This is almost an entirely AU story, with a side of Anderbros and Klaineberry. It's set up a little differently than most stories because there's lots and lots of music and poetry, so hopefully that's something people take kindly to!

Thank you to anyone who supported me along this crazy journey, you guys know who you are, but especially to Trish who's listened to me ramble about this story for the last three years! And most importantly, thank you to my incredible editor Linae who's been with me for about two years now. Without her, this story would be nothing and I owe her a debt of gratitude.

This story is just now being added to S&C, so Ill be posting every few days to catch up to what I have posted on FF and A03. (I post a chapter every week, normally.)

*This is a very dark story that contains consistent and vivid descriptions of self harm. All other warnings (and there are many) will be on a chapter by chapter basis.

Chapter warnings: none.

 Dedications

To Blaine – Thank you for never giving up on me. You saved my life.

To Kurt – I love you. Always will. 

“I've loved him my whole life, and somewhere along the way, that love didn't change but grew. It grew to fill the parts of me that I did not have when I was a child. It grew with every new longing of my body and desire until there was not a piece of me that did not love him. And when I look at him, there is no other feeling in me.”

– Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been With Me

 Introduction 

I like to think that everyone in life finds their soul mate at some point or another. I don't necessarily believe in love at first sight, but I believe that sometimes you just meet someone, and that's it, you know that's who you're supposed to spend the rest of your life with. You don't know why, or how, but you're drawn to them, in a way that you've never been drawn to anybody. You make choices that lead you places, and at those places is where your paths cross. Maybe it's at a coffee shop, or an apartment building, or in the middle of a street. Maybe you're five and he's your first best friend and you don't realize that he'll still be your best friend when you leave for college; maybe you were twenty-seven and she's the first girl you've ever felt that way about; maybe you're forty and you realize that it's never too late to fall in love.

            I found my soul mate on a staircase in the middle of Dalton Academy. I was only seventeen years old and he was my first everything.

            We all want to know why we bother, why we keep searching for that one person – that one great true love – when all we do is get hurt trying to find them. And the truth is that we keep going because we know that at the end of the day we want nothing more than to wake up next to someone that's going to love and care for us unconditionally, someone that's willing to fight for us and defend us when we can't do it for ourselves. I spent my entire life looking for that, and so did he, and maybe that's why we fit so well together. When we were rejected by the world and by ourselves, unable to find happiness or love, we were able to find each other. We turned a nightmare into something beautiful, and though the road to the end was filled with little silver blades and pills and more tears than we could dry, the two of us were lucky.

            I used to wonder what it truly meant to love someone… and then I met him. This boy who taught me so quickly and so easily what love is like. And I knew without a doubt, like the sky is blue and the grass is green, that I loved him. To know him was to love him, but to have him chooseme? It's something that still doesn't seem quite real to me, even as I write this and stare at the smooth gold band on my finger. Our history is a long one, a painful one, and we've got too many scars to count, but we're still here and we made it.

            On the nights I was up crying, screaming my voice hoarse at the unfairness of this world and at the hatred I had for myself, he was there, clutching my hands against his heart so I couldn't reach for the blade that I so badly wanted to rip across my skin. I would yell obscene, awful things at him for hours and hours and then I would collapse into his arms, tears running down my face because I just couldn't do it anymore. He would take me to the bed and pull me close against him, whispering into my ear as he ran his hands over my back. “You are beautiful, and kind, and amazing, and so, so loved,” he would tell me. “So loved. And important. You are worth everything in the world and more and I love you and I will always love you.”

            When he walked around with a hole in his heart where his parents should have been, I was the one who sat with him and listened to him talk about the night his father almost killed him. He was disgusted with himself and what he'd turned his family into, but I would simply hold him to my chest and run my fingers through his hair, telling him that I would help him get through it. I never felt like I would be able to repay him for the things he'd done for me, but I tried to do right by him every day. I supported him and was there for him as best I could be given my own situation, and most of the time I chose to help him over helping myself. And even after I hurt him more than anyone ever had before, even after I tore us in half and scattered the pieces, even after I was more trouble than I was worth – he forgave me. Because he loved me, he said. Always would.

            I remember all of it, every single little detail, just like I know every scar on my wrist and every line from The Notebook. Every touch, word, glance, and breathy I love you as I watched him come undone beneath me is engraved into my brain – an array of perfectly preserved memories that never fade. I remember how he saved me, in any and every way that a person can possibly be saved. If I hadn't met him, I wouldn't be alive and writing this right now. It's not dramatic or extreme or untrue; it's merely a fact, and you need to know that before you read this story.

            The question I get asked the most when I tell people our story is how in the hell did I know that he was going to be it for me when I was so young?

            Well, that's easy. I knew because he was the first person that was able to see past all of the walls I'd put up and the first person to ever ask me if I was okay. I knew because my heart skipped a beat when he looked at me on that staircase and he took my breath away when he grabbed my hand. I knew because he became my best friend so quickly and so easily and we fell in love with each other as friends before anything else. And when we fell for real, my world finally slowed down and his was the first face I saw when my head stopped spinning. I knew because he loved me more than I ever asked him to, sometimes more than I deserved, and he continued to love me even when I didn't love myself. I knew because we opened up to each other in ways that we'd never known were possible and because we stayed with each other in spite of all of our problems.I knew because we beat our scars, together. And most of all? I knew because of how it felt when I left.

            I walked away from us once, from the life we were supposed to have and from the promises we'd made. Why? I'm still not completely sure, even to this day. I had reasons that made sense to me at the time, I guess. I never meant to hurt him. Looking back on it, it was the stupidest thing I've ever done, and it killed us. We lived lives of red and hated the people that tried to save us when we just didn't want to be saved, dreaming of suicide and a way to end it all. He spent years in therapy and popped pills and cried out at night for me when he couldn't sleep; I made friends with the demons under my skin and the knives in my kitchen drawers. We found that we both had much, much more to worry about than not having each other, discovering our true selves and the issues neither of us knew we had along the way.

            And it was because I was vulnerable that I met a monster disguised as an angel with two green eyes and lips that burned my skin instead of healing it. And then somewhere along the way, in a relationship with a man that did nothing but hurt me, I had gotten lost in what I thought was love.

            Whether it's a romance or a friendship, love falls into two categories: the kind that helps you grow, and the kind that destroys you. And whether I was fortunate to have learned the difference or just unlucky to have become a victim, I experienced both. Most of the time, you don't even know what constitutes as acceptable anymore because that fine line is so constantly blurred on a daily basis. Everything gets mixed up in your head and suddenly you aren't able to decipher love from abuse; it's impossible to separate the two when they've gone hand in hand for years and you haven't noticed.    

            Simply put, this is a story about love. It's one of bravery and the simple acts of courage that it takes to wake up every day and keep moving forward. It's one of loss, catastrophic loss, and how little it takes to lose yourself when you get caught up in the grief and heartache. It's one of the hatred a person can have against themselves and all of the reasons why that happens. It's one of how one person changes everything. It's one of family, friends, and realizing that you don't have to be related by blood to be family. It's one of abuse and cruelty and pure, unimaginable wickedness – everything that love is not. Through the journal entries andsongs and poems we've written, we'll take you through the lives we lived together and apart and everything that happened in between.

            I believe there are many ways an author can tell his story. This is how we want to tell ours.

 – K. H.

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