The process of setting up camp that night was horribly awkward for Kurt. While he knew that eight years of anger and resentment towards a person was not and could not disappear with one conversation, he still couldn't bring himself to hate Apollo as much as he did a month, or even a few days ago. As a result, he no longer had any idea how to act around him. Blaine himself just seemed subdued and quiet, which was not helping Kurt's confusion on the matter.

From the first time that they met, Blaine had been overly friendly and almost constantly looking for an excuse to touch Kurt. Now he avoided eye contact. While Kurt was grateful that he was being given the illusion of space to try and process all of the information he'd been given, the change in demeanor was still shocking in its abruptness.

So instead of dwelling on his oddly silent companion, he helped light a fire, pulled out bedding from the quiver, watched Blaine quickly put together a meal (which was actually far more of a surprise than the silence, if he was being honest), and thought.

He'd spent about half of his life hating Apollo and Artemis for letting his mom die. And it had never occurred to him to blame anyone else. Once, during a long day spent in his clearing with Tina, she'd asked him why he never blamed Hades. The answer had seemed so obvious to him, he had actually never given it a conscious thought.

Everyone had to die eventually, and when they did they went to Hades. As far as Kurt knew, he didn't go around killing people for fun, so there was no reason to hold him responsible. No. His mother had been sick, and Apollo had done nothing to help. And then the baby came too early as a result, and Artemis couldn't be bothered do anything about it. They had the power to stop her and his sibling from dying, but they refused to do so.

Given enough time, he thought, he probably would've outgrown the resentment. He may have never trusted them, and probably not have prayed to either, but the hostility and bitterness he felt was something he could have potentially gotten over, if it wasn't for the reaction it caused everyone else in his town. How was he supposed to let go of all this anger when it was constantly being thrown back at him? He'd ended up blaming the gods for not only letting his mother die, but for the treatment he received as a result.

The worst part was that it looked as though he'd been blaming the wrong people the whole time.

Kurt was interrupted from his thoughts when Blaine handed him his share of the meal. He muttered a quiet thank you, and received a shocked look before Blaine smiled at him.

They ate in silence after that, though Kurt noticed that Blaine kept glancing at him in an almost hopeful manner. He wasn't entirely sure what it was Blaine was hoping for, so the entire thing was rather pointless. Still. Blaine had revealed a lot about himself earlier, and Kurt was starting to realize that he had possibly judged him a little too harshly. He could probably start a conversation.

He just wasn't sure what to talk about.

“Why are we going to see Sam?” he finally asked. Might as well get some idea of Blaine's master plan if he was going to have to actually initiate a discussion.

For all the not-so-subtle staring Blaine had been doing, he seemed surprised that Kurt actually did speak. “Um. Because he's the only person I know that can get us into the Underworld?”

Kurt shook his head, “I mean… I know that you said he could do it, but you also said that this was supposed to be a secret. So… why are we getting someone else involved?”

Blaine blinked several times in response.

“I just… I don't want him to go and tell… um,” he faltered and tried to remember the names Blaine had given him to use, but it wasn't working. “I don't remember the name you told me,” he finally confessed.

“Schue,” Blaine said, finally shaking himself out of whatever thoughts had been trapped in. “I think it's Schue, anyway… it's short for something, but I'm never sure what.”

 The look on Kurt's face must have conveyed his confusion, because Blaine shook his head before explaining that he actually didn't know why they had the names they had, and promised to give Kurt the full story later.

“I don't want you to think I'm avoiding your original question,” he clarified hastily. “The name thing is just a really long story. But your question about Sam is… actually a good question.”

Kurt smiled, proud of himself though he wasn't entirely sure why. He settled into his makeshift bed, hoping for an interesting story. Even with his obvious dislike for the gods, he had always liked the gossip that they caused. When he was younger, his dad had used the tales he knew as bedtime stories (they mostly involved Hephaestus, Kurt suddenly remembered), and as he got older the trips to the theater were the highlights of his life, second to his memories of his mother.

He wondered, only somewhat bitterly, if he wouldn't be as fascinated by stories of other people's lives if he wasn't so miserable in his own.

“Unfortunately there's no way for me to prove to you that he's trustworthy, you're just going to have to take my word for it,” Blaine said, effectively breaking Kurt out of his thoughts. “Sam, Sebastian and Schue have always had a bit of a rivalry, you see. Sebastian openly despises Schue, and sort of treats Sam like a joke, and… well the pranks we've pulled on him probably haven't endeared us to him.”

“Why would you pull pranks on the King of the Underworld,” Kurt interrupted in disbelief. “That seems like a great way to get yourselves kille—well. It doesn't sound pleasant for you,” he amended.

Blaine laughed, the sound like music in the air as his face scrunched up from the size of his grin. “It was retaliation. He took something from us; we had to get it back. It's a long and complicated history of the three of us ticking each other off. And Sam has just… never really clicked with Schue, I guess. I assume it's a kind of sibling rivalry, though I can't be sure. Anyway, he's… well other than my darling twin, he's my closest friend. He wouldn't… he wouldn't sell us out to Schue. He'd probably help us out just because we were going against his orders, plus causing more work for Sebastian.”

“You guys really don't like each other?” Kurt asked.

“It's…” Blaine sighed, and ran a hand through his hair. He was silent for a few moments while Kurt assumed he was trying to find the words he wanted. “It's always hard to explain this to mortals,” he finally muttered. “You have a… different idea of family than we do. Immortality does that.”

Kurt frowned, “How does living forever make you love your family less?”

Blaine laughed, though the sound was hollow this time, “I don't think you would ever be able to comprehend it.” He must have noticed the glare Kurt was aiming his way, because he hastened to explain. “I mean that in a good way, I promise. It's just… you love your dad. We've spent barely any time together and it's still the most obvious thing about you.”

“And you don't,” Kurt said, face softening. Blaine was right, he really couldn't comprehend it. Nothing would ever be more sacred to Kurt than his parents.

“No, I don't. But it's not the same situation. I just… I don't think of him as my dad the same way you would. He's more of a boss, really. His wife certainly never felt like family. And none of my half-siblings have ever… they're not siblings to me, you know?”

“No. I don't.”

Blaine flinched, but Kurt waved it off and asked him to continue his story. He really was trying to stop being hostile but it was much easier said than done.

“I know I have so many siblings, but, well… I don't see them that way. I have a sister. A twin. That's it. I don't spend time with my mother, so she's my real family.  The rest are just… the people I have to spend eternity with, for better or worse. It's why you wouldn't have ev—actually, never mind.”

Blaine shoved the last of his food into his mouth and Kurt blinked at him several times in confusion. “I wouldn't have ever what?”

Kurt seriously doubted it took that long to finish chewing, and doubted even more that Blaine's weak response of “understood what I meant?” was what he was going to say. But apparently two slip ups in one night were his limit, because he refused to talk anymore, and insisted that they get some sleep.

Kurt's protests fell on deaf ears, and he was finally forced to go to sleep when it proved obvious that Blaine wasn't going to answer his questions.

XxX

When he was younger and in the mood to make fun of himself, Kurt had thought that early mornings were a curse that Apollo had put on him in retribution for his loud and frequent thoughts of dislike.

Traveling with him was doing nothing to help dismiss the theory.

“Come on, Kurt! It's time to wake up!”

Kurt's response was grumbled and contained no actual words.

“The sun is shining and is beautiful and you should be awake to enjoy it!”

The next response was a rather graphic insult about Blaine's mother that was best not repeated.

“I don't even want to know where you learned that, now come on, we should be getting an early start!”

“It's for this very reason,” Kurt muttered as he reluctantly crawled out from under the nest of warm blankets, “that I've always hated Artemis less than you.”

“Don't say her name,” Blaine said in a sing song voice, seemingly not taking offense to Kurt's insults.

“You haven't told me her nickname,” Kurt argued as he reached for Blaine's quiver. He wasn't awake enough to really think about what to pull out of it, but was pleased to find his vague request of ‘fruit' managed to get him a pomegranate.

“Why are you eating that?” Blaine asked, his voice sounding off. 

“Because I don't eat well in the mornings,” Kurt explained as he popped a handful of seeds into this mouth. “So I usually have fruit. This is what came out.”

“You didn't… ask for a pomegranate but you got it anyway?”

“Just asked for fruit, why do you care?”

Blaine didn't answer, but sat down next to Kurt and threw an arm around his waist. Kurt was too tired at that point to shake him off, and Blaine's body seemed to run at a higher temperature anyway, so the warmth was welcome.

He did protest when Blaine tried to actually hug him, so the god got up to finish packing up their camp as Kurt tried to wake up enough to be of use.

“It's Quinn, I think,” he finally said out of nowhere as he helped Kurt up and they started walking. Kurt stared at him blankly. “My twin's name,” he explained. “I think its Quinn, but I'm not entirely sure because it's fuzzy, like Schue's.”

In an incredibly eloquent response, Kurt yawned before he promptly tripped over his own sleep numb feet. Despite his loud and uncomplimentary protests, Blaine helped him, for the second time that morning, to his feet and began fussing over him.

There was a long, though shallow, scrape along Kurt's left forearm where he'd tried to catch himself, as well as a rather large bruise on his ego, but he was otherwise completely fine. Blaine, for unknown but irritating reasons, disagreed and was acting as though Kurt had been decapitated.

“I am fine,” he insisted. “It's not even bleeding, what is wrong with you?”

Blaine's answer was a long and rambled mix of apologies for not being able to magically heal the scratch and frantic questions about where the bandages were.

“Blaine!” Kurt finally shouted. “I have survived sixteen years without any kind of magical healing; I really don't think that a tiny little scrape is going to kill me. Calm down.”

Kurt liked to think that if he wasn't so preoccupied with trying to get Blaine to stop irrationally panicking he would've noticed the boar that charged them.

The glorified pig was huge, and Kurt had time to wonder why the hell a wild boar was in the middle of farmland, before the damn thing sent him flying several feet into the air and he landed in an undignified lump on his ass. He looked up in time to see Blaine land onto his stomach a ways away from him, and had a brief moment of worry when he realized that his eyes were closed and his temple bleeding. 

The worry turned to panic, however, when he realized the boar was getting ready to charge at Blaine again, and he would have no way to defend himself. Not bothering to think about what he was about to do, Kurt scrambled to his feet and began yelling nonsense at the animal, hoping to draw its attention away from his unconscious guide.

The good news was that his planned worked. The bad news was that his plan was probably going to get him killed.

The boar was now running straight at him and Kurt wondered if its tusks were long enough to go straight through him before he jumped to the left at the last second. He sprinted towards Blaine's quiver that had, somewhere in the confusion, been dropped in the middle of the road.

 The boar seemed confused as to why there was suddenly nothing in front of it, and Kurt used its distraction to reach into quiver and thought desperately weapon, weapon, any kind of weapon.

He should have known, of course, that this was a waste of time. He managed to pull out arrow after arrow and he yelled in frustration. He didn't know how to use a bow. His father didn't know how, so he never taught him, who else would ever be willing to teac—his father.

Hammer. Hammer hammer hammer hammer.

His triumphant shout quickly turned into a rather undignified scream when he realized that his attacker was much closer than he remembered.

With a quick jump out of the way, he managed to bring the large forge hammer down on the boar's head. The attack was mildly successful, as it dazed the boar long enough that he could sprint over to Blaine and try and wake him up, the problem was that his arm now sported a rather deep and painful cut from the boar's tusks.

He ignored his arm as much as he could, though he worried that he wouldn't be able to swing the hammer as effectively and fell to his knees beside Blaine. “Wake up,” he said, shaking the unconscious body while keeping an eye on the boar. “Blaine, you have to wake up. Come on.”

He rolled Blaine onto his back, and, apologizing silently, slapped him hard across the face.

It didn't work.

Leaving the quiver beside the body, he quickly ran to the other side of the road and began yelling abuse at both Blaine and the boar.

“Blaine, this thing is actually going to kill me if you don't wake up!” he screeched as he dodged the boar again. His strategy was becoming less effective as time went on. The boar was learning and Kurt was tiring.

He lashed out at the animal's legs with the hammer as he stepped aside again, hoping that maybe if there was some kind of break the thing would slow down, but so far all he was managing to do was make the animal angrier and his arm bleed more.

“Styx,” he muttered before giving up and shouting, “Apollo! I need your help!”

Without looking to see if his attempt worked, he ran into the field of barley.

The noise his pursuer made was muffled by the grains growing up around him, and he hoped that meant he would be hidden for a few moments. The pain in his arm had flared so he cupped it, wincing at the pressure but leaving his hand there regardless. He tried not to think about how quickly the red stain on his sleeve was spreading.

A noise behind him alerted him to the boar's location and he ran as quickly as his tired legs could manage back out of the field.

He almost sobbed in relief when he saw Blaine trying to struggle to his feet. He found an extra burst of energy and sprinted behind his companion, and hooked his arms under Blaine's armpits, pulling him up the rest of the way.

“I don't know what to do,” Kurt said frantically.

“Need my bow,” Blaine said, his words slurring slightly. “And my arms.”

Kurt let go, but as soon as he stopped supporting his weight, Blaine started to fall back down. He unstrapped the bow from Blaine's back as quickly as he could and handed it over followed by a handful of arrows that were lying on the ground.

Blaine slumped forward again, so Kurt wrapped one of his arms around his waist to support his weight, and then the other across his chest to stop him from falling forward.

He didn't have time to feel awkward about the situation before the boar came charging at them.

 Kurt had to shift his weight when Blaine moved his arm back to draw the bow and was more focused on that then the fact that Blaine had three arrows notched instead of one.

It wasn't until the boar had fallen on its side with an arrow sticking out of both of its eyes and one through his snout that Kurt managed to notice much of anything.

 “How did you do that without powers?” he finally managed to breathe.

“Muscle memory,” Blaine answered before they both collapsed.

After a round of complaints and shoving so that Blaine was not crushing Kurt's leg, they managed to take stock of each other's injuries.

The cut on Blaine's head had stopped bleeding, though the gash was filthy and blood was dried halfway down his face. His vision, he told Kurt, was kind of blurry and his head ached, but he wasn't too concerned about it.

What he was concerned about was Kurt's arm. “I think that maybe that's the wound I was worried about earlier,” he muttered as he inspected the gash.

Kurt winced, and wondered if the statement would've made sense if Blaine wasn't poking at his wound while talking. “What are you talking about?”

“It's just… Quinn says I do that sometimes. I look at someone and see what's going to happen rather than what actually is,” Blaine explained absently. He reached for his quiver and pulled out a small knife and a roll of bandages.

“How does that work if you're not using your powers?”

Blaine simply shrugged and focused on cutting the bandages into the size he wanted before carefully wrapping it around Kurt's arm, while Kurt recounted what had happened while he was knocked out. “I really am sorry about this,” he finally muttered. “If I hadn't been lost in the future, the injury could have been avoided.”

Kurt waved off his concern. “I think your head injury is a bit more serious… and I did hit you. In the face.”

“You were just trying to get me to help, its fine.” Kurt noticed that Blaine was refusing to look at him.

“But I kind of enjoyed it a little bit. Sorry.” Blaine finally looked up and Kurt grinned. “I'm kidding.”

Blaine dropped his head and laughed quietly before leaning over and hugging Kurt tightly. “Thanks for not letting me get trampled.”

Hesitantly, Kurt returned the hug. “Thanks for killing the stupid thing.”

To no one's surprise, Kurt broke the hug and they hauled themselves upright and got to work.

Kurt insisted that Blaine's cut be at least cleaned before they did anything else, but admitted that he wasn't entirely sure what to do. Though Kurt wasn't sure how, Blaine did manage to talk him through the process while staring dreamily at him.

It was probably the head injury, Kurt had mostly convinced himself.

When the wound was dealt with as much as possible, Blaine volunteered to deal with the boar and promptly began to cut up the parts of the animal that were edible and stored them away.

Kurt, meanwhile, cleaned up the aftermath of their attack. There were piles of arrows (most of them still intact) on the ground from where he'd dropped them in his search for a useful weapon, medical supplies left out, large scraps of cloth from his ripped shirt lying sadly in the dirt, and somewhere in the field, the hammer he'd lost track of.

He mourned the loss of his clothing, changed his shirt, and put everything else back in the quiver.

When he returned from his search in the field, hammer held victoriously in his good hand, he found Blaine lighting the unused parts of the boar on fire as an offering. Kurt wasn't sure who a god would sacrifice to, but didn't ask.

When the fire died down enough that Blaine wasn't worried that it would catch anything else on fire, the two resumed their journey.

Blaine wasn't walking in a straight line, and Kurt's arm throbbed, but they kept going regardless.

“I can teach you to shoot,” Blaine volunteered when they'd walked for a few hours.

“I very much doubt that with the headache you have,” Kurt replied, mostly sympathetic, partly amused.

Blaine laughed, “Well not now, but I could still give you lessons! How about in the mornings? We can wake up, have breakfast, practice for a bit, and then… well I'm actually not sure what we're going to do after we talk to Sam.”

 “Hopefully he'll take us to the Underworld and…” Kurt trailed off, but the unspoken words hung around them. And then there would be no reason for them to be anywhere near each other.

“You're never going to speak to me again after this,” Blaine stated quietly.

“Probably not, no,” Kurt admitted.

“But we could be friends!” Blaine insisted, as he stopped walking to better stare pleadingly at Kurt. “I know you still don't trust me yet, but if you'd just give some time and a chance, we could be so great. I can feel it.”

“I can't even call you by your real name,” Kurt said quietly. “You told me I was off limits. How long do you think that kind of friendship would last?”

“As long as we want! I could… I could visit you. Not every day, but… but once a week. We could meet in that forest by your house and… I'd have to turn off my powers but we could still see each other.” Blaine looked near tears and Kurt could not comprehend why.

“If you were caught, you'd be punished.”

“I don't care.”

“You'd be creating more… well. Of me.”

Blaine shook his head, “I don't understand. There could never be more of you, you're—”

“A little boy who blamed you when his mom died. If you're being locked up and punished, how many more times would that happen?” Blaine didn't answer. “You feel this guilty when it's just me; imagine how much worse you'd feel if there were hundreds more—”

“They are not you,” Blaine cut him off forcefully. In his frustration he started walking again, quick strides as if he were trying to work off the excess energy.

Kurt hastened to keep up. “If you feel this guilty because you were specifically ordered not to help my mom for… for whatever reason, then how would you feel if you couldn't help all of those other people because you were in trouble for being friends with me?”

“It was because of the baby,” Blaine responded, his voice flat.

“Excuse me?”

“Why we couldn't help your mother. There was a prophecy. Not one of mine, I wouldn't have told the mighty lightning bolt, but there was one. Your sister would've been great. Might have even been made a goddess, eventually.”

Kurt felt like the breath had been knocked out of him. “My… my sister? Why would… I don't…”

“Her life would've been fantastic, you see,” Blaine continued bitterly. “So there had to be a catch, because there's always a catch. She could only achieve her greatness if she could overcome a challenge. Hers was being born. It's why I couldn't help your mom when she got sick, and why Quinn couldn't help she went into labor. It was her test.”

Kurt grabbed Blaine's arm and forced him to stop walking and look at him. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Because your family is special. You are all so supremely important and that's why awful and amazing things keep happening to you. Do you honestly think that I go around risking all kinds of gruesome and creative torture for every orphan who hates me? No. None of us do. That woman you told me would help your father?”

“Carole?”

 “Carole. Her husband died in a war, did you know that? Do you want to know the awful things she's thought about Ares? Completely horrific, it's amazing how imaginative she is. And do you think that made even the slightest bit of difference to him when she begged him not to take her son too?”

“But… her son isn't dead, is he? He was… I saw him just a few months ago, nobody said that…”

“Arrow through the foot injured him. How long do you think he survived during battle when he could barely walk?”

The sob that clawed its way out of Kurt's throat surprised them both, as did the ensuing tears.

“My point,” Blaine said, his voice far more gentle than it had been “is that you are not like everyone else. That is why I need you to stop trying to bargain your life for other people's, because I will pick spending time with you over saving the lives of a bunch of nameless and faceless people anytime there is a choice, and the guilt of that is going to eat at you and not me.”

 Kurt wiped fruitlessly at the tears still staining his cheeks. “How can you not care about them?”

“There are more people in this world than I can count. There is no possible way for me to save them all, and in the end it doesn't matter, because they will die anyway.”

“So will I, and you're still helping me,” Kurt shot back.

Blaine stiffened. “Like I said. You're different. And, as I'm pretty sure you already know, that isn't always a good thing, and it's certainly never easy.”

 Kurt could at least acknowledge the truth in that, and nodded. They continued walking in yet another strained silence before curiosity finally got the better of him. “You're not going to tell me why I'm… special, are you?”

“As my darling Quinn is fond of reminding me, I don't actually know why.”

Kurt shot him a look that was mostly disbelief. Blaine shrugged. “The future isn't an exact thing. I know that you could get a hero's death, decide to take a nice swim in the River Lethe, and come back to this wondrous world as a new person. It's a possibility.”

“You can see that about every person you meet?”

“No, of course not. That would be terrible; I'd never manage a conversation again and likely go mad. No. I can tell this about you, because if you come back, I'll meet you again.”

“So… you can tell when you'll meet people multiple times?”

“Not just me,” Blaine said laughing. “It's actually a game I play with, uh, some friends of mine. I can tell if people could meet again, and… well. My friends can tell under what circumstances. If there's a group of us together and the three of us are in it, we guess at it. I'll point out two people who have the potential to meet in multiple lives, the others make bets how they'll meet, and then someone will confirm it. It passes the time.”

“You are very obviously not telling me who your friends are or what the circumstances can be,” Kurt pointed out after a few minutes thought.

Blaine grinned, “You're very smart.” He refused, once again, to answer the numerous questions Kurt had, though it didn't matter so much to him as the lack of angry atmosphere, even though he refused to admit it.

He had been actually frightened of the shift in Blaine's demeanor during the majority of their conversation. He was… well for the first time since they met, he seemed more Apollo than Blaine. Blaine was all smiles, affection and complicated family history. Apollo was… well, a god. With terrifying knowledge of things Kurt had a hard time comprehending and a detachment from humanity that was apparently a shared trait among the gods.

The thought made his head hurt, and he was about to suggest they take a break for lunch. If his head was sore, he was sure Blaine's felt even worse. He was also fairly certain that his bandages needed changing. Before he had the chance to voice this, Blaine suddenly stopped walking and took a deep breath through his nose.

“I smell the sea,” he said, opening his eyes and then grinning brightly. He grabbed Kurt's hand and started pulling him forwards. “Come on, I know a shortcut.”