Blaine slept a lot but Maggie slept even more. He had yet had a chance to visit her considering the fact he was still confined to his hospital bed. Kurt had assured him she was fine but something about the look on his face made him uneasy, not in the sense that he thought Kurt was lying to him, but that it seemed as if there were things he was deliberately not telling him.

It was the Tuesday after their admission to hospital that Blaine discovered that Maggie had contracted Pneumonia. A nurse had let it slip and it had sent him into panic immediately. The doctors assured him she'd recover, that it was perfectly treatable with antibiotics and other medicines. Blaine thought he knew better.

Kurt caught him struggling through the wires attached to his body, trying futilely to get out of bed to see her. He was chastised like a child and he asked Kurt to leave, once again cocooned in scratchy blue hospital blankets and needles and wires poking and prodding at his skin. It wasn't until Thursday that the staff, and Kurt and Cooper alike conceded and let him visit her. He was helped out of his bed and into a wheelchair and carted down the hall.

As soon as he entered the room his face split into a grin and he made sure that Kurt had positioned his chair as close to Maggie's bed as possible. "Oh Blaine!" She cried with a beautiful smile "It's so good to see you!" Blaine's eyes began to well up with tears and he took her delicate and wrinkled hand in his own, "I missed you Mags" he said laughing and squeezed. "I missed you too darling boy," she said fondly in reply.

His visits carried on in very much the same way everyday after that Thursday but with every visit he noticed just how sick she was beginning to look, the pale blue pallor of her skin, the clamminess of her hand and the shallowness of her breath. He didn't worry, much. She was strong and healthy despite her age and the doctors assured him she was doing well.

That was until the day he was due to be discharged. He had healed well and quickly, he'd given a statement to the police who were apparently hell bent on catching the guys who had robbed the bookstore. Blaine had little faith, he couldn't remember their faces, smashing head first into a display case does that to a person. He was ready and all set to go back to his apartment accompanied by Kurt and Cooper but he was adamant that he spend a few hours with Maggie first.

She looked well. Her skin had return to it's natural colour and her breathing seemed less laboured. The illusion was shattered with a single cheery greeting "Hello James!"

~*~

Blaine didn't go home that day no matter how much Cooper and Kurt tried to convince him to. He still needed his rest after all but Blaine wouldn't budge. Maggie's state was deteriorating and he refused to leave her side, she wasn't responding as well to treatment as the doctors had initially thought, they were trying something new, something different but Blaine didn't understand, he tried, for Maggie's sake but he just didn't.

His winged heart had crashed and sunk to the bottom of his rib cage the moment those two words had left her mouth. She was confused, disorientated, thinking she was in recovery after having her appendix removed when she was twenty and her and James were still only courting. He hadn't had the heart to tell her that James had been dead for just over two years. So he patted her on the hand and tried to choke back the tears as he said "hello darling" with a smile and his heart breaking in two.

She was fine when he returned from getting coffee in the hospital cafeteria but the nurses warned him that it might happen again and more frequently.

Maggie chatted as if nothing was wrong. She seemed happy and never mentioned what was wrong or if she was in any pain. She urged him to go home, get some rest and as always he listened to her, kissing her cheek as he went to stand with Kurt, cuddling into his side as Kurt guided him out of her room and out of the hospital.

~*~

Blaine laid awake that night on his side on the right side of his bed, Kurt occupying the left. It was weird. Kurt's breathing wasn't deep or steady enough for him to be asleep yet and he tried not to remember that he knew that because they'd shared a bed many times before.

The pain in his ribs was beginning to flare again and he failed to stifled a groan as he turned onto his back to stare up at the black ceiling. Startled Kurt switched the lamp on and sat quietly by his side.

"You were worrying so loudly I couldn't sleep either." Kurt tried to joke but Blaine didn't laugh. "Not funny Kurt." He said coldly. "Hey hey no," Kurt mumbled as he stopped Blaine from turning his back on him "I'm sorry, I'm worried too." With a deep sigh Blaine turned his head to look at Kurt, his eyes were puffy and his hair a bed mussed mess, he didn't have the right to snap at him, after all he'd done for him and Maggie since the break in, besides, he was just as anxious as Blaine. "She's all I have," Blaine sobbed, voice cracking as Kurt wrapped his arms around him, careful of his injuries, "I can't lose her, I can't Kurt I just can't."

Kurt held him as Blaine muffled his sobs into the skin of his shoulder, cocooned in the comforter and Kurt's arms. "She's going to be okay Blaine." He said adamantly, brushing the wetness from Blaine's cheeks "You know her B, she's a strong lady. She won't let this beat her, not after everything." Blaine smiled weakly, his hazel eyes still watery as he looked up at Kurt thankfully. "Tell me about her." Kurt said and Blaine stared bemusedly "You know her? What is there to tell?"

"I don't know her like you know her." Blaine was quiet for a long time before snuggling in closer, resting his head on Kurt's chest as he thought back to when he first moved to New York.

"I moved to New York only a couple of weeks after graduation." He said simply, remembering the feeling of desperation, how it made his chest feel tight and his head pound. He remembered wanting to get out as soon as possible. He'd had it all figured out. He'd started working during the summer of his freshman year, saving, planning, doing the research and connecting the dots. He wanted out so badly that his senior year passed by in a blur, always focused on New York, art, getting out that he became numb to the slurs hurled at him in the hallways. Two weeks after he graduated he threw his stuff into the beat up car he'd bought and fixed up himself and hightailed it to New York without looking back. With a lot of difficulty he sold his car and used what little money he had left to put down a deposit and pay the first months rent on the apartment he still called home.

"On my second day in the city I was already looking for a job. This dumb kid wandering the streets with messy hair and questionable fashion sense. I had no clue what I was doing, and with only a suitcase, my art stuff and a record player to my name what was I supposed to do?" Blaine paused in his retelling of his first time in New York and Kurt was reeling. Blaine had traveled to New York, with his own money, nothing but his tuition for college and a trunk full of his stuff as insurance. He had known Blaine had worked hard but never thought he had worked that hard. His offer to help Blaine so long ago seemed even more of an insult. He had already come so far all on his own, who was Kurt to think that Blaine needed him at all? But he couldn't turn back time, and he was still safe in the knowledge that Blaine would have been able to do it all without him, but he doesn't have to. He doesn't have to be alone, ever again. "You're phenomenal you know that?" Kurt remarked as he kissed his curls and Blaine hummed, wiggling in his position still on Kurt's chest. "I know..." he replied offhandedly,

"Anyway, I was wandering around, enquiring in coffee shops and the like until it eventually started getting dark, or as dark as it can get in the city that never sleeps. I was starting to think about heading back until I rounded a corner and there it was, this tiny quaint little bookstore sandwiched between a laundromat and an off-license. The sign said it was already closed but what drew me in was the music, the faint sound of Sinatra filtering through the cracks in the door frame as I pressed against the door to try and peer inside." Blaine stopped and hummed a few bars of New York, New York before giggling into Kurt's shoulder. "Obviously James then appeared at the window and scared the shit out of me. I smacked my head against the door and stumbled back into the street, snapping my glasses and dropping my bag that held my resumes and my sketchbook, everything just- went everywhere I was so embarrassed." Kurt didn't need to see Blaine's face to know that he was blushing crimson even at the mere memory of himself, fumbling with his things on the sidewalk and stuffing them all back into his bag whilst muttering unheard apologies to the disgruntled passers by, and cursing earth and sky for making him so jittery.

"So there I was on my knees on the sidewalk, vision greatly obscured by my ruined glasses and I hear the door open and the bell ring. There's Maggie, hand over her mouth and eyes full of kindness and concern and behind her is James, doubled over, laughing his fucking ass off so much so that Maggie ended up yelling at him until he laughed himself into an asthma attack. She's kind and gentle but she's fierce and protective when it comes to those she's fond of." Blaine recounted all of this laughing so hard that Kurt feared Blaine would have an asthma attack but the fond memory left Kurt grinning and yet so terribly sad he hadn't shared the moment with them. "Ten minutes later I found myself in an armchair opposite a stern looking James, clutching a cup of chamomile tea and my glasses stuck together with duct tape and super glue."

"He was terrifying at first but then he asked me my name and what I was doing there. I said that I'd only been in the city a couple of days and I was looking for work when I'd seen the shop and heard Sinatra. We talked about the shop and about music and by that time Mags had joined us again. I told them I moved from Ohio on my own and that I wanted to be an artist and that I had a place but I had to eat somehow. I completely offloaded on these two strangers within the first hour of meeting them. I just said that I left because I wanted out. James just looked me up and down once and then offered me a job, simple as that." Blaine trailed off, tears glistening in his eyes again as he felt the overwhelming surge of gratitude he had felt toward these people on many occasions and was hit once again with the knowledge that James was gone now and Maggie was ill in hospital.

"I told them- I told them that school was rough and Ohio just wasn't the place for ‘someone like me'. I think they knew then, that I'm gay I mean but they never mentioned it. I remember coming in to work one day with tear filled eyes and Maggie was ill in bed that day so I wasn't greeted with my usual chamomile and chat by the record player. Instead James just took one look at me and just hugged me. Just walked straight up to me, this burly New Yorker, just walked straight up to me and hugged me. He said ‘Blaine. Blaine you tell me, has this guy you've been telling Mags about been treating you right?' I shook my head and he held me at arms length and asked, as casual as a passing pleasantry "So where does he live?"

"He sounds wonderful." Kurt choked out, moved to tears as Blaine so fondly recounted memories of the one man that he's ever looked up to, more so than his actual father. "He was," Blaine said quietly "we miss him, Maggie and I. At first he always seemed so stoic but he was so kind and loving and you should have seen Maggie and him together. I have never known two people so in love. They were- are my family here." Blaine sniffed and then reached over to pluck his wallet from the bedside table. He pulled out a photograph of them all, Maggie sandwiched between James and Blaine, all of them smiling and looking very tired. "It's the only picture I have of us. We'd been up all night with James in the hospital. He'd had a bad turn and had to stay overnight for tests and observation. It's when he started really getting ill, and we all knew it at the time. We were almost out of business and school and Jonah was weighing on me. It was a really stressful time but we knew we'd make it through or die trying. I still can't believe James didn't make it, he fought it and fought it but cancer is just too bitter, too evil."

Blaine sniffed again and brushed his fingertip against the edge of the photo where it was held in Kurt's trembling grasp. They were silent for a long time after that, Kurt watching and gently caressing Blaine as he looked at the picture, letting him feel and wallow in the past for a while. Blaine finally broke the silence, his voice timid, quiet and scared. "I hope Maggie makes it. I'm not ready to say goodbye yet."

"Me either," Kurt whispers fervently as he recalled Maggie's wise words "me either."

~*~

They got the call at 8.17 AM on a Saturday in October.

Blaine answered. The conversation was short and his breath was hitching as he hung up.

Kurt strode across the room and was with him within seconds, ready to catch him when he fell.

And fall he did.

Maggie Lucille Atkinson was pronounced dead at 8.12 AM Saturday October 3rd. She died peacefully in her sleep.