If you just hold in your breath, till you come pack up in full [part 2]
Tittle: If you just hold in your breath, till you come pack up in full [part 2] [ part 1]
Rating: PG 13. violence, minor character death
Word count: ~11,800
Betas: I want to thank the lovely mockingj91, and the amazing Kyra (I really don't know how you could bear with me). You two are just too wonderful <3
Summary: Sets in wwii, this is a story of a prince and a boy. They met on the shore, going in opposite directions.
Written for the Glee Reverse Big Bang, the amazing art is by Alicia
Disclaimer: Glee and its characrers are creation of FOX Entertainment. The title of the fic is from Genius Next Door by Regina Spektor.
Other songs mentioned in this fic are: Lullaby for a Stormy Night by Vienna Teng, Keep Breathing by Ingrid Michaelson
9 years later
~
“People are being sent out there you know,” Kurt said when they woke up from their nap one afternoon.
“Huh?” Blaine wasn’t paying attention. He kept seeing that face of the young soldier he had taken yesterday, a gentle smile defying a bullet-pierced chest. She smelled of lilac, just like the way Kurt described his mother. Do all dying girls smell that way? Her eyes were closed; her hand was still gripping a blood-embroidered handkerchief. She was ready to go.
“They’ve just set up a military recruiting office in the village. They’re calling up people for mandatory registration.”
“They are what?”
“I’m not old enough to go but Finn got his letter yesterday. Since mom died, I never prayed to the Gods, Blaine. But I did, last night. I walked to the village and saw the line of men waiting to get their name on the list and I went home praying that it would be my turn next year. It’ll be my chance, Blaine; I can see it now, right before my eyes. It’s time and it’ll be amazing. There’ll be no more No’s from papa and I’ll go to places and see people and I will fight. For the country, for the village, yeah, I don’t really care you know, but it’ll be exhilarating… God oh god, finally, it’ll be truly living.”
Kurt eyes were closed and a breath was gusted out as if he’s already going, already gone. “Can you believe it?” He turned to Blaine; tears of joy were running down his cheeks. “Imagine all the stories I told you coming true, they are here.” Kurt’s shoulders were shaking violently: that mere prospect was too much. He could almost touch it then, that wonderful, marvelous world. For that moment, Blain just wanted to take hold of Kurt’s arms to keep him there, to keep him from falling and getting taken away by Cooper. He could see it just as vividly as Kurt’s vision.
“My life has finally begun, Blaine.”
“Kurt..” Blaine’s greatest fear had finally come true. He wanted so bad to tell Kurt, to stop him, but once again, he couldn’t bring himself to do so, to shatter Kurt’s world, their world with truths that were inconceivably untrue.
Finn left five days later. Blaine only met Kurt again after Finn was gone. Kurt said they had been busy preparing for Finn leaving and Burt told him to spend a little bit more time at home.
“I really didn’t mind. Finn looked like he needed somebody to calm his nerves. He’s not like those cowards in the village who were so scared to let go of their mama. He was just worried about Quinn and Beth. I get that, but Quinn was in hysterics. I honestly wouldn’t have been able to handle her if it hadn’t been for Carole. She’s always the calm and sensible one.”
“Quinn has a reason to be like that Kurt.”
“Yeah, I know. But I still think it’s good for him, you know, to go out like that. Even just for a little while. It’s already too sad to see him drop out of school to work and settle down like that. Like his life has already been planned out. How can he just decide to stop living simply because ‘he has no other choice?’ Finn doesn’t believe in himself but I do. I know he’s able to do great things, Blaine. He can conquer the world if he sets his mind to it.”
To conquer the world. “Not everyone wants to do that Kurt. And it isn’t the wisest desire either.” Blaine said, trying not to let his bitterness come through.
“There are always risks, I know. But again, there are always risks, Blaine. It’s just part of living. Plus, the officers say we are wining, and soldiers are coming home soon, we are bound to be the victors. I tried to tell Quinn how good Finn is at sea. There is nothing to be scared about.”
Blaine was scared. He was worried, for himself, because at those moments, sitting on the shore like that, he felt his legs become too real, tangled in Kurt’s.
~
That summer, the village was wrapped in tangible somberness. The hot damp air got thickened with confusion and sweet, silent panic. Walking with Kurt through the market, Blaine saw stories on people’s faces, dreams they had about their loved one, their ghosts, dreams they dared not say out loud as if saying them out loud would make them come true, as if they had any power over it. All those nightmares will come true anyway. Foolish, foolish mortals. They thought they had power over everything. Or so they tried to convince themselves.
Kurt said the village was kind of nice like this; now that some of the boys who had always taunted him already left, and others were too busy screaming their terrified bravery to pick on him as before. But there a few people Kurt missed too. Some of his classmates like Mike, and even Puck. “It’s hard to be the one who stays.”
Blaine spent almost all his time with Kurt. He only came back to the sea at night, and on the days that Cooper couldn’t cover for him. As long as Cooper was the older, mature brother who took care of everything, Blaine got to be the irresponsible one. It wasn’t fair but Cooper understood, he always did. Blaine knew that, and he also knew he couldn’t have made it if it hadn’t been for his brother.
He often dropped by Kurt’s house during that time because Kurt had to spend more time at home taking care of things. Kurt knew Finn had tried to look out for him-he didn’t help much but he did try really hard-so Kurt felt like Quinn and Beth were now his responsibility. Burt still went fishing every morning, hoping to keep things going normal as much as he could. In this time of chaos, Blaine found himself learning a lot more about humans.
Finn’s letters came regularly; he didn’t have much to say, just talking about his day, busy at work from dawn till dusk. He was assigned to be in charge of a supply unit, stationing safely away from the battlefields. He had never seen an enemy ship or even gunfire. Carole said there was something about hearing the most boring routine from people that was so settling, knowing that they woke up just another morning. And maybe telling it, too, would carry those soldiers through another day of work. Blaine saw the glittering tears of happiness in her eyes as she carefully put all those letters in a small rusted tin box.
~
Nine months later, another order for recruitment was announced. Blaine could smell the fear blossoming amid the February’s bloom. Questions pervaded the whispering winds: “But they said we are winning?” Here’s the thing you need to know about wars. Blaine said to himself, Winning or losing doesn’t matter much there. You win or you lose, they are your chances. Dying isn’t.
Burt got the letter to go. Blaine had seen Kurt wallowing himself in sadness before, he would sing Kurt to sleep then, just like the way he’d calm raging storms. To Blaine, sadness was decipherable; sadness was something he had learned to manage. But Kurt with his muffled anger, with his choked Why isn’t it my turn? and It’s not fair got Blaine completely lost, because those were questions even Gods failed to fathom.
Blaine saw the shadows of fear flash in Kurt’s eyes. For the first time, he was afraid the light in them would go out. Kurt kept talking about courage yet Blaine kept seeing how scared he was, perhaps because he had seen enough mortals’ fear to know their feeling of loss. And it was not just about Burt. Kurt was at his wits’ end wondering how he could hold Carole together once Burt was gone, though she was being so, so incredibly strong. He knew she was breaking, and gosh, Kurt would crumble too it if she fell apart. That was the reason, so much more than his dream of sailing away, that made Kurt wish he had been the one to go instead. Blaine could only be silently thankful that Kurt wasn’t.
The afternoon before Burt’s last day in the village, Blaine found Carole holding herself on the kitchen floor, crying, thinking no one was home.
~
Blaine took away a boy today. He was amazed at how calm he had become, taking the boy hand and pulling him out of a woman’s grip; her left arm and shoulder blown of, yet she was still hanging on to him so tightly as if he could have saved her somehow. The boy was about Kurt’s age, and he had chestnut hair too. But his eyes were two black shallow holes. Blaine thought of the many more who were going to end up deep under the sea just like that.
~
Blaine was there when they said goodbye to Burt. It was a clear day at the port, one of the many that fishermen knew too well to mistake it with anything but the forewarning of an imminent storm. Blaine knew Burt was trying his best not to be sentimental about leaving, but when Kurt yelled out Papa and ran into his arms, they both burst into uncontrollable sobs. Although Kurt was taller, stronger and much more definedly shaped, Blaine still saw the little boy weeping into his father’s shoulder on the abandoned beach ten years ago- so devastatingly gorgeous, so innocent, so breakable that Blaine shattered his own heart aching to shelter this boy from the world, to give him a whole different universe made purely of love and peace. But it all was just wishful thinking. Such a human thing. Blaine berated himself. Nothing had changed in the mortals’ world. They were still fatally foolish.
“Hey, it’s okay, kid, I’m gonna be back soon. The war is ending, don’t you hear? Take care of Carol and Quinn and Beth too, okay? It’s all on you now… And Blaine,” Burt lifted his face up to look at Blaine, his arms were still holding Kurt close. “Ya keep your promise?”
“Yes, sir. I will.” I’ll try.
Before he boarded, Blaine gave Burt an enchanted necklace he made from mermaids’ seashells. It’s for luck.
“Thank you, Blaine.” Burt said as if Blaine was giving him the world, though he had no idea that the necklace was blessed with protection from the Sea God. He wasn’t thinking about it anyway.
~
The ships finally set sail. Kurt walked back to the beach; Blaine followed him. They sat on the endless sand for like an eternity, or just a second, letting lullabies from the waves wash away the time.
“Your hands are cold.”
“It’s the water.” Blaine smiled softly, but Kurt already immersed himself in the scattered lyrics. There was something about falling asleep that was just like the sea, so easy, so natural and recurring; one could count on it to never run out of waves coming running, unfailingly overlapping, always in full.
And for those dreamless moments, the storm stood still.
Little child, be not afraid,
though thunder explodes and lightning flash
illuminates your tear-stained face,
I’m here tonight.
~
“Do you believe in Gods Blaine?” Kurt asked letting himself sink slowly into sleep, into Blaine’s scent of salted water.
“Huh?”
“Do you believe, like, they exist, somewhere?”
“Well..” Blaine took a deep breath; his fingers for a second stopped playing with Kurt’s hair “I think believing is never a bad thing, doesn’t matter where you place your faith on. I mean, at least, there are times you need to hang onto to something… even though the Gods may not be the best choice.”
“You’re very different, you know that? The way you talk…” Kurt smiled to himself, softly, the kind of smile that died gently in the middle of its own, fading into thoughts, into nostalgia and premonition.
“Really? How so?”
“There are things you either believe in, or you just don’t”
“You think so?”
“…”
“yeah”
“yeah, maybe this time, I do. Maybe this time, I hope that they’re there to hear my pray.”
“Your pray”
“Not that one”
~
Burt said in his letters he was being relocated, but they hadn’t heard from him since. It had been six weeks Carole kept saying, in her very reassuring voice, that he was probably too busy with all the chaos of the war. Finn’s writings also came so short and so far between. Everyday Kurt would decide not to wait for the mailman but to go straight to the post office after school to check for their letters. Every day he would come home disheartened but then immediately threw himself into the chair next to Blaine. The two of them and Carole, and Quinn, too, would read the newspaper and listen to the radio together, hoping in hopelessness that they would hear something about their loved ones. Blaine had long been purposely avoiding the area where Burt said his platoon would be. The day Burt left, he thought about following the man but he knew it would just have been pointless anyway. Gods were forbidden to interfere with mortals’ fate. And Blaine was scared that he would find Burt among the drifted souls. He couldn’t imagine himself telling Kurt about it. He couldn’t lie about that.
~
Out at sea, blackened shadows, bruised Gods, and wounded ghosts were interchanging into one another in the mist of smouldering ashes and treacherous red. Hovering above them all, between one step and another, angels of death were touching people on the shoulder, slight, gentle touches that would just tip the soul over. Time was the key there. Gods never killed anybody, it was just their time, the concept mortals themselves created.
Blaine used to love the golden threads piercing through the water when mermaids came up and down from the surface. He would spend all day watching that dance party of lights inside the water and awe at how gracefully the past and the present were waltzing in pairs. Little did he know then that they were delivering mortals’ souls, dancing to the magnificence of death. The darkness there was so calm and quiet and illuminated, as if all the cries above had all vanished into crimson sea foam and drifted elsewhere. There was nothing such as pain under the sea.
~
“It’s not fair that you are always the one awake.”
Blaine gave a soft smile, tracing his forefinger along Kurt’s palm: “I’m sorry Kurt but I don’t want to share watching you falling asleep”
Kurt laughed then; gleeful but noiseless laughter brush against Blaine’s collarbone: “I can’t believe you’re real sometimes.”
“There are so many things we cannot believe Kurt.”
“Yeah, yeah. Keep whispering waves into my skins.” Kurt turned and buried his face into Blaine side. “I like the way you make words and sounds lapping in my veins.”
~
May 27th, 1943
Lilac was in season.
The sun was being swallowed whole, glorifying the entire sky with a burning orange. Kurt was late. Blaine had waited for a while, getting more and more impatient from the excitement to show Kurt the castle he had made out of coral reef for Kurt’s birthday. He knew right away that something was wrong when he saw Kurt walking down the beach. Kurt had on not his usual veil of sadness but instead a carefully worn face and controlled look at Blaine. A scared hope.
“Kurt?”
“Hi, Blaine.”
“Is everything…all right?”
“Listen,” Kurt stood facing Blaine. “You’re gonna just let me talk. Hear me out and wait until I finish to say anything. Okay?”
“Okay…”
“Right. So you know I turn eighteen today. I’m finally of age. So uhmm… I went to the office and registered myself voluntarily...
“Kurt? Wha…”
“No, I’m still talking, Blaine. They don’t have a recruitment scheduled but there is this supply ship sailing off tomorrow at noon. I ’was thinking… that you’re going with me?”
Blaine felt all his senses take leave and he knew he had stopped breathing but he had lost control of his body to tell itself to make a sound.
“I talked to Carole last night. She wasn’t happy about me leaving, but she said she would not stop me. I think she gets it, Blaine. More than papa, she gets it, that I may get killed out there but I will be dead already if I stay. She knows that I need to go out there and out there needs me too. The sea needs Kurt Hummel,” Kurt tried to laugh, “don’t you think? Plus!.. Plus, I’ll be looking for Papa. So will you... will you go with me?” Kurt’s expecting eyes were looking straight into Blaine’s and he could not contain a smile spreading across his face, just as bright as his fabricated adventures. That smile pained Blaine more than any of Kurt’s broken tears.
“No, Kurt! You’ve lost your mind. You can’t go into the war like that.”
“I will fight if I have to.” Kurt said calmly. “You know I have always wanted to go out to the sea, don’t be ridiculous now, Blaine. Think about it. We will see the world together, all of it, and we will live those stories and find new ones, too, a thousand, no a million times more amazing stories. What, Blaine? Why are you looking like that? Don’t you want to know how it is out there? Truly living?”
“I know how it is out there. Please don’t go, Kurt.”
“You do want to discover new, wonderful things, right. That’s why I’m telling you to go with me.” Kurt wasn’t listening to Blaine anymore. He was too busy wallowing himself in the prospects of his dream journey. “Imagine Blaine, we can fight together at sea. I can smell it already, the fire and the salted water. The sweat of the brave. We’ll be greater than Gods.”
Just like that, Blaine thought he just died, the mortal kind of dying. He realized Kurt was under that human curse too. Seeking to defeat gods.
“No no, Kurt. Just no. It’s nothing like what you imagine no. It’s real out there, Kurt. These stories, your stories, they live with us, but out there, out there, everything dies. There, truths and lies all end up dead. You canno..”
“Stop it Blaine,” Kurt snapped. “Don’t…” He walked away from Blaine, then turned back, his ears fury red, “Don’t tell me what I can or cannot do. I’m sick of it. I thought…I thought you were different, Blaine. I thought you were like me, unafraid of anything, but apparently you are just another scared little coward like those ignorant people in the village. Never know anything other than this rotten village, never want to. Never have the courage to go out there, to, to just live. Coward, coward Blaine. Fine, you can stay but nothing can stop me from going. “
Kurt turned away, his hands frustrated with his tearing eyes. “Why don’t you get it? That half-living is not living.”
“Kurt…”
“Don’t say my name. You don’t get to say my name like that. I thought you’re… We are supposed to be out there Blaine. You and me against the world.”
“It’s not that easy Kurt.”
“Easy? I know it’s not Blaine. But that’s the point, don’t you see. Easy is ordinary. I cannot do ordinary. I have had enough of it already. I want my stories!”
“STORIES ARE NOT REAL KURT. No matter what we keep telling ourselves, they are just fantasies.” Broken truths.
“No, Blaine! I’m not gonna to listen to your babbling because you are terrified of the unknown. Don’t make up truths as something to hide from reality.”
“I know, Blaine. I know that I don’t know anything about life out there. But that is what I want. What I’ve always wanted. I’m going and I don’t care where I’m heading. I just need to get out of here. I…I just need You.”
Kurt fell down on the sand and sat there, the heels of his hands dug hard into his eyes, trying to contain his frustration, his disappointment, his feeling of being betrayed. Kurt wasn’t crying or sobbing, not even making a sound. He was just breathing, deep overworked breaths that reminded Blaine to breathe too, his eyes closed, Why don’t you stay?
Kurt gathered himself and looked up, utterly weary with red imprints around his eyes where his hands had been.
“I’m sorry. I guess going out there has always been my plan, Blaine and.. and for the past ten years, you are the plan, too. I never thought of asking you. It’s …my fault.” Kurt laughed in dry, gentle sobs. “You were that one constant to me.. I.. never… if you… want to stay… I’m not making you to go with me.”
“Kurt, please don…”
“I’m not mad at you.” He said through his tear-smeared lips, “I’m really not. You will always be my friend, the one I’ll conquer the world with. You gave me the courage I never thought I had Blaine. You have been my sheltering port till I’m ready to set sail on my own,” Kurt said in a quiet voice, hoarse from breathing but so devastatingly composed. “I am now.”
“Kurt,” Blaine muttered, as if it was the only word he could manage then, the only word to every plea he was making.
“No it’s... it’s okay, Blaine. I know not everybody is dying to go like I do.” Kurt tried valiantly to look cheerful. “And you’re not a coward. No,” Kurt took Blaine’s hands.” You are so incredibly brave Blaine, for you make me feel brave.”
Blaine could see all mortal pains in Kurt’s smile then, the sadness that made his entire being ache and torn more savagely, more violently than when he saw Kurt’s crumbling tears. Blaine could never understand how humans can take their brighter than the sun smile and turn it into unbearable sorrow like that.
“I guess this is our goodbye then.” Kurt stood up, and before turning away, placed a gentle kiss on Blaine’s forehead. Goodbye, Blaine.”
“No.Wait Kurt… WAIT!” Blaine shouted. He felt as if that one breath had taken all his god power out of him.
“Blaine?”
“Kurt, I’m the sea prince.”
“What?” Kurt snapped back.
“I am the sea..”
“I heard you. Have you gone mad Blaine? Stop talking nonsense. You going insane won’t make me…”
“Shut up Kurt. Just.. shut up.” Blaine backed into the water; his eyes were still on Kurt’s, staring through his angry tears. Blaine felt his whole body heaving, his feet aching with a burning sensation he thought he had long forgotten. The water was up to his waist now and his tail was transforming. Kurt looked at Blaine, completely bewildered
“Blaine? What are you...?”
“Hush, Kurt.”
He took a jump backwards and fell into the sea. Blaine heard Kurt calling his name in panic, but he had to take a breath in the water to compose his senses before he came back up.
With a sudden splash of water, Blaine submerged, flipped himself up onto a rock, displaying his heavenly figure to mortal eyes for the first time. The dying sun light poured on his tail glittering touches, golden on emerald metallic purple. Gods had the entire spectrum of color on their bodies, and Blaine’s was a dreamed up aurora.
Kurt’ eyes went wide, unblinking; his left hand came cover his mouth while the right hand was holding the left as if it could not hold itself together in disbelief. Kurt’s sharp intake of breath cut the air so loudly over Blaine’s breathlessness.
“You’re…you’re glowing...” Kurt couldn’t finish; he kept shaking his head and looking at Blaine tail twitching long, strong strokes.
“Kurt, I know this is too much to believe but please, let me explain….Please, Kurt.”
Blaine took Kurt’s silence and filled it with his story. It was his turn then. He told Kurt everything, of his family, of how they’re Gods and most of all, how they deliver mortals’ souls from battlefields to their infinite void.
Once Blaine finished, Kurt doubled over, letting out strangled gasps he had been holding. He closed his eyes; his mouth was still hanging open. He started to blink. Blaine thought Kurt was blinking away what was happening, his wildest hallucination. He was not sure Kurt was ready to take in this reality. Finally, inhaling one final breath, Kurt looked up:
“I don’t understand... I don’t … If Gods do exist out there, if.. if you are one of them, why haven’t you stopped the war already? Why didn’t you? When Finn had to go and then Papa... You’re supposed to not let all things happen from the beginning…who are you?”
“We cannot interfere with humans’ free will Kurt. Mortals have to decide where they will end up, we just... we take care of the after. You have to make your own choice.” Blaine uttered a bitter laugh. “I’m breaking the Gods’ oracles right now, telling you this. But I can’t.. I can’t just watch you going to sea like that while I know you are going to fall … I… I never get their reason; there must be one, I just… I think we have failed at some point. We always know better, we should have stepped in and saved mortals from the end they are designing for themselves… But… I can’t save everybody.”
When Kurt finally looked back at Blaine, Blaine felt as if he had waited forever for Kurt to respond, to say anything; but all he mustered was:
“Okay.”
“Kurt, I’m sorry to tell you all this but I had no other choice.”
“So you can swim to practically anywhere? You have been at battles? You have seen the world out there?”
“Yeah…yes.”
“That’s…that’s amazing. I can’t believe it. Blaine..This is beyond anything I…anyone could ever think of. Just..unimaginable. But if it’s true. If all Gods are true...” Kurt looked like he was still trying to convince himself not to jump out of this dream. Not so fast. “We can go and explore together! You can show me all the places we talked about and we will be at battles to, I will fight on board and you’ll be under the water, reaping enemy souls. It’ll be the best adventure. The story no one could dream of.”
“No. We are not reapers. No, Kurt, aren’t you listening? We delivered mortals to their deaths. Not just the enemies. Everyone, Kurt.” You are all the same when you fall down.
“Blaine, don’t you think this is greater than fate? What are the chances that a boy like me in an almost nonexistent place meets you? Be my partner, Blaine, be my guardian at sea and there’ll be no place we cannot conquer.”
“Kurt. People die out there!”
“People die here too Blaine. Don’t you get it? Mortals die. That’s the deal. But at least out there, the Gods will know when I die. I will not be just another muted soul that lives in silence and goes in silence, unremembered in this already dead village Blaine. I will die someday and I want it not to be pointless. I want to die doing something. I want a death worth dying for.”
“Kurt”
“And this is wonderful, Blaine. If I die, when I die, don’t you worry, for you will come to take my hand and lead the way.”
Blaine shook his head repeatedly, his voice, his body trembling. “No. I.. I can’t”. He didn’t know what he was talking about anymore. He couldn’t make Kurt stay? He couldn’t go with Kurt? He couldn’t get Kurt understand the brutality of being humans?
“I can’t have you die. I just can’t…”. Teardrops trickled down Blaine’s already soak face. He was crying now. So was Kurt.
“I can’t have you die.”
Blaine leapt down into the water and disappeared.
~
The morning after, the sky was so blue and so clear that you could even see the faded moon. Yet, as noon approached, a raging storm came savaging the entire village, lifting houses’ rooftops, pulling ships from their anchors. Everyone thought the end was finally there, that the Gods were asking for their dues.
Kurt ran to the abandoned beach, defying the monstrous winds. With each step he felt as if he was going to be lifted up and thrown into the center of the howling hurricane. The center of Blaine.
“Hey Kurt,” Blaine said cheerily. “You’re not going anymore?” He was half-standing in the water with his tail swirling in fury. His broad chest was like the northern sky during wrathful tempest.
“You can’t just do that Blaine!” Kurt yelled over the roaring winds. “You can’t just make storms to stop me from going like that. You can’t stop me.”
“Damn it, Kurt! I’m the prince of the sea; I can do whatever I want.”
“Blaine…Blaine, don’t you think it hurts me too? You are the only thing that makes me want to stay. I’ve never, never imagined there would be something here that would hold me back. And then you. You came, Blaine. But I’m indefinitely me, just as you’re indefinitely you. You can never stop being the sea price, being a God doing what Gods do. Neither can I, stop being me and stay. It’s just who I am Blaine. Leaving is the only way for me to be.”
Blaine was staring into Kurt now. Right into him. The sea was still smashing the sky but Blaine found himself helpless.
“I’m sorry, Blaine,” Kurt uttered, barely audible in the angry winds, “I know you are trying to protect me, to keep me alive but living and dying don’t matter much to me. They really don’t. May be one day, when I was sailing out there, on my own, amidst the never ending water, I will be mature enough to want come ashore, to come back home. But until then, I just have to go. Let me go. Please, Blaine. I know you understand.”
“Yeah.” Blaine breathed.
And the storm just stopped. He stopped. Altogether. It was as if there was no air anymore. Blaine stopped because he understood. He hated it but he understood. He understood Kurt’s need to run away, he understood Kurt. Kurt was… Kurt.
He turned and looked out to the sea afar, seeing his father, his brother. They were right. The casualty of being humans. Blaine realized that he could try anything but he would never change the fact that Kurt was a mortal. And mortals were foolish. They died.
“You know, leaving people behind is always a hard part, Blaine. And leaving you is the hardest.” Kurt started to walk back to the village,
“Good bye Blaine.”
~
The sky went back to being as blue as Kurt’s eyes, as calm as his breaths when he was falling asleep on Blaine shoulders.
~
Blaine spent all of his time in the village after Kurt left. He thought about going after Kurt; he wanted to, but he couldn’t will himself to go into the water. He kept having those dreams, those visions he saw when he was younger, watching his big brother do his work. Cooper was still doing it, actually. He knew his father was furious with him abandoning his duty, but if he went out to the sea he would just see Kurt everywhere: in the flashes of mothers’ eyes looking at their dying daughters, in the young soldiers’ shiny guns, in the books of little boys who should have stayed in school. He would see Kurt in every death, in every soul fallen into the sea going towards their tragic ends.
Sometimes, Blaine still felt the tear-soaked lips on his forehead.
Cooper came one day, he said he had talked to Father. Blaine was allowed a break, but not for long.
“Not for long, Blaine. I get it, what you’re going through. But I also get that this will soon be over and you will come back to the sea. Because that’s who you are. The sea prince. And you will find a way to make being you bearable. Do you hear?” Cooper held Blaine’s head in his hands, so strong and warm and safe. For the first time in a very long while, Blaine felt anchored.
“Remember that you’re not the only one who gets confused by mortals’ foolishness. But you have always handled it so well. I have never told you that but it’s true. Ever since you were little and I saw you watching all the madness up above. You always figured out a way. Hang in there, Blaine. You’ll figure out a way this time too.”
~
Chaos cast a thick, heavy layer of fright onto the village. The air was too suffocating to breathe, yet again, no one was really breathing anymore. Sometimes, when Blaine took a walk around town, through the market, through the playground, he couldn’t recognize the place at all. He was walking through a safe shelter that was no more. Land had become the sea. People were living with looming shadows, with whispers carried from across the oceans by the bitter wind. Every morning, as the rising sun just turned bloodish orange, a mailman would come from door to door on his rusted bicycle to deliver letters from the death. Every morning, Blaine would hide away near the water but he could still hear man’s moans and cries of despair.
At night, he fell asleep on the beach, curled up in the spot that he could still feel Kurt’s back imprint on the sand.
It was still early as he was strolled down the beach that day. Layers of fog and clouds tangled so vast, so endlessly that it was barely possible for Blaine to tell which one was right in front of him, which was from afar. Everything was floating still, in the mist of it all, just transparent enough for November lights to get through; fiery red still asleep under the foggy morn made a beautiful smoky purple. Waves after waves after waves rushed into the rocky sand quietly, seamlessly from the air so thick that Blaine wondered how they could make it to shore. But they always did.
That day, the necklace he gave to Burt the day he left made it there too.
He forced himself not to think of the necklace, of what it could mean because he would just think of terror. Blaine rushed back to Kurt’s house. Somehow, Beth’s crying became his favourite music. It was like a lullaby just for him, unfailingly calming him regardless of the weather at sea.
However, that day, as he stepped into the house, he didn’t hear Beth’s voice demanding to be fed. It was Quinn. Blaine saw an old friend of Finn, Puck, holding Quinn while she was convulsing on the floor, screaming, weeping uncontrollably like all evil madness had come over her. Blaine thought his heart just stopped.
Quinn passed out after what seemed like an eternity of excruciating torture. Blaine helped Puck put Quinn into bed. He worried for Carole; she didn’t said a word or even shed a tear. Her knuckles went white gripping the edge of the kitchen table when Puck was telling the news. Once he was done, she just stood up, staggered into her room, shutting the door behind her. Carole. Beth was oddly quiet today, sleeping in Puck’s arms. Puck started to cry then:
“It was all my fault.. If I hadn’t insulted the commander... What the fuck is wrong with me? Why does God let people like me live but not Finn? What the fuck is wrong with him?”
Blaine just patted Puck on the shoulder.
“It should have been me. Finn should have been the one to come back…”
Finn was given Puck’s post on the battleship when Puck got stuck with the supply and the cleaning section. Before Finn left, he made Puck promise to write letters home in his name, telling them he was okay, still alive and breathing. It worked out for a while; Finn and Puck kept in touch until one day, Finn’s platoon was ambushed and the entire ship got blown up.
“After Finn died, I could not write to Quinn and Carole anymore. I could not bear the thought of lying to them, giving them false hope while Finn was lying somewhere out there unknown of. I’m such a coward” Puck had to put Beth down because of his violent sobs.
“Finn was the bravest man I have ever known.”
Blaine didn’t remember what happened next, he just blinked awake and found himself sitting curled up on a dock at the port, seeing everything that sea creatures were seeing. He watched the far away ships, wondering which one was Kurt’s. But he couldn’t find one. Instead, Blaine saw Kurt’s deep blue eyes still open, yet so vacant, as if his soul had been evacuated to another level. Kurt eyes never closed, just like that, staring in to the nothingness of his dream world, floating on the water, waiting to be taken like just another body, done with life, finished. Blaine hated himself for not trying harder. He hated that was the one who let Kurt go.
It hit Blaine then how right Kurt was when he told Blaine that he was a coward. He had always kept running, kept hiding here. Kurt said Blaine made him brave but it was the other way around. One incredibly mortal boy had managed to make being himself so bearable. No, it was more than that. It was heavenly wonderful. Kurt gave Blaine courage. He had to stop hiding.
Standing on the dock, his eyes closed, Blaine dived into the water.
TBC
A/N: After I finished this and got comments from my betas, I decided to add a second past to the story. I have things mapped out and all that, but it is pretty long (like another 10,000). I'm unable to put everything together in time for the Big Bang posting. I hope I will have the second part done soon, though it has to be after school ends.
Comments are greatly appreciated. This is the longest piece I have written, I would love to hear your constructive criticism. I'm Stonebell on tumblr; my askbox are always open. Be nice :)
Rating: PG 13. violence, minor character death
Word count: ~11,800
Betas: I want to thank the lovely mockingj91, and the amazing Kyra (I really don't know how you could bear with me). You two are just too wonderful <3
Summary: Sets in wwii, this is a story of a prince and a boy. They met on the shore, going in opposite directions.
Written for the Glee Reverse Big Bang, the amazing art is by Alicia
Disclaimer: Glee and its characrers are creation of FOX Entertainment. The title of the fic is from Genius Next Door by Regina Spektor.
Other songs mentioned in this fic are: Lullaby for a Stormy Night by Vienna Teng, Keep Breathing by Ingrid Michaelson
9 years later
~
“People are being sent out there you know,” Kurt said when they woke up from their nap one afternoon.
“Huh?” Blaine wasn’t paying attention. He kept seeing that face of the young soldier he had taken yesterday, a gentle smile defying a bullet-pierced chest. She smelled of lilac, just like the way Kurt described his mother. Do all dying girls smell that way? Her eyes were closed; her hand was still gripping a blood-embroidered handkerchief. She was ready to go.
“They’ve just set up a military recruiting office in the village. They’re calling up people for mandatory registration.”
“They are what?”
“I’m not old enough to go but Finn got his letter yesterday. Since mom died, I never prayed to the Gods, Blaine. But I did, last night. I walked to the village and saw the line of men waiting to get their name on the list and I went home praying that it would be my turn next year. It’ll be my chance, Blaine; I can see it now, right before my eyes. It’s time and it’ll be amazing. There’ll be no more No’s from papa and I’ll go to places and see people and I will fight. For the country, for the village, yeah, I don’t really care you know, but it’ll be exhilarating… God oh god, finally, it’ll be truly living.”
Kurt eyes were closed and a breath was gusted out as if he’s already going, already gone. “Can you believe it?” He turned to Blaine; tears of joy were running down his cheeks. “Imagine all the stories I told you coming true, they are here.” Kurt’s shoulders were shaking violently: that mere prospect was too much. He could almost touch it then, that wonderful, marvelous world. For that moment, Blain just wanted to take hold of Kurt’s arms to keep him there, to keep him from falling and getting taken away by Cooper. He could see it just as vividly as Kurt’s vision.
“My life has finally begun, Blaine.”
“Kurt..” Blaine’s greatest fear had finally come true. He wanted so bad to tell Kurt, to stop him, but once again, he couldn’t bring himself to do so, to shatter Kurt’s world, their world with truths that were inconceivably untrue.
Finn left five days later. Blaine only met Kurt again after Finn was gone. Kurt said they had been busy preparing for Finn leaving and Burt told him to spend a little bit more time at home.
“I really didn’t mind. Finn looked like he needed somebody to calm his nerves. He’s not like those cowards in the village who were so scared to let go of their mama. He was just worried about Quinn and Beth. I get that, but Quinn was in hysterics. I honestly wouldn’t have been able to handle her if it hadn’t been for Carole. She’s always the calm and sensible one.”
“Quinn has a reason to be like that Kurt.”
“Yeah, I know. But I still think it’s good for him, you know, to go out like that. Even just for a little while. It’s already too sad to see him drop out of school to work and settle down like that. Like his life has already been planned out. How can he just decide to stop living simply because ‘he has no other choice?’ Finn doesn’t believe in himself but I do. I know he’s able to do great things, Blaine. He can conquer the world if he sets his mind to it.”
To conquer the world. “Not everyone wants to do that Kurt. And it isn’t the wisest desire either.” Blaine said, trying not to let his bitterness come through.
“There are always risks, I know. But again, there are always risks, Blaine. It’s just part of living. Plus, the officers say we are wining, and soldiers are coming home soon, we are bound to be the victors. I tried to tell Quinn how good Finn is at sea. There is nothing to be scared about.”
Blaine was scared. He was worried, for himself, because at those moments, sitting on the shore like that, he felt his legs become too real, tangled in Kurt’s.
~
That summer, the village was wrapped in tangible somberness. The hot damp air got thickened with confusion and sweet, silent panic. Walking with Kurt through the market, Blaine saw stories on people’s faces, dreams they had about their loved one, their ghosts, dreams they dared not say out loud as if saying them out loud would make them come true, as if they had any power over it. All those nightmares will come true anyway. Foolish, foolish mortals. They thought they had power over everything. Or so they tried to convince themselves.
Kurt said the village was kind of nice like this; now that some of the boys who had always taunted him already left, and others were too busy screaming their terrified bravery to pick on him as before. But there a few people Kurt missed too. Some of his classmates like Mike, and even Puck. “It’s hard to be the one who stays.”
Blaine spent almost all his time with Kurt. He only came back to the sea at night, and on the days that Cooper couldn’t cover for him. As long as Cooper was the older, mature brother who took care of everything, Blaine got to be the irresponsible one. It wasn’t fair but Cooper understood, he always did. Blaine knew that, and he also knew he couldn’t have made it if it hadn’t been for his brother.
He often dropped by Kurt’s house during that time because Kurt had to spend more time at home taking care of things. Kurt knew Finn had tried to look out for him-he didn’t help much but he did try really hard-so Kurt felt like Quinn and Beth were now his responsibility. Burt still went fishing every morning, hoping to keep things going normal as much as he could. In this time of chaos, Blaine found himself learning a lot more about humans.
Finn’s letters came regularly; he didn’t have much to say, just talking about his day, busy at work from dawn till dusk. He was assigned to be in charge of a supply unit, stationing safely away from the battlefields. He had never seen an enemy ship or even gunfire. Carole said there was something about hearing the most boring routine from people that was so settling, knowing that they woke up just another morning. And maybe telling it, too, would carry those soldiers through another day of work. Blaine saw the glittering tears of happiness in her eyes as she carefully put all those letters in a small rusted tin box.
~
Nine months later, another order for recruitment was announced. Blaine could smell the fear blossoming amid the February’s bloom. Questions pervaded the whispering winds: “But they said we are winning?” Here’s the thing you need to know about wars. Blaine said to himself, Winning or losing doesn’t matter much there. You win or you lose, they are your chances. Dying isn’t.
Burt got the letter to go. Blaine had seen Kurt wallowing himself in sadness before, he would sing Kurt to sleep then, just like the way he’d calm raging storms. To Blaine, sadness was decipherable; sadness was something he had learned to manage. But Kurt with his muffled anger, with his choked Why isn’t it my turn? and It’s not fair got Blaine completely lost, because those were questions even Gods failed to fathom.
Blaine saw the shadows of fear flash in Kurt’s eyes. For the first time, he was afraid the light in them would go out. Kurt kept talking about courage yet Blaine kept seeing how scared he was, perhaps because he had seen enough mortals’ fear to know their feeling of loss. And it was not just about Burt. Kurt was at his wits’ end wondering how he could hold Carole together once Burt was gone, though she was being so, so incredibly strong. He knew she was breaking, and gosh, Kurt would crumble too it if she fell apart. That was the reason, so much more than his dream of sailing away, that made Kurt wish he had been the one to go instead. Blaine could only be silently thankful that Kurt wasn’t.
The afternoon before Burt’s last day in the village, Blaine found Carole holding herself on the kitchen floor, crying, thinking no one was home.
~
Blaine took away a boy today. He was amazed at how calm he had become, taking the boy hand and pulling him out of a woman’s grip; her left arm and shoulder blown of, yet she was still hanging on to him so tightly as if he could have saved her somehow. The boy was about Kurt’s age, and he had chestnut hair too. But his eyes were two black shallow holes. Blaine thought of the many more who were going to end up deep under the sea just like that.
~
Blaine was there when they said goodbye to Burt. It was a clear day at the port, one of the many that fishermen knew too well to mistake it with anything but the forewarning of an imminent storm. Blaine knew Burt was trying his best not to be sentimental about leaving, but when Kurt yelled out Papa and ran into his arms, they both burst into uncontrollable sobs. Although Kurt was taller, stronger and much more definedly shaped, Blaine still saw the little boy weeping into his father’s shoulder on the abandoned beach ten years ago- so devastatingly gorgeous, so innocent, so breakable that Blaine shattered his own heart aching to shelter this boy from the world, to give him a whole different universe made purely of love and peace. But it all was just wishful thinking. Such a human thing. Blaine berated himself. Nothing had changed in the mortals’ world. They were still fatally foolish.
“Hey, it’s okay, kid, I’m gonna be back soon. The war is ending, don’t you hear? Take care of Carol and Quinn and Beth too, okay? It’s all on you now… And Blaine,” Burt lifted his face up to look at Blaine, his arms were still holding Kurt close. “Ya keep your promise?”
“Yes, sir. I will.” I’ll try.
Before he boarded, Blaine gave Burt an enchanted necklace he made from mermaids’ seashells. It’s for luck.
“Thank you, Blaine.” Burt said as if Blaine was giving him the world, though he had no idea that the necklace was blessed with protection from the Sea God. He wasn’t thinking about it anyway.
~
The ships finally set sail. Kurt walked back to the beach; Blaine followed him. They sat on the endless sand for like an eternity, or just a second, letting lullabies from the waves wash away the time.
“Your hands are cold.”
“It’s the water.” Blaine smiled softly, but Kurt already immersed himself in the scattered lyrics. There was something about falling asleep that was just like the sea, so easy, so natural and recurring; one could count on it to never run out of waves coming running, unfailingly overlapping, always in full.
And for those dreamless moments, the storm stood still.
Little child, be not afraid,
though thunder explodes and lightning flash
illuminates your tear-stained face,
I’m here tonight.
~
“Do you believe in Gods Blaine?” Kurt asked letting himself sink slowly into sleep, into Blaine’s scent of salted water.
“Huh?”
“Do you believe, like, they exist, somewhere?”
“Well..” Blaine took a deep breath; his fingers for a second stopped playing with Kurt’s hair “I think believing is never a bad thing, doesn’t matter where you place your faith on. I mean, at least, there are times you need to hang onto to something… even though the Gods may not be the best choice.”
“You’re very different, you know that? The way you talk…” Kurt smiled to himself, softly, the kind of smile that died gently in the middle of its own, fading into thoughts, into nostalgia and premonition.
“Really? How so?”
“There are things you either believe in, or you just don’t”
“You think so?”
“…”
“yeah”
“yeah, maybe this time, I do. Maybe this time, I hope that they’re there to hear my pray.”
“Your pray”
“Not that one”
~
Burt said in his letters he was being relocated, but they hadn’t heard from him since. It had been six weeks Carole kept saying, in her very reassuring voice, that he was probably too busy with all the chaos of the war. Finn’s writings also came so short and so far between. Everyday Kurt would decide not to wait for the mailman but to go straight to the post office after school to check for their letters. Every day he would come home disheartened but then immediately threw himself into the chair next to Blaine. The two of them and Carole, and Quinn, too, would read the newspaper and listen to the radio together, hoping in hopelessness that they would hear something about their loved ones. Blaine had long been purposely avoiding the area where Burt said his platoon would be. The day Burt left, he thought about following the man but he knew it would just have been pointless anyway. Gods were forbidden to interfere with mortals’ fate. And Blaine was scared that he would find Burt among the drifted souls. He couldn’t imagine himself telling Kurt about it. He couldn’t lie about that.
~
Out at sea, blackened shadows, bruised Gods, and wounded ghosts were interchanging into one another in the mist of smouldering ashes and treacherous red. Hovering above them all, between one step and another, angels of death were touching people on the shoulder, slight, gentle touches that would just tip the soul over. Time was the key there. Gods never killed anybody, it was just their time, the concept mortals themselves created.
Blaine used to love the golden threads piercing through the water when mermaids came up and down from the surface. He would spend all day watching that dance party of lights inside the water and awe at how gracefully the past and the present were waltzing in pairs. Little did he know then that they were delivering mortals’ souls, dancing to the magnificence of death. The darkness there was so calm and quiet and illuminated, as if all the cries above had all vanished into crimson sea foam and drifted elsewhere. There was nothing such as pain under the sea.
~
“It’s not fair that you are always the one awake.”
Blaine gave a soft smile, tracing his forefinger along Kurt’s palm: “I’m sorry Kurt but I don’t want to share watching you falling asleep”
Kurt laughed then; gleeful but noiseless laughter brush against Blaine’s collarbone: “I can’t believe you’re real sometimes.”
“There are so many things we cannot believe Kurt.”
“Yeah, yeah. Keep whispering waves into my skins.” Kurt turned and buried his face into Blaine side. “I like the way you make words and sounds lapping in my veins.”
~
May 27th, 1943
Lilac was in season.
The sun was being swallowed whole, glorifying the entire sky with a burning orange. Kurt was late. Blaine had waited for a while, getting more and more impatient from the excitement to show Kurt the castle he had made out of coral reef for Kurt’s birthday. He knew right away that something was wrong when he saw Kurt walking down the beach. Kurt had on not his usual veil of sadness but instead a carefully worn face and controlled look at Blaine. A scared hope.
“Kurt?”
“Hi, Blaine.”
“Is everything…all right?”
“Listen,” Kurt stood facing Blaine. “You’re gonna just let me talk. Hear me out and wait until I finish to say anything. Okay?”
“Okay…”
“Right. So you know I turn eighteen today. I’m finally of age. So uhmm… I went to the office and registered myself voluntarily...
“Kurt? Wha…”
“No, I’m still talking, Blaine. They don’t have a recruitment scheduled but there is this supply ship sailing off tomorrow at noon. I ’was thinking… that you’re going with me?”
Blaine felt all his senses take leave and he knew he had stopped breathing but he had lost control of his body to tell itself to make a sound.
“I talked to Carole last night. She wasn’t happy about me leaving, but she said she would not stop me. I think she gets it, Blaine. More than papa, she gets it, that I may get killed out there but I will be dead already if I stay. She knows that I need to go out there and out there needs me too. The sea needs Kurt Hummel,” Kurt tried to laugh, “don’t you think? Plus!.. Plus, I’ll be looking for Papa. So will you... will you go with me?” Kurt’s expecting eyes were looking straight into Blaine’s and he could not contain a smile spreading across his face, just as bright as his fabricated adventures. That smile pained Blaine more than any of Kurt’s broken tears.
“No, Kurt! You’ve lost your mind. You can’t go into the war like that.”
“I will fight if I have to.” Kurt said calmly. “You know I have always wanted to go out to the sea, don’t be ridiculous now, Blaine. Think about it. We will see the world together, all of it, and we will live those stories and find new ones, too, a thousand, no a million times more amazing stories. What, Blaine? Why are you looking like that? Don’t you want to know how it is out there? Truly living?”
“I know how it is out there. Please don’t go, Kurt.”
“You do want to discover new, wonderful things, right. That’s why I’m telling you to go with me.” Kurt wasn’t listening to Blaine anymore. He was too busy wallowing himself in the prospects of his dream journey. “Imagine Blaine, we can fight together at sea. I can smell it already, the fire and the salted water. The sweat of the brave. We’ll be greater than Gods.”
Just like that, Blaine thought he just died, the mortal kind of dying. He realized Kurt was under that human curse too. Seeking to defeat gods.
“No no, Kurt. Just no. It’s nothing like what you imagine no. It’s real out there, Kurt. These stories, your stories, they live with us, but out there, out there, everything dies. There, truths and lies all end up dead. You canno..”
“Stop it Blaine,” Kurt snapped. “Don’t…” He walked away from Blaine, then turned back, his ears fury red, “Don’t tell me what I can or cannot do. I’m sick of it. I thought…I thought you were different, Blaine. I thought you were like me, unafraid of anything, but apparently you are just another scared little coward like those ignorant people in the village. Never know anything other than this rotten village, never want to. Never have the courage to go out there, to, to just live. Coward, coward Blaine. Fine, you can stay but nothing can stop me from going. “
Kurt turned away, his hands frustrated with his tearing eyes. “Why don’t you get it? That half-living is not living.”
“Kurt…”
“Don’t say my name. You don’t get to say my name like that. I thought you’re… We are supposed to be out there Blaine. You and me against the world.”
“It’s not that easy Kurt.”
“Easy? I know it’s not Blaine. But that’s the point, don’t you see. Easy is ordinary. I cannot do ordinary. I have had enough of it already. I want my stories!”
“STORIES ARE NOT REAL KURT. No matter what we keep telling ourselves, they are just fantasies.” Broken truths.
“No, Blaine! I’m not gonna to listen to your babbling because you are terrified of the unknown. Don’t make up truths as something to hide from reality.”
“I know, Blaine. I know that I don’t know anything about life out there. But that is what I want. What I’ve always wanted. I’m going and I don’t care where I’m heading. I just need to get out of here. I…I just need You.”
Kurt fell down on the sand and sat there, the heels of his hands dug hard into his eyes, trying to contain his frustration, his disappointment, his feeling of being betrayed. Kurt wasn’t crying or sobbing, not even making a sound. He was just breathing, deep overworked breaths that reminded Blaine to breathe too, his eyes closed, Why don’t you stay?
Kurt gathered himself and looked up, utterly weary with red imprints around his eyes where his hands had been.
“I’m sorry. I guess going out there has always been my plan, Blaine and.. and for the past ten years, you are the plan, too. I never thought of asking you. It’s …my fault.” Kurt laughed in dry, gentle sobs. “You were that one constant to me.. I.. never… if you… want to stay… I’m not making you to go with me.”
“Kurt, please don…”
“I’m not mad at you.” He said through his tear-smeared lips, “I’m really not. You will always be my friend, the one I’ll conquer the world with. You gave me the courage I never thought I had Blaine. You have been my sheltering port till I’m ready to set sail on my own,” Kurt said in a quiet voice, hoarse from breathing but so devastatingly composed. “I am now.”
“Kurt,” Blaine muttered, as if it was the only word he could manage then, the only word to every plea he was making.
“No it’s... it’s okay, Blaine. I know not everybody is dying to go like I do.” Kurt tried valiantly to look cheerful. “And you’re not a coward. No,” Kurt took Blaine’s hands.” You are so incredibly brave Blaine, for you make me feel brave.”
Blaine could see all mortal pains in Kurt’s smile then, the sadness that made his entire being ache and torn more savagely, more violently than when he saw Kurt’s crumbling tears. Blaine could never understand how humans can take their brighter than the sun smile and turn it into unbearable sorrow like that.
“I guess this is our goodbye then.” Kurt stood up, and before turning away, placed a gentle kiss on Blaine’s forehead. Goodbye, Blaine.”
“No.Wait Kurt… WAIT!” Blaine shouted. He felt as if that one breath had taken all his god power out of him.
“Blaine?”
“Kurt, I’m the sea prince.”
“What?” Kurt snapped back.
“I am the sea..”
“I heard you. Have you gone mad Blaine? Stop talking nonsense. You going insane won’t make me…”
“Shut up Kurt. Just.. shut up.” Blaine backed into the water; his eyes were still on Kurt’s, staring through his angry tears. Blaine felt his whole body heaving, his feet aching with a burning sensation he thought he had long forgotten. The water was up to his waist now and his tail was transforming. Kurt looked at Blaine, completely bewildered
“Blaine? What are you...?”
“Hush, Kurt.”
He took a jump backwards and fell into the sea. Blaine heard Kurt calling his name in panic, but he had to take a breath in the water to compose his senses before he came back up.
With a sudden splash of water, Blaine submerged, flipped himself up onto a rock, displaying his heavenly figure to mortal eyes for the first time. The dying sun light poured on his tail glittering touches, golden on emerald metallic purple. Gods had the entire spectrum of color on their bodies, and Blaine’s was a dreamed up aurora.
Kurt’ eyes went wide, unblinking; his left hand came cover his mouth while the right hand was holding the left as if it could not hold itself together in disbelief. Kurt’s sharp intake of breath cut the air so loudly over Blaine’s breathlessness.
“You’re…you’re glowing...” Kurt couldn’t finish; he kept shaking his head and looking at Blaine tail twitching long, strong strokes.
“Kurt, I know this is too much to believe but please, let me explain….Please, Kurt.”
Blaine took Kurt’s silence and filled it with his story. It was his turn then. He told Kurt everything, of his family, of how they’re Gods and most of all, how they deliver mortals’ souls from battlefields to their infinite void.
Once Blaine finished, Kurt doubled over, letting out strangled gasps he had been holding. He closed his eyes; his mouth was still hanging open. He started to blink. Blaine thought Kurt was blinking away what was happening, his wildest hallucination. He was not sure Kurt was ready to take in this reality. Finally, inhaling one final breath, Kurt looked up:
“I don’t understand... I don’t … If Gods do exist out there, if.. if you are one of them, why haven’t you stopped the war already? Why didn’t you? When Finn had to go and then Papa... You’re supposed to not let all things happen from the beginning…who are you?”
“We cannot interfere with humans’ free will Kurt. Mortals have to decide where they will end up, we just... we take care of the after. You have to make your own choice.” Blaine uttered a bitter laugh. “I’m breaking the Gods’ oracles right now, telling you this. But I can’t.. I can’t just watch you going to sea like that while I know you are going to fall … I… I never get their reason; there must be one, I just… I think we have failed at some point. We always know better, we should have stepped in and saved mortals from the end they are designing for themselves… But… I can’t save everybody.”
When Kurt finally looked back at Blaine, Blaine felt as if he had waited forever for Kurt to respond, to say anything; but all he mustered was:
“Okay.”
“Kurt, I’m sorry to tell you all this but I had no other choice.”
“So you can swim to practically anywhere? You have been at battles? You have seen the world out there?”
“Yeah…yes.”
“That’s…that’s amazing. I can’t believe it. Blaine..This is beyond anything I…anyone could ever think of. Just..unimaginable. But if it’s true. If all Gods are true...” Kurt looked like he was still trying to convince himself not to jump out of this dream. Not so fast. “We can go and explore together! You can show me all the places we talked about and we will be at battles to, I will fight on board and you’ll be under the water, reaping enemy souls. It’ll be the best adventure. The story no one could dream of.”
“No. We are not reapers. No, Kurt, aren’t you listening? We delivered mortals to their deaths. Not just the enemies. Everyone, Kurt.” You are all the same when you fall down.
“Blaine, don’t you think this is greater than fate? What are the chances that a boy like me in an almost nonexistent place meets you? Be my partner, Blaine, be my guardian at sea and there’ll be no place we cannot conquer.”
“Kurt. People die out there!”
“People die here too Blaine. Don’t you get it? Mortals die. That’s the deal. But at least out there, the Gods will know when I die. I will not be just another muted soul that lives in silence and goes in silence, unremembered in this already dead village Blaine. I will die someday and I want it not to be pointless. I want to die doing something. I want a death worth dying for.”
“Kurt”
“And this is wonderful, Blaine. If I die, when I die, don’t you worry, for you will come to take my hand and lead the way.”
Blaine shook his head repeatedly, his voice, his body trembling. “No. I.. I can’t”. He didn’t know what he was talking about anymore. He couldn’t make Kurt stay? He couldn’t go with Kurt? He couldn’t get Kurt understand the brutality of being humans?
“I can’t have you die. I just can’t…”. Teardrops trickled down Blaine’s already soak face. He was crying now. So was Kurt.
“I can’t have you die.”
Blaine leapt down into the water and disappeared.
~
The morning after, the sky was so blue and so clear that you could even see the faded moon. Yet, as noon approached, a raging storm came savaging the entire village, lifting houses’ rooftops, pulling ships from their anchors. Everyone thought the end was finally there, that the Gods were asking for their dues.
Kurt ran to the abandoned beach, defying the monstrous winds. With each step he felt as if he was going to be lifted up and thrown into the center of the howling hurricane. The center of Blaine.
“Hey Kurt,” Blaine said cheerily. “You’re not going anymore?” He was half-standing in the water with his tail swirling in fury. His broad chest was like the northern sky during wrathful tempest.
“You can’t just do that Blaine!” Kurt yelled over the roaring winds. “You can’t just make storms to stop me from going like that. You can’t stop me.”
“Damn it, Kurt! I’m the prince of the sea; I can do whatever I want.”
“Blaine…Blaine, don’t you think it hurts me too? You are the only thing that makes me want to stay. I’ve never, never imagined there would be something here that would hold me back. And then you. You came, Blaine. But I’m indefinitely me, just as you’re indefinitely you. You can never stop being the sea price, being a God doing what Gods do. Neither can I, stop being me and stay. It’s just who I am Blaine. Leaving is the only way for me to be.”
Blaine was staring into Kurt now. Right into him. The sea was still smashing the sky but Blaine found himself helpless.
“I’m sorry, Blaine,” Kurt uttered, barely audible in the angry winds, “I know you are trying to protect me, to keep me alive but living and dying don’t matter much to me. They really don’t. May be one day, when I was sailing out there, on my own, amidst the never ending water, I will be mature enough to want come ashore, to come back home. But until then, I just have to go. Let me go. Please, Blaine. I know you understand.”
“Yeah.” Blaine breathed.
And the storm just stopped. He stopped. Altogether. It was as if there was no air anymore. Blaine stopped because he understood. He hated it but he understood. He understood Kurt’s need to run away, he understood Kurt. Kurt was… Kurt.
He turned and looked out to the sea afar, seeing his father, his brother. They were right. The casualty of being humans. Blaine realized that he could try anything but he would never change the fact that Kurt was a mortal. And mortals were foolish. They died.
“You know, leaving people behind is always a hard part, Blaine. And leaving you is the hardest.” Kurt started to walk back to the village,
“Good bye Blaine.”
~
The sky went back to being as blue as Kurt’s eyes, as calm as his breaths when he was falling asleep on Blaine shoulders.
~
Blaine spent all of his time in the village after Kurt left. He thought about going after Kurt; he wanted to, but he couldn’t will himself to go into the water. He kept having those dreams, those visions he saw when he was younger, watching his big brother do his work. Cooper was still doing it, actually. He knew his father was furious with him abandoning his duty, but if he went out to the sea he would just see Kurt everywhere: in the flashes of mothers’ eyes looking at their dying daughters, in the young soldiers’ shiny guns, in the books of little boys who should have stayed in school. He would see Kurt in every death, in every soul fallen into the sea going towards their tragic ends.
Sometimes, Blaine still felt the tear-soaked lips on his forehead.
Cooper came one day, he said he had talked to Father. Blaine was allowed a break, but not for long.
“Not for long, Blaine. I get it, what you’re going through. But I also get that this will soon be over and you will come back to the sea. Because that’s who you are. The sea prince. And you will find a way to make being you bearable. Do you hear?” Cooper held Blaine’s head in his hands, so strong and warm and safe. For the first time in a very long while, Blaine felt anchored.
“Remember that you’re not the only one who gets confused by mortals’ foolishness. But you have always handled it so well. I have never told you that but it’s true. Ever since you were little and I saw you watching all the madness up above. You always figured out a way. Hang in there, Blaine. You’ll figure out a way this time too.”
~
Chaos cast a thick, heavy layer of fright onto the village. The air was too suffocating to breathe, yet again, no one was really breathing anymore. Sometimes, when Blaine took a walk around town, through the market, through the playground, he couldn’t recognize the place at all. He was walking through a safe shelter that was no more. Land had become the sea. People were living with looming shadows, with whispers carried from across the oceans by the bitter wind. Every morning, as the rising sun just turned bloodish orange, a mailman would come from door to door on his rusted bicycle to deliver letters from the death. Every morning, Blaine would hide away near the water but he could still hear man’s moans and cries of despair.
At night, he fell asleep on the beach, curled up in the spot that he could still feel Kurt’s back imprint on the sand.
It was still early as he was strolled down the beach that day. Layers of fog and clouds tangled so vast, so endlessly that it was barely possible for Blaine to tell which one was right in front of him, which was from afar. Everything was floating still, in the mist of it all, just transparent enough for November lights to get through; fiery red still asleep under the foggy morn made a beautiful smoky purple. Waves after waves after waves rushed into the rocky sand quietly, seamlessly from the air so thick that Blaine wondered how they could make it to shore. But they always did.
That day, the necklace he gave to Burt the day he left made it there too.
He forced himself not to think of the necklace, of what it could mean because he would just think of terror. Blaine rushed back to Kurt’s house. Somehow, Beth’s crying became his favourite music. It was like a lullaby just for him, unfailingly calming him regardless of the weather at sea.
However, that day, as he stepped into the house, he didn’t hear Beth’s voice demanding to be fed. It was Quinn. Blaine saw an old friend of Finn, Puck, holding Quinn while she was convulsing on the floor, screaming, weeping uncontrollably like all evil madness had come over her. Blaine thought his heart just stopped.
Quinn passed out after what seemed like an eternity of excruciating torture. Blaine helped Puck put Quinn into bed. He worried for Carole; she didn’t said a word or even shed a tear. Her knuckles went white gripping the edge of the kitchen table when Puck was telling the news. Once he was done, she just stood up, staggered into her room, shutting the door behind her. Carole. Beth was oddly quiet today, sleeping in Puck’s arms. Puck started to cry then:
“It was all my fault.. If I hadn’t insulted the commander... What the fuck is wrong with me? Why does God let people like me live but not Finn? What the fuck is wrong with him?”
Blaine just patted Puck on the shoulder.
“It should have been me. Finn should have been the one to come back…”
Finn was given Puck’s post on the battleship when Puck got stuck with the supply and the cleaning section. Before Finn left, he made Puck promise to write letters home in his name, telling them he was okay, still alive and breathing. It worked out for a while; Finn and Puck kept in touch until one day, Finn’s platoon was ambushed and the entire ship got blown up.
“After Finn died, I could not write to Quinn and Carole anymore. I could not bear the thought of lying to them, giving them false hope while Finn was lying somewhere out there unknown of. I’m such a coward” Puck had to put Beth down because of his violent sobs.
“Finn was the bravest man I have ever known.”
Blaine didn’t remember what happened next, he just blinked awake and found himself sitting curled up on a dock at the port, seeing everything that sea creatures were seeing. He watched the far away ships, wondering which one was Kurt’s. But he couldn’t find one. Instead, Blaine saw Kurt’s deep blue eyes still open, yet so vacant, as if his soul had been evacuated to another level. Kurt eyes never closed, just like that, staring in to the nothingness of his dream world, floating on the water, waiting to be taken like just another body, done with life, finished. Blaine hated himself for not trying harder. He hated that was the one who let Kurt go.
It hit Blaine then how right Kurt was when he told Blaine that he was a coward. He had always kept running, kept hiding here. Kurt said Blaine made him brave but it was the other way around. One incredibly mortal boy had managed to make being himself so bearable. No, it was more than that. It was heavenly wonderful. Kurt gave Blaine courage. He had to stop hiding.
Standing on the dock, his eyes closed, Blaine dived into the water.
TBC
A/N: After I finished this and got comments from my betas, I decided to add a second past to the story. I have things mapped out and all that, but it is pretty long (like another 10,000). I'm unable to put everything together in time for the Big Bang posting. I hope I will have the second part done soon, though it has to be after school ends.
Comments are greatly appreciated. This is the longest piece I have written, I would love to hear your constructive criticism. I'm Stonebell on tumblr; my askbox are always open. Be nice :)