Kurt stands in the shadows of the tiny bedroom – one of his favorite bedrooms. It’s in the house that was once his house when he was a child. When he was human. When he was still alive. Of course, the house was different then. It’s been renovated numerous times over the decades – plumbing added, then electricity, porchlights installed, the simple glass panes refitted with storm windows to make them energy efficient. So much has changed, time marching on, life moving forward, despite the fact that he’s no longer a part of it – as it does. As it will.

Even after tonight.

The walls in this room have been painted a bright, sunshine yellow - something he would never have done, but then, it wouldn’t have suited him. But it suits her, the little girl sitting at her honey wood desk - a desk that once belonged to her mother. She sniffles as she writes, carefully penning her good-bye letter on a sheet of Power Puff Girl stationary using her favorite pink pen, one with a fluffy yellow puff on the end, fastened with a spring so it bobs back and forth as she writes, googly eyes glued to the front shaking with every word.

Kurt can’t see over her shoulder from where he stands, but he can hear the words in his head while she writes them.

Dear Daddy and Joan and new baby Alex –

By the time you read this, I will be gone. I know that you don’t want me. And with the new baby coming, there won’t be any room for me here. I’m not angry or upset. I understand, so don’t be sad. I don’t want to tell you where I’m going, but know that I’ll be safe and happy when I get there.

Kurt shakes his head miserably, wiping at tears on his cheeks that shouldn’t be there. He’s been doing his job for longer than he was alive, and it always makes him melancholy, but he hasn’t cried in … well he can’t remember.

Kurt knows she’s planning to go to her Grandma Ethel’s house in California – the only family she has on her mother’s side since her mother passed away a few years ago. She’s only ten-years-old. She shouldn’t be making plans like this. She shouldn’t be running away. She might not realize it, but her father will miss her more than he’d miss anyone in his life, even his new wife and baby. This little girl, aside from being his first daughter and princess, is the only living link he has to her mother – a woman he loved from the first moment he set eyes on her, back when they, too, were only children.

This little girl is running away because a new baby is coming, and things around the house have been strained. Her father – working extra hours to prepare for the new arrival - hasn’t had the chance to sit for longer than five minutes and talk to her about it, about all the changes taking place, explain the stress it’s putting him under, and she thinks the problem in the house is her. She loves her father, and she thinks leaving will make things better for him.

Kurt’s there because she never makes it.

She’ll walk out her front door and get as far as the 7-11 eight blocks away, stopping for a Slushie when her backpack stuffed with clothes and toys gets too heavy to carry. That’s when a handsome young man named Peter will approach her. He’ll listen to her sad story and promise to take her to the Greyhound station. He’ll even offer to pay for her ticket so she can keep her allowance money for snacks along the way.

What happens after that is the kind of thing that people only read about in horror novels.

Kurt’s part in all of this is to do what he’s doing now – wait in the shadows until she’s gone, and then take her spirit home – but he won’t. Not this time.

But he can’t change her fate. He doesn’t have the power. If he leaves, if he refuses to stay, she might not die tonight. But eventually, she will. She won’t be able to escape it. He needs someone higher to help him.

There’s only one who can do it, and he’s not accustomed to bending the rules.

Kurt has been waiting for him long enough. He can’t wait much longer, but he won’t take his eyes off this little girl. He won’t leave her alone.

Kurt feels him when he enters the room, slinking up behind him like a serpent in the grass, icy threads trailing wherever he goes. Most angels avoid him. He’s a necessary evil. Even where they exist in the glory of the afterlife, no one speaks to him. No one goes out of their way to befriend him.

No one but Kurt.

The creature puts his hands on Kurt’s shoulders and squeezes, and Kurt silently prays for a yes.

“No,” he says simply.

“But Blaine …” Kurt starts, his voice trembling.

“I can’t impose my will on humans,” Blaine says, his chill breath touching Kurt’s skin, seeping through his clothes. “There are strict rules. I don’t make them. You know that.”

“Bullshit, Blaine!” Kurt snaps, his grief making way for anger, filling his unbeating heart and his broken soul. “You know you can if the situation requires it!”

“This situation,” Blaine hisses, “does not require it.”

“Blaine …”

“Kurt …” Blaine volleys, but he’s not toying with him. Not the way he might with others in his service. He doesn’t like seeing Kurt upset, but for as powerful as he is, this is a trap he can’t get locked in.

“Blaine, I can’t!” Kurt pleads. “I don’t want to do this! I’ve already taken her mother! I can’t take her, too!”

“What do you expect me to do, Kurt!?” Blaine growls, not angry at Kurt, but frustrated at the situation. He would do anything for Kurt, give him anything, but there are limits to what even he can do. Being Death is not a job for the sentimental. It must be done without compassion getting in the way.

Which is why Blaine gave up his own a long time ago.

This little girl is Kurt’s job. If Kurt doesn’t do what he was sent here to do, no other angel can, and that will be a problem.

Because Blaine will be forced to, and by doing so, he may lose Kurt forever.

Before Blaine’s angels brought him Kurt, being Death was a simple matter of absolutes. When someone’s time came, their soul was collected. End of story, quite literally. There was nothing in between. And, for his part, Kurt does his job, he does as he’s told, but he’s a convolution of grey areas – spectrums that bleed together and somehow, impossibly, become colors again. Colors that Blaine didn’t remember existed before Kurt. They remind him of a great many things. They remind him of what it felt like to be human, too. “Speed up time? Bend space for one little girl. I can’t!” Kurt draws his arms around his chest and pulls away from Blaine’s grasp. “You know how this plays out,” Blaine says in softer tones, hoping Kurt will let him touch him again. “It’s a big misunderstanding.”

“I know.” Kurt sniffles. “They didn’t forget about her. They didn’t leave her. Her father had to rush Joan to the hospital when she ruptured. The baby had to be delivered early. And this little girl got back from the sitter’s too late.”

“Dad won’t realize it until the deed is done,” Blaine picks up when Kurt can’t continue, hoping Kurt will see reason in the retelling. “She runs away and gets picked up by …” Kurt whimpers, looking back at Blaine – straight into his ghostly pale face and hollow gaze - with watery eyes. “I can’t fix it, Kurt,” he says. “It’s horrible and disgusting and an example of the true evil that exists on this stupid ball of dust and air, but there’s nothing I can do.”

Blaine puts his skeletal hands on Kurt’s shoulders again, trying to give him comfort, and Kurt lets his hands stay. He takes a breath in – a shuddery gulp of air to keep his voice steady.

“Her name is Elizabeth, Blaine,” Kurt says. “Just like my mother.”

“I know,” Blaine whispers. It’s dark, sinister, but Kurt can hear the affection in it.

“She’ll be scared and alone, and in agony for hours before she dies.” Kurt shakes his head. “Please. I don’t ask you for any favors. I take the lot that’s given to me. But this …” He looks back at the little girl drawing hearts on her note, a tear dropping from her chin and leaving a watermark on the paper. “I can’t, Blaine. There won’t be anything of me left if you make me do this. If I reap this little girl … I’ll truly be dead.”

Blaine feels Kurt’s fire beneath his fingertips canceling out his cold, the strength of his conviction, his need to save this girl. Blaine has met a great many quote/unquote good people in his time, people who have done admirable deeds on Earth, but never someone so genuinely good as Kurt. Blaine knows that Kurt doesn’t have the power, but he’ll find a way to move heaven and Earth to save her, even if it means losing himself in the process.

And Blaine can’t lose Kurt.

“Alright.” Blaine puts an arm around Kurt’s waist, pulling him against his bare rib cage and kissing him on the back of the head. “Just this once, and only because I love you.”

Kurt nods. He knows. He knows that of every angel he commands, all those who do his bidding and fear him, Blaine loves him.

When Kurt arrived in Blaine’s service and saw how the angels avoided him, he felt sorry for Blaine - sorry for this inhuman-looking creature, for all intents and purposes an angel, dressed in his black hood and seated on his morbid throne. And Kurt stayed. He stayed when Blaine refused to speak to him, stayed when Blaine tried to push him away. He felt compelled to stay, as if his true purpose in becoming a reaper wasn’t to bring human souls to heaven, but to bring Blaine’s soul back from wherever he’d banished it to. Slowly, after decades of time spent together, Blaine began to open up to him. He began to confide in him. He began to love him.

And, eventually, Kurt started to love him back.

Blaine raises a hand, his sleeve falling away from an arm that has begun to regrow skin, and snaps his fingers, calling up the book of Elizabeth’s life. It’s not a corporal book, but Kurt can still see it, the pages pulling back, the ink bleeding from them and the words rewritten, restarting life and time over from a few minutes ago, and a man rushes frantically in through the front door.

“Elizabeth!” he calls from the living room. “Lizzie! Baby! Where are you?”

The girl’s head pops up in amazement, and she wipes the tears off her cheeks.

“H-here!” she yells, getting up from her desk and running to her bedroom door. “Here I am! Upstairs in my room!”

“Oh, Lizzie!” her father cries, racing up the staircase to meet her, taking the steps two at a time. He grabs her in his arms and spins her around. “I’m sorry! I’m so so sorry that no one was here when you got home! You must have been so scared, being home alone.”

“No, I …” Elizabeth glances over her shoulder at the half-finished letter on her desk. “I thought that maybe you forgot me. That you took Joan and the baby and left me.”

Her father’s jaw drops, his eyes go wide, and he holds her tight in his arms.

“No, sweetheart,” he says, tears of joy and fear and sadness in his eyes. “That would never happen. Never ever. We love you, Lizzie. So much.”

Elizabeth buries her face into the crook of her father’s neck. Quietly watching, Kurt puts a hand over his still heart.

“It’s just that the baby came early,” her father explains, “and I had to get Joan to the hospital quick because …” He stops, not wanting to frighten his daughter with the details of everything that happened – the tremendous amount of blood Joan lost, the searing agony of contractions that weren’t moving the baby along, how they almost didn’t make it.

In truth, Joan was never in any danger. Kurt’s job is to this family, and he had no intention of leaving Elizabeth’s side.

“Oh, Lizzie,” her father says softly. “I guess we all just missed each other.”

She nods in agreement, then looks up, confused. “But then, how did you know I was here?”

Her father pulls away to look at her with a crinkled brow. “You texted me, darling.” He removes one hand from around his daughter and reaches in his pocket to pull out his phone. He unlocks his screen and shows Elizabeth the message – the one she had started to send, telling him that she was home and no one was there, but then canceled since she figured it didn’t matter anyway.

“But I …” Elizabeth cuts herself off. She doesn’t want to tell her father that she hadn’t sent it, that she erased it since she believed that he didn’t care. Because she thought he had chosen a new family over her and was leaving her behind. “Can we go see the baby?” she asks instead. “And Joan?”

“Of course,” her father says. “But first, I need you to promise me that no matter what happens, no matter how hard things gets around here, if we get short and tired and act unfair when we shouldn’t, that you never forget that I love you, Lizzie.” He looks into his daughter’s eyes, resting his forehead against hers. “I couldn’t go on without you.”

Lizzie smiles. “I’ll remember,” she says, clinging on tight as her father leaves the room with her in his arms. “I promise.”

Kurt watches them go, then turns in Blaine’s arms to give him a proper hug. “Thank you,” he whispers. “Thank you for doing that for them.”

“I didn’t do it for them,” Blaine says plainly, without conceit or shame. “I did it for you, because I love you.”

“You love me?” Kurt teases, but only lightly. Blaine doesn’t show feeling. For the longest time, Kurt didn’t think he had any, but he learned, when it comes to him, somehow they’re there.

“There are millions of humans,” Blaine says. “New ones come every day. They always will, like a plague upon this planet. But there’s only one of you.”

Kurt smiles. “And I love you.”

Blaine raises a questioning brow, as best he can with a face that’s only partially flesh, mostly bone. “And would I have lost you if I decided that I couldn’t save her life?”

Kurt tilts his head. He gives Blaine a gentle kiss on the lips, and Blaine, normally stoic in the face of every kind of joy and tragedy, takes an unnecessary breath.

“No,” Kurt says, placing a second kiss to Blaine’s flesh-less cheek. “I would have found a way to forgive you.”