“Filthy water cannot be washed.” - African Proverb

Kurt sat on a log, looking over the foundation he and Blaine had built overtop of the remnants of their own cabins.  It would be bigger and stronger than either of their huts from before, and definitely more akin to a real house than what Kurt had existed in for the past decade.  Behind him, Blaine was taking a break, playing a game of fetch with Pudding who was already pregnant again, though in the early stages apparently.  Blaine knew those things.  It was why he was training with Mike and Carole now as the closest thing the community would have to a veterinarian.  He would do that, and work with the workers.  He had been happy to accept the opportunity.  With everyone now adopting dogs, and the horses getting to the point where their breeding really needed to be overseen, some kind of animal specialist was needed.  

The community had built itself back up, and better too.  The new homes were, just as his own would be, stronger and better suited to the weather out here, with a thick layer of sawdust insulation in the frame to keep the home warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer.  For the home he and Blaine were making for themselves, Kurt had done a run to one of the closest abandoned villages and cut real fibreglass insulations out of the walls.  He wanted the best for a new place.  This home would be done right.

Even though right now it looked like little more than a stage with some poles coming out of it.

“Hey!”  Blaine flopped down beside him on the log, out of breath and hair a tousled mess.  “You're thinking too loudly.”

Kurt shrugged his shoulders up, “Was…. just… reflecting.”

“Mmmhmm…”  Blaine nodded and widened his eyes just that little bit that told Kurt he didn't believe a word of it, at least not in the vague form Kurt had used.

“What?”

“Tell me.”  

Kurt sighed, head turning down to look at his hands which were in the process of wringing one another.  “I just want to be able to explain myself.”

“In general?  Or with what happened again?”

Kurt rolled his eyes and glanced back up into honey, “You know.  It's not like I have vocalized my frustrations enough around you anyhow.”

Blaine did, Kurt could see it in his eyes.  When Kurt had awoken, the night after he infiltrated the town and put down the usurpers, he had found himself in a bed in the medic's station, Mike, Carole, and Kitty all talking in hushed voices around him.

“He had scars… I'm not crazy right?”
“You're not.  I've seen them too.  Heck, I've stitched him up a few times.”
“I thought you said he was shot.”
“He was.  We saw it.  Me, Noah, Quinn… everyone… all the people who had flanked had been brought around to see him floating in a ditch.  It was red… the water was all red.”
“Well there's no sign of a gunshot, or any scars at all…”
“What the hell happened?”
“Why look at me?  I don't have a clue!”
“I swear… his ears are pointier than normal…”
“You're not suggesting that…”
“God no.  He's been one of us forever.”
“How the hell else can this be explained away?”
“Everyone else out there wants to know.  What are we supposed to tell them.”
“Again!  Stop looking at me.  I.  Don't.  Know.”
“Someone better figure this out, and fast.”
“We can't get out of here until we get this figured out… they're all waiting outside…”

That was the point in which Kurt decided to save them the trouble and sat up, all of them going dead silent and staring at him wide eyed.

“Tell them the truth.”

Mike blinked and looked from Kitty, to Carole, and then back to Kurt apprehensively, “Which is?”

“That I saved their asses from Sebastian and his cronies and they should be less worried about me and more worried about what Rachel and Finn are teaching in that school of theirs if Sebastian managed to get Beth and sneak her through the town.  What the hell happened to teaching about stranger danger and what to do if a kid is kidnapped?  I had to go through all that shit when I was in school.”

He thought his joke (well, half joke anyhow) would at least bring a smile to their faces.  It didn't.

“Kurt…. you had no pulse for an hour last night.. on top of the fact that a large proportion of the community saw you die earlier on in the day… what the hell…”  Mike shook his head looking towards Kurt and waiting for an answer.

He hadn't seen his mother during his second death.  In fact, it just felt like he had fallen asleep and was now waking up, sans the dreams.  “I don't know… I can't explain it.”

The last thing anyone needed to know was that Kitty's fears were right.  He did have Other blood in him.  Maybe only a quarter of him, but enough that it would cause panic and fear and completely unnecessary drama.  He had saved them.  His loyalty was to them.  Why would it matter how he came back?

More glances were exchanged between the medics and it was finally Carole who had the sense of mind to come up with something.  

“We say that Kurt passed out in the field because of shock.  The blood was from a nosebleed.  We could say he's got a history of them.. maybe even say he has seizures or something…. anything to explain how everyone saw what they saw….”

“What about how he was laying face down in the water?” Mike weakly asked, clearly not completely on board with lying.

Carole glanced from Mike to Kurt, who offered up a supply of the rest, “It was a plan…. I was breathing through a reed.  I knew we couldn't take them then and there so I made it look like I died in order to come back and save everyone.”

Carole nodded, apparently satisfied with that. “We're the only ones that knew about his pulse last night anyhow since Mike was the first one on the scene…”

“Not completely true.” Kitty amended.

“Well Blaine is in the waiting room and you know he'll go along with whatever we tell him.” Mike grimly added.

The medics nodded and then looked at Kurt curiously for a moment before Mike asked the real question, “Are you one of them?”

Kurt didn't need to come up with a lie for this.  “I am, and always have been, one of you.”

Mike's dark eyes danced a little as he thought and then nodded, “Okay.  I'll let Blaine in if that's okay.  He wouldn't leave.”

Kurt laid back in the bed and nodded, “Yeah… that'd be fine.”

The medics left him alone for a moment, and then he heard the stomping of feet and a rush towards his door which was opened with a sharp slam as Blaine launched himself towards the bed. “You're awake!”

“Apparently.” Kurt grunted, scanning over Blaine's face.  His lover was clearly elated, eyes all sparkling making his pupils look accented by honey hued glitter.  Then he saw the butterfly bandage at the top of Blaine's forehead and the stitches on his cheek.  “How are you?”  

Blaine sat gingerly down on the edge of the bed, reaching to take one of Kurt's hands in his own, “Fine.. fine… god… I thought you… I mean I saw…. “  He gulped, and Kurt could see that he was forcing back tears.  That was the last thing Kurt needed right now.  He was in no mood to console anyone.

“I'll explain it later Blaine… for now… can we just maybe enjoy the fact that we get a second chance?  If that's okay with you?”

“God yes.”  

There was kissing, and snuggling, and a great deal of happy bliss after that.  When Mike and Carole finally decided to let Kurt go on the grounds that they couldn't find anything wrong with him, and ensured everyone had the same story to share to appease the general public, Kurt and Blaine went to survey the damage done to their huts.

“He made me show him where my hut was and burned it… out of spite I guess… and then yours too for good measure or something….”  Blaine admitted to Kurt, voice full of guilt as Kurt walked into the steaming heap of what had been his place, looking for something, anything, to salvage and coming up dry.

“It's okay… we'll make a new one…”  Kurt had murmured then, leading them up to this point, the base of a house before him, ready for the walls to be lifts on.  Blaine and Trent had put some time into researching how to build a house from their limited selection of building how-to books before they started because Blaine was insistent that the home they had should be “just right”.

Just right for what was the question that Kurt had.  He hadn't asked it aloud though because there was no doubt that Blaine would come up with something fluffy in response that would melt Kurt's heart and for the next while Kurt needed to stay firm.  He needed to be solid.

Thought it wasn't because of Blaine.

Everyone looked at him now differently.  He thought things had been bad before, but now, despite saving their hides, they pulled their children away from him when he walked through town.  A few people had apparently also asked that any meat they had at dinner was not killed by him, as if there was any difference.  

But it didn't matter.  He had Blaine, and Trent still spoke to him as if nothing had happened.  Kitty, Mike, and Carole all knew to some extent, and still seemed okay with him if not a little weirded out.  Even Karofsky still spoke to him even though he was one of the ones Kurt could have done with less of.  

So it wasn't all bad.  

Kurt had kept himself busy since the uproar, spending a good chunk of his day out in the wilds hunting and trying to come to terms with the epiphany of his existence.  His evenings were spent chopping down wood for their new home, and trying to cut it with a handsaw to Blaine's specifications.  He wished he could just steal one of the generators and a power saw for all the cramps his hand now suffered because of all the sawing he did.

Sebastian and his goons were still locked up - the sheriff's office now outfitted with proper locks - the key to which was kept in an undisclosed location that only Santana and Noah knew the location of.  There was still no consensus on what to do with any of them, and so they sat and rotted down there under heavy guard.  The “good Warblers”, as they had come to be called, had asked to join the community seeing as how their group was in shambles and Blaine and Trent were staying anyhow.  When it came to what to do with the “bad Warblers”, the “good Warblers” were the only ones who had a consistent view of what to do - load them up on the wagon and ride them out far away somewhere.

Blaine, for his part, had been quiet on the whole matter.  Kurt could see it upset him from the fire that seemed to light his eyes when it was brought up, but he pointedly did not want to talk about it.  He wasn't past being angry over it all, especially with how Sebastian had intended to kill Kurt.

Trent was more vocal.  He decried Sebastian not only for his little riot and hostile takeover attempt, but also for polarizing the Warblers for years.  He explained that some of the Warblers in those cells could be rehabilitated because they just swayed to the side that seemed like it would be on top, while others, like Sebastian, needed to be dealt with severely.  Trent was adamant that Sebastian couldn't stay though, not with him starting his family.  He couldn't risk having that kind of danger close.

“What do you think we should do with them Kurt?” Mike had asked of him a few days after the dust had settled.  “You did get hurt the worst by them after all…”

Kurt had shrugged.  “In the old days, they killed people who were a threat because there was nothing more they could do with them… then as things modernised they made the prisons… and then came up with rehabilitation and all that… but now we're back to a primitive state… we have the mentality that people can be dealt with in humane ways, but not the means to do it… so I don't know… I really don't.”

“Yeah… I think my vote will be for shipping them off….”  Mike said, referring to the upcoming community vote on what to do with the lot of them.  Several choices had been narrowed down including death, shipping them away, making them into slave labour, and working for rehabilitation rights.  “What about you?”

“I'm not voting…”  Kurt had said, earning him a look of shock from Mike.  “There is no perfect solution.. and I don't want a say in anything that I might regret.”

Blaine too, had decided to abstain.

“On one hand, I want them to pay for what they've done… but I know that some of them did worse than others… Plus… some of them have been my friends or more in the past… I just….”  He sighed.  “I don't want to be part of a mob seeking revenge against them.”

Blaine didn't visit much though with any of the previous Warblers - good or bad.  Since Kurt had awoken, the majority of Blaine's time had been spent either learning his new trade or with Kurt.

“Why aren't you afraid of me?” Kurt had asked the first night after he had woken up.  They were staying temporarily in a room beside Trent and Kitty's - who had both decided to build a home new Blaine and Kurt as soon as theirs was up.

Blaine looked surprised by the question, bringing a hand over Kurt's face and setting it on his cheek, “Why would I?”

“Because I should be dead right now… because no human should have been able to do what I did to free you all… because… I'm different.”

Blaine snorted at that, as if it was the most ludicrous thing that could be said.  “You would never hurt me or anyone else you care about. Hell, you didn't even hurt them really bad.  It was all shots to their extremities just to disarm them.”

“But… that's not…. Blaine…” Kurt searched for the words to try and tell him.

“Look.  Whether you're glowing and super tall or just as human as anyone else I'm going to love you.  Now cuddle me already.”

That was it.  That was all.  It was so simple to Blaine where for Kurt it was all unclear, but if Blaine could accept him as he was, then maybe he could too.

“The phones burned you know….”  Kurt had said, wrapping his arms around Blaine.  “You'll have to sing for me again.”

“Whenever you want.”  Blaine had assured him with a smile, moving his hands to hold Kurt back just as securely.

As spring rolled into summer, the house was built and Kurt and Blaine helped Trent and Kitty with their home which would be about ten yards from their own.  Scavengings into town were mostly focused on furnishing - getting new bed sheets, blankets, and even decorations.  Kurt tanned fresh hides, but it wasn't like he could make up for the years of lost ones.  

They moved in, much to Kurt's relief at being away from the town, and made sure to christen all three rooms of their new place - bedroom, cooking area and eating area, and storage.  Blaine's design was simple yet perfect.  It may of well of been a vacation cabin at a forest resort - and it was theirs.  

As Kitty grew larger around the belly, the naming debate raged on.  One thing that was certain though was whatever the first name might be, the middle names were going to be Blaine and Kurt.  Kurt had pushed that, and because Trent and Kitty shared in the secret of his existence, they went along with it.  Anything for their little one.  Any kind of protection that could be offered.

Even if it was that of a quarterling or whatever the hell Kurt was.

“We could always move you know Kurt…. I'd be alright with it.”  Blaine said to him one night in mid summer after Kurt had become visibly upset when Beth was pulled away from him by Noah, whispers following.  He knew what they were saying.  It wasn't like it was a secret how reviled he was to most people in the town.  They may have accepted the lie given to them, but that didn't mean they believed it.  

“No… we can't…”  Kurt had said back to him, thinking about how he was somehow linked to these people's protection from the Others.  He didn't know how or why it worked, but his mother said it did, and even if they didn't all care for him, he couldn't say the same back.  He wouldn't leave and subject them to whatever hell might come.  If tolerating their stares and whispers meant they were protected, then that's what he'd do.  

“It's still better here now than it was before you came.” Kurt admitted, and that was truthful at least.  Now he had Blaine, and Trent, and even Kitty to some odd degree.  There would be a baby nearby soon that he'd be an unofficial uncle to and a dog that seemed to get pregnant as much as was possible.  They had their new home, which was beautiful compared to any of the others around, and even though his dad was dead and gone, his name was embedded in the town wall.

So they stayed, welcoming the arrival of Kitty and Trent's son - Isaac Kurt Blaine Nixon, who Kurt was immediately enamoured with much to Kitty's relief as Kurt was happy to take care of the baby at night when Kitty was too exhausted.  Pudding kept having puppies, and Blaine made sure that they didn't only have a dog, but welcomed a couple cats into their home as well.  Eventually Sam and Mercedes came around and would come to visit as well, increasing their circle of good friends to the point where they had regular get togethers, usually at Trent and Kitty's home since it was build larger and Trent was actually a decent cook.

If it hadn't been for the threat of annihilation by a magical race or the worry that Sebastian and his goons might return since the vote swung in favour of having them ridden out a weeks solid ride, it almost might have been a normal existence.

And for Kurt, it was more than he could have hoped for.