“The lotus comes from the murkiest water but grows into the purest thing.” - Nita Ambani

Blaine swayed back and forth in the rickety wooden chair that was definitely not meant to be rocked, with the way it knocked its legs with sharp thuds against the ground in whatever direction he was leaning into at the time. The window he was looking out of was showing the same scene it had been for the past two days - a blizzard, whistles of sharp wind blowing around frigid white dust with extreme prejudice. He had initially thought he could still drive through it when he had awoken the morning after arriving at this place, but when he had gotten outside he couldn't even open his eyes because his lashes became so heavy with the snowflakes affixing to them and when he did manage to slit them open, he couldn't see past his nose with all the white, whirling microscopic bits of ice the wind was shooting up.

So Blaine had stayed in the little mountain town, named by its residents as Haven, and tried to occupy himself in the hopes the blizzard would die down enough for him to get back on the road. He had stayed with the towns headman, the old, permanently scowling woman who was glaring at him presently as he restlessly banged the chair against the floor. She had been kind enough to let him stay, though that seemed to be the end of her good-naturedness as she complained about having another mouth to feed in town, how he apparently snored at night, and that he was also an idiot for trying to get closer to the Others instead of further away from them. All that being said though, she still insisted that he stay with her instead of some other lodging while he was trapped in the mountains. Either she didn't trust him enough for him to be with other people under her watch, or she was curious enough about him that she wanted him to stay close in case he revealed any information he might have had. Blaine wasn't speaking that much though. He had kept his mouth closed for so long now that it seemed alien to speak socially. He spoke enough to discover the residents had no fuel of their own in this place, and only had food for trade, and that was the end of it.  

The curiosity around him had abated. The first day he had been stuck in town, people came to ask him questions, wondering if he might know certain family or friends they had long ago lost to the Tides. Of course he didn't know anyone they mentioned though. It was never that easy.  Then he had questions about the community he had left behind, which he answered plainly without revealing too much information. He didn't know these people well enough to trust them with information about his home, or what had been his home when Kurt had been there to share it with him. If there was a chance that someone would use the information about his community to hurt the people there, Blaine couldn't take it, and so he gave as much misinformation as he could just in case.

The woman he was staying with called him out on it earlier today. She had watched him the entire time he spoke with others in the mess hall.  

“They don't have the means or motivation to leave this place. Why would it hurt to tell them the truth about where you came from?”

“Because I don't trust them, just like you don't trust me.”

That had shut her up for the time being, though it didn't stop her from glowering his way whenever he looked away from the window, where he was trying to will nature to calm down so he could move along. He knew when his welcome had worn out, and it was yesterday.

“Why are you really going to the coast?”

Blaine perked his head up and looked over at the woman, one he still didn't know the name of. It hadn't crossed his mind to ask her, and she had never introduced herself. There was nothing in her home to identify herself either. If he had to give her a name it would have been one of those names that had faded into obscurity with age, reserved only for old women like Olga or Agnes. She was fairly ancient looking after all. White hair peppered with silver tied back in a bun on the back of her head with loose wisps coming loose and tickling along her neckline where a weathered silver chain fell down between her breasts, loose skin holding aloft bags of fat, and hiding the pendant that it held. In the comfort of her own home, with the fireplace constantly going, she wore an ankle length skirt she had belted up right below her bosom, which in turn was covered by a white blouse that had long been stained yellow with age. She looked like what Blaine imagined the picture of a spinster might if he looked it up in a picture dictionary.

“Personal reasons.”

“Obviously dumb shit. What kind of personal reasons would make you take such a risk is what I'm wondering.”

Blaine sighed, tilting his head back against the top of the chair and glancing up at the ceiling. Someone had once smoked in this home given how bisque-colored the ceiling was. It hadn't been her though, or if it had been, she had quit, because he hadn't seen a cigarette in her mouth, nor the oral tics those that had been forced to give up smoking had.  

“You going to tell me or just mope around like a little shit until the weather calms?”

“I was going to go for the latter,” Blaine uttered upwards. Clearly this woman had not won her position based on her charisma, since Blaine had seen her be equally crude with the residents of Haven. She had patience for no-one and nothing.

“Did they take something from you? Or someone?”

He swallowed, and given the way she smugly snickered at the motion, he knew he had given himself away. She could clearly read people in a way that he couldn't, and his unconscious nervous reaction had told her all she wanted to know.

“Wife? Daughter?”

“Husband,” Blaine relented, looking down from the ceiling and back to her. If she had to know, at least it would be on his terms.

“Huh. A fudge-packer. Beard threw me off.”

He watched as she rubbed the chain of her necklace between two fingers by her neck. Every now and then he caught her doing it and he presumed it must be because it had been a gift from a lover or a child once, long ago, before The Tides took those people away. Many people had similar things. Mercedes had a pair of earrings from her mother she always touched when she wore them, just to make sure she hadn't lost them. Sam had a ring his dad had given him before he went away to visit the cousins he had run with that he always turned around his finger when he was remembering something of the past. Blaine wished he had something like that of Kurt's. Something that would make him feel more connected to him when he wasn't there. If he found Kurt, it was something he was going to rectify.

“So you're going to go avenge your husband's death, like they really would care -”

“He's alive,” Blaine corrected her. “They took him away.”

“They don't take people away.  They kill them.”

“He's not like other people.”

Her eyes narrowed, darkening even more than he thought they were capable of as she quietly regarded him and continued to play with the chain of her necklace in her fingers. “Is he a halfling?”

Blaine shook his head. “No.”

“‘cause I was going to say, with a necklace of halfling ears in your luggage, that'd make for a questionable marriage.”

For the second time that evening, she had thrown him off. When had she the chance to check his cargo? He returned her stare, a silent challenge. Something was not quite right about this woman, and more than just her needing to lighten up a little.

“Hard to sleep when you're sawing logs something fierce,” she snapped, catching onto his unverbalized question. “I took the liberty to check your inventory while you slept.”

“You had no right.”

“I had every right. This is my community. My Haven. These are my people. I needed to ensure you weren't carrying anything that could get them hurt.”

“Then why not search me when you accepted me in?”

She glanced away, and even though he didn't know how he had done it, he had somehow taken her off guard. “Because it wasn't necessary then.”

“Wait….” Blaine blinked his eyes a few times and then stood up, “how did you know they were Halfling ears and not just Other ears?”

He heard her gulp, and as she continued to avert her gaze, he saw the glint of the pendant as it lifted from between her sagging cleavage as she rolled the chain around her finger. In a flash he had lunged across the room and grabbed the pendant, which was in fact a copper coin that was all too familiar to him. It was the same as the one Kurt had used to be transported away. The same the white-eyed Other had gifted him with.

“Where the hell did you get this?! Are you one of them?!”

She choked as he yanked her along with the coin, and futilely tried to pull herself and it back along with her. In order to get a response, Blaine had to loosen his grip on the piece, but only enough to allow her to take in a breath.

“No…. not one of them,” she finally heaved out in sputtered breath, turning her head up to look at him defiantly. “Let me go.”

“Not until you tell me the truth. Why do you have this? Who are you?”

She glared for a minute more, and Blaine matched her at it in a quiet standoff before she relented and tossed her head back, loose strands of hair going behind her ears in the act. “I'm not an Other, or a Halfling.”

“Then how do you have one of these?!”

“My son is a Halfling.”

Blaine watched her eyes, her lips, and her movements in general for signs of deception. He found none. “So you're allied with them.”

“Hardly,”  she spat, and while Blaine might have felt bad about keeping her standing up on her toes in order to adjust to the way he was holding the coin in his hand, he also knew she had the option to give up the necklace, something she was clearly not keen on doing.

“Explain.”

“I was young, foolish. I thought I was in love. He was such a charmer, and so god damned handsome. Classically so, like Clark Gable and Cary Grant… before I knew it I was unmarried, pregnant, and alone.”

“When was that?'

“Nineteen thirty three….”

Blaine tried to do the math in his head, but was coming up empty with the adrenaline running through him, leaving little room for reasoning. “How old are you?”

“A hundred two.”

Blaine had to give her another look up and down. Was he really that bad with ages that he thought she was, at best, seventy?  

“Parenting a Halfling extends the life of the human involved,” she supplied, Blaine's mind making a small ‘oh' internally, as if it were enough to make sense of it all.

“And then?”

“And then when my son, Robert, was about fourteen he started showing… skills. His father returned, showed his true form. Told me what to do if I wanted to remain connected with Robert.”

Blaine nodded to the coin he had held in his hand, “the coin… it allowed you to speak with him.”

She nodded slowly, “yes.”

“Contact him then. Tell them I want to talk to them!”

She snickered and shook her head, “doesn't work that way. I don't have their powers. They can contact me but I can't contact them.”

“And you allege to be taking care of the people here...” Blaine snarled, letting go of the coin and allowing her to stumble back before catching herself against the chair he had pulled her out of. “You're just a spy for a man who was using you and a son that clearly preferred to live with his father.”

She snorted contemptuously, straightening her clothing out and tucking the coin back between her deflated breasts. “I am one of many. The Others have pulled back, and have allowed humans to live once more in case you haven't noticed… but we have to watch our numbers. They are afraid of us getting too numerous. I put myself in charge of this area, and no one contested it because in the time before The Tides, I was a well respected bureaucrat. I make sure we abide by their wishes so that the people here can live without fear of repercussion.”

“But they don't know what you are.”

She shook her head. “No. Of course not. Old. Not stupid.”

“How often do they contact you?” Blaine asked, storming his way back to the seat he had originally occupied. She wasn't going to run after all, and now that both of their secrets were out, there was nothing to hide between them.

“Last time was just under a year ago… Robert wanted to wish me a Merry Christmas. He remembered how much that time of year meant to me when it was just him and I. They don't have holidays like humans do, you know?”

He ignored the underlying tone of nostalgia in her voice. Almost a year. He couldn't wait for the odd chance that she'd be contacted again. He'd have to move ahead regardless of this discovery.  

“You're not going to tell them… are you?”

Blaine shook his head, resuming his absent stare outside, “No.  Some secrets aren't worth the pain of spilling.”

Either through divine intervention or just because it had run out of steam, the blizzard died out overnight, and Blaine was once again on the road the following morning. He received waves goodbye from the townsfolk that he didn't return as he set his sights on the journey ahead. It crossed his mind that the blizzard had been some kind of intervention to stop him from reaching Kurt, but that thought passed out of his mind as quickly as it had come. Surely, just as the old woman had said, he was of little concern to the Others. They didn't care for him as separate from any other human.  

Haven was the only mountain village he came across on his travels, and he was certainly relieved when the landscape shifted from rocks to rolling hills under him. It had been a long time since he had been in these parts, but he knew well enough to know not to expect any land that was perfectly horizontal for awhile. The west side of the mountain range was more dynamic than its eastern counterpart, a fact that made him sweat as he funnelled the last mason jar of fuel into his tank. Hills took more power to drive up and down, more gas consumption, and he still wasn't close enough to the coast to want to think about having to walk in the snow yet. He should have packed snowshoes, but despite all his careful planning, the thought to bring them had evaded him.

He came across another settlement not long after hitting the hills in what had been British Columbia. There were about fifty people in this smaller grouping, mostly family units that had banded together. Again they confirmed that there had been no Other patrols in the area for years, and as Blaine scanned the group, he wondered who among them might be an agent for the Others, like the woman in Haven had been. How many mothers and fathers had sold themselves into the service of the Others in the hopes of being able to contact their child once in a blue moon?

Not that he was any better, so willing to give himself up in order to see Kurt if only for a moment more.

The settlement had no fuel to offer him, but were able to trade for food and give him information on Halfling camps other travellers had reported when they had come through the area. Blaine marked the information on his maps and thanked them all before continuing onward, wishing it were summer instead of winter, and that the days were longer so he could have travelled further in the daylight offered to him.

He pulled into what was left of a barn, though the land had reclaimed most of it - sinking walls into the earth and roof mostly open where rotten boards had fallen below. There he stayed, making a small fire and eating a small amount of rations as he stared up at the night sky and wondered if Kurt was able to see the same stars he did, and if he missed him as much as Blaine missed Kurt.

There was a time Blaine knew the constellations by heart. He remembered pointing up at them with Jeff on one side and Trent on the other. Together they had been able to map them out and help one another see the images people had so long ago placed upon them. It had been years since he had really, truly looked at the stars though. His nights had been happily spent inside with Kurt, and the cold climate where they lived didn't allow them the luxury of staying outside at night. Blaine tried to piece together the stars before him, tried to recall what picture they were supposed to make when put together, but the name evaded him. Not even the stars here gave him any familiar comfort. They were as foreign as the brown grass he had laid back on.  

He had to remind himself that it would all be worth it. This journey would either result in being reunited with Kurt or would end him, and in each case he would be satisfied with the result. It might have been a bit overdramatic, but he couldn't see anything in between those two options.

He woke up with the sun, climbing aboard the Canary without bothering to eat, and making his way further down what had been a road years before. Blaine didn't slow for the bumps, letting them jostle him and wear out what little shocks he had left in order to keep himself awake for the drive and ensure he maximized his gas usage. He should have taken a horse, he told himself as the sun lifted overhead from behind him; while it might not be as fast, it wouldn't need anything more than the grass and snow to keep itself moving each day.

Another needless mistake on his part, one that he swore at himself for when the Canary began to putter and slow not long after, just as the sun started to shine in his eyes. He argued with it for awhile, then pleaded for it to work, even for just a moment more. Blaine went so far as dumping water into the gas tank in the hopes that would make it go, groaning in defeat when all he got in return was a squealing noise and then nothing.

He packed up everything he could into his backpack and continued the journey on foot, leaving the Canary behind. He walked until nightfall, using one of the pills he had stolen then to help alleviate the sore cramping in his legs. It took him longer to fall asleep with the pain creeping up his body from walking so hard, for so long, that night, and in the morning he had to fight with himself to get up, his body, and legs in particular, now stiff and swollen. He was sure he had blisters, but didn't dare stop to check as he forged ahead, because there was nothing he could do about them even if he did stop.  

Blaine hated walking. He figured out that he was now travelling in one day, what he would have in one hour of driving - if that long. As he passed farms, he looked for vehicles or horses that might have been left behind there. Hell, even riding a bicycle in the winter had to be better than walking. He had no luck though, and eventually accepted his slow pace and hardened legs as a necessity over the next several days.

He had been walking for about a week when he came across another human encampment, and he had to double check his map to make sure its existence made sense. Back in his Warbler days, no humans had thought to live so close to the coast (even though he was still days away by foot), but now there was a busy little town there, and he saw that they had horses.

“Can I talk to whomever is in charge here?” he said to a woman who ducked away from him as he approached.

“Jus'... you stay there!”

She ran off, and Blaine looked down at the ice he had uncovered with his footprints at what he could make out of his reflection. He looked like some kind of mountain man. His beard had never grown out so much, nor as wild. His hair wasn't much better, and his skin looked chapped and peeling. The winter elements had clearly had an effect on him, one that he'd have to deal with if he wanted to look presentable for Kurt.

The woman came back not a minute later with two men behind her. One lifted a gun up by means of threat, and Blaine lifted his hands up. “I'm just passing through. Looking to maybe make some trades, and get something to eat.”

“Right. We've heard that before. C'mon,” the man with the gun said, gesturing with it that Blaine should follow the man beside him as he took position behind Blaine. It seemed a little over the top to Blaine, but who knew what harm these people had faced before and what lengths they had to go to to ensure their safety. He complied with the order and trailed along with the men to a building that had once served as a bank, given the words almost worn off on the window, and let himself be taken in.

“Look… I don't mean any harm… I'm honestly just here to -”  Blaine started again, as they took him to an office within the old bank. His words were choked short though as he saw who was there waiting for him.

“Seb - Sebastian?”

The years had been good to his old lover turned traitor, who didn't look much older than he had the last time Blaine had seen him aside from more wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and more leather in his skintone. While he recognized Sebastian though, Sebastian had to look him over a few times before the recognition set in his green eyes, widening and then narrowing as he spat.

“Blaine.”

“How did you -”

“The people you choose over us. Remember? They drove us out here.”

The guys on either side of Blaine were obviously confused by the interaction, sharing glances with one another and then directing those glances to Sebastian who waved them off.  “He's not a threat to me. You can go stand outside the door.”

Just like that, they left Blaine alone with Sebastian, with more questions than answers.  The door was shut behind him and Sebastian ignored him for the moment as he poured himself a shot of whiskey from a bottle on his desk and sipped it back before looking over his shoulder at Blaine.

“God. You look like fucking hell. Weren't for your eyes I wouldn't have recognized you at all.”

Blaine glanced over his own shoulder at the door closing him in the room with Sebastian and then looked back to Sebastian from where he was hovering by the doorway. “I've been on the road.”

“They boot you out too?”

Blaine shook his head. “No… I'm going to the coast.”

Something within Blaine told him he should be feeling anything except the nothingness he was. He should have felt angry, for this was the guy who nearly killed Kurt and himself. He should have felt sad, for seeing how well Sebastian seemed to be doing compared to himself. He should have felt happy, to know that Sebastian appeared to have turned over a new leaf. He felt none of that though. All he felt was that this was just one more thing happening that was getting in the way of him finding Kurt.

“What the fuck is at the coast?”

“Kurt.”

“Oh.” Sebastian poured himself another drink, not bothering to offer one to Blaine. “Your little Halfling piece of ass you chose over me.”

Blaine winced, recalling how angry Sebastian had looked when he had told him he wasn't going to go along with his plan to take over the community, and then the shock of being hit so hard by him that it knocked him out. “It wasn't just for him… and he's not a Halfling.”

“Well he's certainly fucking something more than normal that you threw away years of friendship for him and now are apparently tracking his runaway ass down.”

He didn't have time for this. As much as he wondered what had happened and how Sebastian had gotten to the point of being in charge of a whole settlement of humans, Blaine didn't have the patience for it. “Look. I just wanted to know if you had a horse to trade or something else I could use to get there.”

“Hunter died, you know,”  Sebastian muttered, sitting himself down in the chair behind his desk and propping his heels up on the table. “They left us out here without anything, and Hunter got mauled by a cougar. We had nothing to patch him up with, not even a damned thing to give him to help with the pain.”

Blaine grimaced and leaned against the doorframe. “Some people wanted to just kill you all outright for what you did… it was a better option…”

“It was a cowardly option. You should have had us all killed. We wanted to go back there, kill you all in your sleep.”

“Like you did to Charles.”

Sebastian locked eyes with Blaine as Blaine remembered the once-Warbler that had died in the middle of the night. Charles had been diabetic, and it had been getting more and more difficult to find the insulin he needed to survive. Sebastian had been the one to argue that Charles needed to go, and then, conveniently, Charles had died in the night. No one had questioned it at the time, but Blaine had known what had happened. He had been involved with Sebastian at the time, and Charles' death was what had spurred Blaine to end things between them. In retrospect, Blaine should have said or done something more.

“Charles would have gotten the whole group killed,” Sebastian finally said, his green eyes darkening. Not an admission, but certainly not a denial either. “It was for the best that he died.”

“What did you have to do to get in this position of power Sebastian? Who did you have to kill here?”

Sebastian's eyes narrowed, quietly assessing Blaine whose body was either tense from strained muscles or from the adrenaline pumping through him. It was likely a mix of both factors.

“Riley! Derrick! Come here please!” Sebastian shouted, summoning back the two men that had escorted Blaine to the room with an opening of the door behind him.

“Imprison this man in the vault.”

Blaine's eyes rounded and he immediately tried to turn and run, getting grabbed at both elbows by the men who roughly dragged him further into the building despite his attempts to break free. “Let me go! I was just passing through! You can't keep me here!”

He was smaller though, certainly weaker, unprepared for this turn of events, and found himself being thrown into an empty concrete room with a heavy bolted door swinging shut before he could get back onto his feet and try to fight against it. Blaine pushed against it, yelling at the top of his lungs at the injustice that had been done against him, and then, when all his energy reserves were spent, he slumped down against the door and sobbed into his hands. This couldn't be how his mission to find Kurt would end.  Locked in a pitch black room that felt colder inside than it did outside the building.  Put there by a man he had long put out of his mind who obviously still considered him a threat.  This couldn't be how it ended.

He had to feel around the edges of the room in order to find the corners, since there was no light within it, and it was in the furthest corner that he used to relieve himself when he needed to.  Blaine hollered and screamed when he had the voice to do so, but he got hoarse quickly, and no one responded to his calls.  Without the light, it was impossible to tell how much time had passed in the vault he was being held captive in, and he wasn't sure if the naps he took were really just naps or night-time worthy slumbers.  

It stunk in the vault, and it struck him that he probably wasn't the first person to be trapped within it and to use the corners for the bathroom given the severity of the smell.  Even at his worst, when he was so far sunk into his depression that he didn't rise out of bed, he knew he didn't smell as bad as it did in the vault.  When he slept, he did so with an ear pressed against the door, in hopes that he'd be able to hear if someone came and would be able to scurry out before they knew what was happening if they did open the door.

He wasn't fed, and the growling of his stomach soon was louder than he could make his voice.  It stopped though after a time, giving up on the hope for food as Blaine was giving up on the thought that he would be allowed out of the room Sebastian had so cruelly had him tossed into.  This was his punishment.  He would die a slow death in the vault, haunted by the thought that he had been so close to the coast only to be trapped.  At some point they had even taken his pack from him, and he didn't even know when it had happened in the fray.  

Blaine had imagined that this trip might end in his death, but had put more stock into finding Kurt and being reunited with him.   He hadn't mentally prepared for death, and certainly not in this manner.  He would starve, and become a stiff corpse in a dark room, and the last man he spoke to would be Sebastian.  It wasn't right, but if there was one thing he could stomach, it was the knowledge that things weren't always right, or fair, or just in the world.  Sometimes, things just simply were.

Like the place he was in wasn't really a vault, but a tomb.