"You did it." Kurt murmured flatly as he and Finn made their way back to base camp. "You're safe."

Finn nodded absently. "As safe as I can be." He agreed, his expression shell-shocked. Kurt couldn't blame him; he could hardly register it himself. He'd just watched his stepbrother kill a man.

"Your mom's gonna be happy." Kurt told him, trying to lighten the mood, but Finn just shot him a look. "Okay, that came out wrong." He admitted. "She won't necessarily be happy about the dead guy, but..."

The other boy sighed, and was quiet for a long moment before he spoke again. "It's already fading." He gestured to his wrist. Kurt glanced over and saw that he was right. The name Joshua Sterling and the image of the young blonde haired boy that had previously marked his left wrist were losing their pigment. Finn swallowed, his expression beginning to crumble. "He couldn't have been any older than us. He might have been younger."

Kurt bit his lip in concern at his stepbrother's obvious distress, and looked quickly around as he stopped him and pulled him into the woods, concealing them from anyone who might come down the road. "Look, Finn." He said gently, beginning to feel his own stomach twist and churn as Finn wiped the tears furiously from his eyes. Finn never cried. "I... I know you didn't want to do it. No one wants to do it. But if it wasn't him, it would have been you. You had to." Finn sniffed and drew in a long, shaky breath. "Just try not to think about it, okay?" Kurt said softly, patting him on the arm. When Finn had composed himself well enough, Kurt peeked out through the bushes, checking the perimeter again before he pulled him back out onto the road and they continued on their way.

Just a little while later they reached the familiar split-down-the-middle oak tree, its branches bare and dead in the cold winter air. Twenty steps forward, fifty to the right, and they were home. Well, if a cluster of trailers and pickup trucks and a fire pit for when they were feeling bold constituted as a home. It did for them, it was all that they knew.

The snap of a twig behind them caused them both to jump, spinning around and drawing their guns to face down any possible intruder and then proceeding to sigh heavily as they were met with smirking brown eyes and a mane of thick, black hair.

"Jesus, Santana." Kurt grumbled, laying a hand over his rapidly beating heart. "You can't just sneak up on people like that. You'll get yourself killed."

"Yeah, yeah." Santana waved her hand dismissively as though it were no big deal. "You two losers better have picked up some sweatshirts on your little shopping spree, everyone outgrew theirs from last winter and we're all freezing our asses off out here."

In response to that, Finn wordlessly handed her a plastic bag before stalking off, his expression strained but also a bit dazed, as though he were forcing himself to not face reality for the time being. Kurt's eyes followed him for a moment before he gave his attention back to Santana.

"We could only find a few." He sighed as she glanced inside the shopping bag. "They're mostly for guys, because we figured the guys could give their outgrown sweatshirts to the girls and then have these new ones." He rubbed at his bare arms, covered in goosebumps because he'd given his own sweatshirt away to Brittany that morning.

The Latina nodded thoughtfully and then shrugged. "It's not ideal, but it'll do." She took one sweatshirt from the bag and tossed it to him, having noticed his shivering, before nodding over to where Finn had crawled into the tent that he shared with Kurt and Puck. "What's with him?"

Kurt glanced between Santana and the tent, sighing and shifting the rest of the bags around in his hands a bit before he looked her in the eye and told her bluntly, the only way that any of them ever broke this kind of news to each other.

"He did what he needed to do."

The first thing that Blaine Anderson heard when he returned from his fishing trip in the woods was a loud wail coming from one of the tents at his camp. He furrowed his eyebrows, glancing at his friend Wes in confusion, who shrugged in return. They set their coolers and fishing poles down carefully and walked over to David, who was sitting crosslegged outside the door to the aforementioned tent, effectively blocking anyone from going inside.

"What's going on in there?" Blaine asked him, frowning as the tent practically shook with choked sobs and muffled cries of anguish.

David put down the book he had been reading and glanced up at the two of them, his expression sad and resigned as he sighed. "Finn Hudson happened."

"Finn Hudson?" Wes raised an eyebrow. "Who's Finn Hudson? I mean, the name sounds familiar, but... Oh, no."

Blaine's blood ran cold as he realized the same thing that his friend seemed to be realizing and they glanced at each other again before looking to David, willing it not to be true. "He's one of our targets?" Blaine asked, more for confirmation than anything else, his voice barely above a whisper.

"Not anymore."

Blaine's stomach churned.

"He's safe now."

His knees almost buckled.

"He did what he needed to do."

They'd lost one of their own.

"Who?" Wes asked quietly as he and Blaine sank down to the ground, mirroring David's position as they sat opposite him.

David drew in a deep, shuddering breath before he could bring himself to answer. "Josh." He breathed, and hearing that name was like a punch in the gut.

Josh Sterling. Two years or so younger than all the rest of them, he may as well have been everyone's little brother with how obligated they had felt to protect him. They'd failed, obviously.

Another muffled scream came from the tent, and Blaine winced. "So Jeff isn't taking it too well." He commented. "Should someone... talk to him?"

"He won't see anyone." David shook his head. "He'll only talk to Nick, and he's out with Trent finding more fresh water."

Blaine nodded, biting his lip as the three of them sat in silence, Jeff's sobs blending in with the chirping of the birds and the rustling of the leaves until it was just background noise. He took the time to glance down at his wrist, wishing it to be bare. Of course it wasn't. The name was still there, clear as day.Kurt Hummel.Those piercing blue eyes still stared right back at him, and he ached for the day when he'd see them in real life. If that day ever came. He wanted it to, so badly, but he wanted just as badly for it to not come. Whoever this boy was, he didn't want to kill him. But at the same time, he did. It was a difficult thing for him to make sense of, even to himself, and most of the time he could push the thoughts out of his mind. It just proved more difficult when something like, well... this happened.

Time passed by- seconds, minutes, hours, no one really knew. They never had to begin with. At some point the faded gray sky darkened to deep blue, seeming to completely skip the twilight time of oranges, reds, and purples that seemed to stretch on forever during the warmer months. The entire camp seemed to come to an unspoken agreement as the majority of them retreated to their tents without dinner, a melancholy air settling over the entire ground.

A handful stayed out to keep watch over the camp for the night, the usual whispered banter silenced for the occasion. Blaine sat with his back against a tree, rifle laid out across his lap. In the pale light of the stars and the crescent moon he could just make out the name and face imprinted onto his skin and he gazed at it for a long time, resigning himself to the fact that yes, one day Kurt Hummel was going to be dead and he was going to be the one that caused it. That was okay. Killing was just a thing that happened on a daily basis, and everyone was either a killer or a victim.

Blaine had promised himself a long time ago that he was going to be a killer. And he intended to keep that promise.