At some point during the morning, Kurt had finally come to grips with the fact that he had fallen through a hole in time…or something. Or, at least, he had come to grips with it as much as a person could, because, really, it was a hard thing to wrap your head around. He couldn't say why and he couldn't say how, but he knew now that it wasn't a dream. So he was driving his Navigator to school—God, he had missed that vehicle—for the first day of his sophomore year. Again.

As he raced down the road he mentally reviewed all the time travel movies he had ever seen: The Time Machine, Back to the Future, Bill & Ted, one of the Harry Potter movies, The Butterfly Effect, The Lake House (but that wasn't really useful), and Peggy Sue Got Married. Of course, there was also Dr. Who which wasn't really a movie, but, whatever. Most of the films suggested that time travel required an apparatus, but some did not, and Kurt was pretty sure that between the brief period when he was making love to Blaine last night and the time he fell asleep, he did not invent, build, and step into a time machine, even if Blaine made him feel as if he could do anything.

And, see, Blaine was the real problem, because the one thing that Kurt knew about time travel from watching all those movies (and Dr. Who) was that the traveler could change the future. Anything that varied from the original, no matter how innocuous, could potentially send a ripple through the universe (hence, the premise for The Butterfly Effect). Kurt was not going to take even the slightest chance of changing his future. He loved his future. He loved Blaine; he loved New York; he loved NYADA. If that meant he would go to his first day of school and be thrown in a dumpster and pushed into lockers, well, it would be worth it in the end, because if he couldn't find a portal (or whatever) back from when he came, at least he knew that Blaine would be in his future.

If he didn't screw it up.

Kurt looked down at his outfit: Mark Jacobs jacket, black turtle neck, black slacks, black boots. The whole thing was a little conservative for fabulous, New York Kurt (and so 2009), but he knew that it was correct. All through high school, Kurt would carefully select his next day's ensemble the night before and display it on the antique, German valet he had picked up at a Dayton flea market for a song. When he woke up this morning in the wrong bed, the wrong place, the wrong time, it was all laid out, so he just put it on.

Kurt looked in the rearview mirror and grimaced. His face looked positively fat. Where were his cheekbones? He missed them. And don't even get him started on the hair, which was brushed to the side and lying flat on his head. Ugh. It was terrible, but it was temporally correct, and, really, bad hair was a small thing if it got him back to Blaine. It also sucked being so short again. However, Kurt had to admit that the color of the jacket really made his eyes look dark and brooding, and his skin was amazing. He made a mental note to remind future Kurt to wear more royal blue, and he also thought he might add some retinols to old Kurt's moisturizing regimen.

Well, maybe not, because that would be change, and change was to be avoided at all cost.

As he pulled into the parking lot and grabbed his book bag, he steeled himself. He remembered the first day of his sophomore year. The rugby team had thrown him into a dumpster before school started, and he had to change his clothes before first period. He patted his bag, knowing that he had a brown button-down and blue pants to change into. If he remembered to keep his head up, he could probably avoid getting French fry grease in his hair.

“Hey, faggot,” called some stick head they called Pine Tree for reasons that Kurt couldn't fathom but suspected had something to do with some sport involving a ball.

Kurt put his nose in the air and continued walking both because it was what old Kurt would have done (because he didn't want to show he was scared), and also because it was what future Kurt would do (because if “faggot” was the best you could come up with, you were more to be pitied than despised). Within seconds, he was surrounded by rugby players, all crowding around him, but no one touched him. Not yet.

“Nice jacket, homo,” called one.

Kurt sighed, “Seriously, do you not get how pathetic this makes all of you?” he asked.

They ignored his rhetorical question and crowded him closer and closer to the dumpster. Just as they were reaching for him, joined by an audience of a few football players, one of the jocks—damn, it was his future sort-of friend, Puck—hissed a warning, “Schuester! Hey, guys!” Everyone froze and tried their best to look innocent, as their Spanish teacher, Mr. Schuester, walked by chirping a question to Kurt, but Kurt wasn't listening, because he was frozen for an entirely different reason.

There, standing on the edge of the crowd, was Finn. Finn. Beautiful, funny, warm, happy Finn. So young. So animated. So alive. Kurt involuntarily took a step toward him, but then a hand shot out and the moment was over and the rugby team was reaching for him, and Finn called, “Wait.” Then he walked over to Kurt and held out his hand. Kurt reached out and took it, instinctively trying to pull Finn toward him, and Finn—who was too big to be pulled by anyone Kurt's size—gave him a puzzled look and said, “Dude, your jacket?”

Oh, God. He was screwing this up already.

In frustration, Kurt threw his bag at Puck and then slipped out of the Mark Jacobs jacket. When it landed in Finn's hands Finn said, “Okay,” and then Kurt was in the air and then he was in the dumpster, and he did manage to keep his head up, and, really, it wasn't too bad except for the corner of the cardboard box that poked his back and was going to leave a bruise.

What really hurt was his heart, because it was Finn. Suddenly, his plan to simply do everything all over again didn't sound so brilliant, because in the real world, in the first world, in Kurt's world, Finn died. He died. And now Kurt could do something about it. He could stop Finn's death. Really, it was simple thing. It was an accident. Accidents could be prevented; that's why they were called accidents. It wasn't like Finn died of a disease. But preventing the accident would change the future—the future with Blaine and New York and NYADA. Could Kurt get it all back?

He'd figure it out. He had to.