Chapter 8

Blaine.

Blaine was here, Blaine was standing right in front of him, Blaine was in the middle of the horse yard at his school and he was here.

Kurt's brain finally caught up and his shocked expression transformed into one of pure joy as he threw himself at Blaine. He flung his arms around his shoulders, burying his face into the crook of his neck and inhaling that scent of trees and horse and something else that he had missed so much. He felt Blaine's arms circle around his back, hugging him just as tightly, and tried to restrain himself from pulling back and kissing him.

'Er… I'll just…' Rory mumbled, shuffling away, and they broke apart. Blaine took Kurt's hand, smiling at him, as Kurt turned to Rory.

'Sorry,' he said. 'Um, Rory, this is Blaine. Blaine, Rory.'

Blaine nodded and offered his hand. Rory shook it likely, then turned to Merry, who was sniffing the air curiously. 'Do you – erm – are you – do you want him stabling for the night?'

Blaine glanced at Kurt then shook his head. 'No, it's okay, I'm staying in the village. But thanks.' He turned back to Kurt as Rory hurried off, obviously trying to be as inconspicuous as possible.

'Hi,' he said.

Kurt grinned and hugged Blaine again briefly. 'Hi,' he breathed. 'Why – how – what are you doing here?'

Ouch, that sounded accusatory. He fumbled to correct himself but Blaine just nodded his head and looked around at the school.

'Can we go somewhere less… conspicuous? I'll tell you everything.'

'Of course.' Kurt nodded, gesturing at Blaine to follow him. He led him up through the fairly empty corridors to his room, stopped at the door and turned to look at him again as he unlocked it, still not quite over the excitement of seeing him again. He opened the door and stepped in, Blaine following.

He watched as Blaine swept his gaze over the gilded fireplace, the stained glass windows and his perfectly colour-coordinated armchairs, curtains and broad four-poster bed.

'Your room is amazing,' he breathed. Kurt felt his chest warm up at the indirect compliment. 'It's so… tasteful and warm and homely.'

'Thank you,' replied Kurt, ducking his head as he motioned Blaine over to the armchairs. 'The furniture is the school's, but I decorated it myself.' He knelt down on the little mat placed in front of the fire to keep his knees clean and started prodding at the ashes. 'Tina – she's one of my friends from magic class – had to help me do the ceiling, but the rest of it was mostly me.'

Blaine glanced up and Kurt saw his eyes widen at the elaborate geometric pattern that sprawled across the ceiling, letting out a small 'wow' of astonishment.

'How are you?' asked Kurt.

Blaine dropped his gaze back to him. 'I'm… alright.' There was something in his tone that led Kurt to believe that he was anything but, but he didn't want to put Blaine in an uncomfortable situation, so he asked him something that he hoped could lead up to explaining it.

'You said you were going to tell me why you were here…?' he ventured as he dropped into his chair. 'I mean, it's fine, of course, if you don't want to, it's nice just seeing you again, I was just wondering –'

'Easy, Kurt, I'll tell you.'

Kurt blushed, realising he had been rambling, and nodded sheepishly.

'You sure you want to hear everything?' asked Blaine. 'That's fine, it's just… it's quite a long story.'

'I'm sure.'

'Okay.' Blaine sighed, running his hands down his leather-clad thighs, and began.

'So… I think this all starts in one place – or with one person. My father. He – he's a very powerful man. He was born a powerful man, he was raised a powerful man, and so he became a powerful man. He doesn't love my mother, and I don't think he ever has. It was a marriage of convenience. But anyway, that… doesn't really matter. At least not in this story.

'My brother, Cooper, is ten years older than me. He's tall, he's handsome, he's clever, he's charismatic – basically, my father's idea of the perfect son. He spoilt him as he grew up, until he also became a… powerful man. He's an amazing warrior, he has a commanding presence, and he has all the ladies swooning at his feet. He's everything my father could ever want his son to be.

'I, however, am… not.' He held up a hand as Kurt began to protest. 'Hear me out. My parents weren't supposed to have another child, from what I'm told – they weren't even sleeping together anymore. I am the… result of a drunken night of folly.' He sighed, and Kurt felt a pang in his chest as he discreetly wiped his eyes. 'So I was treated that way. My parents didn't love me. Why would they, when they had Cooper to adore and dote over? I grew up in my brother's shadow, celebrating his achievements, his victories,his life. My father either hated me or ignored me. My mother tried to connect with me, but she was usually too drunk to walk, let alone have a decent conversation.

'But I don't really think I regret – no, in fact, I'm sure I don't. And I do love Cooper, because he was the only one who actually seemed to care about me, but I would never want to deserve my father's love. Love based on status, strength and achievements, rather than who I actually was. So, I started – I became a bit of a… rebel. I dropped out of warrior training when I was fourteen. I became a scout. Although I never tried it, I became interested in magic. I was friends with the kitchen girl and the groom. I would sneak out at night to hunt deer rather than girls. I started looking after my own horse. I went out to visit my friends in the village every night.

'I loved it, my father hated it. Simple.

'So when I was sixteen, he… kicked me out. Well – he didn't – but he sent me away. To a special… school for kids like me. Rebels, those who didn't conform to the traditions laid down by their ancestors. You have to remember that I'm not from Kerajan. Where I come from, there's no freedom to choose what you want to do with your life, you just follow the path your parents have tread before you. Upper-class boys become warriors or knights, middle-class boys become squires and pages, and only the lowest of the low become scouts. Girls are trained only for marriage. Magic is rarely spoken of – almost the entire subject is taboo. And by becoming a scout and mixing with those of lower classes and doing my own work, I had violated all the conventions of society.

'Anyway, this school. It was horrible. You – you don't want to know the details. But let's just say… it wasn't really a school. It was a reformation prison.

'When I was there, I made friends with a group of guys – oh, it was a boys-only school – who were locked up there for various reasons. Some of them – Wes, David, James – were scouts, like me. A few, like Trent and Thad, had dabbled in magic. And then there was Nick and Jeff. The had done nothing wrong, they hadn't even abandoned warrior training like the rest of us, but they were both born condemned. Their crime? They loved each other.

'They had it worse than the rest of us. Daily beatings. Starvation. Being forced to sleep in a different, much colder, part of the school from us – I think the teachers might've thought they were going to do something to us, or that it was contagious, but they were the sweetest guys you've ever met, and they wouldn't harm a fly…'

He dropped off as he noticed the tears in Kurt's eyes. 'I'm sorry,' he hastened to apologise, 'I should stop, this is a horrible story to be telling you –'

'No, please go on,' Kurt said quietly, his voice quivering. There was a dull ache in his chest as he imagined everything Blaine and those boys had suffered through – and might still be suffering through.

'Sorry. Okay,' Blaine continued. 'Well, Nick and Jeff may have been treated the worst at the school, but it did nothing to stop their personalities.' Blaine smiled fondly. 'Despite it all, the stayed just as crazy as when they first arrived. Always… running around everywhere, pulling practical jokes – they were probably punished at least as much for their behaviour as for their sexual orientations. Anyway, one day they were being their usual selves, when they found an old, disused mine in the school grounds. They investigated it, of course. A couple of the tunnels had fallen in, but it was mostly intact. One – one of the tunnels led out. Behind the school walls. Into the woods.

'They told the rest of us and… we did it. At night, the night of my 17th birthday. We managed to escape.

'Only about twelve of us made it, though. Me, Wes, David, Trent, Thad, Nick, Jeff, Logan, Tyler, James, Adam and Ethan. The others all copped out. They were too afraid of being caught, or finally getting out into the woods only to be devoured by wolves. I don't blame them – they did what they felt was safest in the circumstances. And it was dangerous. When we got out, we realised we had no idea what we were going to do. We headed west – to get as far away from the place as possible – but it soon became clear that we couldn't just keep on travelling. We had a couple of run-ins with wolves and one with a rabid boar, so after travelling for a couple of weeks three of us were injured and the others were exhausted.

'Luckily, a week later, we found the perfect place to stop – it was basically a hidden clearing that you could only get into if you already knew how, know what I mean? Nick found it. It was big and had river running through it, so we decided to set up somewhere to live there. There was no going back east, and we needed to catch up before going any further west. So we built a couple of rough huts, set up a hunting and cooking rota, stole a few horses from the village directly to the north, and became a tiny community.' He smiled, staring off behind Kurt as he remembered. 'There was this one little bird – I have no idea where he came from, but he was very exotic – who moved in with us. We named him Pavarotti.'

'Cute,' commented Kurt.

'Uh huh, he was. Anyway, the system was working out so well that we decided to stay there, at least for a few more months. And then it was my turn to hunt, and I spotted deer herd, and followed them for a few days – sometimes David could be gone for a month, hunting, a week was nothing – until I came to the edge of the Forest. I was just coming back from refilling my water skin at the river when a certain horse and rider caught my eye.'

His eyes glinted with amusement as he winked at Kurt, then he became serious again.

'After you left, it was… weird. I don't really mind being alone whilst hunting – heck, that was one of the attractions of becoming a scout – but I just… I don't know, I felt really lonely afterwards. It's not easy losing someone who was quickly becoming your best friend, you know?'

Kurt's eyebrows shot up his forehead as he nodded. He certainly did know.

'But… the fact that I had to get back to the others wasn't the reason I was so reluctant to go with you. I'm sure they wouldn't have minded if I had been away a bit longer. It was because… before I left, we heard… soldiers, in the woods. My father had sent them. The word of the break-out had finally got back to his ears, and he had sent them to find us. To find me.

'They didn't see our home, however, so I went on my hunting trip anyway and I'm very glad I did. But when I got back, tensions were running high. More soldiers had passed by whilst I had been away, closer this time. Everyone was nervous. We knew what would happen if they found us – the school wouldn't take us back, and so it was either back to humiliating our families or…'

Kurt filled in the gap. Death.

'It was scary. We had to set up a watch every night, and practice our fighting during the day – most of us were pretty rusty, only Tyler, Nick, Jeff and Ethan still knew how to defend efficiently. We were low on food, because we couldn't hunt properly for fear of getting caught, and we couldn't make fires for fear of someone seeing the smoke. So we lived on fruit and cold dried meat for a week.

'Which is not the best when you're attacked by a group of seventy armed men.'

Kurt gasped, hand flying over his mouth in shock. His stomach swooped in fear at the look on Blaine's face, and he got up and went to sit on the arm of his chair, wrapping his arm around his shoulders. Blaine continued, now with tears evident in his eyes.

'They – they came in the morning. When we were still all waking up. They must have found us a few days before, because it was all perfectly well-planned. We barely had time to grab our weapons. It – it was over pretty quickly.'

He took a deep breath, shoulders shaking. 'Three of us didn't make it.'

'Oh my gosh,' whispered Kurt as he slid to his knees, bile rising in his mouth. He kept his arms wrapped around Blaine, comforting him as tears now slid openly down his face. Thank goodness Rachel wasn't singing next door, or he wouldn't have heard the next three words that slipped out of Blaine's mouth in a broken whisper.

'James, Adam and Thad.'

He shoulders shuddered again as he cried, face blotchy and red. Kurt felt tears moistening his own face, but he wiped them away as he focused on Blaine instead.

'We – we – the rest –' He sniffed loudly. 'Most of the rest were captured. Only Ethan, Jeff and I got away because we had horses.'

Kurt remained silent as he hugged Blaine, gently stroking up and down his back.

'They didn't need much convincing to come here. We're staying at the inn in the village, but we'll have to find something more permanent soon.'

Kurt nodded as Blaine rubbed his eyes and tried to calm his breathing. 'I'm sorry,' he said.

'No, Blaine, you have no right to be sorry. You just told me that whole story, I should hope you could at least realise that. You can talk to me whenever you want, okay?'

Blaine hesitated, then nodded.

'Come on,' said Kurt, pulling him to his feet, 'let's get you cleaned up. And then we can sort out where you're staying okay? I don't have any more lessons today, soo we have plenty of time.'

'Um, Kurt?' asked Blaine as Kurt sat him down in front of the sink. 'Have you told anyone about me?'

'No, not yet. Do you – should I?'

'No, I… I'd prefer if you could… keep this a secret. My past, I mean. And maybe… the circumstances of our meeting? I don't want any unnecessary questions.'

'Of course.'

Blaine smiled and wiped his face, then stopped and looked at Kurt again. 'But that doesn't mean I'd be adverse to meeting your friends.'

Kurt grinned more broadly this time at the prospect of Blaine meeting Rachel and Mercedes and Tina. 'Don't worry,' he said, taking the cloth from Blaine and wetting it again, 'we'll find a nice, easy explanation to your sudden appearance. Something that will mean we can meet and talk whenever, okay? Because you need to know that I will always be here to listen to you.'

Blaine nodded gratefully. 'Okay.'