The tears began to fall before he had even realized it and Blaine sunk to his knees on the side of the road. Could he feel pain? Pleasure? Happiness? Would he ever feel anything again?

"Kurt…" the name passed through his lips and he knew the answer to his previous questions. So this was it? He was going to have to leave his friends, his family, and his boyfriend without even saying goodbye. He was so young. He had such a bright future. And then in a few seconds it was crushed just like the frame of his car. This was the end.

He pounded his fist on the wet pavement in rage and the guttural cry that erupted from his body should have been heard for miles. But it wasn't; it was only heard by one.

"It's not the end, you know."

Blaine jumped as heard the small voice come from behind him. He spun around and his eyes were met with the most ethereal creature he had ever seen. Her whitish-blonde hair waved down her back and her ears, which were pointed in an elfish manner, stuck out of it. Her head was topped with a golden circlet that was wrapped in ivy. She was barefoot and clad in a simple white dress and there seemed to be a dim, golden glow surrounding the air around her.

"Wh-what? Wh-who are you?" Blaine's voice shook despite his best efforts to keep his already crumbled composure.

"It's not the end. Unless you want it to be that is." The creature extended her hand towards Blaine, "I'm Abby."

Blaine reluctantly took it and Abby helped him up off of the ground. "I'm Blaine."

"I know."

"How do yo…"

"No time for that. I don't have long and neither do you. You have a decision to make and a very important one at that. The choice is yours." She folded her arms as she studied Blaine.

Blaine noticed that the rain was not touching her skin. In fact, the water seemed to be landing outside of the golden aura that surrounded her completely. Blaine looked down at his hands and noticed that he wasn't wet either. In fact, his clothes were completely dry.

"What choice?" his voice was gravely from his screams and tears.

"Well," she began to gently and rhythmically tap her fingers on her arm, "you can come with me to the other side. Or, you can choose to stay here. We have special circumstances for those who have already met their soul mates and you fall under this category."

Blaine felt the bile rising in his throat and he tried to bite back the tears that were beginning to flood over. "Kurt." His voice was barely a whisper. "K-kurt was my soul mate." His voice wavered but he felt the conviction in his own words, he'd just never known it to be the truth.

"Yes, him. For cases like yours we allow you to continue to live in this world, invisible to the living. You can follow Kurt until it is his time and then you will both go to the other side together."

"Are you an angel?" Blaine stared up at the beautiful, illuminated creature in front of him through his tear glazed eyes.

"Not technically speaking. Some call us angels. Some call us reapers. What we really are is a bit muddled in the biblical sense, seeing as we are the cause of some souls' deaths."

"Were you mine?"

"Well, it is a bit odd to see a boar in the middle of the country side in Ohio, isn't it?" she smiled and Blaine felt a shiver run down his spine.

"That was you?"

"My kind can take many forms if we so choose." Her honeyed voice combined with the strong smell of smoke rolling off the vehicle behind him—that he refused to look at—made his gut clench. "As I was saying, you can choose to stay here and shadow Kurt for the rest of his natural life, or you can come with me. Most people choose to stay because they feel as if they are their loved one's 'guardian angel' in a sense. But I must warn you; very few have decided to stay here for the entire remainder of their partner's life. After they mourn, people move on with their lives. They get new jobs and hobbies, grow old, take new lovers even. If you are to stay, under no circumstances are you allowed to interfere with the path of Kurt's life. You will see things that have broken the spirits of men for centuries." Her eyes were cold and silver and they bore holes through Blaine as she spoke.

"That being said, you still can touch objects that humans own. You will become one of the creatures that humans, in their ignorance, call ghosts. Many of the spirits that haunt humans are either bored or bitter that their love has moved on with his or her life. If you make the decision to do this, there's nothing that I can do to stop you from haunting Kurt. That's not to say that I won't be checking up on you from time to time to ensure that you are obeying all the code."

Blaine stared at the ground for several minutes as thunder cracked in the distance. His hands shook as he gazed back up at Abby and spoke, "Alright. I'll stay with him." His hands may have shook, but his voice did not waver. Blaine was sure in his decision. If Kurt was his soul mate, then there was no way in hell he was ever going to leave his side.

"Well, then I have a few rules to explain before I leave you…"

The day of the funeral was just as dreary and damp as Kurt's birthday had been. Kurt couldn't manage to stop the tremors in his hands. It seemed like he'd had him since the minute he'd found out about the accident. He remembered feeling cold and like his body was shattering into a million tiny shards of glass. He felt himself fall apart and he'd been numb ever since.

In the week that had passed, he had gone through his daily life and felt absolutely nothing. Like a ghost of the boy that he once was. He was just going through the motions. He lost track of all sense of time. He only ate when Burt forced him to because Carole wouldn't stop crying at the sight of what had become of her step-son. They had even snuck into his room and left food on his desk in an attempt to get him to eat but he would just carry the dishes down in the morning and throw out the food. He couldn't feel happy. Couldn't smile. He felt like he couldn't breathe. The boy he loved died.

The day of the funeral was just as dreary and damp as the day Blaine had died, but Kurt barely noticed. He only noticed long enough to grab an umbrella as he left his house that afternoon.

Burt had refused to let him drive anywhere since the accident. Like he would even want to. He had nowhere to go besides school.

They got to the funeral home and Kurt stepped out of the car before anyone else. He trudged ahead of his family in the rain and walked straight through the front doors. He didn't bother signing in or taking a program. He marched straight into the chapel. He barely made it five feet through the double doors when his knees buckled and gave way. He crumbled to the ground as his body was racked with violent sobs. The casket was closed. It was at that moment that he realized he was never going to see Blaine Anderson's face again.

The week following his death was one of the most difficult that Blaine had ever experienced. Watching Kurt's pain was worse than death itself. He wouldn't eat. He barely talked. He lay awake at night staring at his ceiling for hours before his eyes would finally drift close. Even in his sleep he appeared strained and broken. He hadn't cried once and Blaine so desperately wished that he would. Anything would be better than this, even crying.

It pained Blaine to be unable to do anything to help Kurt. After a few days of torture watching him, he got the idea to make him meals, or even heat up leftovers, and leave them on his desk in an attempt to coax him into eating on his own. It was in vain though as Kurt would simply carry the dishes down the next morning and throw away the food.

The day of his funeral it was pouring down rain before the sun was even up. Before Kurt woke up, he went to the closet near their front door and pulled out Kurt's umbrella and took it back up to his room and hung it on his bedpost.

He fidgeted watching the family get ready for the event. Was it weird to be nervous for your own funeral? When the time finally came to leave, the family raced out into the rain and piled into Carole's car. Blaine managed to slip into the backseat in between Kurt and Finn before they shut the doors. Kurt sat his dripping umbrella on Blaine's lap, but it landed on the leather of the seat instead. Interesting…

When Carole pulled into the parking lot of the funeral home, Blaine felt Kurt stiffen beside him. He looked into his boyfriend's beautiful blue eyes and he barely recognized them. It was like the light behind them that he so loved had completely vanished. It was at that moment that Blaine made it his mission to do everything in his power to bring that light back.

Suddenly Kurt threw the car door open and stepped out into the rain, leaving his umbrella behind. Finn grabbed it and called after him as he got out of the car but Kurt was already gone. Blaine followed Kurt into the building, matching his pace. Kurt burst through the double doors of the chapel, completely ignoring all of the ushers at the door greeting him.

Blaine watched as his boyfriend sank to the ground. Watched him curl into a ball and sob uncontrollably. He looked so small and fragile in that moment and Blaine wanted nothing more than to hold him while he cried. To stroke his hair and assure him that everything was going to be alright. That it was going to get better. That he still had his whole life to live and this was just a stepping stone towards bigger and better things. He wanted to tell him that it was okay. He wanted to tell him that he didn't feel any pain. He wanted to tell him that he would always be with him. He wanted to hold him and tell him that he would always love him. But he couldn't. It was part of the rules.