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“...Lovett and his team have been called grave-robbers, their exploration equated with the famous Tutankhamun expedition, and met with numerous insults from media and civilians alike. Yet he maintains his belief that the treasures and secrets of the famous doomed ocean liner are meant to be seen by the modern world...”

It was a mercy that his hearing was still intact. When he was younger -- sixty or seventy -- Kurt used to play a game where he’d arrange his various faculties in order of importance. “They can take my voice and my sight and my complexion,” he’d famously joked to one reporter or another, one of the countless who’d tried to take the honor of being the last to interview the famous Kurt Anderson, “but for god’s sake, no arthritis or deafness.” Then, with a grin, he’d smoothed one wrinkled, slightly shaky, but still dextrous and flexible hand over his thick, neatly styled white hair. “And let me keep this.”

Fortunately he’d managed to keep the use of his hands and his ears, though the soft snow-colored strands he meticulously cared for were disappearing in droves these days. And he was using both his hands and his ears on that day in mid-April 1997, sitting in his quiet, bright, tastefully designed home by the sea, at the beautiful baby grand piano that had been a seventy-fifth birthday present from a friend.

The same friend who was either the grandmother or the great-grandmother -- his memory wasn’t what it was anymore -- of the dark-haired girl who was currently making something disappointingly soft and easy to eat. Kurt’s ability to eat steak had fled along with his pitch-perfect voice, a fact he still grumbled about.

“...for example, some family heirlooms have already been returned to the Hudson family, and we hope to find the belongings of other notable passengers, such as the famous Cohen-Chang’s, or Noah Puckerman...”

Kurt’s fingers stilled on the keys then, his song breaking off halfway through. So. So he hadn’t imagined it. Turning around slowly, a little surprised as always at the aches and pains that accompanied the movement, he squinted across the sunroom at the little portable TV the girl -- Leah, that was her name, she was Blair’s daughter and his former co-star and dearest friend Michele’s granddaughter. Where was Michele, anyway...

...oh, right. She’d been gone for almost a year, now.

Sometimes he still forgot he wasn’t twenty and living in a tiny apartment in California, going to auditions every day, making friends he’d still have decades later. He sometimes forgot he wasn’t thirty or forty and stepping smoothly into the role of confirmed bachelor uncle -- he’d had many flirtations, a few lovers, nothing lasting, nothing permanent -- and attending weddings, births, graduations and parties and birthdays and, in more recent years, funerals. He’d lost count of how many friends he’d shared late-night heart-to-hearts and sorrows and joys and lives with, how many little girls or boys he’d held and babysat and helped raise, how many fans and followers had come up gushing and exuding adoration, how many interviews and causes and charities and foundations he’d pledged support to.

He’d had such a full life that it was getting harder and harder to hold it all in his head. Sometimes he woke up and he couldn’t remember if he was at home by the sea, or in the high-rise apartment he’d had in the fifties, or the condo in the seventies, or the tiny boarding house he’d stayed in for a year during the second World War (or, sometimes, more often than he’d ever admitted, in his cabin, eighty years ago, awakening to the sound of steam and water and people, to the tight fluttering of anticipation in his chest and warmth still lingering on his lips). But he always remembered, though it was happening slower and slower.

“...we’ve also been hired by a private investor to try and recover some lost property rightfully belonging to the Pierce family. Apparently the infamous Miss Pierce’s guardian, steel tycoon David Karofsky forgot to grab something very valuable in his hurry to get off the ship...”

Ahhh, the infamous Miss Pierce. Kurt had never met her, but he’d read of her exploits in nightclubs, usually in the company of her “companion”, a lovely Latina singer -- apparently they’d had more in common than he’d thought. As for Dave...well, Kurt hadn’t thought much about him, not since that morning on the Carpathia, when he’d come down to where the third-class passengers were, looking around aimlessly. Kurt had seen him, hesitated for all of two seconds, then had curled up tighter in his blanket and turned away. He’d heard in the papers that the crash of the stock market had hit the Karofsky mills particularly hard. David hadn’t lived long enough to see his business recover during the war, unfortunately.

Kurt sighed, softly, turning back to the piano and running his fingers slowly over the keys. He was pretty sure he knew what the “lost property” was. After all, he’d kept it for years -- once he’d found it, of course. Closing his eyes, he relived that moment, like he relived so many about those few days on the sea -- standing on the Carpathia’s deck, looking up at the Statue of Liberty, soaked by the rain, hands hanging at his sides. A crewman had come up, taking names and without thinking, he’d given another name, the name he should’ve had, the name he wanted -- Anderson. Then he’d slid his hands into his pockets, he’d felt the damp velvet case, he’d pulled it out and...

Well. Kurt smiled a little, hands starting to move over the keys again. The velvet casing had fallen apart soon after -- water damage -- and he’d disposed of the soaking wet money that had been caught inside. There had been another bit of paper, though, one he’d almost thrown away, carelessly. It was water damaged and blurred and wrinkled, even now, but it was still safe and sound, between the pages of the biggest book Kurt owned, the dictionary, right between “heal” and “heartbreak”. Not that he needed to look at the notes anymore to play the song.

My song, Kurt thought, smiling slightly, fingers flying over the keys in the fluctuating, slow-and-sweet, then quick-and-lively melody that was as familiar as his own name, the tune he’d hummed to fussy babies, to children with nightmares, to teenagers weeping over heartbreak, to his friends when they were sick, or sad, or scared, or lost or dying. It was the tune that everyone who’d ever known and loved Kurt Anderson associated with love and happiness and comfort, and it was the song Kurt Hummel-Sylvester had hummed to himself for endless sleepless nights in 1912, when he curled up on his hotel bed and hugged himself tightly and rocked himself back and forth and remembered and wept. He had no doubt that it was the song he’d hear in his head when it was finally time for him to follow Michele and his father and mother and everyone else he’d loved and cherished and been parted from (but not said goodbye to, he never said goodbye, not to anyone).

And as for the diamond?

“...we’re treating everything with the utmost respect and care, but we’re fully confident that this is a story that needs to be pulled up off the bottom of the Atlantic and into the light...”

That made Kurt chuckle. What a poetic way of saying what they meant -- they wanted the Heart of the Ocean, and they were ready to sift through the remains of a thousand lost souls to find it. Well, that was unfortunate, really, that they didn’t know where it was.

Because neither did Kurt.

He’d held onto it, yes, for years and years, hiding it under his pillow when he slept and taped under his clothes while out and about. It had rested in a safety deposit box in his later, more affluent years, and been taken out to this very house. And then, several years ago, he’d called a very discreet jewel expert to his home, taken out the long-cloistered away diamond and sold it for an obscenely high price. It was no longer his concern whether or not it found it’s way back to the Pierces or the Karofsky’s. The money was in banks -- part of it, at least.

Another, larger part had gone to a slowly-growing civil rights group in Boston, accompanied only by a note that said “Congratulations on Doe v. McNiff”. Kurt was fairly satisfied with what he’d done with the sum. After all, the diamond had been a lot of things, beautiful, valuable, stunning. But it had also been cold, hard and dark, three things Kurt tried his best to avoid.

“Grandp�re? Is something wrong?”

Oh, the girl. Blair. No, no, no, this was Leah, she was calling him what all the third (or fourth) generation called him, French for “grandfather”. Kurt glanced up, realizing that he’d stopped playing again and was staring at the television with a sort of dazed expression.

Leah hesitated, reaching out towards the TV. “Did you want to watch this? I can turn it up, if you want?”

Kurt hesitated, looking back at the screen, where the news station who’d been interviewing that man -- Lovett, that was his name -- was showing a few iconic images. The ship in Liverpool, the video clip of it departing, the headline in the New York Times the day after the sinking. And one photo, not often used, of the frontmost decks, at sunset, on Titanic’s first evening out to sea. It was fuzzy and grainy, but Kurt knew it by heart. He was there, standing on the upper deck, gazing off at nothing in particular.

And in the corner, off to the side, almost out of frame -- he must’ve been sitting mere feet away from the photographer and never noticed -- was a young man in faded clothes, dark curly hair ruffled and wild. He was facing away from the camera, staring intently up at the higher deck.

Up at Kurt.

With a smile and a shake of his head, Kurt turned back to his piano. He didn’t need the grainy photos or the oceanographers account. He could still smell the paint, and feel the new sheets against his skin, and hear the waves crashing against the ship, and taste the salty air, and see the sunset the way he’d seen it from the bow of the mighty Titanic.

(And, when he closed his eyes, he could smell Blaine’s skin and feel Blaine’s hands on him and hear Blaine’s voice and taste Blaine’s lips and see Blaine’s face and nothing, not eighty years, not a lifetime of changes and lies and longing, not Lovett with his fancy underwater robots or historians who listed Kurt Hummel-Sylvester as drowned and Blaine Anderson as never existing, not the hundreds of thousands who threatened and fought and killed others for loving like Kurt had on that doomed ship could take that away from him.)

With a soft sigh, Kurt opened his eyes and smiled once more at Leah. “No, dear. You go right ahead and turn it off. What’s for lunch?”