A/N: If you asked a question about the last chapter, I explained some things in the author's note at the end so you can check that out if you want.

Before you start reading, though, THANK YOU for all the support. You guys are simply amazing. You don't even know. Thank you all.

The Proper Way to Talk to Dolls

My mother always reminded me of a pretty doll...

Ever since I met Kurt I had stayed as close to him as I possibly could. It was like a compulsion—magnetic, automatic—a need more than a want.

Whenever he was gone, I felt his absence like a physical ache and a new kind of compulsion would set in—a compulsion to find him and be with him again. The top layer of my skin would hum with it until it seeped down into my bones and ate me alive.

I needed Kurt like I needed blood in my veins.

As I stared brokenly at the silent giant's empty arms, the air around me became thick and toxic and my blood felt crusty and dry as sand.

Kurt was gone.

But not the normal kind of gone—the supernatural kind. The kind that left very little possibility of finding him again.

Gone.

Gone.

I had no idea where he was, no idea where to find him, or even how.

He's gone.

I looked at Adam and I realized for the first time that the look on his face was wrong. It wasn't shock like I had originally thought. It was something slightly different—he looked surprised, yes, but surprised in a thoughtful, calculating way—a way that told me that he had been expecting my mother to show up, but hadn't been entirely sure whether or not she actually would.

He knew, I thought. That fucking bastard actually knew.

Something dark welled up inside me.

"Where is he?" I demanded.

Adam looked at me. He looked so calm—relaxed and at ease. It was difficult for me to make sense of it. Then he smiled kindly at me and on the surface it was just right—friendly and pacifying, but there was something deeper that was off; something about the twinkle in his eyes reminded me of a scientist who had just made a breakthrough discovery.

"I can assure you, I have no idea where he is."

"You knew this was going to happen," I accused and he chuckled.

"Not knew," he said with that same twinkling grin. "Suspected."

My hands were shaking again. I wanted to choke him more than ever. "What's the difference? You still had an idea."

"There is a huge difference," he said, but didn't elaborate. Instead, he sighed in an almost dreamy sort of way. "I must say this experience has been much more entertaining than I thought it would be. It's a pity that I can't take the time to really enjoy it." He checked his watch. "The board will be here any minute and the show isn't over yet. Not for me, at least, and certainly not for your father." He looked up at me through his lashes. "You, however, must leave now."

"No. I want to know where Kurt is."

He was back to looking at his watch. "And I've told you already that I do not know." He sounded distracted, like he couldn't waste another thought on the person whose life he had just destroyed. "Besides, you may want to keep in mind that wherever he is, he is safe so long as I cannot find him, so let us hope that your mother has hidden him very, very well. The moment he comes out of hiding, I will have no choice but to dispose of him. I meant what I said earlier—his ability is a dangerous one and because of the threat it poses, he must be eliminated. Fortunately for your Mr. Hummel, I cannot eliminate what I do not have."

He turned away from me and started for the elevator. As he put in the activation code, he started talking again and it took me a minute to realize that he wasn't talking to me but to his silent giant, who just stood there looking emotionless and gigantic. "I'll need you to escort Blaine outside. Once he is safe in his car, give the order for the Hummel's property to be cleared." The door of the elevator swooshed open and he stepped inside. He turned and winked at me. "I am a man of my word. Don't forget to say hello to Cooper for me." The doors closed.

Seconds after the elevator door closed, the seven foot giant was by my side. He wordlessly put his hand on my shoulder and forced me forward. I stumbled, but he kept his hand on my shoulder and steadied me as he walked us straight towards a wall. My stomach flipped when I realized that he meant for us to walk through it. It was more terrifying than it should have been—probably because every instinct I had was screaming at me to stop before I walked into solid brick.

I shut my eyes when we went through the first wall, but that made me feel sick to my stomach so I kept them open for the next one. It was like moving through water. The wood seemed to turn into an alien liquid and it made me wonder whether the man's ability was to make himself incorporeal or just everything else.

Eventually we were moving underground through liquid rock and dirt, and I discovered what it felt like to feel claustrophobic. The giant kept a strong grip on my shoulder, but I reached out and closed a tight fist around the fabric of his shirt. The fear of losing him and being trapped underground until I asphyxiated became very real. I tried not to wonder how I was still breathing and decided that it was better just to be damn glad that somehow I still was.

Eventually I got the feeling like we were moving up—like there were a series of staircases under the ground that no one knew about, but I didn't open my eyes (I had closed them again, dizziness be damned straight to hell) to confirm it.

Even though I had been breathing semi-normally the whole time, I took a deep gulp of air as soon as I felt the air on my skin. I blinked furiously and tried to regain my sense of what normal should be, but by the time we got to my car, even the ground seemed to be trying to turn to liquid under my feet, which started to seriously fuck with my head. It got worse when the stoic giant shoved me right through the front door of my car without allowing me to open it the normal way.

I sputtered a little and reached out with both hands until I felt something solid. It took me a few minutes, but once I felt less like an unstable basketcase, I put both hands on the wheel and took a deep breath.

It was a confusing few minutes. It's hard to describe exactly what was going on in my head, but I was in a kind of limbo. I sat there wondering what I was supposed to do. Only a couple hours before Kurt had been in the seat next to me. He had been right there. Close enough to touch.

He's gone.

I glanced in the rear-view mirror for a look at my face.

The entire left side was swollen, but my eye looked the most fucked up. The little bit of it that I could see was red instead of white, which looked pretty creepy in contrast to the hazel green color of my iris. Looking at it made it hurt more so redirected my attention elsewhere.

A quick sweep of the area told me that the man was gone.

My hands tightened on the wheel.

I knew I couldn't just sit there. I had to do something—go somewhere.

A kind of buzzing sound erupted in my ears.

I fished my keys out of my pocked and turned my car on. I drove.

The house looked exactly like I remembered it, even after two years—gigantic and standoffish.

I parked my car in the middle of the horseshoe sharped driveway and got out. I didn't have a key to the house—it was one of the first things I got rid of after I left—so I knocked on the door and waited impatiently.

I tried to stamp out all hope that by some one-in-a -million chance, Kurt was in there, just waiting for me to come get him, creeped out of his mind by my mother's endless grinning, but at the same time awed by her old-time fashion choices, which I knew he of all people would appreciate.

But that kind of hoping was dangerous—in my gut I knew he wasn't there.

The door opened a crack and a pair of cold eyes peered out at me before they widened in surprise. The surprise didn't last long and was quickly replaced by scowling suspicion.

The door opened all the way to reveal a stern looking old woman. Her gray hair was pulled back into a too-tight bun that brought back a lot of unhappy memories. When I was little I used to look at her tightly pulled back hair and worry that it would pull her ugly face right off her skull. I would have nightmares of her walking around with only a skull and that tight head of hair.

She had glared mercilessly at me when I was a child and she glared mercilessly at me then, like I was a squished insect that had come back to haunt her. I glared right back at her. I would have happily gone another thousand years without having to see Deborah Burke's stupid pulled back face.

She parted her crusted lips to talk. "What are you doing here, Blaine Anderson?"

I mentally cringed at her use of my first and last name. She had always addressed me like that—she always addressed everyone like that—always with their first and last name.

"I need to see Mom."

She stared at me, searching my face. Her upper lip curled. "That is absolutely out of the question. Just look at your face. Obviously you've turned into some kind of brawling hooligan."

"I wasn't asking your permission, O.B.," I said and shoved my way into the house.

O.B. was short for Old Bat—Cooper's idea, of course, but that didn't mean that I couldn't borrow it, especially since I knew she hated it.

My ex-nanny sputtered indignantly at being man handled by the person she used to bully and chased after me as I started walking towards my mother's wing of the house. "Impertinence!" she squawked like a chicken. "Impertinence! Get out of this house, Blaine Anderson! You made your choices. You do not live here anymore. Get out before I call the police!"

I rounded on her suddenly and she gasped a little as she stopped abruptly to avoid walking right into me. I grinned sinisterly down at her, pleased to note that for the first time since I could remember, I was the taller one. When I was little, she seemed like a mighty giant who was fit to tear me down. She used to terrify me. Now the idea of it was laughable.

"Go right ahead, O.B.—call 'em. I'll use my satanic powers to flay the fresh from their bones. And then I'll do the same to you."

Her mouth dropped open and she stared up at me with weary eyes for a moment. Then her expression turned hard and smug. "I don't believe you, Blaine Anderson. Your brother was the abomination. You were just the scared little boy who cowered behind him."

Deborah actually didn't know anything about preternatural abilities. She didn't have one and she didn't know that they existed. She was just crazy religious and obsessed with the devil. In her warped mind, God had given her the power to see the devil inside of evil people, which was basically anyone that she didn't like. She was fucking batty—not that years of witnessing Cooper's telekinetic fits had helped her mental state, but I swear she was nuts long before my father hired her.

Thinking about my father made me think about everything that had happened that day and I let the grin fall off of my face. I stared at Deborah with cold, dead eyes and the smugness on her face fell away almost instantly. She took a step back.

"Do I look like a scared little boy now?" I asked, stepping closer to her, crowding her space.

Fear seeped in just before she closed her eyes. Her lips moved rapidly in what I can only imagine was a prayer.

I snorted and took a step back as I rolled my eyes. "Stupid bitch."

That time she didn't follow me when I turned and walked away without stopping to think about how much I had enjoyed scaring her.

I felt a thousand different emotions as I walked through the halls of my childhood home and they all twisted together in my stomach like one big knot. The knot ballooned when my eyes landed on the open double doors that led to my mother's rooms.

I couldn't see inside yet, but I knew that the room would be the same as it had been two years ago, and when I rounded the corner where the wall met the doorway, what I saw confirmed what I already knew.

Everything was exactly the same: the sitting room was the first room you entered when you stepped through the doors, where you would be forced to squint to adjust to the sudden onslaught of bright light from the setting sun. The entire back wall was lined with windows—just one right next to the other, all of them spaced only about three inches apart. The room was massive, so there were about fifteen of them that overlooked the lake in the backyard.

And there, sitting in the corner of the room, sat Melissa Anderson in her upholstered white chair—separate from all of the other white upholstered furnishings, as if the even the room recognized that she didn't really belong. Still, she smiled happily as she looked out at the lake below and studied the fallen autumn leaves that surrounded it.

My mother didn't turn away from her window to look at me, which wasn't surprising. Unless you obstructed her view, she would be content to stay lost inside herself all day long.

As I watched her watch the outside, the balloon in my stomach expanded a little bit more. The longer I stared at her familiar face, the more unfamiliar it seemed. Her features began to wash together and I started to imagine her with no face at all—just a blank head of hair that had taken my heart away from me. I frowned, trying to make sense of it.

I began to feel like I was teetering on a line. One side of that line was a very dangerous place to be.

Something cold gripped my heart and I tore my eyes away to take a few deep breaths.

I was going crazy.

Hesitantly, I peeked back at her. She looked normal again.

Keep it together.

Kurt wasn't there. He hadn't stepped foot in the house. I could feel his absence pumping through my veins, making me feel erratic.

I shook it off.

I walked towards Melissa. Someone—probably the old bat—had dressed her in a flowy white dress that made her look ghost-like.

No Face flashed before my eyes again and I blinked it away.

Slowly, I kneeled down in front of her.

"Mom."

With painful slowness, she turned away from the window and looked at me. When our eyes met, the stupid rhyme I used to chant when I was little came back to haunt me.

My raven haired mommy with eyes like a dolly.

Cooper hated it when I sang that song.

"Mom, do you know who I am?"

Melissa Anderson said nothing. She just kept smiling beautifully at me.

"It's Blaine," I told her. "I—I'm Blaine—your son." I paused to see if she would give me a reaction. I shouldn't have bothered. She didn't so much as blink. I started talking again. "You took someone away from me today—someone very important. I need you to tell me where he is."

Melissa lifted a white hand. She caught my curls in gentle fingers.

I reached up and pulled her hand away. "Mom," I begged. "Please. Please tell me. You've never done anything to help me in my entire life. I need you to help me now. I need you to take me to see Kurt."

"Kurt," she said.

My heart stopped.

My hand tightened involuntarily around her wrist. She didn't react to it, but the second I realized what I was doing I loosened my grip.

Easy, I told myself. Go slow. Be easy.

"Yes. Kurt. Where is he?"

"Kurt," she said again.

My heart fell. She was just mimicking me. Did she even know who I was talking about?

I studied her vacuous smile and her hazy eyes. Where would she have left him? Did he have food? Did he have a place to sleep? Was he alone? Was he scared?

She looked right into my desperate eyes and touched my cheek again. "Darling boy," she whispered. Then she giggled.

My shoulders slumped. I was in over my head.

I shoved my hand in my pocket and pulled out my phone. I unlocked it and pulled up the first picture of Kurt I could find. "This is Kurt," I said, turning the phone so she could see. "I need to see him. I need you to use your ability—the one he gave you—to take me to see him."

The smile on her face fell and she looked at Kurt's picture with sad eyes. "Kurt," she said again, and her eyes filled with tears. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a phone—Kurt's phone.

The balloon of emotions in my stomach popped.

"That's Kurt's," I whispered, staring at the black screen. I looked back up at her wet eyes and everything seemed to kick into overdrive. My heart raced faster than I thought possible, spurred on by the remaining fear and desperation that I felt inside. "What? Why are you crying? Is he okay?" I dropped my own phone and gripped her shoulders hard. "Tell me where he is!" I shook her.

She made a startled noise and gripped my face with both hands. I registered the feel of her fingers and a warm shock. Then, like the flick of a switch, everything stopped. Everything changed.

I stopped shaking her and smiled.

Everything was wonderful.

Everything was the best it had ever been. It was amazing, beautiful, fucking marvelous, and wonderful, and even those words weren't enough to describe how utterly awesome everything was—how awesome everything felt—how awesome I felt.

I looked up at her in adoration. She had made me feel that way. She had forced me to feel that way, just like she had forced Kurt all those years ago. She used her damnable empathy to confuse me emotions and make them her puppets. She made everything wonderful again.

I hated that she had done it, but at the same time I was glad that she had done it. In fact, I loved that she had done it, and I loved that I hated that she had done it.

The conflicting emotions messed with my head until I felt a cold frustration under my skin. It bashed against my insides, furious and trying to get out despite the fact that it was trapped under the much stronger feeling of false elation.

I was furious.

It was wonderful to be furious.

I giggled at the sheer joy I felt.

My mother looked at me with wide eyes. "Home," she whispered. "Go home."

Home.

What a wonderful suggestion.

I would do it—because it was so wonderful.

But where was home? I didn't really have one.

Kurt felt like home. I was sad that he had been taken away from me, but that was okay. Things were still wonderful. It was wonderful that he was gone and it was wonderful that I was sad about it. Everything was wonderful.

Home would be wonderful too.

Home was a wonderful suggestion.

I would go to Kurt's home, since that was the next best thing to being with Kurt himself. I could go to his room and wrap myself up in his blankets that smelled like him and it would make me sad, but it would still be very, very wonderful.

I smiled at my mother one more time, showing her all my teeth because wasn't that lovely?

Then I kissed her cheek and walked out of her room.

When I passed O.B. clutching a cross to her chest, I smiled at her too. She took a step back and held the cross out to keep me at bay. I laughed happily and gave her a hug and a kiss. She screamed in my ear so loud that it made my vision blur for a second. She shoved me roughly away and I stumbled back.

O.B. was such a bitch—it was wonderful.

The car ride was amazing. I smiled at everything that was wonderful, which was pretty much everything—all the trees, the other drivers that gawked at my car as I drove by, the birds in the sky—it was a miracle that I didn't drive off the damn road, but even that would have been wonderful so it wouldn't have mattered anyway.

It was completely dark by the time I got to Kurt's house. I drove up their long driveway at a slow, relaxed pace and took my time parking the car. After I got out I strolled up to the house with a smile on my face.

Logan was the one who answered the door. Her eyes got wide as saucers when they landed on my face. "Holy shit—Burt!" she called. "Burt!"

Burt ran over from somewhere in the living room, but he barely glanced at me before he was peering around me into the dark. When he saw nothing he set his wild, crazy eyes on me. "Where's Kurt?"

I remembered then that Kurt's family had been expecting us to show up for Friday night dinner. Now it was Saturday and neither one of us had called the night before to let them know that we couldn't make it. They had probably been going out of their minds, but I was too damn happy to respond the way I should have. Instead I grinned dopily at Burt and said, "Hiya!"

From behind her brother, Logan frowned in confusion.

Burt looked about ready to tear me to pieces. "Where's. My. Son?"

"Kurt," I provided with a smile. "He's gone."

"What?"

Logan reached out and grabbed Burt's shoulder. "Something's wrong. Go get Carole."

Burt breathed heavily through his nose—like a bull about to charge. "Not until I find Kurt."

"Fucking hell, Burt, just do it," she ordered, but her grip on his shoulder tightened.

"Blaine? Oh, god, Blaine."

Cooper.

He pushed both Burt and Logan out of the way and within seconds his hands were on my face. His fingers brushed against my bruised skin and I flinched at the pain, but kept smiling. He quickly pulled his hands back.

"Jesus, Blaine, what the hell happened to you?"

I beamed up at him. "Hi, Coop."

He frowned at me and turned back to look at Logan and Burt. "What's wrong with him?"

Logan scowled. "How the fuck should I know? He showed up like this."

Cooper turned away from her before she got all of the words out of her mother. "Where's Kurt, Blaine?"

"He's gone," I said again, still smiling. Inside my heart was breaking. He's gone.

"Where?"

"I don't know. Mom took him."

Cooper looked stunned. "What?"

"Mom took him," I repeated.

Burt pulled against Logan, who reached out to with her other hand to keep him back. When her grip failed, she darted around Burt to act as a human barrier between us. She stood facing Burt with her back towards me as she grunted with exertion to keep him away and yelled Finn's name.

"What do you mean?" Burt demanded, his face beat red. "Took him where?"

Carole and Finn came down the stairs. From somewhere else in the house I heard Brittany scream.

"Burt? Burt! Stop it!"

"What's going on?"

"Kurt's gone," I answered Finn with a happy wave.

Cooper caught my hand and forced it back down to my side. "Where did you see Mom? Did she touch you?"

"At Adam's house. And yes. She made me feel wonderful."

All the oxygen seemed to leave Cooper's body at once. "Oh my god."

Both Finn and Logan were holding Burt back now.

"Will somebody please tell me what the hell is going on with my son? Who is Adam? Where is my son?"

"Can someone please get Burt out of here?" Cooper yelled over his shoulder. He had his hands on both of my shoulders, and I sagged against him, feeling exhausted but still happier than ever, still wonderful.

Wonderful.

I hated that fucking word. But I loved it too.

Even the fact that my face was throbbing worse than ever was wonderful. Everything was so goddamn wonderful that I was sick of how much I loved it.

"Blaine's been touched by an empath."

"What do you mean?" Carole asked.

"My mother," Cooper said. "She can manipulate emotions. She forced him to feel happy—I don't know why—but it scrambles your brain. Like being both stimulated and sedated at the same time."

"Is it permanent?"

"No, but he should lay down. Jesus, Carole, look at his eye, look at his face."

She must not have noticed it before in all of the chaos because she gasped. "Take him to Kurt's room."

"Like hell!" Burt raged.

Cooper ignored him. He wrapped both his arms around my waist and practically dragged me up the stairs. I tripped and stumbled but he held me tight.

"You knew about Mom," I said, struggling to keep both eyes open. I was so tired that even smiling began to feel difficult. "You knew about Mom and you never said anything."

Cooper said nothing. He just kept leading me down the hall and I nearly sobbed when we stepped into Kurt's room and I saw his bed.

I had wondered whether it was possible for my heart to break even more. It turned out that it was. It was terrible and it was wonderful.

He's gone.

My eyes closed.

Everything is wonderful.

Everything went dark.

A/N: Okay, so questions…

The first question has to do with Adam telling Blaine that with Carl "gone" he and Kurt will be able to sleep easier at night, and the question is that if Adam planned on killing Kurt, why did Blaine's lie detector not pick up on the fact that obviously Kurt wouldn't be sleeping easier if he was dead? The answer is that since Adam suspected that Blaine's mother would swoop in to save the day, he believed that there was actually a chance that Kurt would be able to sleep easier at night. Therefore, technically Adam inferred rather than actually lied.

Second question: Who the hell is that silent giant guy? He is basically Adam's bodyguard. In my mind I see him as the guy who has been protecting Adam for years and years. He remains in the shadows and will do anything Adam asks without question or complaint. He has the ability to manipulate all matter. In other words, he can make things incorporeal. Blaine himself doesn't know any of this, but I have a whole detailed back-story for this man in my head so I figured I would share a portion of it with you guys.

Third question: What's going on with Blaine's mom? Basically, she used the ability Kurt gave her (teleportation) to teleport Kurt to a different location. You might be wondering how she knew he was in trouble, or where she took him, but those questions will be answered in the next few chapters.

I think those were all of the questions asked. If I missed any, let me know. If you have more, please don't hesitate to ask.

I'm still shooting for a weekly updates (obviously that didn't happen this time around), so we'll see how about next week. I'm gonna try my best.

Until next time everyone.