At first, Blaine found his freedom overwhelming.  For too long he had spent his days trying to fill up time, and now he had to juggle not only school, but a part time piano teaching job, along with a social life.  Most of his newly made friends also regularly invited themselves to Blaine's dorm room, which was the penthouse of dorms being single occupancy, double sized, and, somehow, having been granted permission to have pets.  His two kittens were now teenaged cats, still feisty and playful but sleeping more often on the double sized bed that his friends drooled over.  Everyone assumed he must have come from money in order to secure a room like that, and in a way it was true.  Blaine had come from money, just not the kind of money they thought.

He didn't talk about what he had been through.  At first, after he had been escorted to his room by the guards to the dorm room, which also had a kitchenette already stocked with food and all his stuff from Kurt's, he considered going to the police to tell them what had happened.  Blaine put it off though, expecting the media to make a call for witnesses or information about the murders of so many mobsters that he had escaped.  

But they didn't.

In fact, Blaine convinced himself that he might have imagined it all for all over a half hour until he found a small blurb about gunfire being exchanged between two rival mob families at the very end of the local news section, and nothing more after that.  He had to wonder if people didn't care because it didn't involve important people, but rather the kind of people no one would miss if they died off anyway.  Or maybe it was kept quiet because of the kind of people involved.  Maybe they had a muzzle on the press.

Whatever the case was, Blaine didn't go to the press or the police, and not because he wanted to make it news but because he didn't know if anyone would listen, or if they did listen and he would end up making more trouble for himself because he caught the ear of someone who was in the pockets of the mob.  Moreover, Blaine didn't want to make any trouble for Kurt or the guards that had helped him in the end.  

His id and superego made themselves known once more, though he wasn't sure which was which.  One told him that he was twisted, suffering Stockholm syndrome, and needed to get help.  The other side told him he deserved this set up with paid housing, tuition, and a bank account that got regular deposits into it regardless of whether or not he needed them.  The internal conflict seemed to benefit him in acting classes, his teachers giving him applause for what they called “true vulnerability” and “believable emotion” - whatever that meant.  Blaine just drew on his experiences, which he was certainly more rich in now, when he was asked to play a character.  If the emotion showed through, maybe it was because so many of the scenes they had selected for the class resonated with him.  There was the fighting couple scene, the locked in a room scene, and the prince in distress scene… all of them Blaine felt he barely had to act for because he had been able to call upon his memories for.  

While it was nice to be around other people again so much, Blaine also had to wonder why he used to think so much of it.  At times it became exhausting to dabble in small talk and just hang out with others, and Blaine had internally screamed at people who came into his room so many times because he just wanted silence and time to himself.  It wasn't lost on him how some of the people he had befriended were genuine, but how others were using him for his roomy dorm and the money he always had on hand to order out when he didn't have time to make food for himself.  Yet Blaine didn't give those people the cold shoulder or turn them away.  He knew there were worse people in the world to associate with.

At night, when he had finally ushered people out of his room and was laying in bed with a cat on either side of him, Blaine let himself think about Kurt, and it almost did seem like he had to give himself permission to do that.  He wondered what Kurt was doing, if he had been replaced, and if Kurt was safe.  Blaine wanted to know why Kurt kept continuing to take care of him even though he didn't have to, even having sent over a nurse the day before classes started to check how the cut behind his ear and those around his wrists had healed up.  

He wanted to ask though, most of all, what Kurt had meant when he referred to Blaine as being his family to the man that had abducted Blaine.  Had things been that terrible for Kurt that the only person he felt close enough to to call family was Blaine?

Despite that, Blaine held off on doing a web search for Kurt until October, and what he found made his heart sink in his chest even though his mind told him he shouldn't still feel so emotionally invested in a man that had enslaved him.  The earliest article he found told him that not only had Kurt lived just down the road from Blaine in Lima, Ohio as a child, but that he had lost his mother at eight years old.  The obituary he found for Elizabeth Hummel said she was a loving wife and mother, and that donations to the American Cancer Institute could be made in lieu of flowers.  Following that, the next article listed Kurt as a member of the William McKinley fledging glee club, New Directions, as a member.  That made Blaine arch a brow in surprise.  The Warblers had been up against The New Directions in competition but Blaine definitely couldn't recall Kurt being among them.  

It was probably because of the obituary he found next, one for Burt Hummel.  Predeceased by his wife.  Loving father.  Donations could be made to the Heart and Stroke Foundation.  Based on the date, Kurt would have been sixteen.

After that, the articles Blaine found were New York based.  Kurt was listened in advertisements as a financier of different events and businesses, but never listed among suspects when it came to drug busts or murders that occurred in those locations.  Blaine couldn't find his name among any known listing of mob family members, nor in any article that referred to suspicious mob activity.  The only other place Kurt's name came up was in an article from only a couple weeks prior.

<If you can not see the image: Article with Kurt's picture.  Header: SOUTHSIDE BUSINESS CLOSED AMIDST RUMORS OF SLAVERY RING; LOCAL BUSINESS INVESTOR, KURT HUMMEL, PULLS SUPPORT PROMPTING POLICE INVESTIGATION “NYPD detectives say they have discovered a slavery ring right in New York, operated by local known persons of interests in local mob families.  Interest was drawn to the alleged site of the human trafficking when Kurt Hummel, a business investor, drew out his investment in the business right before an anonymous call was made to the federal authorities about the location and the business.  When called for comment, Hummel noted that while he wasn't involved in the business operations, the rumors he heard surrounding its function prompted him to pull his support.  Police do not consider him a person of interest in this case and encourage all individuals who have information about human trafficking in New York to step forward with information.”>

Like the other articles Blaine had read about mob activity, it was no more than a small blurb amidst other news reports, not likely to garner much attention or interest.  The sight of Kurt's face though, looking as put together as he always was, stirred something Blaine had shoved away, or so he thought, deep within him.  That had been the night Blaine had finally succumed to masterbating for the first time since he had been freed, Kurt's name on his lips as he came under the blankets.

It wasn't that Blaine hadn't been aroused since he had returned to NYADA, far from it in fact.  With Sebastian out of his mind, Blaine finally had time to appreciate how many good looking gay men there were on campus, and even playfully flirted with several of them on a regular basis, yet, when it came to what he thought of when he touched himself, Kurt's image seemed imprinted on the insides of his eyelids.  Maybe it was because Kurt had been his first, or maybe it was because he was not past whatever the relationship he had with Kurt was, but Blaine couldn't seem to scrape away those kinds of thoughts of Kurt when his dick went up.  It was also the reason he had forced himself not to masterbate for so long, as he felt guilty for having those thoughts about his captor at all.  

One of the things that surprised Blaine was that no one had asked about Sebastian on his return.  In fact, the only mention he had heard of Sebastian was someone openly complaining about what a creep he was and that they were glad Blaine didn't hang out with him anymore.  

Blaine had to wonder if Sebastian was still in that warehouse.

It was a Saturday in late October, when the leaves from the odd tree left alive in New York was scattering its red and orange leaves on the ground, only to be picked and swirled up by the wings, that Blaine found himself with a free day.  No one needed piano lessons, most of his friends had gone to some fair in Jersey that he had opted out of, and there was no practices for the play he had gotten himself a part in.  He took the opportunity to take a walk, and while he intended to only go for a short jaunt to stretch his legs, it ended up taking an hour and ending up with him standing in front of a building that seemed as foreign as it seemed familiar.

Kurt's apartment building.

For a long time Blaine just stood in front of it, staring up at it like tourists did in Manhattan with the Rockefeller center or the Empire State building.  He willed his legs to move, to continue on and move past the building, but he couldn't even though his stomach flooded with bile at the thought of running into Kurt.

Of course, the thought also made his heart pound.

It wasn't until a man in a suit, that Blaine immediately recognized as one of Kurt's guards, stepped out of the building and cleared his throat Blaine's way that Blaine snapped out of his trance.

“You need to go kid.”

So Blaine did, rushing off a little bit too quickly, and making his legs burn as he ran part of the way back to campus and his dorm room even though no one had been chasing him.

On Monday, he applied to see one of the counsellors.

“So, I can see you have excellent grades, are set up with a part time job, and all your finances have been taken care of Mr. Anderson, so what can I help you with?”  The woman across the desk said as she looked over at Blaine expectantly.

“I.. well I need to figure something out personal.”

“You know I'm not that kind of counsellor right?”  The woman queried, pushing her glasses up her nose.

“I know… but maybe you could refer me to someone who is?”

She sent him a few blocks over, after making some calls and scheduling an appointment, though seemed skeptical that someone in such good standing at NYADA could possibly have any issues to work out, and the next room he sat in had two cushy chairs sitting across from one another in a room with more books than carpet fibers.

“Well Blaine,” The counsellor, another middle aged woman with glasses that also fell down her nose, started.  “.. what is it that I can help you with?”

“I need to figure out if I'm crazy.”