Help Uncle Sam stamp out the Kaiser.

Defeat the Huns.

We want you for the US army.

_____

Lima, Ohio.

Fit men from 18-30 years of age.

Thanks to the war, they’re in short supply.

Elderly.

Children.

Disabled men.

Widows.

Thanks to the war, they’re the majority.
_____

They listen to the water lapping against the shore. The silence resting between them is uneasy, just waiting to be shattered, but neither of them are ready to throw the stone. So they just wait.

And listen.
_____

“I’m going to war,” he had said when the other leaned in for an embrace.

“Don’t.”

“I might die.”

“Don’t go.”

“I have to.”
_____

He turns and looks at the man, frowns and tries to find the words he’s been gathering up in the quiet, but they all escape him and all he can do is sob.

“Don’t leave me.”

“Blaine...”

Blaine reaches out, takes the other man’s hand in his own, “You don’t have to go. You can stay here. You can be safe.”

“Safe? No one is safe.”

“From the army. You can be safe from the army.”

The other man laughs, a hollow sound, “Tell that to my father.”

“Kurt...please...”

“I have to go,” Kurt says and he looks down at their hands, runs his thumb over the wedding ring on Blaine’s, “I have to go. But I’ll be back, okay? I just have to do my part.”

“Please...”

“Go home to your wife, Blaine,” Kurt is standing now, but his hand is still held in a tight grip, “I have to go pack. Go home to her.”

“I love you. You know that, right?”

“I know...I love you, too.”
_____

Blaine sits on his bed, imagines the hands massaging the tension from his shoulders belong to a man and not the dark haired woman behind him.

“I just want to help.”

“You’d die if you go,” his wife says, as if he doesn’t know, as if the entire town hasn’t told him that, “You should be thankful.”

“Thankful for a bum leg?” he scoffs.

“Thankful for anything that keeps you alive,” she tells him, like it’s that easy.

He imagines that, for her, it is.
_____

Kurt sits on his bed, imagines that the man in the picture is alive again, and not kept on Earth only by the memories of his son.

“I’m going to fight, Dad,” he says to the picture, “But I’m afraid. I’m afraid I’m going to die.”

He looks up and doesn’t bother trying to stop the tears, because the house is empty. It has been empty ever since his father left.

“I don’t want to be a hero,” Kurt murmurs, “I didn’t join to be a hero. I just want to do my part, and then I want to come home. So you make sure that happens, okay? You let me come home, Dad. You make sure whatever thing kept you back doesn’t latch onto me, okay?”

He thinks, You broke your last promise. You can do this. For me.
_____

They kiss in the dark, lying in a field that makes up part of Kurt’s property, and they try to be happy and just forget.

But they can’t.

“I’m leaving in three days.”

And that’s why.
_____

Blaine ignores his wife.

She pouts. She whines. She makes him angry, but he doesn’t hurt her. He could hurt her, and no one would question it, but he promised himself he wouldn’t be his father’s son (and he doesn’t break his promises).

She asks him one night, as he turns away from her in the bed, “Don’t you love me anymore?”

He says, “Yes.”

It’s not a lie, not really. Because he never loved her to begin with.
_____

Kurt leaves.

No one cries for him.

Blaine would, but according to the town and the Bible and to the rest of the world, it’s not allowed.

So he doesn’t, because sometimes, he has to follow the rules.
_____

“You’ll write to me,” he had asked on their last night together, twisting his body to look up at Kurt’s face.

“When I can.”

“And you’ll actually send the letters.”

“When I can.”
_____

I can’t send this letter. But I need to write it.

The war is difficult. I’d say more, it’s not like this is going to be censored, but I don’t want to. I just want to forget everything as soon as I see it, and if I write it, you know that I’ll remember it.

You’d probably see this and say, “You can send this. This isn’t bad.”

But it’s the ending that’s the worst.

I love you, Blaine.

I love you and I will always love you. You remember that, okay? There are things I have to forget, there are things you’ll probably have to forget, but if you don’t ever forget that, then I promise, I won’t.
_____

“Can I borrow that match?”

The other man looks over at Kurt before shrugging and handing it over. Kurt stares at the paper in his hand for a few more moments before he lights the match and sets the flame to the corner of the letter. He watches as it burns and ignores the other man grumbling about the new one’s always wasting things.

He waits until the last second to drop the letter, to let it burn up completely.

“You okay, kid?” the man he took the match from asks.
Kurt looks away from the letter and answers with the truth, because that’s what his father always told him to do.

“No.”
_____

“I just don’t know what to do about him.”

“Rachel, you just have to let him be. He’ll sort himself out, don’t worry.”

Blaine listens to his wife gossip about him.

Blaine listens to her friend pretending to have all the answers.

Blaine listens and pretends with them, because that’s easier than knowing.
_____

Kurt makes friends.

He doesn’t want to.

When you make friends, you get attached; you get caught up int he war. He doesn’t want to be caught up in the war. He just wants to do his part and go home. But they all drift to someone in the trenches, and he doesn’t fight it when a young man walks up to him and sticks out his hand with a large, easy smile.

“I’m Rory. Rory Flanagan.”
_____

“Did you hear that Kurt kid went to the war?”

Blaine looks over at the man sitting in the pew next to him, frowns and feigns ignorance. He’s gotten good at it, but he can feel the shell cracking, as if it’s too much.

“Really? Kurt who?”

“Hummel. Burt’s son,” the man leans back in his pew, sighs, “That kid is crazy for going. He won’t last long.”

Blaine looks down at the Bible in his hands and pretends that there isn’t a part of him nodding along in agreement.
_____

Rory tells him he joined to defeat the huns.

Rory tells him he joined to save lives.

Rory tells him he joined to be a hero.

“Heroes don’t survive,” Kurt had told him.

He hates being right.
_____

Blaine hears about Kurt all over town.

He knows why.

No one thinks he’ll come back.

So everyone thinks that Kurt won’t be able to rant and rave when the bad gossip reaches his ears.

They’re right, you know, a small part of Blaine whispers, Completely and totally right.
_____

Kurt looks around and sees death.

Kurt looks around and sees despair.

Kurt looks around and sees murder.
_____

Blaine drowns the voice in alcohol.

Rachel doesn’t fight him.

She just hands him the bottle and retreats to their room.

Blaine doesn’t know what she does there. And it’s been a long time since he’s cared.
_____

Where are they, Blaine?

Where are the heroes?

- Kurt.
_____

It’s months later and he gets a letter.

It’s short, with no name, but he doesn’t need a signature to know who it’s from.

He locks the bottle away and reads it over and over.

It’s hours later when he puts the letter down.

"I don't know. I'm sorry. I don't know."
_____

The Huns are coming.

No one says it.

No one says that the sky is blue, either.

But everybody knows it anyway.
_____

“You’ve been weird lately, Blaine.”

Rachel puts down her fork and stares at him across the table, but he ignores her.

“Blaine.”

He looks up for a second before nodding at her plate, “Keep eating. Don’t waste your food.”

Rachel stares at him for a few more seconds before she excuses herself.

Blaine lets her go.

He’s been doing that a lot lately.
_____

“The Huns,” they all whisper to each other.

“The Germans,” Kurt says, because calling them names won’t make them disappear.

“We advance,” the boss man says.

Stupid, Kurt thinks, because calling him names won’t make the decision any more intelligent.
_____

“Did you hear-”

“No.”

He doesn’t want to hear.

The less he hears, the less it hurts.

The less he hears, the less chances there are of that changing.
_____

“Go! Run!”

They push him.

He doesn’t want to go over the top.

“Go! Run!”

But they push him.
_____

Blaine unlocks the bottle and drinks.

Rachel finds him lying in their bed, sheets wet from a combination of spilt alcohol and piss. She looks down at him with pity in her eyes and shakes her head.

“Oh, Blaine.”
_____

We regret to inform you...
_____

“You need to get better,” Rachel tells him after he gets cleaned up.

Blaine looks at her and shakes his head, “I can’t.”

“Not alone,” she agrees.
They spend that afternoon pouring out liquid and throwing out bottles.
_____

The next of kin is Quinn Fabray.

She keeps the news to herself, because why would anyone else in this damn town care about her cousin?

She keeps the news to herself, because she doesn’t know.
_____

“So, I heard something interesting today,” Rachel says while she sets a plate down in front of Blaine.

He looks up at her, arches one brow. Things are better between them, less stilted, but he still doesn’t bother talking to her that much. She doesn’t make for good company.

“Yes,” she sits down and leans forward, like an excited teenager with a juicy piece of gossip, “I was talking to Quinn Fabray today.”

“And?”

“Her cousin died. Kurt, she said his name was. Sad, isn’t it?” she adds as Blaine stares at his plate, “And you wanted to go to that war.”

“Excuse me,” Blaine stands.

“Where are you going?”

He doesn’t answer her. He knows he doesn’t have to; she’ll be there when he comes back. She’s always there when he comes back.
_____

Blaine throws the bottles into the lake when he’s done.

He considers throwing himself in, but he’s not broken enough to take a coward’s way out.
_____

“I want to go to that funeral,” Blaine tells Rachel when they’re lying in bed together.

She looks over at him, frowning, “Why? You didn’t know him.”

I loved him, Blaine thinks.

“Quinn will need our support,” Blaine says.
_____

Blaine wanders away halfway through the funeral. There’s no body, so he’s not missing anything.

He limps through the cemetery and looks up at the sky, where Kurt had believed no one ever went, but he has to think that something is up there, otherwise there’s nothing left.

“You shouldn’t have gone. You didn’t have to go,” Blaine says as he walks, “You could have been safe. You could have stayed.”
_____

He cries.

Rachel looks at him funny, but she pretends it’s from the onions she’s chopping for dinner and says nothing.

So he continues crying.
_____

Rachel never asks him where he goes when he leaves once a week.

She doesn’t want to know.

It’s probably for the best.
_____

Rachel never asks him who the flowers are for when he leaves once a week.

She doesn’t want to know.

It’s probably for the best.
_____

Rachel never asks him who the new letter is from.

She doesn’t want to know.

Again, it’s probably for the best.
_____

Just in case: I love you.

-Kurt.

P.S.
And I’m sorry. But I had to go. But maybe, if my dad was right, I’ll see you again someday.

Maybe.
_____

Blaine stares at the knife in his hand, stares at the letter sitting on the table.

It’d be easy, to drag the knife across his wrist, to watch the blood fall until the black takes over.

It’d be easy, but cowards don’t go to Heaven.

And as long as there is a maybe, Blaine wants to go to Heaven.
_____

“You must really love your wife,” the florist remarks, “Never had a man buy flowers every week for this long.”

Blaine looks down at the flowers.

Rachel hates carnations.

Blaine forces himself to smile.

“Yeah...I really do,” he lies.

It’s easier that way.