Chapter 16:

  When Blaine stirred the following morning, he realised that his entire left arm had gone completely numb. Kurt was laying; sprawled on the other side of the bed, face down with Blaine's arm trapped uncomfortably beneath his chest. He smiled slightly at the awkward angle of the other's man's twisted body where he must have rolled over in the night, and glanced again at his trapped arm.

 Blaine couldn't feel anything.

 He flexed his fingers slightly, the tingling sensation starting to return but still unable to feel any of Kurt's weight pressing down on him. Turning slightly and reaching out with his other hand in an attempt to slide Kurt over, Blaine tried to push against the sleeping body.

 His hand clutched at empty air.

 A strangled noise was wrenched out of his throat as he frantically tried to grab on to the body he could see in front of him, no attempt at gentleness now. His hands found nothing. No flesh, no skin, no muscle, no warmth.

 "Kurt!" he screamed, the terrified sound making Kurt jolt awake and scramble to turn over. His eyes were wide with horror as they took in Blaine's appalled face, mouth hanging open and gasping for breath.

 "What Blaine? What is it?" Kurt reached out his fingers, attempting to sooth the other man's terrified expression and shaking body, only to watch him leap back in fear. Blaine stumbled out of the bed, backing away from Kurt's out-stretched fingers and confused, hurt expression.

 "I can't feel you Kurt!" He shouted again. "I can't feel you! I can't feel you. You've gone Kurt. I can't feel you!"

 He was quivering, body visibly trembling in fear and confusion and pain. Kurt shrank back as if he'd been burned. His face crumpled before Blaine and the other man stood appalled as he watched the last shred of fight Kurt had held on to disappear into dust amongst the tangled bed linen. He wanted to go to him but instead the confusion mingled with anger and frustration and he let all the pain of the last few days surge through him.

 "I can't feel you. Why? Why can't I feel you Kurt? Where have you gone? Are you dying Kurt? Did you give up? Is that it? Did you just give up? After all of yesterday and everything we did and talked about. After everything I did for you! Did you give up Kurt? Did you?"

 He was screaming now. His face scrunched up in anger and hurt and pain. Words ripped through the air between them and each one stabbed at Kurt's chest until he was curled into a tiny ball on the bed, sheets wrapped around him, whispering over and over again,

 "I don't know. I don't know Blaine. I don't know." 

 Tears streamed down both men's faces and neither could reach out to the other. They stood on their own islands, acres of bedroom carpet seeming to forge a gulf between them as they fought to cling on to hope.

 But there was nothing to cling on to. Blaine's hope had come from touch and heat and tangibility and now there was nothing. Kurt was like an echo left over after the shouting was done. Just a shadow, a silhouette.

 Kurt was whimpering now like a wounded animal. Tracks of tears lined his face and the light had gone completely from his eyes. Blaine watched him and felt his gut contract and roll, a wave of nausea flooded his body and he stumbled to the bathroom, clutching the toilet bowl before violently emptying the contents of his stomach. When nothing more could come, he slumped against the side of the bath, exhausted and broken.

 Kurt stood in the doorway quietly watching the crumpled man before him, his own body wrought with conflicting emotions. Eventually Blaine raised his head. He looked utterly done; finally surrendered and limp.

 "What now?" he whispered.

 "Now I think we go to the hospital Blaine."

 ____________________________________________________________________

 For the first time since this all began, Blaine felt utterly alone when they entered the hospital. It dimly registered with him that this would be his third visit in three days and he blanched at how familiar the smell of the place had become. He felt another flip in his stomach and clamped his jaw shut tight, breathing through the horror of the place.

 There was no need to worry about attracting strange glances this time. Now that they couldn't touch, there would be no reassuring hand squeeze or gentle fingertips; just Blaine, wandering the halls with a shadow that ghosted beside him.

 ICU was bustling with people when they rounded the corner and Blaine felt himself start to shake at the sight of Burt Hummel talking to a doctor outside Kurt's room. There were three other people visible through the viewing window outside 4C and he heard Kurt gasp at the sight of them and draw back a little. Instinctively, he reached for the other man's hand before whipping it back in pain when they both remembered. He swallowed down the tears that threatened again and forced his legs to keep moving.

 Two women stood beside Kurt's body; the older of the two was leaning over the figure on the bed, brushing the greasy hair off his forehead and murmuring unheard words against the bruised skin; the other was younger, about the same age as Kurt and Blaine, with long glossy brunette hair and a face blotchy with tears. She stood a little to the left in the arms of a tall, man, whose face was white, frozen and pained. He was unconsciously running his hands up and down the girl's upper arms while she sobbed uncontrollably.

 The entire scene was like a hideous freeze-frame from a movie, all the characters waiting patiently for their final goodbye scene and trying to remember their lines and positioning. Blaine wanted to scream, he felt it rising in his throat ready to spill out in a torrent of angry, desperate words but instead he felt himself moving forward onto the stage and joining them; another character in the final scene of Kurt's parting act.

 He could see Kurt beside him, his eyes drifting wordlessly between each of the occupants of the room before lighting on his own form stretched out on the bed. He seemed strangely calm, not crying or shaking or quivering with the injustice of it all. Not clinging to the last vestiges of life that remained. Blaine saw only the man from the evening before, who had whispered lyrics into his hair, his mouth, his skin; breathing the tiny fragments of air left in his failing lungs into another human being. A thank you. To say goodbye.  

 He realised with an aching pain that Kurt was ready for this. Had resigned himself to this fate even if he wanted something different now. 

 "Blaine?"

 The man was startled out of his reverie with the sound of his name spoken behind him and turned to see Burt Hummel looking at him. He appeared even older than when Blaine had last seen him and he had to remind himself that it had only been two days since they'd last spoken. He still wore the baseball cap, pulled low as if for protection from the grotesque scene before him but his face was pale, eyes blood-shot and sunken. A man utterly destroyed.

 "I'm sorry Mr Hummel. I just wanted to see him. I know this is a time for family but......" Blaine's voice was quiet and unsteady and he couldn't think of anything to say to really justify his being there that wouldn't sound ridiculous. He tried again but shrugged and gave up. "I just wanted to see him." he whispered in to the floor.

 Burt moved towards him and put a hand on his shoulder, the touch making Blaine jolt with an unexpected ache for Kurt's skin against him. "It's ok Kid. You can stay."

 He noticed that Burt hadn't bothered to introduce him to the other members of the room, hadn't seen it worthwhile to perform the expected pleasantries when they'd soon be strangers again. Kurt was their binding element; afterwards Blaine would be left unravelled, to fall apart alone.

 "When will they do it?" Blaine heard himself say, watching as five bodies flinched. He didn't care. He needed to know.

 Burt cleared his throat, removing his cap to run his hand over his bald head before ramming it back on again and looking towards Kurt's body.

 "They've run their final tests. He is still utterly unresponsive. I've been told we should say our goodbyes."

 Watching as Kurt's eyes fluttered closed and dragged an unsteady breath into his lungs, Blaine felt his own eyes flit to the body on the bed, longing to see the chest rising with the inhale, willing it so. His heart bled a tiny bit more onto the sterile floor beneath his feet as the figure rejected his silent pleas once again.

 "I'll go" he said quietly, making Kurt's eyes lock onto his in pain at being abandoned. "You need to be alone with this.....and....I..I won't, I can't watch. Just, well, could you just give me a few minutes alone with him? And then I'll go."

 He couldn't look at them, didn't want to see their pitying faces and sympathetic watery smiles of agreement. Instead he fixed his eyes on the body before him and waited for them all to leave.

 Alone, he moved to sit in the chair while Kurt stood on the other side of the bed. They both remained silent, Blaine's eyes fixed on the body and Kurt's fixed on Blaine. He reached for the figure's hand, sighing with relief when he felt the slightly cold but definitely real sensation of the skin beneath his touch. He clutched tighter, watching as the grip produced faint red marks on the porcelain skin and feeling it settle his heart slightly. Calming him for what he needed to do.

 "Did I help at all Kurt?" He whispered into the air, eyes moving to lock into Kurt's while his hand remained grasped around the body's forearm. "I don't understand the point of all this if you couldn't ever be fixed."

 "You did fix me Blaine." Kurt said gently, voice quivering slightly as his throat constricted.

 "How? You're not here. You're going to.......God apparently you're already gone, so how? What was the point?"  

 "You made me feel real again Blaine. I haven't really felt alive for a long time and you made me remember."

 "For you to just go!" he growled exasperated and pained.

 "No not to just go." Kurt retorted more forcefully. "Not to ‘just' go. I'm not ‘just' going Blaine. I have to go. I don't have a choice in this."

 "So tell me again how I helped you? If you can't stay and you can't live, how did I help you?"

 "You made me want to!" Kurt forced out, the words grappling in the heavy air. Blaine couldn't breathe, couldn't swallow, feeling all the pain bubbling to the surface and spilling over his cheeks.

 "Blaine, before meeting you I felt utterly empty. Like I was sleepwalking through everything. Existing but not really living. I know you know this. You've read it ...but, Blaine......" he waved his arms around the room, trying to find the words.

 "I think I probably wrote all of that for you without ever having met you. I think you were the person with the key who kept passing me by. Does that make sense?" he looked up as if for confirmation but carried on quickly, throat tight and raspy.

 "I know it doesn't, but...Blaine, you need to understand. You have saved me. Maybe not physically, maybe not with life and breath and blood, but you saved me. I don't feel trapped anymore. I don't feel like I missed out now. I feel like I lived. Even if just for this tiny bit of time. I think you unlocked me Blaine. I think you opened my cage..."

 "And what's outside the cage Kurt? What was worth breaking out for?"

 "Freedom"

 "You're not free Kurt. You're dead!" He couldn't help his words biting out harshly into the room. Kurt sighed deeply, closing his eyes against the words and bitterness.

 The air hummed around them and the beep of the monitor continued to play out its monotonous soundtrack. Blaine could hear hushed voices outside and the distant squeak of bed wheels on lino flooring. Another beep brought him back into the room. Back to Kurt.

 "Do you believe in heaven Kurt?"

 The other man paused, thinking about his next words carefully, "I never believed in God or the church or everything that came with it. It all just seemed so ridiculous to me. People desperate for some sort of comfort. I didn't want to be like that. I didn't want to be someone waiting for an ‘after-life. I wanted this life."

 "Do you still?"

 "Yes"

 "Does it scare you?" He waited, the pause wrapping itself around him and squeezing fresh tears down his stained cheeks.

 "No." he locked eyes with Blaine again. "I don't think any of it matters anymore. Heaven. God. Souls. All of that." He became even quieter, whispering the last words into the space between them rather than directly at Blaine.

 "I think maybe this bit was my heaven. With you."

 Blaine had lost all control now, his body shuddering with sobs as he tore his eyes from Kurt's achingly beautiful ones and pressed his forehead into the arm of the inert body on the bed; Kurt's words washed over him.

 "But what about me?" He knew he sounded pathetic, pleading and aching in his own selfish desperation but he couldn't help it. His eyes rose to meet Kurt's and he tried to breathe, tried to fix on the beautiful features that seemed to be swimming in and out of focus, blurring slightly around the edges.

 "Blaine, you were always going to be fine." Kurt whispered gently.

 "No. No I don't think I will be. I don't think I can be now." He clutched at the arm harder, pulling on the wasted flesh as if trying to crawl inside the skin, underneath everything. He longed to feel the tiny touches that Kurt had whispered over him in the last few days; ached for the pain to come back when they'd joined together, the heat deep inside him, the throbbing heart beneath his chest. Skin and blood and sweat and the brutal reality of living flesh.

 "Please Blaine. Please stop" Kurt whimpered, distraught as he watched the other man rage against him. His voice was choking out sobs and he felt every shred of him hurt, nerves on fire.

 And then a different noise ripped from his throat.

 The air in the room became cooler suddenly and Kurt let out a desperate cry of surprise as some kind of electricity surged through him. Blaine watched in awe and pain and fear as a light seemed to radiate from Kurt's eyes and a strange yellow haze seemed to form around him.

 "No!" Blaine shouted, voice breaking and scratching in his throat. "No. Kurt not yet. God. Just ...Just wait."

 "I don't think I have any control over this bit Blaine." Kurt sobbed. He seemed to have become wispy, like a reflection on the surface of rippling water, lines becoming fainter and less distinguishable. Blaine sat transfixed, struck with the simultaneous beauty and horror of it all as he shook uncontrollably.

 And still he clung on. Clung to the body beneath his fingers. Clung to the reality fading before him.

 "You made me feel too you know." He whispered into the too quickly disappearing air. "You made me feel something. You made me feel everything Kurt."

 The words floated around in the space that Kurt had left behind, dissipating into tiny particles of dust and memories.

 "You made me love you." he mouthed into the cold, frozen statue on the bed as his narrow world paused for a fraction of a second.

 Then everything surged back into the present as the monitor beside his head suddenly emitted the ear-piercing continuous beep of Kurt's flat-lining heart.