Puck and Kurt are still, somehow, tangled together like wet seaweed when Cooper arrives. Despite their most recent visit from him being obnoxiously ostentatious, he scuttles in, quiet and bedraggled from an unplanned flight. Kurt rushes to his feet but watches as his Father leads Cooper to one side and rewrites the Doctor's note for him in hushed delicate words. Cooper keeps nodding; his face grimaced with lines of anguish that seems to be rotting at him. When Burt finishes he turns to the desk and is, so easily, passed along the corridor. He glances back to Kurt in the last instant and nods. Kurt closes his eyes and puts all in his energy into hoping that he'll be able to see his precious face again soon, touch his perfect skin; wait for that radiant smile fall from the very face that holds it.

“They'll let you in soon,” Puck whispers and it feels like a confirmation.

Soon, they hear hushed squabbling from the corridor, with voices that filter acidic remarks back and forth, pin-balling to their ears.

“Kurt is his family ok?” Cooper's loud voice continues, somehow angrier and more true than any acting they'd ever witnessed, “I don't care what you do with me, I'd rather sit out in the corridor for the rest of my life than be in there and know that you've let him be alone for hours and not let the love of his life be in there with him.”

Suddenly, Cooper is marching towards him and yanking him up by his shoulder, pushing him forwards back down the corridor, past white doorways, and pale fluorescence.

“Sir, he can't go in without shoes,” the pathetic nurse, calls out weakly.

“Take mine, then,” Cooper says sharply, whipping off his trainers and urging Kurt's feet into them. They are far too large and Kurt's bare toes feeling slippery with cold sweat against the rough insides, “Go in,” he says quietly, “Quickly, come on.”

Kurt takes a huge breath and pushes through the swinging door. At first, he focusses his attention to the large window that overlooks the lush greenness of the Hawaiian land, in the distance the ocean innocently sparkles in the late summer sun. He can't bear to look and see what the monster has done to his boyfriend, but there is nothing left to distract him, not when the very sight of the ocean makes him feel queasy.

Instead, he turns to the bed, dripping with wires and tubes so that Blaine almost looks like a monster himself, but beneath that he can see the round moon face, the dark eyelashes framing the shadows under his eyes, and ragged curls haloing the wires that hook against his face and arms. Arm. Kurt thinks, eyes glazed to the gauzed snow-man stump of a limb on Blaine's left side. The unnaturally large space of hospital sheets and blankets gaping, ripping at Kurt's heart.

Blaine's face is grey with trauma and the constant beeping of machines and dripping of liquid through tubes, makes his sleep seem scattered, disrupted.

It takes Kurt a moment and then he reaching for him, pressing cold fingers against Blaine's cheek and forehead, whispering kissed reminders of their lives together against ears against his jaw and neck.

“Please, wake up soon, honey,” he pleads, between kisses, “You can go back to sleep right after, I promise ok, just open those eyes for a moment.”

There is no movement, but the glass is splintering in Blaine's mind, crisping melted glass against his skull, trying to pierce himself awake for the voice that echoes and echoes in his mind and pleads, blue and endless.

Instead, Kurt pulls up a chair and rests he cheek against Blaine's remaining arm, closing his eyes. He feels safe with the pressure of Blaine's bones through the sheets and it doesn't take too long for him to fall into a slow sleep.

Blaine's mind is scattering pain across his body, as he begins to feel his limbs again, he feels lopsided, like there's something missing but he still can't move from the bottom of the snow-globe, he feels trapped, behind heavy lids, like metal shutters to his skull. In what seems like years, he cranks them open, little by little, inky splotches blooming into flowers and then disappearing to only white clouds.

His heart stutters as it tries to remind him that he's alive and elevates in a panicked screech. It is this that alerts Kurt, when the blood pulsing through him spikes against the wrist pressed against his face.

“Blaine?” he asks, muffled as he raises his head. Warm, desperate eyes catch his attention and he almost yelps to pull the emergency alarm, signalling to the hospital staff, who come wheeling back into the room followed by Cooper.

“He's awake,” he whispers over and over, “Oh God, he's awake.”

“Get the kid out of here,” a cloaked Doctor says, and Cooper grabs him so he can hide, defenceless behind him.

“Is this good?” Cooper asks, despite being ignored by the nurses testing across Blaine skin and tubes and wires, “I mean it's not too early right?”

“We'll give him something for the pain and to get back to sleep again,” One nurse explains, rushing past him with a menacing looking needle, Cooper grapples behind his back for Kurt's hand and Kurt presses his forehead between Cooper's shoulders, his eyes squeezed shut, “but it's good news that he is reacting and awake.”

“Can he hear what you're saying?” Kurt asks, quietly, and Cooper repeats for the nurses, “Isn't he terrified, how can he know what happened?”

Blaine doesn't know what has happened, as he slips back out of consciousness, he recalls this time Puck and Sam's presence, the resolute waves that fell short, and something jarring at him. Could it have been…no, only pieces of him fall apart, and he can't breathe with it. Only jarr his memory into sticky blood-swept oceans that he still feels against his skin.

“Come on,” Kurt pleads, “Please, let me talk to him.”

“Kurt, you're not even supposed to be still in the room,” Cooper hisses back, pressing them further into the corner so Kurt is as trapped as Blaine, blocked out by the shadows of the bustling show of nursing staff.

“He doesn't know anything,” Kurt continues, his throat wet, “just look at him for me. Just look.”

Cooper does look and the flailing in his brother's eyes that have ripped back open from the ocean of his mind is enough to persuade him. He surges forward, knocking a nurse to the side and grappling for Blaine's remaining hand under the sheets, “It's going to be ok, Blainey,” he starts, “you're in the hospital, there was an attack but everyone's fine, you've lost your…”

“Now is not a good time for this, Mr Anderson,” A nurse says, pointedly, ignoring the fact that Blaine's eyes suggest that he is more alive and with a greater capability to listen than any of them put together, “We will discuss the future when he's in a coherent state.”

“He is coherent, look at him,” Cooper points wildly as Blaine's eyes spot-light between them, hurriedly, “Blainey, they're going to get you to sleep some more, but after that Kurt and I are going to come back and we're going to talk this through ok?”

Something in Blaine's eyes dips like a nod and the nurses finally succeed in a powerful enough drug to shutter Blaine back again. The stillness is deeper than before and, without really thinking about it, Cooper shuffles Kurt out the door.

They lean against it for a moment, breathing in the putrid air of consciousness, gulping in what they had just witnessed in faint incoherent jolts.

Much later when a neat darkness has settled in the windows of the hospital and only Kurt, Cooper and Carole remain, they are told that Blaine is fully awake, talking and refusing to go back to sleep until he sees them. Kurt is calmer now, having expressed his anger to Carole and her responding as to the realities of rule following in hospitals. He knows the unfairness is not just his, not just Blaine's but everyone's; locals who express their guilt in surfing the waves for decades unscratched, doctors who send them empathetic looks. They all know the teeth marks that remain have ripped holes in their worlds.

“Cooper,” Kurt hisses, nudging the sleeping brother awake so that they can shuffle back down the corridor. Kurt's feet still falter in over-sized shoes and Cooper's socks slip against plastic floors.

“Kurt?” a small voice asks, as they enter.

“I'm here, baby, I'm here,” Kurt exclaims, rushing to Blaine's bedside and fumbling in the sheets for his hand. There is only emptiness.

“It's not here, I know it's not here,” Blaine mumbles, almost incoherently, tossing to one side a little before Kurt presses a hand to his chest and holding his heart in place, “I keep imagining it's going to grow back, I was dreaming about it, like a starfish, you know?” his eyes plead desperately. To Cooper he is the Blaine of their childhood, forgotten and vulnerable in the corner, wrapped in a cloak of blankets disguised as fierce bravery, sheltering unimaginable fear. He is the beaten, bandaged, eyeless, burst appendix, broken finger , swaddling child emerging from the womb.

“I'm right here,” Kurt says, fiercely tears threatening at the back of his skull, swarming forwards like building waves on the horizon, “And I am not leaving.”

“Kurt are the others…” Blaine starts, living, under the blue gaze that surrendered him from sleep's massacre.

“Everyone's fine, just worried, about you,” Kurt explains, finally reaching across the bed so he can grip Blaine hand on the other side of his body, and offering a weak smile before the rushes of reality flood out of his mouth, “I was so worried I thought I was going to die,” he tells him, “I thought we both were, and I practically kidnapped Artie…”

“Honey, we're both here,” Blaine reminds him, softly.

Cooper watches their comfort bounce across in canon, from one to each other, sharing each moment, accepting each others fear and bravery as on entity to admire and treasure.

“Coop,” Blaine addresses his brother, finally, “Are Mum and Dad, I mean, I know they're busy…”

“They're going to come down as soon as they can,” Cooper lies, tongue buried against his teeth, to shovel white lies against them, like plaque. His parents are not coming soon. His mother is silently weeping and moving, through coffee-induced meetings, shaking with adrenaline that rots her fear of white walls and weeping child, post-post-post natal, he calls it. And their Father, with assistant's fingers plugged into his ears, continues on, delegates another slice of paperwork, reading SON INJURED and calls across the brother, delegated Father to new adulthood.

“It's ok,” Blaine says, dimpling with a smile that they never thought they'd see again, wetting tears from all of their eyelids, “I just need you two.”

“I need you too,” Kurt croaks out, quite suddenly, his body surging to press chest to chest with Blaine, his lips carving kisses against Blaine's neck. The intimacy of the moment shuffles Cooper back into the corridor, breathing heavy sighs for appearances of boys on staircases, hours after a voicemail message that had skittered his bones together, of cold voices and tired watches that where a tiny voice had told him to look for the reasons, scrapped pieces of paper he had hoped never to see the light of day.

There is a kind of need between people that can be believed. A kind of brokenness that when connected feels like sleep looks, peaceful and natural in the greatest form. Cooper does not have to go back into the room to know that what his brother needs is Kurt's strong hands to hold him deeply enough to forgot his loss. There is no other hope than this, he thinks, Kurt has to be the missing piece that will mold him back to reality or destroy him forever.

Back in the room, there is only silent muttering of love and hope and gratitude that Kurt presses deep into Blaine skin, lips like scalding irons, scorching messages he prays Blaine will not forget. His hands catch at the sheets and dig for the edges of Blaine, new edges that he tries not to think too deeply about. First, he must make Blaine know that his love is never unwinding, is tied with bowlines of memory.

“Kurt,” Blaine chokes out, into Kurt's hair, “What's going to happen?”

“We're going to stay here until you get better,” Kurt responds, not moving so his words puddle against Blaine's collarbone, “And then we're going to finish the year, we're both going to do fantastically but it won't matter because we're already in at NYADA and then we're going to go to New York and live, Blaine, we're going to live.”

“What roles am I going to play, with one arm?” Blaine asks desperately, “who would fall in love with a limbless Fiyero or a lopsided Tony.”

“Then you'll make your own romantic leads,” Kurt lifts his head, finally, his eyes bright with something, “leads built on fire and bravery. There may not be roles written for us but theatre is a moving art, Blaine, what is theatre if it is designed to challenge, to shock, to pursue depths of reality. What you have is real and unique and no lack of limb is going to take that talent away from you.”

“But, what if I can't dance properly?” Blaine asks again, feeling unnaturally still as he is pressed into the mattress by his own pain and lifelessness.

“What even is dancing properly, Blaine?” Kurt remarks, his head thrown sideways. But he turns back to Blaine's eyeline and offers, genuinely, “You'll learn to use your body again, I promise.”

“I'm scared,” Blaine whispers, his honest admission scatters around the room like dust particles, cracking Kurt's throat open and spittling his eyes until he wants to rub them bare.

“I know,” he crackles out, “I know. But we're going to be ok, I promise.”

Blaine tries to believe the promises that the blue eyes bring, these blue eyes that cracked him back to the surface, shattered the waves that trapped him, but the spaces beside him leave such chasms in his future plans, path that he had so carefully embroidered for himself on dreamless nights. He feels like a great hurricane has come and left him only with a waste-land and a hand reaching out in the dark to show him a direction from his broken compass.