Chapter Twenty Four

"Hummel, you are going to owe me so big for this one." Santana picked gingerly at the fabric of her skirt.

"I think you look hot." Brittany shrugged, "I know I do. When we're done with this we should totally go back to mine. My parents will be out."

Santana's expression morphed rapidly from disdainful to smug, and Quinn hit her on her thigh from where she was crouched next to them, lacing her shoes, "Can't you two focus for one second?"

"They can keep it up all night as far as I'm concerned," Puck said with a suggestive quirk of his lips.

"Bite me Puckerman," Santana snapped.

"Oh... this was such a bad idea..." Rachel wrung her hands, fiddling with the stiff polyester fabric of her sleeves, "This is never going to work..."

"Shut up! All of you!"

Kurt's head snapped up from where he had been studiously looking at the ground, trying to quell his raging thoughts, press down on his knotted nerves, and ignore the increasingly irritating chatter of his friends. He had been moments away from sending them all home himself, but oddly enough, another member of New Directions had got there first.

"No one's making you do this. No one's making you stay. If you're going to keep whining, or treating this like some stupid prank, go home. We're here for Blaine, and Kurt. Get over it, or get out." Sam's brow was furrowed, his lips pressed thinly as he glared at the bickering and complaining group. No one moved, but many of them had the grace to look contrite and serious.

Kurt rubbed his face, squinting for a second into the distance, where warm orange beacons began to pepper the darkening sky as evening set in and lights were switched on in Dalton's rooms. He turned to his friends, words finally forming on his tongue, "Sam's right. I don't know what kind of laws there are about this kind of this – to be honest, I've not really wanted to check – but if we're caught, there's going to be serious trouble. I love you guys, and I won't love you any less if you go home now."

There was a lull in the group, broken by a soft swell of warm evening breeze as they all stood in a loose huddle. "And if we do? What happens to Blaine?" Quinn shook her head, her eyes chips of flint in the dusk. "We can't leave him in there alone."

"I could make things worse..." Kurt said, that nasty shard of doubt he still fostered creeping into his words.

"Bullshit." Finn refuted calmly. "Now, are we gonna do this or not?"

And that was that. The group wished each other luck, and split into two, the boys heading in one direction, and the girls another.

Kurt checked his watch. With all the letters Blaine had sent him, he thought that he had a pretty good grasp on the students' schedules. By now, it had to be nearing lights out. He wondered if Blaine's parents had already been and gone, collected Molly but left their son. He wondered how he was even going to find Blaine. It was pretty obvious from the outside where the dorms were located, but Kurt had no clue what floor or room number Blaine was, or even if he was still in his room. He could have been moved somewhere else...

He could be in isolation. They could have moved him to an intensive care facility if they thought he was that bad... He might not even be here...

"Okay, so remember, as long as no one sees you, you're good."

Kurt forced himself back into the present, looking up at Sam. "Right. Don't get seen by anyone in a school that's probably made mostly out of long unbroken corridors. Easy."

"Seriously, Kurt," Finn added, his tone nervous but determined, "As soon as someone sees you, they're gonna know you're not a student or buddy-person. But as long as they don't, they'll have no idea you're there."

"You'll be invisible to their senses. You'll be like Sue Storm, except, like, you're a guy, and if someone does catch you, you won't be able to repel them with force fields..." Sam gestured wildly, his eyes wide and earnest.

Kurt stared at him, appreciating the effort but feeling the meaning would have been less wasted if Sam had been talking to Blaine.

A chirp distracted them, and Finn checked his phone, "Okay, that's Rachel, the girls are on."

"Now or never, Hummel." Puck's eyes were burning into Kurt, and for a moment there was stillness, as everyone waited for him to make the final call.

Adrenaline surged, and doubt became a superfluous emotion he had no time to entertain, "Get the door."

Puck smirked, pushing lightly on the murky little side door, "Already done."

Sam gave a nervous smile, "Well at least we know now it wasn't alarmed... You'd think they'd have more security..."

"This place isn't designed to keep people out," Puck said grimly. "Who'd be daft enough to want to break into a place like this? And as for the kids who live here..."

"They would never even think running away was an option for them." Kurt finished, "Don't wait for me if I'm not back in time. Meet up with the girls and go as soon as you hear from Santana."

Kurt didn't wait for their assent, he didn't have time for that argument again. He needed to find Blaine.

He slipped into the darkness of the tiny corridor. A few doors lined the walls, possibly classrooms or teachers offices, all deserted. He ignored them, treading softly on old polished floors, turning, twisting, winding... Oh no...

Kurt stepped out into a warm, soft light. It glowed welcomingly down a long deserted corridor, so much larger in scale and grandeur than the ones he had passed through. For a moment, his stomach clenched at the impossibility of the task before him. He had so little time, and no idea where Blaine was. The halls of Dalton yawned before him, vast and mazelike. Impossible. What had he been thinking?

The answer came quick and simple. He had been thinking of Blaine.

"Get a grip, Hummel." Kurt hissed at himself, feeling slightly better as his voice punctured the dusty, creepy silence. "Move."

But where to?

He picked at random, trusting on some concept of faith and fate that he didn't even believe in, at least, not until he had met Blaine.

Only twice did he encounter anybody. It was clear he had entered into a part of the school that was only really in use during the day, and with the girls making good on their distraction, Kurt had a pretty clear path. Sam had been right; all he had to do was hide and no one knew he was there. Because someone like him... he was the opposite of what they were trained to look for.

And he had never been so grateful.

"The boys are agitated." A soft voice gave Kurt pause, and he immediately froze, ducking back around the corner, pressing himself in the shadows of a classroom doorway. He listened intently, waiting until the way was clear.

But the voices weren't moving.

"It is to be expected in situations such as this. Normally the children who escalate are removed from the general population gradually, so as not to unsettle the others. Montgomery's actions meant that we didn't notice the deterioration as we should have."

"I assume the boy will be appropriately disciplined? That the authorities have been informed?" The woman's voice was haughty, setting Kurt's teeth on edge.

"For what?" The other voice was softer, more melancholy, and yet laced with the kind of authority that Kurt automatically associated with Coach Sylvester. "You said it yourself, they are boys. We failed Wesley as much as we did Blaine. He truly thought that he was doing the right thing, and we are at fault for not making sure he was properly educated. The buddy system is not to replace the teachers and doctors of this school, but to create a link that might make the stay of our children slightly more bearable, while also training our successors."

Kurt's heart was thumping in his chest so loudly he thought that his ear drums might burst from the pressure as his pulse ricocheted off the inside of his skull. He held his breath, straining his ears, determined not to miss anything.

"You cannot deny the flaws in the system. That boy is damaged beyond repair. He might have had another year in the general population if it wasn't for the supposed good intentions of an intern who was given far too much leniency by this staff." The haughty woman was bitter and cutting in her remarks, detached in a way that Kurt knew far too well from his own visits to sense doctors. It was all so... clinical, emotionless. And wasn't that ironic.

"Your comments are well noted, Miss Rosen." The other voice was colder now. "If you wish to make it official, please feel free to file a report with me in the morning. Until then, I'm afraid I am late for a call with that boy's parents to update them on his condition."

"He is still to be moved then?"

"We can no longer provide him with the level of care that he needs. We have too many other students here..." The woman – maybe the headmistress, or one of the senior staff, Kurt would guess – sounded honestly regretful, even sad, "And the longer we wait, the harder it will be for him. I don't think I need to ask you to absent yourself tomorrow morning during the transfer. Your conduct with that cat was unacceptable, and you will only agitate him further in what will already be a very stressful experience for him. Am I understood?"

"Yes, Doctor Hargreaves. Perfectly."

"Good. Now, I believe Mr Edwards could do with a hand in the entrance hall. Evidently some Crawford girls have wandered in and are making a scene. I will leave you to handle it; Mr Edwards is already in contact with their head of staff."

It was a cold dismissal that left Kurt's head buzzing. It also highlighted how little time he had, because the girls' story was going to fall apart pretty quickly once Crawford denied Brittany as being one of their high ES level students.

Tomorrow... They were moving Blaine out of Dalton tomorrow. Kurt didn't want to think about where to; just the mere fleeting thought conjured images of white rooms and drugs and Blaine just fading away without Kurt there to hold him.

I don't think I'm real anymore, Kurt.

Taking a gamble, Kurt dashed in the direction the two women had come from. He noticed how the décor was becoming sparser. Not clinical, necessary, but also not warm. He started frantically checking doors, peeking through darkened windows of safety glass into empty, barely furnished bedrooms. And then he rounded the corner into another, identical corridor.

Or was it?

No, this one was brighter, yellow light spilling from under a few doors. Two unmanned desks sat to the side, a steaming mug of coffee on one indicating that whoever watched over this area of Dalton couldn't have gone far. Further investigation showed a bank of tiny TV screens, each displaying the same image of a room. The only difference between the pictures was the occupants. Most were sleeping, but in one Kurt could see the night nurses. One was trying to placate a small boy, Kurt wouldn't have said he could be older than twelve, while the other prepared something in a corner. Even from the poor quality black and white image, Kurt could tell the kid was sick. That must be why he was down here away from the rest of the student body – whenever kids got sick at McKinley, it was always an interesting experience for all involved. Kurt couldn't imagine that happening in a school for kids with abnormally high ES levels.

Realising that he probably had limited time before the nurses returned to their station, Kurt skimmed the screens, desperately looking for a familiar silhouette.

There.

Under the screen, a neat label of Room 8 was printed clearly and professionally, and Kurt was already off running. Just that tiny glimpse had tied his stomach on knots because this was real and he was doing this and fuck this was probably so illegal and wrong and possibly the stupidest thing he had ever done in his entire life, but with the lightest of certainty he found... that he really didn't care. It didn't matter.

He skidded to a halt outside the right door, hand hovering over the door handle, ears pricked for the nurses. Closer now, he could hear their comforting murmurings from an open door a little way further down the corridor.

For a moment, all doubt and terror crashed into Kurt, his hand held so close as it was to the handle.

Last moment to panic, last moment to be scared, last moment to look back.

He pushed open the door and slipped inside.

Blinking, Kurt paused. His eyes needed a moment to adjust to the dimmer light, but thanks to the security feed, he already knew straight where to look.

Blaine wasn't asleep on the bed. He wasn't even sitting on the bed, or at the little desk against the wall.

"Blaine?" Kurt kept his voice as hushed as he could. He crept forwards, crouching in front of the other boy, heart beating wildly with such a maelstrom of emotions Kurt couldn't even begin to unpick them here.

His boyfriend – because that's who he was to Kurt, there had never been an 'ex' prefixing that word from him, not really, no matter how much he had tried to lie to himself – was huddled in the very far corner of the room, pressed into the wall, as small as he could make himself. He wasn't dressed in any sort of Dalton uniform, and the clothes only served to add to the unsettlingly blank pallor of the normally so bright boy. Thick white socks covered his curled feet, and grey baggy sweats smothered his lower body. What Kurt found most unnerving was the off-white t-shirt, because Blaine hated having his arms uncovered where anyone could touch him.

It broke Kurt's heart. "Blaine, baby? It's me, Kurt? I..." You're what? What can you possibly say to him right now to make this okay? What can you possibly do?

As his voice cracked slightly, Blaine finally looked up. Kurt swallowed harshly. Dull black curls fell over Blaine's forehead, highlighting his too-pale skin, making his face look even thinner than it already was. Charcoal smudges marred the skin under empty hazel eyes, and Kurt couldn't stop the spike of self-loathing that shot through his body. He should never have left. He should never have allowed himself to get pushed away.

Blaine blinked slowly, too slowly. Something was off about his posture, his mannerisms, and it was then that Kurt realised they probably had him on some pretty heavy sense suppressants. Blaine blinked again, as if he was trying to see through a thick, choking smog. And then a horrible twisted smirk cracked onto his beautiful face, "So I guess I've finally gone crazy, huh?"

That was the moment for Kurt. The moment he knew what he was going to do. Before it had always been lingering at the back of his mind; a small suggestion of it'll be fine; I'll just go see Blaine and he'll be okay and we'll both be okay and everything will go back to the way it was before.

But he realised now that it was all or nothing. Blaine was dying. Blaine was fading, perhaps had already faded too far for Kurt to reach him. And Kurt needed to do something, he needed to fight it.

Firmly, purposefully, Kurt took Blaine's face in his hands, "I'm very real, Blaine, I promise. I came to get you out of here."

Blaine's nose scrunched, his smirk breaking into pieces as his hands twitched, "It's no good lying to me. I can't feel you. You're not here."

"I am, baby, I am, I promise, I swear. I'm so, so sorry Blaine. Baby, please, it's me, I love you." Kurt's voice hitched, swimming with gathering tears.

Blaine just smiled sadly at the confession, bringing up the heel of his hand to rub slightly too hard over his left eyebrow, pressing into his forehead as he mumbled, half to himself, "Now I know you're not real."

Kurt's heart broke, but he refused to let himself dwell. He caught Blaine's hands in his, "Real or not, Blaine, we have to go. I need you to trust me, Blaine. We need you get you out of here." Kurt's heart and mind were wild; all logic had flown out of the window long ago, let alone thought of the consequences. All he knew was that he was here, and so was Blaine, and all he wanted was to them get as far away from this place as possible.

Blaine just stared at him. Kurt would never forget that look, a shadow of the way Blaine used to gaze at him, now torn apart and broken by something beyond their control. But there was also the tiniest of sparks. "Okay."

TBC