A/N: Hey everybody. I know it's been forever and a year, but hopefully you guys are still with me...

So I suppose I should start with why it's been so long…

Last month an electrical fire started in my apartment when I was at work and the last few weeks have been absolute hell. The whole apartment was ruined and we lost almost everything—old pictures, the book collection I spent hundreds of dollars on so I would have books for my students to read when I got my first teaching job, my laptop, my portable hard drive which had stories I wrote dating back to when I was in middle school, stuffed animals that I've had since I was a baby—everything. I mean it could have been more than just materialistic things that were destroyed—luck had it that my dog had been at the vet all day undergoing medical observation so thank god she wasn't in the apartment when it happened, but it still completely devastating mentally, emotionally, financially—I can't even describe how stressful it's been.

We've been in a new apartment for a couple weeks now and we've been slowly replacing the things that we've lost. I lost everything that I had written for this story, so I've been re-writing everything that I had finished, but it's honestly been like pulling teeth. I keep comparing the new stuff to what I had before and thinking that what I had before was better, so that's been really frustrating and upsetting at times, but I'm still determined to finish this—even more so than before because I just want life to be somewhat normal again and I'm done with feeling sorry for myself.

Anyway… I'm sorry to get all heavy on you guys, but I felt like I couldn't just start updating again without saying anything about what happened.

To those of you who PMed me and asked about the status of this story, thank you for your patience and kindness—it was really spectacular to see after everything that's happened. Really. I honestly expected some people to be annoyed with how long it's been since I updated (I wouldn't have blamed anyone for it), but everyone was incredibly polite and unassuming, so thank you for that.

As far as updates go, I've got the next chapter partially rewritten so I'm going to try and get that finished within the next few days—hopefully I'll get to work on it some more tomorrow because as stressful as it can be, having a laptop again and being able to write has been one of the best things for me. I'd like to start updating regularly again if I can.

I'll stop rambling on now so you guys can read. Hopefully this will be worth the wait.

Thank you again for your patience. You are all simply the best.

The Proper Way to Watch Him Leave

I never knew something could hurt so much...

My father looked up at me with blazing eyes. His face was twisted in a scowl and the gag in his mouth prevented him from snarling like he obviously wanted to.

My mind got lost for a moment as I looked at him, or, more specifically, as I looked at that damn gurney he was strapped to. It was so out of place in the high-tech looking living room I was standing in that it seemed archaic and disturbing surrounded by all of the bells and whistles that modern technology had to offer.

I tore my eyes away from the sight of it to glare at Adam. "What the fuck is going on?"

My grandfather smiled and reached out to pat his son's hand. My father tried to jerk away from the touch, but the restraints wrapped around his wrists prevented it.

"Oh, nothing terrible enough to warrant that disturbed look on your face," Adam said in a reassuring tone of voice.

I seriously doubted that, but decided it wasn't the best time to tell him so.

"We're going to grant a wish," he went on happily, like it was some fun game that we were playing.

My eyes narrowed. "A wish?"

Adam opened his mouth to answer, but frowned instead. "That did sound rather juvenile, didn't it? Let me rephrase myself: We are going to give your father something he—Carl, do stop making that noise. It's absolutely savage-like, for one thing. For another, this pertains to you as well, so you might want to pay attention." He lifted his eyebrows expectedly and waited for silence in an I-can-wait-all-day-if-I-have-to-mister manor.

Breathing hard through his noise, my father stopped snarling around his gag.

"Thank you." Adam smiled. "Now, as I was saying, today we are going to give your father something he had always wanted. We are going to give him a second ability. Or rather, Kurt will."

My eyes were as wide and as shocked as my father's. Unlike Carl, however, who stared stupidly at Adam, once the message really began to sink in, rage overcame the shock and boiled the marrow in my bones.

"The hell he will!" I exploded.

Adam's brow furrowed. "There is no need to shout, Blaine, I assure you."

"Fuck you," I spat. "He's not doing it."

My grandfather smiled politely. "Actually, I have a very strong feeling that he will. You see, Kurt," he said in a smooth, snake-like voice as he leaned slightly to his left to peer at Kurt, "I can make life for you and your family quite difficult."

Kurt's fingers clenched around the fabric of my shirt, involuntarily pulling the collar tight against my neck.

"Get your fucking eyes off him!" I snarled, stepping to the right to block Adam's view.

Adam merely took another step left, smiled a completely ludicrous apologetic smile, and continued on as if I hadn't spoken. "Now, I do realize that threatening your family members is fighting dirty, but unfortunately I need this done regardless of what propriety dictates. You must understand: I am willing to go to whatever lengths necessary to see that I get my way."

I growled and stepped right again, and that time I grabbed hold of one of Kurt's wrists and pulled his arm around my waist so that his front was flush against my back. Not that it did much given our height difference, but it made me feel slightly better. "Do you even hear yourself? You're out of your goddamned mind! You don't even like him!" I raged, jabbing a finger in my father's direction. "Why would you want to make him even more powerful than he already is?"

A feral grin stretched across Adam's lips and I was so surprised to see the kindly old man façade drop without warning that I cut myself off mid-rant, forgetting every single insult that I had been about to throw at him.

"Why, indeed," Adam said in a sadistic tone. "Come now, Blaine. You're smarter than this. Your father has been a menace for far too long. And don't look at me that way, Carl, you know it's true," he admonished with a stern look in my father's direction. "That temper of yours has ruined this family's reputation for the very last time. If you thought that I was going to let you take over the organization after that childish fit you threw in response to Cooper's escape, then you are even more deluded that I originally thought. Such a disgusting public display of total loss of control. It's unacceptable."

He leaned in close to the bound man to whisper, "The truth is, I've already found a replacement for you. But not to worry, Carl, the business will stay within control of the family. Your cousin, Benjamin, in fact. You've never met him, of course—I cut ties with your uncle before Ben was born—but I can assure you that he's a very capable young man." Adam glanced up at me. "My brother was a worthless disappointment with a string of ex-wives and more children than he knew what to do with," he explained as if I actually gave a shit.

He continued, "Most of his ilk turned out to be just as disappointing and stupid as he was—a bunch of lowlifes going nowhere. After he sired his seventh mistake, I stopped keeping track of his offspring. That was a pity because by some happy accident, his eighth child turned out to be quite the prodigy. He is extremely intelligent, and most importantly, he has composure."

He turned back to my father to talk to him directly once more. "Anyway, as I was saying, Benjamin is quite perfect in all aspects for the job, and I have decided that he will be the one to run the organization when I step down."

My father roared at the words, the sound muffled by the gag, but the rage behind it was clear enough. He thrashed against his bonds.

Adam wrinkled his nose and straightened up before he gestured with both hands. "There now, you see? This is exactly what I am talking about. He is not fit to run a global organization."

The gurney threatened to tip over from the force of my father's weight as he flung himself left and right. Adam watched him with disapproving eyes before he finally heaved a giant sigh and moved back a step to lean against a nearby table.

"Oh, stop it, Carl. At the moment, you are still my successor." He glared. "For now."

"You see boys," he said, looking back at me and Kurt, "unfortunately, I have the damned board to think about. They have put a stop to each of my attempts to declare Benjamin as my legatee. Your father," he sneered the word, "has them all running scared with their tails tucked between their legs." He shook his head with a scowl. "They absolutely refuse to see reason and do what needs to be done. They're afraid he'll come after them in a vengeful fit of rage, I suppose. Blaine—you and I spoke about idiot fathers breeding idiot sons once. Well, my father had been idiot enough for the both of us. His most idiotic idea was no doubt his decision to equip the organization with a board of directors. All of them—a bunch of spineless moronic fools."

He went off on a tangent of complains then and I let him talk—he was a rambler and he liked to describe things to death, a trait that usually annoyed the shit out of me, but in that moment it had its uses. It gave me plenty of time to look around the room and search for a way to get us the hell out of there.

I figured that if I could just get us out of that madhouse, we could get away—we could figure out a way to hide Kurt's family. We could go to another country or something—somewhere safe and everything would finally be over. But there was no way in hell my father was going to get a second ability.

No. Way.

He was dangerous enough with only one.

Of course, there was a problem with my plan. There was no way out that I could see.

The damned elevator that had brought us down was shut tight and I doubted that I would be able to open it. Instead of the traditional up and down buttons that were typically used to control elevators, there was a key pad that obviously required some kind of code. Adam hadn't used a code to make it go down so I had no idea what it could be.

And since we were underground, there weren't any windows to escape from. It was like being buried alive with two psychopaths (albeit one who was tied up), and for the first time in my life I started to feel claustrophobic. The walls seemed to wobble and bend as if they were taunting me—or deciding whether or not they should start coming together.

"Blaine!" Adam said sharply and my eyes immediately snapped back to his.

I hadn't been listening and he didn't look happy about being ignored. In fact, I was surprised to find that he looked completely pissed off—almost feral.

The surprised look on my face must have sobered him, because suddenly his anger vanished and was replaced with his typical friendly smile. "I apologize. That was quite rude of me. I have to admit, I haven't felt this frazzled—no, not frazzled; anxious. I haven't felt this anxious in quite some time and, as a result, I'm afraid that I'm doing a terrible job of explaining myself."

He huffed out an apologetic sigh. "I believed you asked a question earlier. What was it again?" He frowned up at the ceiling, thinking. "Ah, yes. Why would I want to make Carl even more powerful than he already is? That's a good question, actually. The answer to that particular question carries and important lesson—perhaps the most important lesson—so please listen carefully, boys." The underlying threat in his voice was explicitly clear.

He paused to make sure he had command of the room—not that there was any question that he was king of the shit pile.

"In order to be in command of anything," he said, "you have to have power. For example, you cannot run a company without having power, whether it is power in money, in persuasion, in connection, in personality, whatever. Having just enough power will get you all the lovely things in the world you want. There is a downfall of course. Having too much power is dangerous. Too much power will result in all of those lovely things being taken away from you. Too much power always—and I do mean always—leads to a tragic end. Do you understand what I'm getting at? No? Let's try a different approach. What do we do with people whose abilities are 'too powerful?'"

After a beat of silence, he happily answered his own question. "We lock them up. We take away their human rights and we let them rot in a cell until they die. And why do we do this?

"Many would say that we do it for the good of humanity—to protect people." He rolled his eyes and wrinkled his nose. "I'm sure you know that's all hogwash. That's what people in denial tell themselves so that they can get to sleep at night. In reality, we lock up the powerful because we're afraid. We're afraid of their power and we're jealous of the fact that they have it and we don't. So what do we do in response to those feelings? We do what animals have done since the beginning of time: we eliminate the threat."

His words entered my mind with a click and triggered a memory from a while before. I remembered that Kurt had said something similar. SIIPA locks people up in the D5 facilities because they pose a threat to a corrupted chain of command.

Somehow, I knew that Kurt was remembering it too, and from the way he sagged heavily against me, knowing that his outlook on humanity (or lack thereof) was similar to Adam's didn't sit well with him.

"So," Adam continued, "that is what I am doing. I am eliminating the threat. As of now, your father has had just enough power for people to fear what he might do to them if they ever were to cross him. In other words, he's had a lot of power, but not so much that people would risk almost everything to get rid of him. That is a problem. I need him gone. So," he slapped his hands and rubbed them together, "if we were to give your father the ability that made him too powerful, the board would be forced to take action for fear of what he would do whether they cross him or not—they will take that risk because without it, they're doomed anyway."

He finished his little speech with a smile and I decided that he was sick. He was absolutely sick and I really didn't know why I was so surprised by it, but I was.

He paused to laugh. "My goodness, look at your faces. I'm quite sure that it's not as disturbing and insane as all that. After all, we are giving Carl what he always wanted, are we not? And the giving doesn't stop there. There's more.

"Just think of all the good things that will happen once he is gone. The family name will be saved from slander, an Anderson will still be in power, and I will die knowing that the legacy I have worked so hard to build will not be crushed by the delusions of a madman. More importantly, though, the both of you will be able to sleep easier at night." He smiled kindly—like how a kidnapper might smile as he stretched out a hand full of candy. "Cooper will be safe, Blaine—I give you my word that I will not attempt to bring him back to the D5 facility. I will extend the same courtesy to Ms. Pierce, of course."

"And Kurt," Adam said with and piercing eyes. "You could avenge your mother's death. You could avenge your own suffering. And if even that isn't enticing enough, just think of all the lives you will save by taking Carl out of the equation. He will never be able to hurt another person ever again."

Behind me, Kurt was stiff as a board. Adam studied Kurt's face carefully and must have found something he liked because he smirked just a little bit. Seeing it made my heart feel cold and dead.

I spoke up. "You say that like he'll die Kurt if does what you want."

He turned his eyes on me. "Perhaps," he said calmly.

"Perhaps?"

"Not by Kurt's hand, of course. Not directly, anyway. Really, it depends on what sort of ability manifests once the procedure is complete. I do have a preference, of course, and Kurt I would ask you to try your absolute best to honor that preference. You see, after Elizabeth's attack on SIIPA, a discussion had to be had—a discussion about what should be done in the event that another person with ability to use mind control was found. The worst case scenario? Immediate termination with no questions asked. It was a unanimous decision. This is news to you, Carl, since you were not present for that particular discussion." He sighed. "Had you not been raging over a lost opportunity at the time, you would have been there. Perhaps then you would have seen this coming. Once again, you can see that your berserker nature is your ultimate downfall."

He ignored my father's answering howls.

"Oh, and one more thing." He pushed himself from the table he had been leaning against. "Kurt, if you still are not convinced, allow me to be very, very blunt at this point. You might not be willing to do this, but I assure you that the fifteen armed agents surrounding your house at this very moment are more than willing to go into your home and kill every last person there. As I said before, threatening lives is a dirty way to do business and I do apologize for it, but I am out of options. It just so happens to work in my favor that you are out of options as well."

He clasped his hands together once again—that time with finality. "Well. I think that's enough talking for now. I believe I've said everything I needed to say. Let's begin, shall we?"

I pulled Kurt's arm more securely around my waist—whether it was to pull him closer to me or just to keep him from moving away, I wasn't completely sure. All I knew was that Kurt wasn't going anywhere. "He's not your fucking puppet. Fix your own fucking problems."

Adam sighed. "Always so difficult. You should know me well enough by now to realize that I always plan ahead for these sorts of things," he said. Then he called a foreign sounding name that sounded like gibberish to my ears and man I had never seen before came into the room—not by any kind of normal means. No. The fucker had to step right through the goddamn wall like a giant Houdini. I say giant because the man, who had caramel colored skin and impossibly dark eyes, was fucking huge. Taller than Finn could ever hope to be kind of huge.

I instantly stepped back, taking Kurt with me.

We had to leave, I realized.

The man started for us, taking his time. He looked like the very definition of aloof.

We had to leave now.

"Kurt," I hissed from the corner of my mouth. "We're getting out of here."

Kurt said nothing.

He said nothing because he knew that there was no way that we were going to get out of there. He knew it, and, deep down, I knew it too.

I knew it, but it didn't matter. I still had to try. For my own sanity, I had to believe that I would get us out of there—that I could protect the person I loved and keep him safe.

But I could feel his resignation to succumb to the inevitable race through his veins like quicksilver. It seemed to seep from his skin into mine, making my body hum with it—I had to fight against it as I looked around for something to even our shitty odds.

"Blaine," Kurt said, and I knew he had already made up his mind.

I couldn't accept it. I twisted my fingers around his and held on as tight as I could. Time was up.

"Run."

I didn't give him the chance to protest. I shot off like a bullet, taking him with me. We got about six steps before the man was right in front of us. I took a sharp left to avoid him, but suddenly he was there again, even closer that time. He wasn't teleporting or anything like that—he was just really fucking fast.

I tried to dive away but he caught the back of my hood and sent me flat on my ass. I lost my grip on Kurt's hand when I fell, but I was back on my feet in an instant. The man was already reaching for Kurt when I dove and it was only by millimeters that he missed his mark as I tackled Kurt to the ground and away from the man's grabbing hands.

We fell hard, and I barely registered the impact before there was a hand on my hood for the second time. I gagged as I was hurled backwards.

I was sent flying—actually fucking flying—like a damned ragdoll right into one of those pointless decorative tables that people put potted plants on—only that one had a lamp on it and it went crashing to the floor as I landed hard on top of the wooden table. My landing was hard enough to break wood and each snap seemed to bite at my skin with a sting that was powerful enough to make my bones ache.

It hurt like an absolute bitch. My body seemed to go on shut down. That one instant of pain and I was ready to curl up and go to sleep just so it could go away for a while.

Obviously, that wasn't an option.

It was nearly impossible to force myself to stand up, but I did it. My head was spinning and I was exhausted, but I tried to ignore all of those things as I bent down to pick up a broken table leg. It was still partially connected to the rest so I had to pull with both hands until it came free.

I stumbled back at the sudden lack of resistance and somehow managed to stay on my feet.

It's funny how dramatic moments like this seem to go so fast. Just one thing after another—boom, boom, boom, done. The shitty part was that for as much as everything seemed to speed up, my body seemed to slow to a crawl.

I grit my teeth and turned to face the silent giant.

He was standing a few steps away, waiting—calm. I looked right into his dark eyes as I hoisted the table leg over my shoulder like a baseball bat.

As I walked closer, he didn't move. He didn't so much as get into a defensive position. He just stood there and waited until I was close enough to swing the makeshift bat as hard as I could.

It sailed right through his skull as if he wasn't even there.

It fucking figured.

With nothing to stop the momentum of the swing, I spun through and fell.

On my hands and knees, I swayed for a minute and waiting for the world to go back into focus. When I was no longer seeing two of everything, I looked up and just in time to catch the giant booted foot sail towards my face. I didn't even have time to register how much it hurt before I fell headfirst into a deep black nothing.

I woke up with that uncomfortable feeling you get when you spend too much time upside down—it's kind of like a hard pressure at the very top of your skull, as if your head is full so much blood that it might pop at any moment.

As soon as I opened my eyes, I found out why. I was laying on my back, arranged carelessly upside down on one of my grandfather's couches with my legs draped over the back cushioning and my head dangling off the edge of the seat. I could remember sitting that way on the couch when I was little just so I could watch TV upside down. I remembered thinking it was fun. If I could have, I would have gone back in time and smacked five year old me upside the head for being such a fucking idiot.

Gingerly, I lifted my head and the pressure from all the blood that had collected there rushed back to where it was supposed to be. Losing the pressure hurt almost as much as having it there did, but it was quickly forgotten when I heard a soft whimper from Kurt.

"Kurt?" I groaned and rolled blindly. I dropped down to the floor like a rock and for the first time I realized that the skin around my left eye felt hard and swollen. When I tried to open it, it refused to cooperate and it throbbed painfully with each passage of blood cycling through my veins.

I looked up just in time to see Kurt collapse into my grandfather's arms. He looked weak and sickly and his skin had turned a pasty white color.

"Easy," Adam said. "Easy. There you go. Rest there. Rest."

His words were comforting, but his movements were rushed and impatient as he lowered Kurt to the ground. As soon as Kurt was down, Adam was up and hovering over that stupid gurney with giddy excitement. I couldn't have cared less about what he was doing, though. All I saw was Kurt, who was sprawled out over the floor as if he was already dead. Blood dripped steadily from his nose and a vein stood out in the middle of his pasty white forehead.

I used my tired arms and legs to crawl to him and his big blue everything eyes locked on mine when I was half way there. I'm sorry, they said and I wanted to cry because that was all wrong. I was the one who I was sorry. I was sorry I had ever met him. I was sorry I had ruined the normal life he had made for himself.

When I was close enough to reach, I put my arms around him. I kissed him where I could reach—the corner of his eyebrow—and I closed my eyes and wished that we were in our someplace else, sitting in Kurt's car, and wasting the day away in each other's arms and looking out of the window and the big gray sky.

"Genius," Adam's awed voice broke into my wishes and crushed them to less than dust. "It's absolute genius." Excitement bubbled out of him with a laugh. "Do you feel that, Carl? Do you feel the power that's there at the tip of your tongue? You could have anything you wanted now—if I were to remove that gag, that is."

The gurney rocked and jerked, its wheels slapping angrily against the floor.

Adam went on calmly, as if he was strolling through the park in the spring. "I can't even imagine how frustrating it must be to have all that power and not be able to use it… I do believe that you are more powerful than even Elizabeth was." He took a deep breath through his nose, like he was hoping that somehow he could inhale the raw power he felt under his fingertips. "If you could talk then this would be my nightmare, wouldn't it? I would spend the rest of my life staring into space if you told me to. I can see that you want to, but," he tapped the gag, "you can't."

More angry slapping was followed by more calm talking.

"Still—you should be happy. Being that you need to speak to use your new ability, your tongue may very well be the only thing you lose when this is all said and done."

I wanted to kill him.

More than anything I wanted to kill him and I thought about how as I stared up at him and imagined all the possibilities.

He must have felt the disgust in my stare because he turned away from my father to look at me. He looked fascinated rather than scared—not that I can blame him for it. I was beat up and laying on the ground of fuck's sake. Not much of a threat there.

"Such anger," he murmured as he stared transfixed. "If you could, you would kill me right where I stand, wouldn't you, Blaine?"

I would. I knew I would.

He smiled sadly. "You would have been such a good successor had it not been for all that hatred you carry inside. Yet another loss we can blame your father for." He looked back at my father and the awe returned to his expression as he pressed his hands to his son's cheek. "Yes," he said as he closed his eyes. "Definitely more powerful than Elizabeth. Much more. Kurt did an excellent job."

He breathed in deep as he used his ability to study the power at his disposal. After a few moments he opened his eyes and glanced at his watch.

"It's almost time now. The board should be here any moment. Just one last thing." He looked at the two of us. "I'll need you both to separate now."

I held Kurt tighter. Not happening, asshole.

He sighed. "Always the difficult way with you." He called that foreign sounding name again and the giant man appeared like a shadow. Just seeing him made me feel absolutely drained of all life.

My eyes rolled shut against it all.

I'm so tired, I thought.

And I was.

I was exhausted. All I wanted was to sleep—right there, safe with Kurt.

"Just let us go," I heard myself say. "Please. Please. I need him."

Begging.

It was probably one of the lowest points of my life.

"I can't do that," Carl said. "Surely you must have seen this coming?"

"Seen what?" I asked sluggishly. It felt like the only ability I had left in me was to lie there and listen.

"This," he repeated as if that helped, which of course it didn't. "After our conversation about power, you must have known."

His voice sounded so close and when I opened my eyes, there he was, kneeling over us, looking at me.

"As much as I wish there was another way, certain abilities are just too dangerous. Do you know what I'm trying to say? I'm saying that Kurt's ability is too dangerous. It's an unnecessary risk and precautions must be taken."

"No," I moaned brokenly at the words as my stomach caved in.

"Yes," Adam insisted. "It has to be done."

No, I thought again. They would have to squeeze the life out of me before they could take him out of my arms.

"I cannot leave lose ends to unravel."

The sick part was that he wasn't even lying. I don't think he lied once to me in my entire life. He truly believed every disgusting word coming out of his mouth. If his evil truths had been physical things I would have shoved them right down his goddamn throat and held them there until he choked to death.

Finished with his games, he took a step back as the other man stepped forward.

It was around that time that I started repeating myself. It started with one choked 'no' and suddenly I could stop. I probably looked and sounded completely pathetic, but I didn't care. Kurt stayed completely silent and I grew louder. I kicked my feet when the man came down on us and tried to push him away but he forced us roughly apart without effort. I screamed as I attacked the man's legs as he hauled Kurt into his arms, and I screamed with my mouth stuffed full as I bit him with all of the force my jaw could allow.

Each time I managed to get a grip on him, I was able to hold it for only a second before he became incorporeal and literally slipped through my fingers—that was when 'no' turned into senseless screams—hoarse yells and grunts and inhuman sounds that should never have to be desperate enough to make.

Kurt didn't even try to put up a fight, but his eyes were so sad as they begged for me to stop.

And then suddenly everything changed.

One minute I was screaming like a mindless animal because that bastard had my entire everything in his arms and the next my mother was suddenly there, standing right next to the man who had Kurt, and my brain nearly short-circuited.

I couldn't process what was happening. I gaped at her, stunned into silence at her sudden, random presence that just made no sense at all.

I could only watch stupidly as my mother reached out a hand, taking no notice off all of the stunned and confused faces as she touched Kurt's cheek.

And then in that one second—the very second—that she touched him, the two of them were gone. The giant man was staring flabbergasted at his empty arms.

They were gone.

Completely and utterly gone.

As if neither of them had been there at all.

A/N: You might be very confused over that last part or even over Adam's twisted logic in general. If you need anything explained just let me know.

I'm shooting for an update by next weekend. Hopefully I will see you all then.