Kurt looked up at the tall building with a sigh, and looked down at his suit. What he wouldn't give to have his trunk from Paris still, with the hand-tailored suit and other wonderful pieces. But that trunk was at the bottom of the Atlantic. 

Straightening his navy suit, he knew he looked good. Taking a deep breath, he walked towards the entrance, thanking the doorman who held the door open for him.

The lobby was busy, full of businessmen rushing about and acting important. Kurt kept in character as he walked to the reception desk.

"Kurt Hummel to see Charles Anderson." He said it in an off-hand manner, as if such meetings were commonplace.

"Thank you, Mr. Hummel. He is expecting you. You can take the elevator to the second floor, room #253."

Nodding, he turned to go to the elevator lobby. A sharply uniformed operator manned each one. 

Stepping inside, the operator closed the grill behind him, latching it firmly.

"Two, please." Kurt intoned, and felt the elevator rise quickly, leaving his stomach behind. He hadn't been in elevators that often.

The second floor seemed to have many offices for the hotel staff, and Charles' was at the end of a long hallway with large double doors. Very impressive. 

Kurt could feel a sensation much like stage fright, but even more intense. Would Charles recognize him?

Knocking on the door, he heard a female voice inside bid him to enter. Inside was an elegantly decorated reception area with plush upholstered seating. After introducing himself, he sat down, running through possible scenarios and imaging how he could react.

"Mr. Hummel, this way please." The slim blonde waved Kurt towards the large oak door. 

First impressions were the most important. Kurt lowered his chin and pasted on a confident smile.

"Mr. Anderson, I'm Kurt Hummel. Nice to meet you." Kurt held out his hand to the older man, shaking it firmly. 

Charles Anderson looked basically the same as before. The same sharp hazel eyes, quick mind. Maybe a few more grey hairs. There was no sign he recognized Kurt at all.

Dropping back into his office chair, Charles steepled his fingers together. "So, your letter mentioned wanting to discuss the possibility of opening a moving picture house, and that you are experienced in Vaudeville theatre management. Do you really see these moving pictures being so important in upcoming years?"

"Yes, I feel very confident that they will grow into a large industry, and you'd be wise to invest early in it." Kurt replied, sitting back in his chair. "But I am actually here about another matter. Your son, Blaine Anderson."

Charles flushed a little in anger, before he composed himself, his tightened jaw the only outward sign of his emotions. "What about my son, Mr. Hummel? I hope you are not another one of those flim-flam artists promising to find him? It has been five months. I have long ago conceded to the idea of his body being lost at sea with hundreds of others."

Kurt shook his head quickly, wanting to get off that topic quickly before it sparked tears in his eyes. "No, sir. Nothing like that. I actually was a friend of your son on the Titanic. Special friends."

He held Charles' gaze, steady and unflinching, until the other man looked away. 

Charles rose from his chair. "I think it is time for you to leave, Mr. Hummel." He circled the desk, his jaw clenched tight.

Kurt stood, searching for the words to make Blaine's father stop and listen to him. "I'm not making this up, sir. His full name was Blaine Devon Anderson. His older brother is Cooper and he lives in San Francisco. Their nanny was Fiona, who taught Blaine traditional Irish songs and gave him a guitar before he went to school at Dalton. His favorite book was Tom Jones. And he preferred the company of men than that of ladies."

Charles froze on the spot, his face turning red with anger. "And what do you intend to do with all this information, Mr. Hummel? Talk to a reporter about your scandalous shipboard tryst unless I pay you to keep quiet? Drag our family name through the mud?"

Taking a deep breath, Kurt let it out slowly. He waved for Charles to sit back down, knowing he had his attention now. Still, he waited for another minute.

"I have no intention of talking to a reporter or anything like that. But I do want one thing of Blaine's before I leave today." Kurt said calmly, trying to keep his emotions under control. He had come this far. Just a little bit further. 

Charles let out an impatient huff. "Pray, tell me what it is so I can refuse you and get to my next appointment."

"I want his guitar." Kurt said, his voice clear and steady.

Charles' eyes widened in surprise. "That old second-hand piece of junk? Why? Does it have a treasure map printed inside it or something?" 

Shaking his head, Kurt could see that his request had thrown Charles a bit, maybe even thawed his icy demeanor slightly. "It only has sentimental value to me, sir. Please. It would mean a lot to me."

Kurt wasn't sure where to look. He was getting to the edge of his endurance. It didn't take much to send silent tears streaming down his face these days. He looked at the edge of the desk, trying to keep it together as he waited for Charles' response. Bracing for the worst.

"Alright." Charles said, standing up and walking quickly to the door. "Come with me and we will fetch it from his suite."

Kurt sat there, blinking in surprise for a couple heartbeats, until the words sunk in. Then he practically flew to Charles' side, trying to keep his face neutral. 

They rode up the elevator to the tenth floor together, and Kurt schooled his face to reveal nothing as he could feel Charles' searching glance.

Walking down the hallway, Charles took a key ring from his pocket and unlocked the door. He pushed it open, and waved Kurt inside.

Kurt was expecting dusty piles of Blaine's things, in a musty, stuffy room. But things were tidy and dust-free. There must had been maids keeping this room clean the whole time. It looked like Blaine could return at any moment. 

The thought made tears prickle in Kurt's eyes, and he strode over to the window, using the excuse of looking out the window to take a moment to collect himself. 

He heard a noise behind him and turned to find Charles standing a few steps away, holding out the old guitar case. "Are you sure this is all you want, Mr. Hummel? Would you like his copy of Tom Jones as well?"

"It's not here. It was on the ship." Kurt said without thinking, reaching out to take the guitar from Charles.

Charles let Kurt take the instrument, and watched as he walked to the door of the suite to leave. "You loved him, didn't you?" 

The soft words stopped Kurt in his tracks, holding onto the doorknob. He turned slowly, looking at the older man across the room. The empty room of his dead son. "Yes, I loved him."

Charles nodded. "I'm glad. Glad he knew real love." He turned towards the window.

Kurt suspected Charles was using the window just like Kurt had before. Trying to collect himself before tears came. Suddenly he didn't look like a powerful businessman. He looked like a grieving father. 

Taking out his handkerchief, Kurt walked across the room and held it towards the older man. He accepted it, lifting it to his face, but still not turning to face Kurt.

"I trust you can find your own way down, Mr. Hummel. I'm going to take a moment here." Charles said softly, still facing away. 

Nodding, Kurt went back to the door and picked up the guitar. 

"Please make sure to leave your mailing address with my secretary. When we pack up this room, I may send some things to you." Charles said, half-turned towards Kurt.

Giving a small nod and a smile, Kurt left the room, closing the door almost all the way to give Blaine's father some time alone.

---

Every cloud must have a silver lining.
Wait until the sun shines through.
Smile, my honey dear
While I kiss away each tear
Or else I shall be melancholy too.

Kurt strummed on the guitar, singing the sweet, simple song with raw feelings that made the audience cheer at the end.

Curtsying, he didn't bother pulling off his wig for a big dramatic finale. It tended to go over better when he dressed to the nines and did a more seductive number. 

He hadn't been in the mood for that kind of act for a long time.

Backstage, he stashed Blaine's guitar back into its case carefully. He had worked at learning it for ages, and still practiced every day. He was comfortable enough to play simple songs onstage with it now. 

He changed quickly for his next act, a comedy routine where he acted like a clueless policeman. The makeup was gone and his hair below a cap in a minute, and he rushed to the side of the stage to join the others for the skit.

"You are getting quite good at that guitar." Melanie smiled at him as she adjusted her yellow dress, making sure it was sitting right on her cleavage. 

Kurt returned her smile. "Thanks." Melanie was someone he'd worked with before going to Europe. Most of his company was performers he had worked with in the past, and he had settled into the routine quite easily.

"Say, after this, do you want to pop over to the theatre a couple blocks over? They have this new singing act which is supposed to be quite funny." Melanie checked her lipstick in the mirror a final time.

Kurt nodded. "Sure, sounds good."

The curtain came up and they entered from stage left, their timing perfected from doing the skit twice a day for the past few months.

---

The other Vaudeville theatre was just as busy as theirs was, but Melanie knew the guy at the stage door and they got in easily. Grabbing an old program off a table, she scanned it. 

"It's after the magician." She said in a soft whisper.

They worked their way into the hall, finding two seats close to the wall.

Onstage, a man in a bathing suit was being lowered upside down into a wood and metal tank of water with a glass front, his feet locked into stocks at the top. 

Everyone watched in rapt attention as the man twisted and turned inside the tank, working to free his feet before he ran out of air. Just when it felt like it had gone on too long, the man threw his leg shackles onto the stage and sat on the edge of the tank, dripping and gasping for breath.

"I wouldn't want to follow Houdini!" Melanie whispered, as they watched the performer bowing and his team clearing away the tank. 

When the curtain came up again, there was a guy dressed up like a fisherman, holding a ukulele. As he began to play his song, another guy came out dressed like another fisherman and acted out the words. Words that were very familiar to Kurt.

Cause her hair was green as seaweed
Her skin was blue and pale
Her face it was a work of art,
I loved that girl with all my heart
But I only liked the upper part
I did not like the tail

A woman came out, dressed like a mermaid, and the audience laughed along with their antics. All except Kurt. 

He sat there in shock, staring at the guy singing and strumming the ukulele with such ease. Below the baggy clothes and cap, was that Blaine?

Melanie didn't notice until the end, when she was clapping and Kurt wasn't. "Didn't you like it? I thought it was fun."

"I think I know the singer. Can you get me backstage again?" Kurt asked, still reeling from it all.

Melanie took in his expression, and just nodded, grabbing his hand to pull him along. 

And there he was, smiling with the other cast as he took the costume off and hung it up, looking like he'd been doing this for years. 

But when his hazel eyes caught sight of the tall still man, standing to the side, he stopped talking too. 

It was loud and chaotic backstage, and it was just too much for Kurt suddenly. He turned to Melanie. "Get me out of here." And relied on her guiding hand as she led him back out the stage door, into the dark, quieter side street, and down on a bench.

The stage door banged open and Blaine burst out, dressed in casual clothes. "Kurt!" He looked around, and then spotted them, running over and dropping onto the bench. He looked just as shocked and stunned as Kurt did, and they just stared at each other. 

"Hey, man, piss off. This is Peter, not Kurt." Melanie stepped closer to loom over Blaine. 

Kurt chuckled up at her big sister protective instincts. She knew he'd been through a lot, with Titanic, and she knew he'd had his heart broken too. It was rather sweet.

He put a calming hand on her arm. "Kurt is my real name. Peter Lockwood is just my stage name." He turned to Blaine. "And you've been using the stage name Andrew Prince."

Shaking his head, Kurt began to chuckle. Both Melanie and Blaine looked at him as if he'd lost it.

"Sorry," Kurt chuckled. "I was just imagining how many times we've been in the same city without realizing it." It all felt a bit surreal. 

He looked between the two of them, but they didn't seem to be joining with their laughter. They were sharing concerned expressions. Kurt giggled again, and the world seemed to get a little fuzzier. And then went completely black.

-----

Disclaimer: I own nothing. 

A/N: Here's the second alternative ending to my Titanic story. I hope you will enjoy it. :D 

My Melancholy Baby: This song that Kurt sings was first performed in 1912, music by Ernie Burnett, lyrics by George A Norton. Ernie Burnett, who composed the music, was wounded fighting in the First World War, and he lost his memory together with his identity dog tags. While recuperating in hospital, a pianist entertained the patients with popular tunes including "Melancholy Baby". Burnett rose from his sickbed and exclaimed: "That's my song!" He had regained his memory. It was in various movies over the years. Marilyn Monroe's character in the 1959 comedy Some Like It Hot was a big fan of it when played by a tenor sax. "All they have to do is play eight bars of 'Come to me My Melancholy Baby' and my spine turns to custard, I get goosepimply all over, and I come to 'em!"

Tom Jones: I'm sure you remember 'The History of Tom Jones; A Foundling' by Henry Fielding, the 1749 comic adventure novel Blaine lent Kurt on the Titanic.

Harry Houdini: Born in Budapest as Ehrich Weisz in 1874, his family moved to the US when he was 4 years old. He started working as a trapeze artist at the age of nine. In 1891, he became a magician and changed his name. His big break was in 1899 when he met manager Martin Beck who encouraged him to focus on his escape acts. Within months, he was performing at the best Vaudeville houses in the country, and later toured in Europe. In 1913, Houdini introduced perhaps his most famous act, the Chinese Water Torture Cell, in which he was suspended upside-down in a locked glass-and-steel cabinet full to overflowing with water. The act required that Houdini hold his breath for more than three minutes. For most of his career, Houdini was a headline act in vaudeville, and he was the highest-paid performer. He died at the age of 52 from peritonitis, secondary to a burst appendix. There are rumours that it was caused by a surprise attack in Montreal a few days earlier by an university student who delivered several hard blows to his stomach, while Houdini was reclining on a sofa with a broken ankle. He was in pain, but continued to perform on stage, not seeing a doctor. When he finally saw a doctor, he had a fever and the diagnosis of the appendicitis, with recommendation of immediate surgery. But he still went on stage in Detroit and was hospitalized afterwards, dying a week later. After taking statements from eyewitnesses, Houdini's insurance company concluded that the death was due to the dressing-room incident and paid double indemnity.

Mermaid song: Blaine sings the same song as he sang on The Titanic. It sounds like a traditional song, but it's actually from 1965, written by Saul Silverman & covered by the band Great Big Sea in 2005.