Finn watched his brother from across the room. At 36 the man was still poised, elegant, impeccably dressed and had the air of a man better than everyone else, an ethereal being among mere mortals. Finn had thought that Kurt would never accept anyone into his heart after Blaine died but about two years after the terrible accident that took his brother’s boyfriend away the glasz eyed man had allowed Liam in. The young man by Kurt’s side was a fellow Juilliard student and had been friends with Kurt since they both started at the prestigious New York college and had helped Kurt through the pain and depression that Finn, Burt and the rest of their friends had often wondered if Kurt would ever pull himself out of.

Kurt was now a respected and revered Broadway actor and Liam was a singer and TV star, the same as Blaine had wanted to be, though Liam didn’t know how close his desires had been to Blaine’s.

Finn felt Rachel’s hand curl into his and he smiled down at her, raising their joined hands to kiss her wedding ring. They’d reconnected at Blaine’s funeral, their spark never fading and pulling each other through the hard time. Blaine had touched all of their lives. The special, loving, adorable young man too good for life apparently.

Rachel looked over at Kurt; the man was introducing Liam to people. Polite to everyone, friendly to those he knew and loved. Liam was a great guy, Finn liked him. He’d made an effort to become friends with them all and to connect with Burt, telling Finn and Burt he’d never try to replace Blaine, he’d never disrespect the younger man’s memory like that but he hoped they could all be friends and family, for Kurt. He’d been accepted, he was good for Kurt and loving and decent; but not loved. Burt liked him, but had never called him ‘son’ the way he’d called Blaine it practically from the second they’d met and the other New Directions burned for their brother, a few including Puck and Santana openly rejecting him but never in front of Kurt, their respect for him too great.

Rachel tolerated him. It grated on her that he’d tried hard with the Hummel-Hudsons and Rachel herself, knowing that she was close to Blaine in a different way than most. She and Blaine were the ‘in-laws’, understanding each other as equals and living as the people who’d ‘found their soul mates against all odds’ as she’d said so long ago about how she and Blaine were supposed to play Tony and Maria while being virgins, tapping into that passion instead of the carnal one they’d never experienced yet. They’d held a piece of Kurt, each in different ways. She missed that deep voice, the way he smiled and the way he was always sweet and happy and fun to be around. The serious, impulsive, passionate man was not the same as the cool, calm, friendly and nice man Kurt had chosen as his next after Blaine. She liked him.

Mercedes watched as Kurt and Liam crossed the room. She hadn’t seen her friend in two years, they’d spoken over the phone and twitter but they’d both been too busy and the times they could have met either Liam filled Kurt’s time or she’d ‘found’ something that needed to be done. She guessed it was unfair to really blame Liam, he was nice enough and he treated Kurt right but she could never shake the feeling she got around him. He was tall, as tall as Kurt, blond and green-eyed. He was lean and strong with pale skin like Kurt’s. He was the polar opposite of Blaine. Sometimes the dark haired diva wondered if it was that fact that made her dislike her friend’s fiancé but she’d talked it over many times with the others and some of Kurt’s friend from Juilliard and found that most people had the same feeling. He was a lovely guy. He was strong and secure in himself, while very free-spirited and laidback but he was also very quiet and didn’t give in to passion and boldness. He didn’t fit in with the New Directions, who spent most of their time high on the passion and edginess that had driven their high school lives and hoisted them into being the epitomes of their dreams.

She watched as Kurt showed his hand to those who asked, flashing his ring. It had looked expensive and to be honest, gaudy. Not like the one that hung around his neck under his clothes. The ring from Blaine, given not long before his death, was platinum and dusted with tiny emerald and sapphire stars. One for each year they’d known each other and engraved inside with the words Kurt had whispered to Blaine the day he’d returned to McKinley from Dalton as the Warblers sang to Kurt on the bleachers, ‘I’m Never Saying Goodbye To You’. The ring from Liam was white gold and practically encrusted with diamonds and one ruby in the middle.

Mercedes felt arms wrap around her from behind and leaned back into Sam’s warmth, comforting her on a day when she should be happy for her friend. Engaged again to a nice man and in love through everything he’d been through; but she also felt like the Heavens should rip open and wherever their lost boy was, given wings from the second he’d been up there, he’d stop the madness.

The engagement party was well over and most people had gone home but a few people still remained, the New Directions and Burt and Carole who were sat together away from the younger people, chatting and giggling, tipsy and enjoying the glow from their boy finding love and happiness again. Kurt sat on the floor in the middle of the dance floor with the others, talking about the past and the future. Liam was leading the conversation, talking to Mike about where he and Kurt wanted to live after marriage. Puck leaned across to Santana and whispered something that made the Latina burst out laughing, gaining a smile from Kurt as he turned his head towards them and his lips quirked up until Liam turned sharply, glaring at them and then carrying on the conversation. Kurt’s smile slipped off his face and as he lowered his eyes the others saw something they’d only seen once before and they suddenly realised Kurt was wearing a perfectly crafted mask, something held up to disguise the truth behind the happy man. Tina looked around the group, all looking at each other with petrified expressions, deeply disturbed by what they’d all seen in Kurt’s eyes. Nothing.

Finn walked up the steps and knocked on the door. It was weeks after the engagement party and he was taking Kurt to where they always went on this day every year. He could hear arguing inside the apartment and was about to get his spare key that Liam didn’t know about, out before Kurt opened the door, clad completely in black and glanced back inside, yelling back to his fiancé that he’d see him later. Finn offered Kurt a smile and Kurt’s lips quirked before sighing, his fingers going to the ring around his neck, fiddling with the cold platinum.

The ride was silent and Finn studied his brother out of the corner of his eyes at times. The mask was beginning to crack. He looked dishevelled and tired, the lines around his eyes deeper and his perfect hair and clothes slightly out of place.

They finally stopped and got out, walking down the gravel path together, silent, Kurt holding a single rose. Finally they stopped in front of a marble headstone. The picture on it showing a smiling young man, dark brown eyes sparkling, black hair slicked perfectly and tanned face cracked into a grin. Blaine as he’d looked, handsome and youthful just five days before his death at just 29.

Blaine was never meant to die. Finn was sure of it. It had all been a freak, horrific accident. A terrible crime that took away his best friend, his brother’s soul mate and a part of all of them.

Blaine had died just a few blocks away from his home, at a coffee shop, of all places with Kurt at home, waiting on his fiancé. It had been almost a month since the two men had gotten engaged and they were both still in the giddy highs of another milestone passed together, sealed tighter together than ever. Never knowing they’d be ripped apart forever.

The young singer, fresh from touring with his third album, had been standing in line to get two coffees to go. One for him and one for Kurt. A grande non-fat mocha for Kurt and a medium drip for himself. Five seconds later, Columbus Avenue exploded, the front of Starbucks caved in and shards of glass flew into the shop, ripping coffee cups and flesh. The walls of the building groaned and dust exploded in as the remains of the Reebok Gym wall across the road and the boutiques next door blew their debris into the suddenly wrecked coffee bar. The red-bricked building above the coffee shop, housing many apartments shuddered, the supports and beams of the shop below fracturing. In the bar, shaking, scared and hidden under a table a young man managed to grab his cell with bloody hands and dial home. Grating out a litany of ‘I love you’s to the man on the other end as the building gave one last groan and collapsed, flattening the defenceless coffee shop and blasting dust, blood and debris into Columbus Avenue and the horrified onlookers, and taking the life of many.

Blaine Anderson would never get home.

In the end the New York police had closed the case, citing it as a tragic accident, problems with gas mains works had made the building unsafe and as the coffee shop worked with dangerously unsafe working conditions it had only been a matter to time before something terrible had happened. There were trials, compensation and counselling for the shattered families of the victims and those who’d witnessed the horrific explosion but the money soothed no-one. Kurt had donated it all to a fund benefitting struggling artists, so someone else could be like them, like Blaine, someday.

Kurt had slipped into a deep depression, letting no-one near him for weeks. After the funeral Kurt had shut himself away, living with memories for four months. Slowly he emerged out into the world again, he moved out of the home he and Blaine had shared and got his own small apartment not far from their place, ready to rebuild himself and his life. It had been hard. Blaine had been a part of his life as friend and lover for about twelve years, since the moment they’d met on the staircase at Dalton Kurt and Blaine’s lives had been linked together and Kurt really had no idea how to be without the man by his side, so he’d had to find and build himself as a new Kurt, too.

Everybody who loved him helped him. He spent more time with his high school friends, the Warblers who he spent time reminiscing about Blaine with, his Juilliard friends and his Broadway compatriots. In the end they’d noticed one man getting closer to Kurt than others. Liam. The blond man had an agenda, they all knew that but it had seemed so innocent at first but slowly over time each person who spent time with them realised, Liam was looking to be Kurt’s next lover.

He’d been sweet, offering Kurt a shoulder to cry on, then counselling and soon he was helping Kurt with anything the young star wanted. Finn could hardly blame him, Kurt was a special guy but at first he’d resented the man, trying to slip into the place of a better man but soon he’d come to terms with it, as Liam explained and truly tried to not be Blaine, but to be himself, with Kurt. He accepted, along with Burt and Carole, Liam’s intentions when he’d gotten them together to ask them if he could propose to Kurt. Burt had balked at first, reminding the young man that Kurt had been engaged before, but Liam had once again told him that he wasn’t Blaine; he just wanted to be with Kurt and to him that included marriage.

Blinking out of his memories Finn watched as Kurt knelt, laying the rose on the grass, tears slipping down his handsome face. Finn looked at the words written across the marble after the dates of birth and death; too short a span between them. ‘I’ll be seeing you again, I’m never saying goodbye to you. Please don’t forget me in your life, as you grow and change and move, bring the pieces of you that are of me, so that one day when we meet again, I will recognise you, within me’.

The last words Blaine had spoken before telling Kurt he loved him over and over as the ceiling collapsed.

Liam had never visited this place with Kurt. It was always Finn and sometimes Rachel. Never Burt, though after the first few months Finn could see why, Burt had broken down so many times, it would hurt Kurt for him to come. Finn held out his hand to Kurt as the shorter man stood and Kurt grasped it thankfully. They stood there for a while longer, Finn whispering to the dirt and marble about how their lives had gone since Blaine’s departure, focusing on every member of Blaine’s rag-tag family that were the Warblers, New Directions and Juilliard friends who still stayed in touch.

Over the next few months everybody watched as Kurt turned inwards, changing and wasting away. Liam’s true nature revealed itself as friends and family were turned away and his earlier sweetness turned to bitterness. He’d yelled one day at Puck down the phone that he was sick of being compared and bested by a dead man all the time, prompting the volatile man to drive up from where he was in New Jersey helping a friend to New York to go stare the man down, tell him that if he truly cared about Kurt that he wouldn’t hold the memory of a man he’d loved for twelve years and died telling him he loved him as he listened to him die against him and to let people see Kurt or Puck would make sure he never saw Kurt again.

It was six days before they saw Kurt; he met them backstage after a show, his perfect mask gone. They talked for hours about the past, life and death and the missing part of all of them. Kurt was beautiful, his eyes, though still blue and flecked with many colours no longer held the shine they once did. He looked like an angel, unbound to the earth.

It was the last time any of them saw him.

Two days later Finn, Rachel and Mercedes were on their way to meet Kurt for lunch, he’d sounded happy on the phone the day before, though vague, talking about going to the financial district. In the end Finn and the two women walked to Kurt and Liam’s place. Finn knocked on the door, waiting for five minutes before using his key. The place was a mess, tables knocked over, papers strewn around, glass smashed on the floor. Rachel screamed, staring around in horror and Mercedes looked like she was about to faint. They searched the rooms, calling out Kurt and Liam’s names, treading carefully over the remnants of the apartment. Finally in the bedroom, lying on the bed Finn found a note addressed to Liam in Kurt’s curvy handwriting, two and a half words scrawled on the page. I’m Sorry.

Finn burst out of the room, running for the door when his phone rang. Liam was on the other end, crying and panicking. Finn tried to calm the man down as the three singers raced out of the apartment and down the road to find the best way to the financial district and the Paris Café where they’d agreed to meet. Finally when they got to the Paris Café they found a waitress who told them that Mr Hummel had been in but left, telling her to tell them to go to the Brooklyn Bridge. When they got there the place was in chaos. Police, cameras crews and horrified onlookers gasping, covering their mouths and pointing over the bridge held them back. Finn looked over to where the police were gathered around and his blood went cold. On the pavement were two Starbucks coffee cups, and nothing else.

Over the next few days the news filtered out of New York to the rest of the world and the police told Kurt’s family the events of that day. Apparently Kurt had left the note telling Liam he was sorry on their bed before going out to the bridge, Liam having found the note, tore their apartment apart. Kurt went to the café, then to Starbucks and bought the coffees before launching himself off of the Brooklyn Bridge, unable to live any longer without Blaine.

Burt was devastated; he’d lost his wife so long ago and son’s love and now finally his son. Carole was strong for Burt but Finn could see his mother breaking inside. The New Directions, Warblers and all of Kurt’s friends were equally devastated. Tributes were left by friends and fans at Kurt’s apartment and the bridge and some sent to the Hummel-Hudson house. No-one stopped crying.

The day of the funeral they all gathered at Kurt’s now abandoned apartment, Liam hadn’t been seen since the day Kurt died. They toasted his life and the beauty and love he’d created, the family he’d brought together and the world he’d helped change. The service was short, no-one able to cope with the goodbye they were now saying for their angel. Burt had decided to lay Kurt to rest beside Blaine at the Woodlawn Cemetery and give Kurt the same type of headstone inlaid with their favourite picture of Kurt.

Standing in front of the graves Finn let his tears flow, reading the words written on Kurt’s grave. ‘I’m Never Saying Goodbye To You. In the days that pass by remember me as the one you loved. Happy, blessed and free. Do not look for me. One day when we meet, I will see you through the parts that are me’.

Finn gasped on the sob that rose in his throat, revelling in the changed words to the ones Blaine had told Kurt all that time ago. He understood now. His brother had died that day, waiting with Blaine and now they were together again.

Joined forever in Heaven.