About a year ago, when Burt had first agreed to help David's father build a rather large and ridiculously expensive… something or other for their house, Kurt had been forced to join his dad in a dinner with the family so that they could discuss payment, a timeline for the project, as well as the measurements for it. Kurt hadn't been able to pay much attention to anything that was going on at the time because David had sat across from him, openly glaring throughout the entire meal. Everybody had noticed, but not said anything. David's parents because, like most of the town, they weren't exactly fond of Kurt, and his dad because… well they needed to keep the meal as polite as possible in order to get another one.

As Kurt sat around the fire with the godly twins, both upset for different reasons, he wished he was there instead.

Quinn had decided to be civil enough to put her weapons away, as well as turn off her powers so that no one would interrupt their meal and Blaine had followed suit. The agreement had been the last thing anyone had said in quite some time. For whatever reason (there were too many to choose from, so Kurt wasn't entirely sure which it was), Blaine was still furious with him, though he looked slightly less upset about the situation once Quinn promised not to shoot Kurt, but kept shooting glares at him as if daring him to ask again.

The painfully tense atmosphere was making Kurt feel more and more guilty by the excruciatingly slow minute. He knew that seeing Quinn had made him panic, as a result he stopped thinking clearly, making him take everything she said just a bit too seriously, and then he said some things that he really shouldn't have, but… he had. There was no way to take them back now. He really didn't have a death wish, but at the time it just seemed like such an obvious solution.

Now that the situation was slightly less volatile and he was able to think, he couldn't stop the waves of shame and guilt washing over him. He was willing to give up on saving his father's life? How could he think that was an option? And offering to let Quinn kill him? In front of Blaine? Did he really think that would end well? Even if he had said it was okay with him, there was no way of knowing that Blaine still wouldn't have blamed her, and then the war they were threatening still would have happened. He was so stupid.

And he really shouldn't have told Blaine he loved him. He didn't think he'd ever be able to apologize enough for that. He was fairly certain that Blaine at least suspected that he didn't mean it, but he wasn't sure if that would make the situation better or worse. He had just been so afraid that something was going to happen and he had to stop him from going off on his own somehow and it really wasn't a complete lie. He was willing to quite literally give up everything to try and make something between them work, didn't that count for anything? Thinking about Blaine being sent to the worst part of the Underworld to be punished for eternity really had terrified him and he'd tried to do what he could to stop that from happening.

He wasn't sure if he did that because he thought it was the right thing or if it was from actual affection and the uncertainty was almost as bad as the guilt.

He really did care about Blaine, and not just because he was so willing to try and help save his dad. Typically speaking, they got along really well and despite the circumstances of why they were together, he really did enjoy spending time with him. Blaine was funny and sweet to him, willing to stand in between him and several sources of potential death, and had admitted that he was in love with him.

Kurt realized that the worst part about their situation was that, given enough time, he could love Blaine back. However, being constantly worried about his father's health, terrified that a god who wasn't sympathetic would find them, as well as general crankiness from not getting much sleep since they'd started their journey had pretty firmly kept any thoughts of romance out of his head.

But they didn't have time. And what was the point of falling for someone who you weren't going to be able to see again in less than a week? Why would he willingly break his own heart like that?

Quinn noticed his tears before he realized he was crying, and silently handed him a piece of cloth to wipe his eyes and nose. He smiled weakly in thanks, and tried to simultaneously get himself under control and ignore the glare Blaine was still sending him.

Quinn noticed, and sighed heavily before doing something so very shocking that Kurt blinked at her for several seconds afterwards. She stood up for him. “If you keep scowling at him like that, he's going to be too frightened to apologize, brother mine.” The answer that Blaine gave was more hiss than an attempt at words.  “Oh, may crows feast on your liver. You are actually putting Rachel to shame in the overreaction department.”

“Considering that no one here has snakes for hair, that's very obviously not true.”

Quinn rolled her eyes, “You couldn't do that to me if you tried and he's too pretty. You'd just upset yourself.”

“And that would ruin the terrific mood I'm in.”

“I don't understand why you're so upset!” Quinn said, absently poking at the fire. “This isn't even the worst thing he's done to you! I've killed people for much less than trying to attack my temple.”

“Speaking of Rachel,” Blaine muttered in response.

“That's not fair. When she found someone having sex in her temple, she turned them into monsters to terrorize mortals and us for generations to come. I just turned Tina into a deer and let the newer hunters—”

“Tina?” Kurt asked quietly. Blaine went still at his question, but Quinn didn't seem to notice.

“One of my hunters,” she explained dismissively. “I give them a choice. Immortality if you swear off men. I don't understand why she would throw that away for some boy.”

“Tina,” Kurt said a little more firmly. “She had long brown hair and had trouble speaking so her—”

“Parents gave her to one of my temples, and I found her. How did you know her?”

Kurt sobbed into his hands, not able to answer the question. Tina was dead? Turned into a deer and hunted down? She used to sneak out of the house so she could visit him, had enjoyed learning how to weave and loved doing it, and she spent as much time as she could hiding from her parents. They used to argue about her. Her father didn't think she was really marriage material with the way she spoke, especially to someone with a large household. Her mother thought she could do just fine if they pushed her harder.

In the end, they'd sent her to a temple. Where she'd been literally killed like an animal.

The twins were arguing about something, but Kurt tuned them out. They could bicker all they wanted, but he deserved a chance to grieve without having to listen to it. He must have been more unobservant than he thought, because he didn't notice Blaine get up and move until he felt himself being hugged. He tried to push away, but Blaine was being stubborn and refusing to let go. “You're mad at me, stop it.”

“You just found out your best friend died, you get a hug,” Blaine argued back. “Those are the rules.”

“You're my best friend now let go of me.” Blaine kissed the top of his head instead. Kurt shoved him. Blaine held on tighter. Giving up on the argument, because he was obviously not going to win, Kurt buried his face in Blaine's shoulder and tried to stop crying. It wasn't a successful attempt, but an attempt nonetheless.

Quinn said something uncomplimentary about Blaine's character, he snarled out a reply and she stormed off, saying something about firewood that Kurt largely ignored.

“I'm sorry I made her hate you,” Kurt said when his breathing was back under control.

“Don't worry about it. She's hated me for years; it's how I know she loves me.”

“Oh.” Kurt tried to make sense of that, couldn't, dismissed it. “Um. I'm sorry for—”

“Save it,” Blaine interrupted sharply. “I'm still mad at you, and we'll argue about it later. For now, try and calm down, you're kind of scaring me.”

“I'm probably as calm as I'm going to get for awhile.” Blaine didn't say anything, but he didn't let go either, so Kurt kept talking. “I knew when she left that I probably wasn't going to see her again, I just… I didn't think it'd be because she'd died. I mostly convinced myself that she might even enjoy working in a temple. And she didn't even stay there, she was… they turned her into a deer? Why?”

“It's what Artemis does when her girls break their vows,” Blaine explained quietly. “It's rare that she takes girls with her, but if they're chosen… they don't age. They can't get sick. They won't die, unless they're killed in battle. And if that happens they're guaranteed a spot in Elysium. But they swear off men entirely. The only guy they see consistently is… well, me, but only when I'm visiting Quinn. Who would actually kill me if I ever tried flirting with them.”

 “So if they're not celibate, they're hunted down?”

“I'm not sure… technically they have to be maidens, but Quinn just said they had to swear off men. There might be a loophole in there somewhere. But usually, they're extremely well treated. Quinn adores those girls, Tina probably had a fantastic time before she… um.”

Kurt nodded miserably. “She fell in love with someone and died for it.”

Blaine tensed, and Kurt worried for a minute if he was going to change his mind about having their fight later. He relaxed though, and shook his head. “Not necessarily. My dearest sister didn't catch them having a deep and meaningful conversation about their feelings, after all.”

“What happened to him?”

Kurt felt more than saw Blaine's answering shrug. “I never asked what Quinn does to the males.”

“Sometimes I kill them outright,” Quinn said, returning to their campsite with an arm full of fire wood and… a small deer trailing after her. Kurt wasn't sure where it came from, but thought it was best not to ask. “Other times I give them to the Amazonians. They'll be used for breeding purposes before they die of… ugliness, I assume. I never actually asked Santana.”

“Santana?”

“A friend of mine,” Quinn explained with a far off smile. “She's fairly high up in their ranks, answers directly to Queen Sue.”

“They're terrifying,” Blaine whispered.

“Then don't go near them, Apollo.”

“It was an accident, Artemis.”

“How does a person accidentally find a camp filled with women who can and would like to kill you? That doesn't happen to anyone else I know.”

“In hindsight, I probably should've known that Sam was setting me up, but at the time—”

“You were an idiot?”

“Oh, my beloved sister, are you implying that I'm not an idiot now?”

“Of course not, brother dear, you've surpassed idiot and are now an entirely new level of stupid.”

“Just because you don't like me doesn't mean I'm stupid!”

Artemis raised an eyebrow and looked at Kurt, who blushed and coughed. Blaine glared. “It's not stupid it's—”

“Suicidal?” Quinn suggested, faux innocently. Kurt felt his face heat up even more.

“Do you not understand the whole soulmate thing? The fates decided we were supposed to be together, and they're much more knowledgeable about such things than Schue.”

“They're also not in charge of you, don't care if you two are anywhere near each other, and spend most of their time arguing with each other like… like…”

“The two of you?” The gods glared at Kurt, but didn't deny it.

“I know you don't want to hear this,” Artemis said, sounding much more sympathetic than what Kurt thought she was capable of. “But it really is safer for both of you if you just leave him alone until he comes back.”

Kurt yelped slightly and scooted away from Blaine, whose temperature suddenly spiked. His body was beginning to glow again, and sitting next to him was like getting sunburned. “He's mortal and I am not. I get a chance at three mortal lifetimes with him. That's it, and it's assuming that he makes it to Elysium for all of his lives. Do you know how rare that is? Isles of the Blessed are tiny. And you want me to- to…” he trailed off, making strange growling noises and half formed words.

Kurt stared in disbelief for what seemed like a ridiculously long time, but was probably only a few seconds. His eyes began to sting, from what he told himself was the glow surrounding Blaine's body getting brighter as he got more upset, but he ignored it and kept looking. He'd never seen anyone that distraught over him. “If you calm down some, I can give you a hug,” he whispered, hoping that Quinn couldn't hear him, but doubting it. “But your powers are kind of burning me.”

Blaine looked horribly guilty when he met Kurt's eyes, and he dimmed his powers back down quickly. He gave a small smile in apology, and Kurt hesitantly wrapped his arms around him in response. Blaine relaxed into the hug easily, though Kurt could feel that his breaths were too even to be natural, so he didn't think Blaine was calm yet.

Whenever he was upset as a kid, his mother used to set him on her lap and run her fingers through his hair until he was ready to tell her about whatever world-ending dilemma was happening in his five-year-old life. While this situation seemed a bit more serious than getting in trouble for knocking over a bucket of nails his dad had just finished making when he wasn't supposed to be near the forge anyway, the idea was the same wasn't it? Feeling slightly ridiculous and a lot embarrassed, he ran his hand through Blaine's hair in what he hoped was a soothing manner. Even if Blaine wasn't enjoying it, Kurt kind of was. It was rather hypnotic the way his curls would spring back into place after he stretched them.  

Quinn let out a scoff at the display, and Blaine made a three fingered gesture at her that made Kurt laugh and Quinn roll her eyes. “Find him again and make him a god. Or at least immortal, it wouldn't be the first time it happened,” she suggested.

“You're working under the assumption that I could find him again,” Blaine argued. His posture was much more relaxed even with the fight being resumed, so Kurt kept playing with his hair. “It's a rather big if that I'm not going to risk. He could be on his third life. Or he could die in his next life before I find him and be sent to the Fields before I tracked him down. He might not even make it to Elysium in this life.”

“What?” Kurt asked, his hand stilling. “But… I'm on a quest. I'm trying to save my dad's life. That's… that's what heroes do! How could I not make it to Elysium?”

Blaine bumped his head against Kurt's hand in an attempt to get it moving again, but he was now worried enough that his movements were more jerky than soothing. Quinn was the one who answered. “In a perfect world, that would be an automatic ticket to Hero's Paradise. But it's not. A lot of times someone only gets in there because one of us puts a good word in for them.”

“I'll vouch for you,” Blaine offered. “Brittany and Artie, too. We just can't let Schue know why, but that shouldn't be too hard because he mostly stays out of the Underworld.”

“It's a curse, really. We have all these siblings to spend eternity with, and none of us get along.”

“You love me.”

“That doesn't mean I like you.”

Blaine turned his face towards Kurt and grinned, “I'm her favorite person in the whole world.”

“Leto help me, I will shoot you.”

Kurt frowned, “Isn't that your mom? So are you swearing by her, or is she going to help you?”

“Both,” Quinn said simply.

“Mom wouldn't shoot me!” Blaine protested.

“Do you know what we went through to get you into this world, Apollo? She would so give you a few non-fatal wounds for what you're doing.”

“Its true love, mom would think it's romantic.” Kurt turned bright red, but the siblings were ignoring him.

“I seem to recall her slapping you in your idiot head when she heard you slept with Sebastian.”

Kurt started coughing uncontrollably, and Blaine shot him a sheepish look before turning back to his sister. “I probably deserved that one, but it only happened once!”

“Not what Persephone said,” Quinn muttered.

“It was summer! She wasn't even there!”

 “Can we please not talk about this, it's highly disturbing.”

Quinn smirked at him, “Brother dearest, I think we're making your soulmate jealous.” Blaine looked at him in a mixture of curiosity and excitement, but switched to sheepish guilt when Kurt glared at him for it. When no new topic of conversation immediately presented itself, Blaine suggested they get some sleep, to which Kurt readily agreed. Quinn had an aversion to being near either males or her brother (the wording was ambiguous) for long periods of time, and said her goodbyes. Apparently her hunters were expecting her back, and she really did seem to adore them.

“I left Kitty in charge, but she's a scheming, power hungry little gorgon and I wouldn't put it past her to have a hunting accident with one of the girls she doesn't like.”

“Still shaping her in your image, then?” Blaine asked innocently. Rather than glaring or cursing like Kurt half expected her to, Artemis smiled dangerously and nodded. She seemed almost gleeful.

It wasn't until after the bedding was situated, the fire nothing but glowing coals, and Blaine was snoring slightly a few feet away, that the memories of Tina came. Kurt had managed to keep his cries quiet for an impressive amount of time before Blaine stirred and noticed. Rather than saying anything about it, he pulled his blankets next to Kurt and wrapped an arm around him, and started humming quietly.

Kurt didn't think it was a healing song like he'd used when they had first met, Blaine wouldn't insult his friend's memory by taking away the pain of her passing, but it was comforting to know that someone was there for him. Sometime later, when he'd cried himself out and Blaine was half asleep again, he turned to face his companion and cuddled closer. They were still under separate blankets, and it was difficult to get too close to him, so Blaine raised his up wordlessly, and Kurt burrowed in.

It was much warmer this way, and more comfortable. Blaine stretched his arm out, and Kurt used it as a pillow as he tucked his head into Blaine's neck. “Are you still mad at me?” he whispered. Blaine sighed then nodded, the feeling strange against the top of Kurt's head. “I am sorry for what I said.”

“Talk in the morning, I'm tired and you're comfy.”

Kurt nodded his agreement, and closed his eyes and tried to sleep.