and haunt you until he wakes up, isn't it? Because then things will be better, and my words won't mean anything anymore. But someday they will. They'll come back to you in some way and you won't be able to kick me out then because I might not even be there."

Finn pulled Rachel to the side, but she could hear the click of Santana's boots as she left the room ans strode purposefully down the hallway.

"I'm sorry, Kurt," Blaine's voice fretted. "She's just stressed, I swear. She really c-"

"Are you okay?"

"M-Me?" Blaine stammered. "Why?"

"He's as much your dad as mine."

Rachel started crying a while ago, but she couldn't remember when. Blaine joined her when Kurt said that.

Carole looked at Kurt intently. "Is there something you forgot to announce in all the chaos, Kurt?" she asked.

Blaine had left the room to go after Santana and calm down, and he still wasn't back. Finn had had to take Rachel aside, and they were out in the hall with the door closed firmly between them. Kurt had been silent and calculating until he sat down in the chair by his father's bed and took his hand.

"If you can hear me, squeeze my hand."

"Hm?" Kurt asked, looking up at her in confusion.

"You and Blaine..?" she trailed off.

"Oh." Kurt seemed taken aback. "Yeah. Blaine and I. Yes. I forgot to tell you. Right. Sorry."

"You're back together?"

The heart monitor skipped a beat, and in the blank space it left Kurt's face had been shocked into blankness. It took a while before the normal pulse settled their own, and Kurt answered her. "Yes, we're back together."

The pulse skipped another beat, and the finger holding Kurt's twitched.