Blaine sighs.

“Brittany, you can’t be inside your own head-”

“-okay, then.” She cuts in, removing her fingers from Blaine’s temple, and he reluctantly stretches out his fingers, shivering – they feel chilled to the bone. “Where are we?”

Blaine opens his eyes, ready to answer her instantly because he knows Ohio as well as he knows his hair gel brands, and pauses.

“Brittany?” he breathes.

“Yeah?”

“You win.”

She simply nods, taking his hand and pulling him closer. Blaine stumbles forward on his feet, eyes still wandering in all directions. “It’s a lot to take in, I know.”

They’re not really in a room, per say, but some kind of void; Blaine stands on solid ground, he knows, he can feel it under his bare feet, but there’s nothing to be seen there. He feels like he should be falling, can practically feel the air being whipped from his lungs by the plummet.

Blaine pauses. “So we’re really in-”

“Not exactly.”

Blaine raises an eyebrow.

“We’re not here here; physically, we’re still in your kitchen, but mentally,” she gestures at her head, “-we’re in here.”

“So…my head…is in your head?” He says slowly.

Brittany nods.

Blaine breathes out a whoa, turns semi-frantically on the spot.

“How are we-” he begins to ask, but then he’s falling, wind whipping around his face and arms and legs and he can’t breathe properly and-

-and he’s crashing, ground slamming into his face and it’s about as comfortable as being buried in brick wall and the shock of the fall slaps through his body like a wave in high tide.

“Are you okay?” Brittany’s at his shoulder, tapping and whispering cautiously, cursing under her breath.

Blaine whimpers.

“Shit, can you get up? I’m so sorry, Blaine, I didn’t mean to do that-”

“-wait, so that was on purpose?” Blaine manages to wheeze out, trying to prop himself up on one arm.

“I didn’t mean to, okay? You were wondering why we weren’t falling and my concentration slipped. Do you think you broke anything?”

“No, just my brain.” He hisses, half-glaring at Brittany. “Why are we here, anyway?”

“You wanted someone to explain what was going on before, right?” Blaine nods. “Well, it’s a little hard to explain with words, so I figured I could just show you.”

She snaps her fingers, and an ocean of pictures drops down from the invisible ceiling, puppet-strings glowing whiter as they get closer to Blaine. Brittany tugs him over to one, raises her palm and gently presses against the side of the frame. Blaine feels a chill ripple through him, and he isn’t surrounded by black anymore; he’s at McKinley High, crowded underneath a bleacher.

Memories.

“This is just an example,” Brittany explains. “It’s the day Kitty Wilde broke her spinal cord, so everyone remembers it; Coach made us practise on mattresses for the next month.”

“Why do I need an example?”

“So you know what to do in a memory.”

They hear footsteps, and Brittany tugs him by the sleeve of his shirt further underneath the bleachers.

“Rule number one – whatever you do, don’t let your past-self see you. It’s basically the same rules as clichéd time travel, except if you screw up the continuum, we can’t get out of the memory and no-one else can get in.”

Blaine sucks in a breath. “So, who’s allowed to see us?”

“Anyone who won’t be able to put it together that there’s two of us in the same place at the same time.”

Blaine nods.

“Rule number two – the memory pretty much self-destructs once it’s finished, so don’t get in its way-”

“-get in its way?”

“If it looks like it’s going to burn itself up, get underwater. If things start getting windy, find something to hold on to. If everything looks a bit too bright to be natural-”

“-close my eyes?” Blaine remarks jokingly.

Brittany grins. “As long as it works in real life, then it’ll work here; just like surviving a natural disaster-”

“-only it’s trying to kill us?”

“Oh, shush. Rule number three – this is more a piece of advice than a rule – you can only use memories to see things. You can’t manipulate what’s already happened. It’s like playing a video game; you can interact with certain things, but in the end, everything really has to go the same way it always has.”

“So…?”

“So don’t try to, okay? Don’t get too attached to something that can’t be changed.”

“Okay.”

She stares. “I mean it, Blaine.”

Blaine perks up a little more at that, raises his eyebrows. “So do I.”

Brittany holds his stare for a moment longer, looks down. Nods over at the football field. “We’ve got about a minute left in here – memories only last so long.”

Blaine leans on the railing underneath the bleachers, hands dangling like abandoned puppets. “How do you know about this one? Have you been in here before?”

She hums in acknowledgement. “Kitty’s going to start screaming in about twenty seconds, Coach is going to notice in about thirty, and then there’s always thirty seconds at the end of each memory where nothing significant really happens. It’s only there to make sure the memory doesn’t cut off halfway through.”

Blaine looks over at her, something like pride bursting in his chest. “You know a lot about this stuff, don’t you?”

She blushes, looks down. “It’s kind of my thing.”

Blaine’s about to tell her that it’s definitely her thing when a shrill, high-pitched shriek echoes past them. Brittany grabs his hand, drags him further into the shadows.

“This is it.”