Previously: “Oh yes,” the goddess sounded far too happy about that. “Totally. So I think Kurt shouldn't be here.”

Before he had a chance to ask what that was supposed to mean, the world flipped upside down. 

Faintly Kurt could hear Blaine yell his name, but the rest of his sentence was drowned out by a rushing in his ears. Colors surrounded him, all of them almost blindingly bright. He shut his eyes, but it just made the spinning all around him seem more intense and he had a split second to be thankful that he hadn't eaten anything that morning because otherwise he was sure he'd have been sick.

Abruptly, and almost alarmingly, the colors disappeared and the spinning stopped. Despite this, his eyes still burned from the brightness and his head still spun. His stomach clenched, but he forced down the gag he could feel trying to work its way up.

When he was finally able to move, he found himself on all fours on a hard metal floor. Still trying to catch the breath that had been sucked out of him, he looked around, hoping to find some clue as to where he was. The entire room he found himself in was filled with various pieces of metal. Some were half finished pieces of armor or other machinery, some were scraps, and some pieces were twisted into strange shapes that didn't look workable.

The air smelled like smoke, heated metal, and burned cloth. When his stomach settled, he realized that… well. It smelled like home. He climbed awkwardly to his feet and began walking in the direction where the smoke was thickest, which, admittedly, was probably not the wisest of moves. It turned out to be the right choice, however, when he saw the most beautiful sight he'd seen since leaving his father behind.

A forge.

Far too large to fit into the armory where he'd lived his whole life, let alone for him to use, but a forge nonetheless. The anvil set in front of it was about the same height as he was, and much wider, with a bucket of water large enough to bathe in sitting next to it.

Though there was no one around, the fire was still hot enough to indicate that someone had to be in here not that long ago. Kurt called out hesitantly. As much as he felt at home in a forge, and as much as he doubted that Aphrodite had meant him any harm, he still didn't know who might answer.

 He yelled out again, much louder, but still no one responded. Deciding that he had nothing to lose at this point, he walked around more, trying to find some sign of life in the room. Or building? The ceilings were high enough that he couldn't actually see it, and while the forge was against a wall, there was no sight of its opposite. That, however, could be from the piles of stuff stacked everywhere in no specific order.

Kurt walked in a mostly straight line, dodging around piles of metalwork taller than he was when necessary, and tried to remember that he needed to find a way out and not just stare like he wanted to. He'd never had much interest in working with his dad when required, but it was still something he was used to, and… his dad. He needed to get out of here and back to Blaine so he could save his dad. Which reminded him… “Hephaestus?”

Still no answer, but Kurt was now fairly certain of where he was. His dad used to tell him stories of Hephaestus as a child, and would speculate on what a workshop of his would look like. Kurt felt himself grin when he realized that he could be able to tell his father when everything was done.

Walking around another giant pile of what looked to be mostly scrap metal, he got his first glimpse of the god. He was sitting on a rather odd looking chair, made entirely of different twisting kinds of metal, creating a rather beautiful but highly uncomfortable looking place to sit. Hephaestus didn't seem to notice though, as he took a small tool and began tinkering with a device attached to one of his legs.

“Hephaestus?” he asked quietly, hoping not to startle him and… well have something thrown at his face. There were quite a few potential projectiles lying around that would probably decapitate him.

From the looks of things, he failed spectacularly at his plan, but thankfully all the god did was jump slightly in place rather than something violent. “How in Hera's name did you get in here?”

Reflexively Kurt flinched, and then silently cursed Blaine for making him so paranoid about names. Noticing his reaction, Hephaestus let out a snort of laughter. “Have you met mother dearest then? That's usually the reaction people have, don't be embarrassed.”

“No, it's just. I was told not to say any godly names or… actually there wasn't a follow up to that threat, now that I think about it…”

“And you told you that? Actually no. Back to my first question: how did you get in here? Mortals aren't allowed here.”

“You'd be surprised how many times I've been told that this week,” Kurt sighed before straightening up. “I… uh. I'm actually not entirely sure how I got here. I was talking to Brittany and—”

Kurt was starting to buy into Blaine's explanation of names having power, because at the sound of Brittany's, Hephaestus rose to his feet unsteadily looking rather angry. The device attached to his leg, Kurt noticed, flexed and moved with him and he realized that it was to help him stay upright on his own.

“I sincerely hope that you have a very weirdly named friend, and you didn't just call my darling wife by her nickname.”

Kurt shrank back, trying to subtly put a few pieces of metal in between the two of them in the rather ridiculous hope that it would shield him. Realistically it would just crush him. “N-no. She's, um, Aphrodite.”

“And how would you know to call her that, I wonder. I don't suppose you're sleeping with her.”

 “No! No of course not!” Kurt wasn't sure why he managed to carry on full conversations and even argue with Blaine, stay in Sam's underwater palace and openly disagree with him, and make a rather big idiot of himself in front of Brittany without any real problems, but it was Hephaestus who terrified him.

Maybe it was because he had neglected to shrink himself down to human size, or that the aura around him looked less like a glow and more like he was engulfed in semi transparent flames, or that working on the forge had given Hephaestus arms big enough to crush Kurt's entire body.

Or it could be that this was his father's favorite god and despite himself, Kurt really did want him impress him. Or at the very least not hate him.

Maybe it was because Blaine wasn't with him.

“Um. I was with Apollo and—”

“You're sleeping with Apollo?” Hephaestus asked, looking temporarily less angry in exchange for confused. “I thought he was on some weird celibacy kick.”

“No! No. Um. No. I'm not sleeping with him, he's… um. He's been helping me with—”

“You, a mortal, are getting help from an Olympian, and you're not sleeping with them?” Hephaestus looked highly skeptical. Kurt felt his face heat up, but didn't get a chance to defend himself before Hephaestus seemed to realize something else. “He's been missing. No one's seen Apollo in days.”

“Technically we visited Sam yesterday.”

“Sam is it?”

“Um. Poseidon. Lord Poseidon. Um. Yes. Him.”

Hephaestus let out a deep sigh , “What in Hades is Apollo up to?”

“Just, um, trying to help me save my… my dad. He's a blacksmith. His name is… well everyone calls him Burt. He's sick and—”

“You're Burt's son?”

“I—yes.”

“Oh, Apollo is going to drown in Phlegethon at this rate.”

“You know my dad?” Kurt asked, slightly in awe. If his dad knew that Hephaestus knew who he was, it'd make his year.

“Of course I do! It was made perfectly clear I had to stop blessing him when Zeus went and got his wife pregnant!”

For the second time that day, Kurt felt the world tip upside down. It took him several minutes before he realized it wasn't from sudden teleportation, but rather that he'd fallen over. His stomach rolled heavily, and there was a rushing in ears that couldn't be healthy, but the thought was dismissed as he started dry heaving.

“Whoa there, are you okay?”

“Ze—Sch—with my… my mom?”

“I take it you didn't hear that part of the story, then. Sorry about that, kid.”

“Why… why didn't Blaine tell me that?”

A memory managed to break through the fog that was Kurt's brain and he heard Blaine's voice as if he was right there saying it.

“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.”

Wouldn't have felt related, his mind supplied. They would have shared a half sibling, because Zeus had… had…

He stomach lurched again.

“Zeus wasn't always, uh, violent with his… lovers,” Hephaestus said awkwardly. “And he was usually in human form.”

“Not helping,” Kurt croaked.

“Right.”

There was silence as Kurt tried to get his stomach under control and to start breathing properly. Hephaestus stood near him awkwardly, looking like he wanted to offer some kind of encouragement or comfort, but didn't have any to give. “Since it seems that Apollo has decided to blow all of our rules to Tartarus, you can call me Artie.”

“How is that breaking a rule?”

Artie laughed awkwardly. “We don't try to hide from each other very often. But when we do, it's usually because we're trying to sneak past, uh. My parents.”

If he didn't still feel so horrible, Kurt probably would've appreciated that he was trying to avoid upsetting him by saying Zeus's name. “So you came up with nicknames to use instead?”

“Not exactly. See, no one except the head guy can put a track on names. It's one of the advantages to being King. So Apollo looked into the future to see names that'd be… important to us. We don't know why, but they are. And since most of them are rather unique, there's no real chance of us getting the names mixed up with an actual person.”

“So you came up with these names and then just… don't use them in front of Schue and Terri?”

“Pretty much. And we don't tell anyone what they are. Artemis has all those semi-mortal girls with her, but she won't tell them, and no one calls anyone else by their nickname when it might be overheard. So, if he told you…”

“That's why Sam got so upset when I said ‘Blaine' in front of him.”

“Pretty much. But that trick was really handy with that misunderstanding about the Trojans a few years back—”

“That was a war!”

“Terri was the one who realized that we could all hear most of what was being said about us by the other side, so she came up with the brilliant idea to start calling us by our symbols or whatever instead.”

“Did that work?”

“Not even a little bit,” Artie said, laughing. “She kept referring to Aphrodite as “Love”, and we were expected to take that seriously. And nobody was going to refer to the King as “Justice”. I swear Athena was ready to switch sides just to get away from her…”

Kurt sat up and the room, to his relief, stayed in the same place. Artie smiled at him, probably relieved that there wasn't going to be any more dry heaving in his workshop, and climbed unsteadily back to his feet. “So are you okay then? I'm really not one for medicine that's… well you know.”

Kurt just nodded, not up for talking much.

“I'd take you to him if I could but, um.”

“You can't get me back to Blaine?” Kurt felt unsteady again.

“Nope. I can get you to Apollo, no problem. But getting Blaine? Not a chance.” The fact that that made sense made Kurt's head hurt. “I could just send you to where it was you were trying to get and hope that he caught up with you, but I really don't want to know that. The less I know about what you're doing the better.”

“Then why did Aphrodite send me here?”

Artie looked thoughtful, “That's actually an excellent question. But I have a better one for you. I happen to know that Artemis is looking for her twin, so why is it that Aphrodite found you instead?”

Kurt's face went red. “She can. Styx. She can sense… well. You know.”

“You're in love with Apollo?”

“Um. No. I'm… I'm not. But, well. I guess…” Kurt dropped his face into his hands in an attempt to at least hide the blush spreading across it since he was powerless to stop it.

“Huh. Apollo's in love with you.” Artie sounded impressed of all things, and Kurt was staring to hate everything. “That's… actually that explains the whole celibacy thing!”

“Please stop talking.”

 “Sorry, man. But it actually doesn't help much. I don't have anything that'll track love and unless Brittany was planning on coming back here to pick you up…?”

“I think she had plans to meet up with… Quinn.” Kurt hoped that Artie thought his pause was because he didn't remember her other name, rather than that he was lying.

“I'm going to pretend to believe you.” No such luck, it seemed. At least he tried.

“I… I don't actually know what this means, or what… if it's relevant or… I don't even believe it. But she said… well the two of them said that, that…” he couldn't make himself actually say the word.

“Soulmates? You're Apollo's soulmate?” Hephaestus let out a low whistle. “That's… wow, I wasn't sure we could have those.” Kurt must have looked confused because he hastily explained. “Mortals get them, but it's rare that they have one and even rarer that it works out. But us? We honestly weren't sure we got those since we don't… die. So we can't have multiple lives for it to actually work.”

“So people occasionally like the same person in multiple lives. What's the big deal?”

Artie blinked several times in horrified confusion, “You really don't get it, do you? It's not that they meet multiple times, it's that they can. And when they find each other? Holy Aphrodite, it's… there's a reason we all try to find them. We can't interfere, but if they meet? It's just… wow. Of course some people get the opposite, and that's always great to watch. Mortal enemies! They get to spend their lives hating each other. Great fights…”

“You're not making sense.”

“The point isn't that they meet multiple times and love or hate each other each time, because honestly? For the most part they don't meet in the first place, and it's so rare that both of them turn out to be heroes and then come back. It's that their souls are so connected that the emotions actually carry over even though the memories don't.”

“But… I don't love Apollo. I've actually spent most of my life hating him.”

Artie shrugged. “How many times have you met Apollo?”

Kurt stared blankly at him for a few seconds trying to figure out if this god was insane, “I've been traveling with him for a week now.”

“Nope. You've been traveling with Blaine. And I promise you, if Aphrodite confirmed it, it's going to happen. You're going to love him more than anything.”

Kurt shook his head rapidly. He refused to believe this. It was stupid. He wasn't going to fall in love with someone just because someone told him he had to or that future him already was. That was… that was unfair. And that's… that's all it was for Blaine anyway. He didn't love Kurt despite what he'd said, he just…

He loved him in the future. And decided that was good enough for now.

Artie had disappeared when he looked up, and for a minute he panicked. He was going to be left alone in this giant workshop forever and his dad really would die, and… no wait. Artie was back.

And holding a weird box.

“This'll take you to him!”

He held the strange device out, clearly expecting Kurt to jump at the chance to get out of there, which he should be doing, but… “Didn't you just say that you couldn't get me to him?”

“Can't find a god disguised as a mortal and I can't track love. However, I built this for Brittany a few years ago. She had a falling out with some Amazon woman she was… I'm not going to think about it. Anyway, she felt bad that she couldn't be around her anymore so she had me make this!”

“And what is that?”

“It harnesses… actually, you know what? I'm not going to get into how it works, you won't care or follow along. It's mostly magic and a lot of really careful craftsmanship. It'll transport you instantly to your soulmate.

“You're lucky I even have this,” Artie continued, looking pleased with himself. “I gave it to Aphrodite, she gave it to her former lover, she found her soulmate, gave it back to Aphrodite when they saw each other next, and Aphrodite gave it back to me!”

“So… couldn't you guys just use it to find your own soulmates? It would kind of, you know. Prove if you had one better than waiting for Blaine to find me.”

“Only works for mortals. Design flaw.”

Kurt nodded skeptically, but took the little box out of Hephaestus's hands anyway. “I don't know if it's safe for me to go back to him yet,” he admitted as he turned the device over in his hands. “Brittany sent me here to get me away from danger…”

“As much as it pains me to admit this, and it really does, I think Ares will probably be gone by now. Apollo should be all yours,” his face brightened. “In more ways than one now that I think about it!”

“I hate my life,” Kurt muttered.  “How does this work?”

Hephaestus grinned and went into a rather detailed set of instructions that left Kurt more confused than before he asked. Realizing this, the god sighed heavily and summed up, “Just think about Blaine. The magic should do the rest.”

“How does that work for people who don't know their soulmates already?”

“Are you going to be difficult? Because I can take that back.”

Kurt cradled the box closer to his chest protectively. He closed his eyes and tried to remember every detail about Apollo he could remember. God of medicine, music, poetry, prophecy, sun, light, knowledge, oracles… there's another one, but we'll just stick with those, he'd introduced himself. Plagues, he remembered. The one Blaine hadn't wanted to talk about.

Taking a peek he looked around and realized he hadn't moved at all. Hephaestus was smirking at him, though trying to hide it by making adjustments to the metal attached to his legs.

Okay, don't think about Apollo, think of Blaine.

Blaine was shorter than he was, something he'd found vaguely amusing seeing as how it was fairly obvious that he could control his height. His hair was always a mess of dark curls, but he ran his hands through it fairly often in both a vain attempt to flatten it and as a nervous gesture. His eyes didn't literally glow the same way they did when he was in his godly state, but they were still bright and, at least while looking at Kurt, about as warm as the sunrise. His face was… well, technically flawless, though that was true for most of the gods Kurt had met. He looked to be in his mid-twenties, even though age didn't seem to mean anything to the gods he'd met.

He sighed deeply when he realized he still hadn't left the workshop. “I promise I'm not trying to be difficult,” he finally said to Hephaestus, “but it really isn't working.”

“Think about your soulmate, it's really not hard to figure out.”

“I was thinking about him!”

“So don't think about him, think about your soulmate.”

“You are not making any sense,” Kurt complained.

Artie gave him a look. “I was deformed when I was born so my mother threw me off of Olympus. When I finally got back, my father felt bad for me. So do you know what he did? He had me marry Aphrodite. She resented that, so now she's the goddess of loves-everyone-except-me.”

Kurt stared in confusion, wondering what this had to do with him, and if Artie was actually going to hurt him. Before he had a chance to ask anything, the god continued speaking.

“You have an actual perfect match, do you get that? Someone who loves you so much that not even dying would stop that. And rather than being thrilled, you're focusing on the downside of who it is. When really? That does not even kind of matter.” He turned away, grabbing pieces of metal seemingly at random, and walked towards his forge. Kurt was left alone with the strange device and still no idea how to use it properly.

Deep breath, he thought to himself and then… froze. That's what Blaine told him every time he started to panic. Because he knew how to calm him down. The same way he knew that leaving Burt to die would destroy Kurt. Or how Blaine always got so angry whenever Kurt so much as implied that he was anything less than perfect, how he panicked when he got to that inn before Kurt showed up, or got irrationally jealous when Sam had done that blessing thing…

Because Blaine wanted him to be happy and safe and… around, mostly. He was completely willing to deal with whatever punishment Zeus was willing to give him just to visit him when all of this was over.

And even though Kurt was still furious with him for not telling him about his mother… considering how he reacted, it was probably a wise move. If Hephaestus had never let it slip, he never would've even considered the possibility. Blaine was just trying to protect him.

Which… sounded a lot like a soulmate.

He didn't remember closing his eyes again, but when he suddenly felt the air temperature around him drastically change, he opened them in confusion. He was standing outside again, and he had a moment to wonder why Aphrodite couldn't have given him as a nice transport as her husband, when he spotted Blaine.

He was a few feet away, pacing back and forth while muttering murderously under his breath. The clearing he was standing in was different than the one they had been in that morning and Kurt absently wondered why Blaine had left and where they were now. Before he could ask any of those things, Blaine turned and saw him. “Kurt!”

It occurred to him that he had never actually heard anyone say his name the same way Blaine did, and no one had ever sounded so relieved and happy to see him before. Without stopping to think about what he was doing, Kurt ran towards the stunned looking god and launched himself into his arms. While clearly not expecting the turn of events, Blaine managed to stay upright when he was suddenly supporting most of Kurt's weight.

Kurt felt Blaine try and back up enough to look at him, but he refused to let go, instead he clung to him tighter. He should let go, answer the unending stream of increasingly panicked questions Blaine was babbling into his ear, and then leave the spot they were standing. There were probably traces of godly magic all over it, assuming Brittany had sent him here, and they really did have a time limit for getting to the Underworld, but he couldn't make his arms move.

“Kurt, please, you're scaring me. What happened?”

“Met Artie,” Kurt finally spoke, though his voice was muffled by Blaine's neck. “Dad will be so jealous. He sent me back here and told me why you really weren't allowed to help my mom.”

Blaine's body went stiff against his, and he dropped his arms from where they'd been somewhat frantically rubbing Kurt's back, possibly trying to feel for injury. “He told you?”

“I didn't take it well. Probably why you didn't tell me. I forgive you.”

“You… really? Just like that?”

“Apparently I'm stuck with you for eternity, doesn't make sense to hold that kind of grudge.” Blaine made some kind of noise that was either a sob or a laugh, Kurt couldn't be sure. “I'm refusing to meet your parents though.”

Blaine made the noise again, and resumed his very important job of hugging Kurt. “I promise I will go to really ridiculous lengths to ensure that I never introduce you to them.”

 Kurt grinned and finally let go of Blaine, who then insisted on at least holding his hand as they began walking towards the Underworld.