remember.

The waves don't crash, don't roll in, don't undulate. They just are.

Kurt stands on the shore watching, breathing, waiting for some grace. A reprieve. Anything apart from this sense of the impending, the things that haven't happened yet but that he knows will. It's all a part of the plan to redeem himself for his crimes, and he doesn't deserve the grace anyway.

April Matheson. Toby Hillard. Zara Todd. Emily Michaels. Aiden Palmer. Mercedes Jones. Chandler Kiehl.

Even in his mind, he still stutters over that last name. Sees him dancing around to show tunes in the living room. Watching him from the window of the beach house, just standing in the surf and sinking (the only time he could ever bear to be still).

The photographs are all gone, now. Wrapped up inside artificial bubbles and kept inside a tightly-sealed box with Finn's name and address written on it for afterward. The contents are sparse, but he hopes they will be taken in the spirit they were given.

Kurt turns away, pushes it all back with a firm and outstretched fist, and goes inside.

There are phone calls to make.

*

justice.

This is true justice, Kurt thinks as he drives into the city, forgoing sunglasses in light of the heavy and roiling clouds overhead. This is true purpose.

A lot of his time is spent being careful these days. Making sure he's breathing right and not over-exerting himself. Then there's the lingering phantom pains, crawling the length of scars. Reminders, always.

The coroners and police probably thought he was morbid, macabre, something not to be trifled with when he asked the order. The times, down to the very second—there was only one he could have been sure of, the one that he held in his own arms.

His phone rings; Finn. Decline. Not now, brother, I have someone to see.

Kurt pulls into the lines of stop-and-go traffic just inside the city limits and flips open the unassuming manila folder on the passenger seat, looks over the pretty woman with her kind smile and red hair.

It's the sort of information he shouldn't have, by rights, but it's the sort of information he needs if he's ever going to make amends—is that even possible? A life for a life isn't a philosophy that's ever ended particularly well, in any given context.

Just drive, Kurt.

*

between.

Walking down the street from the main building, he wonders if perhaps Emma Pillsbury will be a moot point—he's sure that it's raining, can see the drops falling, but he's not getting wet. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.

Five down (four completed), two to go.

He trawls records all afternoon, comes across two viable options. One, a surgeon. The other, a baker. Both owe the government a lot of money, both have bills racked upon bills for the same thing. He visits the surgeon at the hospital under his usual guise, flashes the ID he copied from Finn and doctored with his own image. The surgeon is unworthy. Squirrelly and squirming and offering up excuses instead of admitting his fault—all with a brand new Lexus in his assigned parking spot. A scratch through his name where it's scribbled inside Kurt's palm.

The cafeteria is pallid fluorescence and he eats in silence. Can't help but catch the eye of the boy sitting two tables in front of the baker, playing with Happy Meal toys. The entire scene reminds Kurt of Malachi (three), right down to the tight smile on his mother's face as she watches—she's thinking to herself that this is the best it's ever going to get, and Kurt wishes he could offer some words of hope, but how can he do that when he's only just past halfway through repaying his own debt?

Back to reading, though he's taking in nothing. These engineering volumes used to hold his attention for hours that turned into days, and now it feels like he's just chasing the words around the page with his eyes. Maybe Emma really will be disappointed.

“Excuse me.”

Kurt looks up.

*

seven.

“Blaine Anderson. It says here you're a baker.”

Blaine shifts uncomfortably in his seat, breathes uneasily through his nose, rubs at his chest just below the clavicle.

“It says here that you owe the government forty-two thousand, two hundred and seventy-four dollars and ninety-four cents.”

“I know. I just—I know. I can't work right now. Look, can we—there must be a better time for us to do this. I just got discharged today.”

Kurt's taken aback. He's not being blown off or shoved out the door. Just asked to rearrange. One tick in the right column, and no crosses yet.

“Of course.” He smiles, like it isn't the hardest thing he could possibly choose to do. “I'll be in touch. Take care, Blaine.”

Kurt almost doesn't catch Blaine's parting words as he turns away. “I'm trying.”

*

preparation.

“I think I found him, Seb.”

That catches Sebastian's attention. He averts his eyes, fiddles with the cap of his water bottle and swallows. Kurt tries not to think about leaving him behind; this is going to be hardest on him. Finn has his family and his kids. Dad and Carole have each other. Sebastian has no one.

“Seven, right? The last one.”

Kurt nods and watches his deadly box jellyfish, Kai, move through the blue-lit water of her tank in the corner of the room. He chose the name because it means “forgiven”.

“You're sure you want to go through with this?” Sebastian asks, like he does every single time. His briefcase rests between his ankles, the dark leather concealing the papers he keeps with him always. There's no timeline on this thing, after all—he could be called into service at any minute with only a phone call's notice. “I know, I know. You're sure. I understand, I do. I just wish—“

“I know you do,” Kurt says shortly, feeling dead and weary. The clock is counting down; that's the way he created it, just like Mr. Gateau. Only, Kurt wasn't born an old man doomed to die a child. His plan calls for the death of someone old before his time, weighted down with the responsibility of repaying an unrepayable debt. “Your job here is simple, Seb. I need you to do this for me. I wouldn't trust anyone else.”

Sebastian exhales sharply through his nose. “Drink?”

*

repair.

Getting to know Blaine is surprisingly easy; he's open, good-humored, somehow settled in the body that's trying to come to an end. Kurt sits in his kitchen shuffling through records and receipts, the strains of old forties music filtering from the ancient Crosley radio that sits on the sill beneath an orange block color blind. The space is full of colors, full to bursting, and Kurt thinks that somehow it's a reflection of its owner. Can houses do that?

When he asks about the baking, Blaine shoots him a tight smile and pushes himself up from the table, beckoning for Kurt to follow. The music trails after them, floating on the air through the open window and Kurt steps inside the high-ceilinged outbuilding with intrigue driving his dampened curiosity. Blaine leads him to stand in front of a gargantuan antique stove, emblazoned with the words “Triple Crawford”.

“This is Stetson,” Blaine says, fingers dancing along the stove top. “He's one of four in the world. Took me two years to track down. This guy was born for sourdough baked from a sixty-year-old starter.”

“He's beautiful,” Kurt whispers reverently, finding that he means it. The black metal and almost century-old craftsmanship makes him ache for the past, when things were simpler. When everything was simpler. “You bake with him a lot?”

“Not anymore,” Blaine answers, after a long moment, his voice laced with sadness and regret. “He's been sick for a long time. Almost as long as me. I try not to read too much into that. Maybe if I get a new heart, he'll magically get better again.”

It won't happen that way around, but you could be right, Blaine.

A new twig forms on this branch of Kurt's plan. He doesn't need astrodynamics, aeroelasticity or avionics for this. Just some old-fashioned elbow grease and ingenuity.

*

blister.

Emma Pillsbury. Thirty-eight. Music therapist. Blind since age fourteen.

“Miss Pillsbury?” the girl asks, her fingers stilling halfway across the Braille sheet music. Kurt observes from the open doorway—another place he shouldn't be daring to linger, but he has to know. “Do you remember what it's like to see?”

Emma swallows, a small smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. The scars around her eyes—once horrific, Kurt knows from seeing the incident report taken after the unfathomably cruel acid attack—are faded and she seems helpless against the urge to reach up and brush her fingertips beneath them.

“I lost my sight when I was only a year older than you,” she answers, her voice tinged with an undercurrent of a sadness that has never quite been made peace with. “So there's a lot that I can't recall. But there are some things.”

“Like what?”

“Well, I was always very good with faces. I can still remember my father's smile whenever I would play for him. The color of my mother's eyes and the shape of her nose,” Emma says, her voice quiet and reverent. She grins, feels her way up the girl's shoulder and the side of her face to gently press a fingertip to the end of her nose. “It's easy to worry that you'll forget things, someday. And that's okay, you know. Even people with sight forget. The important thing is that you try to remember.”

Silently, Kurt steps back from the door, not wishing to intrude a moment longer. The moment is a private one, and he's found out all he needed to know. It's not until Kurt is tapping out a text message to Sebastian—I found five. Call me.—and blinking harshly that he realizes there are tears in his eyes.

*

seek.

“I need a name, Verity. There are things I haven't told you. The reason why we even know each other, for example.”

“I get the feeling you're not going to tell me,” Verity states, though her words are accepting rather than accusatory, just like always. There was a reason Kurt chose her, after all. “Kurt Hummel, ever the enigma. Just who are you looking for?”

“You know my type,” he jokes weakly.

Verity nods all the same and digs through the filing cabinet behind her, sets the papers down in front of him and fixes him with a look that's barely contained curiosity and concern.

“Is this going to absolve you?”

He never answers her, simply says thank you and excuses himself. Verity's words stay with him as he speeds back outside to where he parked in a quiet spot behind the building. The storm has been brewing and roiling inside him for days, and he knew that this would probably be the tipping point. He gets into the car, sets the papers down on the passenger seat and breathes deeply. It takes three seconds for him to start screaming, pounding his palms against the steering wheel and throwing himself back against his seat. The entire vehicle is filled with an anguish so heavy, Kurt feels like he's carried it around forever. All he has now are memories of happiness and the duty that drags him—most mornings, at least—from his restless slumber.

The third (fourth? Fifth? Twentieth?) howl dies in his throat as his phone buzzes in his pocket, and he clears his raw throat with a grimace. Back to business. Kurt raises an eyebrow when he sees the name on the screen, hesitates for just a moment before swiping his thumb across and raising it to his ear. “Blaine?”

*

new/old.

There's something about Blaine, Kurt's beginning to realize. Something that makes the aching in his chest multiply upon itself until he's thrumming with it. There's a simmering within his heart, an expansion of awareness each time Blaine's hands move over his as they knead together. The rye dough is grainy and rough, matching Blaine's callused palms, and he can't help but relax into the warm body pressing lightly into his back.

“You sure you aren't a baker? You've got the knack,” Blaine says, his breath warmly coiling around the shell of Kurt's ear.

Nervously, he laughs. On a terrible whim—because he knows he'll berate himself for it later—he cranes around and presses a fleeting kiss to the corner of Blaine's mouth before returning his attention to the dough. Blaine's movements slow for just a moment before there are ten feathers whispering across the skin of Kurt's forearms, and he swears he can feel an erratic, unsteady heartbeat even through the fabric of two shirts and untold miles of wasted muscle.

When the dough is covered in a damp cloth and safely ensconced in the pantry, Kurt takes Blaine's hand and leads him to the outbuilding, watches as Blaine stares his usual sad and wistful stare at the Triple Crawford. Kurt gestures toward it with a small incline of his head, and the wash of amber hope in Blaine's eyes is close to shattering.

Thirty minutes later, Blaine sits with his back to Kurt's chest on a fuzzy blanket, gazing at Stetson humming, hissing and hiding his work behind black doors. A warm, homely scent floats across the air and it's the most relaxed Kurt's ever seen the man.

When the bread is about ready to emerge, crusty and hearty and crackling, Blaine turns to face him: a progression of hands on Kurt's face, thumbs over his cheekbones, a steady leaning in until there are dry, warm lips alighting upon his own.

This spirit catches him like the kindred of a previous life, and Kurt's already falling dangerously.

*

three-two-one.

This gets harder every day, hour, minute, second. The pain is excruciating; Kurt's entire leg feels as if it's being seared over an open flame. He can feel the needle inside his bone as it draws out the precious marrow that he hopes will give Malachi the chance he deserves—the cruel chance that Kurt was given, to atone for the seven chances he took. He doesn't want to feel the release, doesn't want to feel anything apart from the horrific pressure that grips his entire conscious mind. Dizzy and with a devil on his shoulder—the presence of his past right at his back, living and exhaling across his skin—he somehow makes it home and sleeps for nineteen hours.

Zara, I'm so sorry you'll never get to see your wedding day.

When Kurt starts counting back from one hundred, the face above him blurs and fades. Seconds later, his eyes open. His lips shape numbers as he continues the count, no sound except that of a labored exhalation. Right. His lung. There's a dead weight on his chest, knife blades pressing between the ribs on his left side, and everything in his field of vision is flexing and shifting, none of it making sense. Kurt fluctuates with it, becoming a part of the glare overhead and for a moment wondering if he will dissolve altogether.

Toby, I wish your sweetheart the easiest of dreams for all the nights of his life.

Noiselessly, the bandages flutter onto the small mat curved around the bottom of the sink and Kurt traces his fingers along the line of the incision, wincing as he walks the surgeon's path. It's a grounding kind of pain; reminds him of why he's willingly proposing himself a candidate and searching out subjects. This is no experiment, no test of himself—his measure has already been taken and he has been found wanting. Before departure, his books need to be balanced.

April, you will always be the center of your parents' world.

He's losing time and order but never the will. Never the will.

*

shatter.

One. A screech of metal on glass on metal.

Two. A scream torn from the throat of his beloved.

Three. A tumble, a fall, a war cry.

Four. A soaring through free, clear air.

Five. A landing, ribs cracking and air ripped from every cell.

Six. A dark splatter on the windshield, a cry from beyond the jagged metal confines even though nothing can exist, nothing can keep going if his love doesn't.

Seven. A silence, all-encompassing and terrible; a shattered world left in the wake. They'll tell him later that it wasn't his fault, that it could have happened to anyone. Chandler's been on at him for weeks to get the brakes checked, that they're sticking. But Kurt knows better, always does when it comes to the Navigator. Or so he thought.

*

six.

Oceanside is salty air and dry mouth, and it plays with Kurt's consciousness like an attention-greedy little cousin. Taylor's twenty-two-year-old bruised eyes are dark, all laced up with Godlessness and distrust, yet Kurt presses the packet into his palms all the same. It's stuffed to bursting with maps, local information, and the deeds to the house in Silver Lake. “You don't need to stay here. I'm giving you an out.”

“Why me? What am I supposed to do there?” Two questions in tumbling succession; Kurt opts to answer the first.

“Because you deserve it. Because I never got given a chance when I really could have used one. Because you're worth something more than being beaten and abused. Do not be a coward, Taylor. You're better than that. Take I-5, follow the directions. There's a map.” A final, significant look, then Kurt's swinging his legs out of the decrepit, hand-me-down Dodge's passenger side door.

“What am I supposed to do there?” Taylor repeats.

Kurt pauses, fingers wrapped around the sticky door handle, and inclines his head just enough. “Heal. Live. And speak of this to no one.”

Mercedes, you always gave me a place to shelter. I miss you every moment, and I wish I could take it all back.

*

shift.

It's a curious and terrible thing how quickly the weather can transform, flowing so seamlessly from one state to the next. The morning can break brightly, finches chattering their cheerful adieus to a turbulent night that leaves behind promises of fat, juicy worms to feast upon. It can progress beautifully, can become a day for picnics and trips to the beach and sitting in the warm shade of a veranda whilst sipping at an ice cold lemonade. Then the darkened horizon to which little attention has, for once, been paid is suddenly overhead, heavy clouds roiling and tumbling and searching for that elusive pocket of release with nothing to keep them at bay. All at once, there is no birdsong. Only the relentless hammering on a pitched roof, the overflow threatening to break levees and burst dams.

The ground blinks and sways, flicker beneath Kurt's feet. Blaine sits in a hospital-issue gown with a cracked cheekbone, black bruises blooming beneath the skin, and an immediate upgrade to status one after passing out on his neighbor's front stoop. Doctor Martinez tells him he has weeks, at most. Not to expect even a month.

Had Kurt not had firsthand experience, he would stop to contemplate the unfathomable cruelty that is so often wreaked upon those least deserving. Instead, he drives Blaine home, studiously avoiding so much as a glance at the small black pager clutched between the forgotten baker's palms. Something so square in shape, built for such throwaway hope, looks like an error there.

“Will you stay with me?” Blaine asks when Kurt has tucked the covers around him, resisting the pull of the bed's empty space. His exhaustion runs deeper than the bone. “Tell me a story?”

“You need sleep,” Kurt says, hoping that the droop of Blaine's eyelids will be too much for his frail and weary frame to overcome.

“I'll have better dreams,” Blaine murmurs, his voice softly wrecked. “I have such awful dreams, Kurt.”

“All right. Once upon a time... Once upon a time, there was a little boy named Kurt,” he begins, and when Blaine sighs into even breathing, pulse visibly stuttering between the cords and sinews of his throat, Kurt gently lowers himself onto the bed, crossing his palms over his heart and his feet at the ankle. “He always loved birds, and wished for wings that he could spread and use to leave behind all of the sadness in his heart...”

*

four.

“Because she needs it, Rachel. And I owe her mother,” Kurt says succinctly, eyes fixed upon little Aria Michaels, two years old and fighting for the chance to show the world everything she could be.

“Kurt, Emily may have been my best friend, and she may have been involved in a car accident that took her life, but that's exactly what it was. An accident,” Rachel says, hands and voice both reaching out imploringly.

“Your life's already been torn apart once,” Kurt says, watching Aria's little fingers clamped around his as she sleeps: tightly, like she already knows he will be her savior. “Why refuse anything that might prevent it happening again?”

“Because this isn't... We're not talking about blood or platelets, or... Kurt, it's a kidney. You only have two,” Rachel argues, but the conviction in her voice dwindles the longer she looks at the goddaughter she loves like her own.

“And I can get by with one,” Kurt counters.

He can see the apprehensive yet consuming hope the very second it floods Rachel's system.

Emily, saving your daughter will be an honor. I hope you can forgive me.

*

lost.

The simplest things are sometimes the hardest, and vice versa. Gasping “I love you,” into the hollow of Blaine's collarbone as he spirals out of control for the first time in two years is neither—like the waves at the beach house, his little slice of undeserved heaven, it just is.

They come down slowly, in the same vein as the languorous rocking of hips and explorations of scar-covered expanses of skin from two opposite ends of the surgical spectrum. Kurt feels full; something like light is burrowing through the neglected pathways of his heart, excavating and making way, a canary's song keeping it safe from harm. The problem is the taint of plans and intentions. None of this was supposed to happen; Blaine was never supposed to have the potential to be the love of his life.

Kurt leaves Blaine sleeping, cocooned in blankets with his heartbeat resting uneasily in that rhythm of trip-trip-stutter. The impression in his pillow forms a nest for the envelope containing his last words—if there's an upswing or a contingency, he'll be back for it. They'll toss it onto an open fire and watch the vellum twist, curl, disintegrate into the ashes from which a phoenix will rise. For now, he pulls on his jeans and the heather-gray shirt Blaine bought for him to wear to dinner on the patio, and lets himself out.

Doctor Martinez is making rounds in the cardiology unit, and he doesn't look surprised to see Kurt standing before him, trembling and soaked to the skin from the downpour outside. The only thing his face betrays is regret that he can surgically fix a sick heart, yet he can do nothing for the heartsick. The single-digit percentage he gives Kurt may as well be a zero. A future licked into Blaine's olive skin, promises of life and love—it circles the drain, but only for Kurt. His end will prove a beginning.

Neither the rain nor the cold have any hope of touching him, and the wind howls a static buzz that punctuates the rings as he waits for Sebastian's answer: a groggy, “hello?”

“Seb, it's time. It's happening tonight. I love you.”

Chandler, you were my first, and I was your last. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry.

*

goodbye.

Dear Finn, take care of yourself and your beautiful family. Don't let this sway you for too long, because they need you. Be as strong for them as you were for me. Please try to understand. I love you, brother. Kurt.

Dear Taylor, one thing I forgot to mention. The furnace sometimes has trouble in the winter. If you're having problems with it, find Ben Thomas at The Harbor Lights Bar, and tell him I sent you. This will be the last you hear from me. Wishing you all the happiness you deserve, Kurt.

Dear Rachel, don't be afraid, or hold yourself back because of what you feel obligated to do. Despite what you tell yourself every day, you haven't outgrown your dreams—they're still waiting to come true. If anyone can have it all, it's you. Love, Kurt.

Dear Verity, you once asked me if what I'm doing (and I have no doubt that somehow, you figured it out) will absolve me. The answer that I was terrified of giving you before—the terrible truth—is no. But now... Now, it's not about achieving absolution for myself. It was your question that made me realize it, and for that I'm grateful. It was an honor to have known you. Kurt.

Dear Carole, thank you for shining your light and always guiding Dad from his sadness. He'll need you more than ever—please hold him up for the both of us. All the love I have, Kurt.

Dear Sebastian, please don't close yourself off forever. You're scared because of how horrifically he treated you, but I promise there is someone somewhere who could be so good to you, if you'll only let them. You weren't built to be alone forever. Thank you for every gift you have ever given to me. Kurt.

Dear Dad, I'll miss you more than I can bear to think about. This is the work that I've had to do in order to repay what wasn't mine to take. Thank for always being you, and also for everything. All of my love and so much more, Kurt.

*

five.

One last call. Images and questions flash in Kurt's mind—isn't this supposed to happen later?—as the walls finally come tumbling down. There's no longer a future, and all he has now is each single moment, one to the next.

The ringing is dull in his ear, and he pictures Emma in her bed, slowly coming to and reaching for the speaking clock. “Emma Pillsbury speaking,” comes her voice, lilting upward into a question.

“Emma, my name is Kurt Hummel. Tomorrow, you're going to be contacted by a man named Sebastian Smythe, and I want you to listen very carefully to what he's going to tell you. But I wanted—I wanted the chance to speak to you once before...” Kurt swallows, the first influx of fear lapping around his ankles and climbing as Kai moves languidly in her tank. “Before the end.”

“Before the... Who are you?”

“I'm... I'm someone who wants to help. For no other reason than the fact that you deserve it,” Kurt says, steadying himself with white knuckles on the edge of the glass. “I'd liked to have known you, in a different life.”

With a click, Emma's response is cut off mid-sentence. Silence—Kurt needs the gravity of silence.

Aiden, I wish you could have seen the sun rise over the Grand Canyon like you wanted. I'm sorry for everything I took from you.

*

surrender.

Kurt writes a note, leaves it seven pigeon-steps from the bathtub. Slashes the bag of ice cubes that were probably packed with hands and eyes that dreamed of champagne toasts and elegant soirees. Finishes with gallons of cold; braces himself by the arms on the time-roughened edge and breathes.

Kai waits at the end, to be his end.

There are seven letters fanned out in formation across the desk that stands in the middle of the motel room's longest wall; a dilapidated focal point. Only one letter is missing—Blaine's. Kurt still wears the short-sleeved shirt Blaine gave him.

One freezing step. Two. No time for adjustment to the razors seeping through his clothes; he surges forward and upends Kai's crude, temporary home into the h-two-oh cocktail and whispers the last apology he will ever make directly to her—she probably won't survive this, either.

Tendrils of membrane trace his shaking flesh, and his fingers flex along the malleable shell of her body as she moves closer. She senses his fear—he's easy prey, how deliciously simple this will be for her—and all at once, Kurt is torn layer from layer. Skin, artery, muscle, vein, everywhere is fire and poison. He grips, thrashes, stiffens, it never ends, how long is this going to take, stay focused, scream, let it out, if you scream then maybe everything will go away—

April Matheson Toby Hillard Zara Todd Emily Michaels Aiden Palmer Mercedes Jones Chandler Kiehl—

Blaine Blaine Blaine Bl—

*

gift.

Blaine,

Beep-beep. Beep-beep.

You once told me that you don't think you deserve a new heart. That your life is unremarkable in every way. I hope you can see, now, that you are one of the most remarkable people I have ever known.

Blaine stirs, eyes snapping open at the noise—his alarm clock doesn't beep; it plays music. His left hand closes on the pager, right hand moves through free air that should be occupied. Fingers brush something cold and smooth.

Finn, or one of the other recipients, will have told you everything by now. The thing they won't have told you, though, is that I needed you. The donations were atonement—my seven pounds of flesh to pay the price for what was my fault, no matter what the people in authority said. But I never would have been able to give you my heart if you hadn't opened it up like you did. Until I met you, it wasn't healthy. My heart was trapped in a never-ending cycle of reliving past misdemeanors and much, much worse. And then, there you were. With a Triple Crawford and a Crosley, dancing around your kitchen to 40s music and all of it with a countdown inside of you. Blaine Anderson, THAT is remarkable.

Slowly, he sits up. Presses the button to stop the call of his next life, just for a moment. His own name is written across the front of the envelope in a flow of personalized cursive, and he turns it over, calls out, “Kurt?”

Live, Blaine. Live for me. I love you. Kurt.

*

afterward.

Hazy days pass, filled with morphine and grief. Vague recollections of Doctor Martinez's kind eyes being swallowed by a complete darkness; waking and drifting though tests and immunosuppressant cocktails that keep Blaine dizzy and in stasis; dreaming of piercing blue-green and sharp cheekbones and patchwork skin. The day he gets home from the hospital, he falls face first onto the bed and doesn't move for eighteen hours, a mass of wet tears and the lingering scent of Kurt wrapped around him.

It takes five days, nine hours and twenty-three minutes until it hits Blaine that the heart inside him is beating faithfully, and only for him. Cooper is visiting, playing housekeeper and nursemaid like some dreadful parody of a Carry On movie, and Blaine finds himself speaking uncharacteristically sarcastic words, something barbed and involving accusations of a role-playing fetish. Kurt's heart thumps steadily beneath his breast, never above seventy-five.

Five months slip by before Blaine can face Stetson. He makes rye bread and eats it in thick slices straight from the oven, searing new burns on top of his softened calluses as he sits out on the patio in the chair Kurt had occupied. He pays no mind to his newly-developed habit of laying his right palm on his chest, feeling out the strong surety around which he's constructing a shining golden trellis.

It isn't as difficult as he thought it would be to get the information out of Sebastian, who seems to look at him with a kind of acceptance that gives Blaine the impression of newness. He visits with Kurt's parents, discovers that they are the sort of good people who want to know him—him, not what he carries of the hero that never saw himself through anyone's eyes but his own. They weep together on the living room floor, united and unashamed.

Summer comes, and Blaine waits at the end of the short line at the El Rey stage door with a bunch of purple heart calla lilies. Emma smiles as she signs ticket stubs, graciously accepting compliments and embracing her fans. Her eyes remain shrouded until she reaches him, and even in the color-leeching red neon glow behind the theater, he would know those eyes anywhere. Blaine's tongue swells to thick uselessness in his mouth; instead, he gently raises her hand to his chest and realization dawns in a wash of cyan and phthalo. Between Emma's eyes and Blaine's heart, something rests.

As Blaine is driving south toward the next name on his list, he takes inventory. A new heart; a taller walk; a more dry sense of humor; a small pot of ashes to scatter. He's kept them for long enough, inside the doctored casing of what used to be his pager—he holds onto a living part of Kurt's tortured hurricane. What else remains should be set free.

Blaine chooses Goleta Beach to finally stop and walk to the cliff edge, box in hand. The sea wall below falls away in vertical grades, and there are nooks and coves at the bottom where Blaine had imagined sitting with his sweetheart, kissing the sea salt from his freckles and staying until the incoming tide threatened to cut them off. The case snaps open with a pinch on either side, and the breeze picks up just as Blaine tips it sideways. He'll come back here one day, to renew his memory of the tangy, tar-scented air and walk barefoot along the beach to find the cove that feels like it gave Kurt a home. For now, he simply watches the sun dip below the horizon, covers his ears, and listens to Kurt's heart.

*

-fin